I'm there (a smudge in the background around 0:32).
Some say it was the largest single day of political actions on any issue ever. It might depend how you measure it, but last Saturday (which I discussed at length back here) included around four and a half thousand events with a single message conveyed in a wide variety of creative ways. If nothing else, this day was a testimony to the power of the internet to co-ordinate global campaigning.
Summary
Series begins back here.
The project is pointedly contemporary in its focus. The perception of inexorable threats to the future of industrial society as it is presently known is the dark background against which we will explore the possibility (and possibilities) of faithful Christian moral thought. However, the deeper issues are in one sense perennial. The fragility and temporariness of political and social orders may be closer to the surface at times, but it is never so distant as to be irrelevant.
Inhabiting the collective imagination of many Westerners are apocalyptic images drawn not least from the Bible and Hollywood. For those familiar with the alarming statistics concerning ecological damage to the health of the biosphere, it does not take much effort to picture a cascading series of systemic failures, increasingly widespread shortages in the material conditions required for daily life, a breakdown in civil order and rapid descent into violence and chaos. How can moral thought avoid being paralysed or oversimplified by such apocalyptic nightmares?
There is some similarity between my question and the one adopted by C. S. Lewis in his address “Learning in War Time”. Lewis was speaking to an incoming group of undergraduate students in Oxford about the possibility and importance of any kind of reflection in the bleak period following the outbreak of war with Germany in 1939. He noted the threats to the possibility of learning and articulated both philosophical and Christian reasons for both the necessity and possibility of learning even in war time. My question is both narrower (asking after only ecclesial moral attentiveness) and has what may be a less pressing, but even darker background.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
Tomorrow, in at least 177 countries, over 4,600 political actions (many of them involving hundreds or thousands of people) will be taken under a single banner. The banner? A number, three hundred and fifty, referring to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide (and equivalents) in the atmosphere. This is the level many leading climate scientists (including the head of the IPCC) now say is required to minimise the likelihood of passing various climate tipping points that trigger positive feedback mechanisms virtually ensuring further destructive changes. The challenge? We're currently at about 390 ppm. Even the most rigorous goal for the Copenhagen negotiations stands at 450 ppm, on the assumption that this gives us a better than even chance of limiting average warming to 2ºC, widely quoted as a threshold beyond which the dangers multiply. But even an average warming of 2ºC will have enormous effects on many aspects of climate, not least precipitation patterns (and so agricultural yields) in some of the world's most food-stressed areas. To avoid this, the 350 campaign brings together a huge number of organisations, individuals, congregations and parties from nearly every country, calling for global leaders who will soon meet in Copenhagen (see clock in sidebar) to reach an agreement that is strong, equitable and grounded in the latest science. Today's Sydney Morning Herald includes this opinion piece by Archbishop Desmond Tutu explaining his support for the campaign.
H/T Matt Moffitt and Geoff Broughton for this link.
Personally (provided we are both over a cold that has been dogging us recently), Jessica and I will be going to one of the Edinburgh events tomorrow in order to add our voices and bodies in support of keeping this issue high on the agenda. You can find an event near you here.
However, political support for a strong deal seems to be waning. New polling shows that only 57% of Americans believe the climate is warming (compared to 77% in 2007) and only 36% accept that the human actions are primarily to blame. In Australia, 68% saw climate change as a threat to Australia's vital interests back in 2006, by last year that was still 66%, but is now only 52%.
With national leaders concerned about national interests, every country is out to minimise its costs, particularly since the primary dangers are decades away, well beyond the term of any of those responsible for current negotiations. Different approaches to sharing the burden are also evident between countries that have historically contributed most to emissions and those whose emissions are currently rising fastest.
And there is worse news. Even if leaders manage to agree in Copenhagen to limiting emissions to 450ppm, reaching some kind of compromise between developing and developed nations, then even the most optimistic assumptions about a best case scenario put the chances of actually sticking to anything like that as almost impossible. Clive Hamilton, one of Australia's best known public intellectuals and Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, a joint centre of the Australian National University, Charles Sturt University and the University of Melbourne, in a lecture delivered earlier this week, summarises the situation like this:
It is clear that limiting warming to 2ºC is beyond us; the question now is whether we can limit warming to 4ºC [to see what a 4ºC change might look like, see here, or here]. The conclusion that, even if we act promptly and resolutely, the world is on a path to reach 650 ppm and associated warming of 4°C is almost too frightening to accept. Yet that is the reluctant conclusion of the world’s leading climate scientists. Even with the most optimistic set of assumptions—the ending of deforestation, a halving of emissions associated with food production, global emissions peaking in 2020 and then falling by 3 per cent a year for a few decades—we have no chance of preventing emissions rising well above a number of critical tipping points that will spark uncontrollable climate change.
- Clive Hamilton, "Is it too late to prevent catastrophic climate change?"
The whole article is worth reading. In it, Hamilton argues that things are worse than we thought. Whereas until recently most policy makers assumed that we could limit change to less than 2ºC and that the effects of that change were "worrying but manageable", new research into the likely negative effects of even 2ºC warming and into the extreme (political, economic and social) difficulty of staying below the 450ppm barrier makes even the most aggressive suggestions currently on the table seem at once both beyond our reach and too little in any case.
So why bother at all? Why campaign for a basically impossible target? Why make the (sometimes painful) lifestyle, legislative and policy changes required to reduce our carbon footprint? If all our efforts will be too little, too late, why not "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die"? A longer answer will probably take much of my thesis to articulate. An excellent 11-page answer by Andrew Cameron in his 2007 report to Sydney Anglican Synod on behalf of the Social Issues Executive can be found here....then please don't read this. Seriously.
I will post more on this later.
Oliver O'Donovan's The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the roots of political theology is often regarded as a difficult and dense read. And it is. But it is worth it. For those who would like a brief summary to guide their reading (or to get a sense if the book could be worth the effort), there is quite a good one here, written by Alex Abecina, who is a Masters student at Regent College in Vancouver.
H/T Ben.
Possibility: part one
Series begins back here.
Finally, we arrive at the beginning and find that it is the centre. The possibility of: these first words of the sub-title are critical, as they designate the sharp focus of this project, limiting its scope, directing its attention and making it, I believe, original research.
The project is not attempting to answer “what ought we (as Christians) to do now?” (i.e. under these modern conditions of perceiving a predicament of societal unsustainability), which is a much broader question of daunting scope and complexity, demanding careful and multifaceted answers. Its answers will develop and shift according to both the further development and understanding of our situation over time and according to our particular social location in the world with the opportunities and threats we find ourselves facing. It is also a question that has received much consideration from both within and without the Christian church.
This project is also not attempting to answer one subset of this broader question, namely “what ought we to think now?”. This too is critical and complex. An analysis of the cultural patterns of both behaviour and thought that have led us into this mess and suggestions for new conceptions or for the recycling of old ones are pressing needs of the hour. And once again, Christian and non-Christian thinkers are making interesting suggestions on these matters.
Instead, this project asks “under what theological conditions is moral thought even possible today?”. It will investigate the threats to reflection upon the question “what ought we to do (and think) now?”, the ways in which the process of attempting to answer it might be short-circuited or the moral landscape flattened out such that genuine moral though is attenuated. It is asking after the theological space that enables moral reflection to take its time without being hurried into an answer by the threat of contemporary or imminent crises. What is the character (rather than content) of moral thought during a predicament such as the one we presently face? How does the Christian gospel shape and provide for the moral self at this time? What is it about the good news that enables the possibility of moral attentiveness even (and perhaps especially) in today's adverse and apparently hopeless conditions?
Finally, the project is interested not only in the possibility of, but also the possibilities for Christian moral attentiveness. That is, not just about the preservation of Christian moral attentiveness against the various threats that may numb it, but also about how this predicament may even be a source of spiritual and moral renewal.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
"What with Global Warming, the War on Terror and the Global Financial Crisis, we may well think that we live in apocalyptic times."So began Archbishop Peter Jensen's presidential address to Synod. The bulk of the speech concerned the particular financial and organisational issues that have arisen as the result of very significant losses in Diocesan wealth over the last twelve months, but his opening sought to say something about living with the perception of being in apocalyptic times.
Christian: part one
Series begins back here.
Who is the subject of moral reflection? Who is it who must awaken and be attentive? Although this issue could be broadened to the more general question of moral attentiveness in the predicament of ecologically-threatened industrialism, this project is primarily concerned with the Christian moral subject. The Christian moral subject is one whose life is shaped by the Christian gospel of the life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus the Messiah. This project will be grounded in this narrative and take various Christian thinkers as dialogue partners.
Taking this lens for our investigation need not be of narrow interest only to Christian believers as Christians have generally claimed that the life of Jesus is relevant to all human individuals and societies.
I had considered modifying moral attentiveness with ecclesial rather than Christian to emphasise that the moral subject is always formed in community and indicate that I am interested in social rather than purely personal ethics. Indeed, this issue is an important one because the crisis we face is not simply a threat to society, but a threat to sociality. The kinds of scenarios haunting the collective apocalyptic imagination are of the bonds of affection being loosened or broken. Fear can either isolate individuals or turn a society into a mob, giving them a false unity. I shall argue that the Christian church at its best is a model, or a promise, of a society capable of sustaining moral attentiveness, of sustaining genuine sociality, without being overwhelmed by fear. Nonetheless, I have retained the more general term Christian rather than the more specific ecclesial.
It is also worth stating that the relevant subject of moral attentiveness is not merely professional moral theologians or ethicists, but all Christian believers and communities.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
"Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd."
- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (trans. Justin O'Brien, London: Penguin, 1975 [1942]), 20.
Today is my birthday. I am not thirty and do not assert my youth. But I am indeed absurd.
Moral attentiveness: part two
Series begins back here.
Uniting all three responses is a deep fear of loss and death. Facing this predicament may be the first time some people are faced with their own mortality and impotence to prevent loss. But the threat is broader than personal demise or suffering; broader even than family and loved ones also being in danger. If the present form of society comes to an end or undergoes radical transformation to a lower level of complexity, then the loss encompasses an entire cultural identity: familiar places and rituals; narratives that make sense of the world; feelings of belonging; a sense of self.
Part of what justifies the negative evaluation of these responses is the deleterious effect they have on the clarity of moral attentiveness. I am drawing here on some of Professor O’Donovan’s recent work articulating the character of moral thought as attentiveness. He argues that there is a process of moral awakening in which we are called to pay attention in order to understand and respond well. We must pay close attention to our situation in the world, to the time in which we live, and to ourselves as moral agents lest our actions fail to grasp the goods that lie before us.
Therefore, the topic speaks of attentiveness rather than merely attention. Everyone pays heed to this or that at various times and so attention can simply refer to the latest distraction. Attentiveness, on the other hand, is a habitual disposition, a comportment of coherent focus. Moral attentiveness is a way of being in the world that seeks to understand action.
The focus of moral vision is not generally helped by apocalyptic fears of the imminent end of society (at least as we know). On the contrary, social breakdown is often imaged to mean the suspension of morality for the sake of survival. An aphorism attributed to Mao Tse Tung articulates this widespread sentiment: “Food before ethics”. In other words, survival is the highest good, coming before all other moral considerations. Perhaps particularly when the situation is not simply personal survival, but the dynamic interaction between personal survival and the continuation of society, then the possibility of moral thought declines further. When collective survival is at stake, all other bets are off and all means justify that overarching end.
Indeed, Hans Jonas has made this the centre of his ethics of responsibility. This is the one truly categorical imperative: to keep human society alive. To this, all other ethical impulses, principles and insights are to submit (including the impulse to protect one’s own life). This is one way of attempting to avoid the panicked fragmentation of moral thought in the face of grave societal danger, but in the end it treats all other ethical norms as distractions from the single unifying survival imperative.
This project seeks a different and more nuanced kind of coherence through relativising the importance of survival (both personal and societal), believing that moral attentiveness is a more complex (and important!) phenomenon than merely the pursuit of continued existence.
The reasons for rejecting the false coherence of survivalism and the possibility of a different kind of coherence are found in the term modifying moral attentiveness.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
Why does the Church of England recycle its sermons? Having just quoted Archbishop Williams in my previous post, this article argues that the Church of England has jumped on the ecology bandwagon for lack of anything else to get excited about. Ecological sins are an easy preach and green tips are a simple application.
There is indeed such a thing as saying too much about a particular ethical issue, whether it be sexual or ecological. There is, of course, also such a thing as saying too little. A church that never mentioned ecology would be as deficient in its discipleship as one that never mentioned sex or money. As I read the article, my first thought was that few Sydney churches that I know of could be accused of talking too much green!
Our church here in Edinburgh has an eco-group as one of its many (forty-one at last count) special interest ministries. So you can pick between improving the music, supporting AIDS orphans in Africa, helping to walk beside locals struggling with debt or saving the planet one lightbulb at a time.
Now the ecclesial body has many members, each of which has its own function and not everyone can be involved in every cause or need. So I am not against churches having specialist groups. My question is this: what is it about a church eco-group that is specifically Christian? Presumably, like a sub-committee of various corporations, such a group will be counting carbon and cutting footprints, trying to encourage the larger group to change behaviours and modify assumptions. But what difference does the good news of Jesus make? How do specifically Christian responses to ecological destruction differ from mainstream secular ones? Merely in motivation? In putting the cause into a larger context? In placing ultimate trust in God as we act? Yes, all of these, but are there other differences?
Don't worry, I will be returning to my series in which I am outlining my thesis question. These three little posts are a brief interlude. Normal transmission will resume shortly.
The threat posed by climate change and environmental degradation tends to make us think about survival and look for solutions that will guarantee survival. That's a reasonable response to any threat; but the sheer complexity of this situation and the continuing uncertainty about some of the precise detail (how late is it? have we reached the 'tipping point?) make us especially vulnerable. We are bound to realise sooner or later that easy solutions are not at hand and that there is no one cause of the whole crisis that will allow us to point to some single scapegoat. This in turn makes us vulnerable to panic on one hand, apathy on the other, and the illusion that someone will both take the blame and assume the responsibility of finding a solution – usually meaning a series of grand technological solutions requiring massive investments of money nobody seems to have.
- Rowan Williams, "The Climate Crisis: Fashioning a Christian Response"
Either we're both barking up the wrong tree, or we're displaying similar bark because we belong to the same tree. Either way, at least I'm not alone.
Are you sick of politicians diluting and compromising on climate action, putting short term political and economic gains ahead of long-term social and ecological investment? If you are an Australian, are you disappointed with Rudd's half-hearted climate suggestions and feel (like Professor Garnaut) that he has significantly lowered his sights? Are you even more disappointed in Coalition politicians who still can't make up their mind and would even risk a double dissolution election over making the bill even weaker?
Have a look at the Safe Climate Bills recently released by the Australian Greens. Aimed to stimulate debate about what is really needed, the series of twelve bills have been warmly welcomed by Friends of the Earth, the Green Building Council Australia and many others.
The current proposed government solution is considered by some to be "better than nothing", but by giving the illusion of action while simply continuing business as usual (with a few slight tweaks), it may actually be worse than idleness. Have a read of the summary (with links to the complete bills) and see if you think this might be worth making a fuss about.
PS Although large corporations are often among the worst ecological offenders and corporate regulation is one area requiring the largest shake-up (for all kinds of reasons), sometimes, it's a little bit nicer to be writing these kinds of posts on an Apple. Smug, moi? No. But if they too are greenwashing, then at least they do it with more style than the competition.
PPS I've only just realised that I unintentionally contributed to this. Ha.
Moral attentiveness: part one
Series begins back here.
There are of course many forms of unhealthy response, the most common of which can perhaps be summed up under the headings of denial, despair and desperation.
First, the claim about societal unsustainability can be challenged in a number of ways. In dispute are the extent, causes and imminence of the various ecological crises and the political agenda of those who make such claims. The scope of the warning naturally gives rise to conservative suspicion. Narratives of societal decline or impending disaster are virtually ubiquitous in at least Western culture since the later years of the Western Roman Empire. Those who suffer most from the present social order will always be quick to critique it. And from a theological perspective, might it simply be another form of human hubris to believe that our actions are capable of effecting global alterations?
Such challenges to the account of unsustainability are important and of course need not be made in bad faith. But the unhealthy response of denial consists not in raising these questions, but in the dogged refusal to accept the possibility that decline is possible, or in the wilful ignorance of the available evidence, or in its doctrinaire reinterpretation to avoid undesirable conclusions.
A second common response to this predicament is despair, a pervading sense of dread that numbs motivation and judgement. Without hope for good things in the future, life may no longer feel worth living. The burden of this knowledge may prove too heavy to bear and so various defence mechanisms may be employed. These could include apathy, seeking distractions, or making attempts to minimise the importance of the information in order to cope.
A third unhealthy response is a frenetic activism that desperately seeks to stay alive, either personally or collectively, at whatever cost. Others may be recruited to the cause and those who will not are treated as enemies. A variety of survivalist strategies may be adopted, for either personal or communal survival, and all other concerns are subordinated to that goal.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
Predicament: part two
Series begins back here.
John Michel Greer in The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age usefully distinguishes between two kinds of threats, which he calls problems and predicaments. Problems have solutions, whereas predicaments do not. A problem has a path may be discovered and chosen that will effectively avoid, nullify, or significantly diminish the problematic aspect of the situation. A predicament lacks such options. It is a situation in which there are no strategies that will substantially avoid all the significant negative aspects of a threat.
Greer suggests that the archetypal human predicament is death. Facing death, humans have come up with a wide range of responses, some healthier than others: from denial or suppression to great works of art and a variety of ethical and spiritual impulses. Yet it is a mistake to treat our mortality as though it were a problem we are to solve.
I may correctly treat this or that threat to my life as a problem and seek a solution to stay alive. I am standing in the middle of a busy road; I will get out of the way (or perhaps I will campaign for more pedestrian areas and higher taxes on private automobiles). But while specific problems can be seen and solved, the fact that I am mortal is a basic condition of my life. No amount of wishing, campaigning, meditating, medicating or moralising will decisively remove the constant threat and ultimate inevitability of my own demise.
Staying alive is a good thing. And so medical research and (probably more significantly), public health initiatives such as sewers and effective garbage disposal that reduce mortality rates and increase life expectancies are generally instrumental goods worth pursuing. But it is possible to pursue one good thing in a way that undermines other good things and distort the proper ordering of goods. There is an often unspoken assumption behind much of the angst over healthcare funding (whether private or nationalised): that, given sufficient resources, we can endlessly defer the inevitable. But throwing more and more resources towards medical interventions that merely prolong the continuation of a pulse may well be mistakenly treating a predicament as a problem, and ironically, diverting attention from other problems that do have solutions.
Death is a personal predicament. Greer argues that the present ecological and resource crises are a social predicament, indicating the unavoidable end of the industrial age as we have known it. Although at one stage (he identifies the 1970s oil crises for instance) the unsustainability of contemporary industrial society was a problem that could have been confronted and solved through an ordered transition to more sustainable ways of living, it is now too late. The moment for solutions has passed and we are now in a predicament, where no amount of activism, technological advance or personal reform is remotely likely to succeed in maintaining the astonishing trajectory of growth that industrial nations have enjoyed for the last few generations. Indeed, nothing can avert widespread social decline and political instability. He claims that treating this as a problem distracts us from a healthy response in which the inevitability of this decline is accepted and we seek ways of cushioning the most likely quite rugged downslope that lies ahead.*
Of course, it is crucial to identify correctly which threats are problems and which are predicaments. Treating a predicament like a problem is pointless waste of energy. Treating a problem like a predicament is an irresponsible defeatism. But how can we tell the difference? How do we know if an issue is insoluble unless we resolutely attempt to solve it?
These are important questions, and in the case of whether our society has reached or is reaching various limits to growth, very important questions. However, I would like to plead some measure of ignorance on the precise global situation and instead pursue some subsequent questions: if Greer is correct and unsustainability is not simply a problem, but a predicament, what does a healthy response look like?
*Greer also claims that we face long-term decline, not sudden collapse (hence The Long Descent). But that is a post for another day.
UPDATE: I've also just discovered that the relevant section of The Long Descent was first posted here on JMG's blog some time ago.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
Predicament: part one
Series begins back here.
If the severity of these various problems is not being overstated, there are a variety of possible scenarios. Perhaps unforseen new technological breakthroughs will open up new vistas of growth and the dawn of an even more prosperous era. Or it may still be possible to make a more or less smooth transition to a more sustainable version of the present based on existing and prospective technologies. But for many, the future appears increasingly bleak and some version of Malthusian collapse or decline seems imminent.
This prediction may be based on a pessimistic estimate of the possibility of overcoming social and political inertia in the timeframe that may be available, or it may simply arise from a belief that industrial society has already passed a point of no return. Either way, the present situation is seen as not merely a problem, but a predicament.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
Societal unsustainability: part two
Series begins back here.
We shall refer particularly to contemporary industrial societies, rather than to all societies globally or historically. There are of course various kinds of industrial societies. Western societies have a long established tradition of industrialisation and only distant cultural memories of any other kind of social organization. For some other societies, industrialisation is rapidly becoming the dominant pattern of social and economic activity. Again, this project will focus more on the former than the latter. Although many of the challenges just mentioned are global in scope and threaten all societies, there is a particular shape to the issue in those societies whose historical and present activities are principally to blame, since at stake is not simply survival, but also the moral, spiritual and legal problem of guilt.
Industrialism is a complex cultural phenomenon involving shared beliefs, narratives, and moral judgements, a set of habitual practices and various social structures and institutions. From a physical viewpoint, it is the historically unprecedented exercise of human power through harnessing non-human energy (particularly fossil fuels) in the rationally-governed pursuit of maximal production of material goods. And the very ‘success’ and increasingly global reach of this way of life is a or the primary cause of the present ecological crises. Pre-industrial societies have undermined the conditions of their own possibility before and collapsed as a result. But the activities of contemporary industrial societies threaten not only their own continued existence, but that of nearly all human societies.
This line of analysis and critique is well worn amongst ecologists and eco-theologians. Although there are significant disputes within this field, the precise account of the cause and extent of the problem is not crucial to this project. It is enough to note that there is an increasingly widespread perception based on coherent evidence that the present pursuit of relentless industrial growth will continue to have increasingly disastrous consequences both for human societies and much of the rest of the biosphere too. Put another way, continuing ‘business as usual’ is not simply a moral impossibility, but an ecological impossibility.
For this reason, I considered using the term societal decline rather than societal unsustainability since the force of threat in the latter has been diluted through overuse. Nonetheless, I have retained it because although serious decline is the likely fate of an unsustainable society, the societal threat from lack of sustainability has a particular shape not shared by other potential causes of societal instability and degradation.
Also, I am deliberately using societal rather than social. Although almost synonymous, the latter has a broader semantic range, including ‘interpersonal’ as well as ‘society as a whole’. Therefore, using social leaves open the possibility that the threat in question could simply mean this or that aspect of society being altered, rather than the entire present social order in danger.
Notice too that our topic speaks of society rather than politics. There are, of course, specifically political implications of ecologically-driven decline, and various political regimes may be more or less sustainable under the conditions of late modernity. But the focus here will be more broadly societal than specifically political.
This perception of grave societal vulnerability is the background, not the focus of this project. Let us continue backwards through the sub-title to see how it is important for the question I wish to pursue.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
Image by CAC.
Societal unsustainability: part one
The background for my project is the increasingly widespread perception of the unsustainability of the present order of industrial society. This belief is based on a wide variety of factors and takes a variety of forms, but uniting them all is the judgement that contemporary industrial society is undermining the material conditions of possibility for its own existence. Deforestation, soil degradation, water depletion, climate change, peak energy, biodiversity loss, pollution, sea level rises, mineral exhaustion, introduced species, pollinator decline, desertification and over-fishing: each of these challenges are caused or exacerbated by the industrialisation of much of human society over the last few hundred years. The scale of each issue is multiplied by the unprecedented population expansion that industrialisation has enabled. And each of them could sooner or later threaten significant social disruption. Many of these problems already cause widespread suffering and political tension, but taken together and in their bewildering array of interconnections, they drastically endanger the continued growth of industrialised society, and perhaps its very existence. Although ours is certainly not the first society to face a crisis that threatens the basis of its continued existence, nonetheless, the global extent and technologically-enhanced degree of environmental degradation are historically a novelty.
A number of thinkers, such as Jared Diamond, William R. Catton Jr. and Joseph Tainter, argue that, due to a range of converging reasons, the present way of life enjoyed by the developed world and aspired to by the developing world will reach the limits of its conditions of possibility within the next few years or decades. If so, then significant social changes are imminent. Whether accepted voluntarily or imposed forcefully by material conditions, total human population, production and consumption will not continue to grow indefinitely in a world of finite resources. A sustained or precipitous decline in the world economy may well bring with it the compounding difficulty of political and social instability. If the decline is as severe, permanent and global as these thinkers suggest, such instability is unlikely to be confined to the poorer nations or those usually considered volatile.
Whether such claims are accurate is a complex matter, and so are the analyses of the causes: the causes of the situation if the perception is accurate or the causes of the false perception if it is not. All these questions are important, but I would like to set them to one side. My concern is with the perception itself, its effects on thinking (specifically on moral reasoning) and possible responses to it.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
I have long known that my writing skills are more hare than tortoise. I seem to work in fairly unpredictable bursts of productivity, or rather, depressingly predictable ones during the last minute before a deadline. Over the years I have oscillated between attempts at reform and embracing this pattern. I have known for some time that I probably wanted to do a PhD and also knew that while last minute sprints could get me through endless essays during my nine undergraduate years, you can't sprint through a PhD.
I have tried writing every day* (and failed). I have tried setting myself shorter term deadlines (and failed). I have tried asking for external deadlines (and failed). I have tried treating my study more like work (and failed). I have tried banning distractions (and failed). I guess I'm looking for new inspiration. How have others wrestled with this issue? What have been your successes and failures?
*Probably the closest was when I was blogging more regularly and would aim to put up at least 5 posts each week. You can see by the numbers on the sidebar which months have been more or less productive.
Recently I have been working on a more precise articulation and clarification of my thesis question. Since my topic is not the more straightforward "personality" based approach ("what does x think about y?"), but is more thematic in orientation, it threatens to become a project about everything, and so about nothing. In order to avoid this, and give me some chance of finishing within cooee of a respectable timeframe, I've been working out what the project does not aim to do, as well as what it does.
I thought I would post some of my thoughts here so that I can (a) get some valued feedback from trusted (and perhaps as yet unknown) sources; (b) have a record of where my thinking was up to by this point to give me a good laugh when I look back in another year's time and (c) give me somewhere to direct people when the inevitable party conversation stopper arises: "so, what is your thesis actually on?"...
Here is where the wording of my title is up to at this point and I will be explaining it in reverse over a series of posts.
"Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one
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