Disasterbation turns you blind

Why "disaster porn" films blur our moral vision
Our predicament is crucially different from, say, being ten minutes after the launch of mutually assured nuclear destruction, where human society really has only minutes or hours left and hugging loved ones is almost the only expression of humanity left. Instead, we are in the (in some ways worse) situation of having a disaster (or series of interlocking crises) that will unfold across decades and even centuries and millennia (the effects of our injection of CO₂ into the atmosphere will be felt for hundreds of thousands of years, species extinctions are forever and could well lead to ecosystems that are radically different - and for a very long time much simpler). What this means is while some shocks could be quite sudden (as we saw in 2008, banks can (almost) collapse within 24 hours if conditions are right, or rather, wrong), industrial civilisation will not go down in an afternoon (barring global nuclear exchange). Such an outcome is likely to take decades and a whole series of crises.

Many "catastrophe porn" films like 2012 (which I haven't seen) only further corrupt our moral imaginations by asking us to imagine ourselves in pure survival mode, which is a form of ethical laziness, since it is much more likely the real crises will bring moral challenges considerably more complex than "will I resort to cannibalism to stay alive?" (The Road). Neither Mad Max or Star Trek are particularly likely in the coming decades, but I expect something more in the ballpark of (the background scenes of) Children of Men.

In our contemporary situation, there are still plenty of good ends to pursue, even if it is increasingly unlikely that our actions are going to "save" civilisation as we know it. Whether we conceive ourselves as offering societal palliative care or building arks for the coming storm, there are more options than trying to plug the hole in the Titanic as it goes down (to mix three metaphors in as many lines). If we are offering palliative care for industrial society as a terminal patient, then perhaps that patient is a pregnant woman and our care may yet save the baby. That is, the choices we collectively make now will significantly influence the basic conditions under which any future society will exist, including (through the climate, health of biodiversity, soils, oceanic chemistry and so on) the carrying capacity of the planet and its regions. So it may actually now be impossible to keep things going as we've known them for the last few decades (let alone with continued growth) for too much longer, but it is certainly possible for us to bequeath a better or worse world to our children.

The perception of being "too late" will only increase in the next few years and this could well lead to all kinds of hopeless responses (nihilistic hedonism ("eat, drink and be merry..."); populist quick techno-fixes; authoritarian paternalism; scapegoating of outsiders). Our concern is not to say ahead of time what ought to be done (though many of the things that ought to be done now are more or less clear), but to focus on the formation of human beings who will not respond to such perceptions out of fear, guilt or impotence, but from faith, hope and love.
I took the title of this post from this helpful article. Other good posts on a similar theme include this reflection on the motives on doomers from one who has experienced them and this piece on collapse porn.

Are you voting for death?

"[D]riving is like voting. Presidents do not fall on the basis of one single vote. Your vote becomes politically potent when aggregated across the whole of the electorate. Voting is a private contribution to a public mass action that carries the power to topple presidents. Driving to the shops does not make you a killer. The chance that you will kill anyone is miniscule. But the risk does exist and someone somewhere will kill a pedestrian while to the shops today. These small personal actions carry with them a tiny probably of causing harm, which when aggregated across the whole population have major public health implications. We will see later on how the motor industry and the car lobby attempt to personalize road danger. It is better for them that road death is seen as an errant act of a deviant driver or a 'jaywalking' child than the expected outcome of an unsafe system that kills 3,000 people every day, most of them pedestrians and cyclists."

- Ian Roberts with Phil Edwards, The Energy Glut:
Climate Change and the Politics of Fatness (London: Zed Books, 2010), 42.

We are generally quite poor at thinking in terms of large scale societal trends. More cars on the road means more pedestrian deaths and consequently, fewer pedestrians and so more cars on the road as more people join the transportation arms race. (This in turn drives up BMI across society, but that is a point for another day, though it is one of the beefs of this book.)

The deadliness of mechanised transport is a systemic risk we have accepted (and largely become blind to) as a society because we love our cars so much. This too is another illustration of red vs green behaviour.

It doesn't have to be this way.
When looking for an appropriate image to accompany this post, I realised that I don't have many photos of cars. I don't find cars visually attractive and generally frame my photography to exclude them (that said, anyone reading this blog for any length of time will also realise that I generally crop people from my images as well. That is not from misanthropy as much as a recognition that I'm not very good at portraits). In the end, this image of the decomposing remains of a vehicle in a Scottish field seemed the most fitting.

The Word became flesh: looking again at Jesus II

A sermon from John 1.1-14: Part II
Introduction: What do you see?

Image from hereDo you remember those 3D Magic Eye pictures that were all the rage a few years ago? If you held the book at the right angle and squinted your eyes and looked into the middle distance and thought about nothing and stood on one foot, then you still couldn’t see the image? Or maybe you were one of those frustrating people who could always see it without trying. Or maybe you pretended you were, because you didn’t want to look stupid when everyone else could see it.

Maybe Christianity feels a bit like that to you. Everyone seems to get it, or pretends they do. They speak as if God were real, they act as if it’s normal to think some guy came back from the dead, they tell you they feel God’s love, forgiveness or presence. But you just don’t get it and you’re faced with the choice. Do you admit your blindness and call it all a hoax, or do you go along with the crowd, saying the right words, doing the right things, in order to fit in? Is this a familiar feeling?

Of course, there’s a third option. To keep looking. To look again.

This series on John’s gospel over the next few weeks is an invitation to look again at Jesus. Perhaps it’s never ‘clicked’ for you, the stories of Jesus seem so many coloured dots on a page. Or maybe church seems too familiar, these services feel dull and lifeless, the readings say what you expect and you’ve stopped really looking. Jesus is like a piece of furniture you no longer even notice. Your spiritual life feels like you’re simply going through the motions. Look again. Whether you’re puzzled by him or have simply grown too used to hearing his name, Mary’s son from Nazareth is worth a second look.

And John will be our guide. Most readers notice that the fourth Gospel is somewhat different to the other three. It is at once more straightforward, and yet contains hidden depths. Perhaps John had reflected for longer on the overwhelming and life-changing experience of living with Jesus. He has thought carefully about how to invite us to look at Jesus, and then look at him again. John is book not only worth reading, but re-reading. Our passage has three key terms and we’ll look at each in turn: the word, the light, and flesh.
Ten points for the first to see the magic eye puzzle.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X.