If we really care for the fate
of the people who comprise our nation, our motto should be: America last,
China last, Russia last.
BY SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
he latest news from the border
of Ukraine and Russia indicates that we already live in a pre-war situation –
so what should we, ordinary people, do when the explosion of global madness
looms?
Perhaps, our first reaction
should be to confront this dark news with another series of even more
catastrophic news. Recent scientific reports make it clear that our global food
system is broken: according to 130 national academies of science and medicine
across the world, billions are either underfed or overweight, and our food
production is driving the planet towards climate catastrophe. To provide an
environmentally-friendly diet for all of us will require a radical
transformation of the system.
But it’s not just the global
food system that is out of joint. As we learned abundantly from the last
environmental reports, the scientific diagnosis of our predicament is very
simple and straight: if we don’t cut greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent in
the next 12 years, coastal cities will be inundated, food will run short, etc.
And, again, to do it, a rapid radical social transformation is needed, that
will deeply affect all spheres of our life. So how to achieve this?
Apart from rapidly phasing out
carbon-intensive fuels, another more dramatic approach is considered: SRM
(solar radiation management), the continuous massive dispersal of aerosols into
our atmosphere to reflect and absorb sunlight and thus cool the planet.
However, SRM is extremely risky, as
Kate Aronoff outlines in a recent article for In These Times. It could
decrease crop yields, irreparably alter the water cycle, not to mention many other
“unknown unknowns” – we cannot even imagine how the fragile balance of our
earth functions, and in what unpredictable ways such geoengineering can disturb
it. Plus it is easy to guess why SRM is so popular with many corporations:
instead of a painful social change, it offers the prospect of a straight
technological fix of our biggest problem. We are in a real deadlock: if we do
nothing we are doomed, and whatever we do involves mortal risks… Who will make
the decisions here? Who is even qualified to do it?
Phenomena like global warming
make us aware that, with all the universality of our theoretical and practical
activity, we are at a certain basic level just another living species on the
planet Earth. Our survival depends on certain natural parameters which we
automatically take for granted. The lesson of global warming is that the
freedom of the humankind was possible only against the background of the stable
natural parameters of the life on earth (temperature, the composition of the
air, sufficient water and energy supply, etc.). Humans can “do what they want”
only insofar as they remain marginal enough not to seriously perturb the
parameters of life on earth.
The limitation of our freedom
that becomes palpable with global warming is the paradoxical outcome of the
very exponential growth of our freedom and power: we are now so strong that we
can destabilise the very basic geological parameters of the life on
earth. “Nature” thereby literally becomes a socio-historical category, but
not in the exalted Marxist sense (the content of what is – or counts for us as
– “nature” is always overdetermined by historical conditions that structure our
horizon of our understanding of nature). It becomes a socio-historical category
in the much more radical and literal sense; nature is not just a stable
background of human activity, but is affected by this activity in its very
basic components. The way we will develop our economy in next decades could
affect not only our future, but the future of the entire life on earth.
Hundreds of animal species are already disappearing; polar ice is melting. And
the paradox is that there is no simple return to some previous balance: in all
probability, life on earth has already adapted to our activity so much that, if
we all of a sudden stop producing and consuming, that would also cause a
catastrophe.
In short, the prospect of
geo-engineering implies that we are knee-deep in “anthropocene,” a new epoch in
the life of our planet in which we, humans, cannot any longer rely on the Earth
as a reservoir ready to absorb the consequences of our productive activity.
Earth is no longer the impenetrable background or horizon of our productive
activity. Instead, it emerges as an(other) finite object which we can
inadvertently destroy or transform it to make it unlivable. Therein resides the
paradox of anthropocene: humanity became aware of its self-limitation as a
species precisely when it became so strong that it influenced the balance of
the entire life on earth. It was able to dream of dominating and exploiting
nature as long as its influence on nature (earth) was marginal, that is,
against the background of stable nature. The paradox is thus that the more the
reproduction of nature depends on human activity, the more it escapes our
control. What eludes us is not just the hidden side of nature but above all the
impenetrable consequences of our own activity.
So yes, we are in a deep mess:
there is no simple “democratic” solution here. The idea that people themselves
(not just governments and corporations) should decide sounds deep, but it begs
an important question: even if their comprehension is not distorted by
corporate interests, what qualifies them to pass a judgment in such a delicate
matter? But what we can do is at least set the priorities straight and admit
the absurdity of our geopolitical war games when the very planet for which wars
are fought is under threat.
The logic of nation-state
competition is extremely dangerous because it runs directly against the urgent
need to establish a new mode of relating to our environs, a radical
politico-economic change called by Peter Sloterdijk “the domestication of the
wild animal Culture.” Until now, each culture disciplined and educated its own
members and guaranteed civic peace among them in the guise of state power, but
the relationship between different cultures and states was permanently under
the shadow of potential war, with each state of peace nothing more than a
temporary armistice. The entire ethic of a state culminates in the highest act
of heroism: the readiness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s nation state, which
means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation
of the ethical life within a state. Is today’s North Korea with its ruthless
pursuit of nuclear weapons and rockets to hit distant targets not the ultimate
example of this logic of unconditional nation-state sovereignty?
However, the moment we fully
accept the fact that we live on a Spaceship Earth, the task that urgently
imposes itself is that of civilizing civilizations themselves, of imposing
universal solidarity and co-operation among all human communities, a task
rendered all the more difficult by the ongoing rise of sectarian religious and
ethnic “heroic” violence and readiness to sacrifice oneself (and the world) for
one’s specific Cause.
Reason thus compels us to
commit treason here: to betray our cause, to refuse to participate in the
ongoing wargames. If we really care for the fate of the people who compose our
nation, our motto should be: America last, China last, Russia last…
No comments:
Post a Comment