Climate Change, Dullardism, and What We Can Do About It

Below, I've reposted my most recent guest contribution to the Endangered Species Print Project Blog. Because it is pertinent, I've also included the National Resource Defense Council Action Fund's "This Is Our Moment" public service announcement.

Please devote three minutes to the PSA. The celebrity cast is definitely "of the moment," and some of their references won't make sense five years from today, but that's the point. We need to be calling our senators now! (Or, if you prefer, email them, as the PSA suggests. Click here.)

Legislative action on these issues is long overdue...and our ailing country will benefit from the new jobs and the display of a little moral backbone. Let's not pass up the opportunity. Call. Email. Rally. Please.

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When the post below originally appeared on Hungry Hyaena, in June of 2005, polls suggested that the American public were increasingly aware of the fact that climate change (or "global warming") posed a serious threat to our environmental status quo. In fact, the number of Americans that favored legislative action to curb anthropogenic greenhouse emissions and to mitigate the negative effects of climate change continued to grow into 2008.

Recent studies, however, reveal a troubling trend: Americans' concern about climate change diminished in the last year, so much so, according to some polls, that a majority of United States citizens today doubt that climate change is a threat, and dismiss global warming as a fantasy. Whatever the actual numbers, the up-tick in skepticism is real, even in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus. The frightening anxiety of the burgeoning global village, our contemporary economic upheaval, and the requisite priorities of our elected legislators notwithstanding, action on climate change is no less a moral and ethical imperative today than it was five years ago.

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"The problem of modern man isn't to escape from one ideology to another, nor to escape from one formulation to find another; our problem is to live in the presence and in the attributes of reality."

-Frederick Sommer, The Poetic Logic of Art and Aesthetics

Although surveys suggest that most of the American public still believes that climate change is a future threat, many thousands of species are already threatened by shrinking environmental ranges and changing precipitation patterns; some of these species are on the verge of extinction. The negative impact of climate change occurs now and later.

I encourage those readers curious about the subject, particularly those who believe that we will "solve" the problem via improved technologies, to read "Climate Change is Totally Awesome," a recent post at Organic Matter. The author dissects a Telegraph article by Robert Matthews, entitled, "Warmer, wetter and better (or the good news that the climate change lobby doesn't want you to hear)."

Interviewed for the Telegraph piece, Professor Philip Stott of the University of London argues that reducing emissions will not alleviate the threat, and that the steps required to significantly reduce emissions would render us technologically impotent.

"Even if we shut every fossil-fuel power station, crushed every car and grounded every aircraft, the Earth's climate would still continue to get warmer, according to Prof Stott. 'The trouble is, we would all be too impoverished to cope with the consequences.'"

I agree that the warming trend is natural and that, even were we to de-industrialize, the world would continue to warm. But anthropogenic action accelerates climate change to such a devastating degree that biodiversity and, ultimately, human stability are in peril.

Furthermore, Stott's concept of technological impoverishment is misguided. To be sure, if we First Worlders are to transition to sustainable development, we must give up many of the conveniences that we now take for granted. It remains to be seen whether we will make this sacrifice of our own volition or if we will do nothing until Nature demands it of us. In either case, the sacrifice will not make us incapable of coping with climate change.

It will, however, demand a significant restructuring of our cultural and technological priorities. Our taste for spectacle and distraction must be unlearned. Cultural critic and anthropologist Morris Berman, in his outstanding book Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality, dubs the social spirit of contemporary, industrialized nations "dullardism."

"With dullardism, the goal is simply to go unconscious, by means of tranquilizers, alcohol, TV, spectator sports, organized religion, compulsive busyness and workaholism, and so on (even though many of these do provide a short-term 'high')."

Dullardism is not endemic to contemporary, industrialized societies. Equivalent symptoms were documented in the late years of the Roman and Mayan civilizations, and I suspect that they also existed in Sumer and other early civilizations.

The human animal is not evolutionarily equipped to flourish in society; our brains remain "wired" for the Pleistocene, and the rapid transition to an agrarian, sedentary, and "civil" existence has been rapid and fraught. We therefore exhibit displacement behavior, seeking escape via fundamentalism, sports, entertainment, and drug abuse.

Does this mean that advanced civilization makes us ill-equipped to deal with environmental catastrophe? Not necessarily (we have to hope not!), but we must reexamine our social mores in order to create something akin to a new social order, one that balances our primitive lusts for progress and power with pragmatism and stewardship. It's a tall order, to be sure, but one that we must fill.

Technology, Dullardism, & Climate Change

"The problem of modern man isn't to escape from one ideology to another, nor to escape from one formulation to find another; our problem is to live in the presence and in the attributes of reality."

-Frederick Sommer, The Poetic Logic of Art and Aesthetics

Although surveys suggest that most of the American public still believes that climate change is a future threat, many thousands of species are already threatened by shrinking environmental ranges and changing precipitation patterns; some of these species are on the verge of extinction. The negative impact of climate change occurs now and later.

I encourage those readers curious about the subject, particularly those who believe that we will "solve" the problem via improved technologies, to read "Climate Change is Totally Awesome," a recent post at Organic Matter. The author dissects a Telegraph article by Robert Matthews, entitled, "Warmer, wetter and better (or the good news that the climate change lobby doesn't want you to hear)."

Interviewed for the Telegraph piece, Professor Philip Stott of the University of London argues that reducing emissions will not alleviate the threat, and that the steps required to significantly reduce emissions would render us technologically impotent.

"Even if we shut every fossil-fuel power station, crushed every car and grounded every aircraft, the Earth's climate would still continue to get warmer, according to Prof Stott. 'The trouble is, we would all be too impoverished to cope with the consequences.'"

I agree that the warming trend is natural and that, even were we to de-industrialize, the world would continue to warm. But anthropogenic action accelerates climate change to such a devastating degree that biodiversity and, ultimately, human stability are in peril.

Furthermore, Stott's concept of technological impoverishment is misguided. To be sure, if we First Worlders are to transition to sustainable development, we must give up many of the conveniences that we now take for granted. It remains to be seen whether we will make this sacrifice of our own volition or if we will do nothing until Nature demands it of us. In either case, the sacrifice will not make us incapable of coping with climate change.

It will, however, demand a significant restructuring of our cultural and technological priorities. Our taste for spectacle and distraction must be unlearned. Cultural critic and anthropologist Morris Berman, in his outstanding book Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality, dubs the social spirit of contemporary, industrialized nations "dullardism."

"With dullardism, the goal is simply to go unconscious, by means of tranquilizers, alcohol, TV, spectator sports, organized religion, compulsive busyness and workaholism, and so on (even though many of these do provide a short-term 'high')."

Dullardism is not endemic to contemporary, industrialized societies. Equivalent symptoms were documented in the late years of the Roman and Mayan civilizations, and I suspect that they also existed in Sumer and other early civilizations.

The human animal is not evolutionarily equipped to flourish in society; our brains remain "wired" for the Pleistocene, and the rapid transition to an agrarian, sedentary, and "civil" existence has been rapid and fraught. We therefore exhibit displacement behavior, seeking escape via fundamentalism, sports, entertainment, and drug abuse.

Does this mean that advanced civilization makes us ill-equipped to deal with environmental catastrophe? Not necessarily (we have to hope not!), but we must reexamine our social mores in order to create something akin to a new social order, one that balances our primitive lusts for progress and power with pragmatism and stewardship. It's a tall order, to be sure, but one that we must fill.

Hunting JFK

I occasionally irritate friends by highlighting their environmental transgressions. It's only fair, then, that they should return the favor by challenging me to defend hunting.

I consider myself a conscientious hunter. I eat no meat, including fish, unless I catch it or kill it myself. I kill only a few animals a year and catch fewer than ten fish. Otherwise, I live on a vegetarian diet, aiming to minimize my contribution to the environmental degradation wrought by the meat industry. Moreover, I hunt only species biologists deem to have "surplus" populations, such as white-tailed deer (and, then, only does), mallard ducks (only drakes), cottontail rabbits, and some species of squirrel.

Unfortunately, there are also surplus "trash hunters," and I will defend neither their ignorance nor their abuse of the hunter's ethical contract (see my post on the New Jersey black bear season). For me, hunting is a reasonable and thoughtful activity, not at all at odds with being "green."

Laughing, drinking beer, telling dirty jokes and tall tales - all of these things are associated with the "hunting tradition," but I wince when I witness such self-consciously masculine behavior in the field. The dealing of death is no laughing matter. I will gladly share "good times" over the resulting meat meal, but the activity of hunting is, for me, a time of inner quiet and outer awareness. The camaraderie should take place before or after the hunt; save the stories for the grill or a winter evening football broadcast, but do not offend the sanctity (and gravity) of the hunt with such boorish behavior.

I'm therefore disturbed by the word "sport" when it is applied to hunting or fishing. "An active pastime or endeavor" is one of the given definitions of "sport" and, in this application, it accurately describes a range of activities, including hunting, fishing, rock climbing, or basketball. But "sport" is more closely associated with balls and strikes than with bag limits. In my own (undistinguished) athletic career, more than one coach told me to "have fun out there" and reminded me that "to excel at the game, you gotta enjoy it." But the killing of an animal is no "game" and, though the hunt can be considered enjoyable, "fun" isn't the word I would use. In fact, the experience is often deeply emotional and distressing.

But let's be honest, I could give up meat altogether and never again have to convince anti-hunters that white-tailed deer hunting benefits the environment or that I honor and admire the creatures that I kill. Why do I continue to do it, then? I must admit that a significant part of the appeal of hunting is existential. Those first difficult moments after you execute a large ungulate are transfiguring; your own mortality is highlighted and a sense of oneness with the natural world preoccupies you. Your intimate connection to the brutal deed, and to the slain animal, reduces the ego, opening you to a more universal experience of the universe. To use Dr. Morris Berman's analogy, the experience removes the respectful hunter from the vertical worldview and allows him to reside as part of the horizontal stretch, if only for a few hours. My love and respect for the natural world is rooted in the time I have spent outdoors, but particularly in the time that I've spent hunting. Birdwatching, a pastime I enjoy a great deal, might afford me an encounter with wonder, but hunting always seizes and wraps me in the beautiful, ambivalent mess that is the Everything. It is hunting, above all, that humbles my spirit, and makes me profoundly grateful for life, in every sense.

Three news items have me thinking about hunting and death today. SWORDS, robotic killing machines, have made headlines recently. The United States military will begin using these death toys in Iraq later this year. Last week, reading an issue of Outdoor Life Magazine, I came across this article on remote-control hunting. This morning, on my subway ride to work, I read that the makers of the videogame, "JFK Reloaded", are offering a $100,000 prize to the gamer that can most convincingly re-create the 1963 Dallas assassination of President John Kennedy.

There is a common thread. "JFK Reloaded" allows us to kill a digital Kennedy as often as we like, trying to make that "perfect shot." To enjoy such a game, where the target is not a faceless "enemy" but instead a well-known person who was assassinated relatively recently, the gamer must abstract (or even debase) his or her sense of morality. Our culture, as any religious zealot will tell you, is experiencing a moral schism. Murder, even for our soldiers in Iraq, is becoming an abstraction. From fist to blade, blade to spear, spear to arrow, arrow to bullet, bullet to...what? How can you describe a system whereby the man-boy assassinating a digital JFK on the computer screen might as well be gunning down Iraqis with a SWORD or slaughtering a big buck on a Texas game farm? For that matter, is not the murder of the pixel proxy similar to the pricking of a Voodoo doll? A clear association is made by the gamer; the digitized image on the screen - your quarry - represents a flesh-and-blood human. But when you pull the plastic trigger and assassinate JFK, that's that. You can turn off the gaming console and hit the sack. No police will show up at your door. No posttraumatic stress disorder will accompany your return to civilian life. No bang. Just a click.

The disconnect between animal and meat on the plate is but part of the problem; with every passing month, the disconnect between hand and killing becomes more ingrained in our culture and, as I see it, such a trend does not bode well for empathy. With less empathy and compassion in the world, abstraction of the "other," already a natural inclination, becomes that much more easy. Terribly, this leads to more violence.

Photo credit: Titled Forum Project