The Whether Report: Thoughts at 73

As I approach another birthday, I mark also the fleeting paradox of living into one's seventies.  While each year seems to speed by faster than you can blink your eyes and see it, each year nevertheless has a greater, more consequential weight;  it takes us inexorably nearer the physical conditions that forecast the end.   So each year means more, and yet is harder to grasp.

Seventy-three--my upcoming milestone--is not 79, and in particular not what 79 often was in the 1940s.  Yet my response to external events of this time raises a question defined by the last book of H.G. Wells, and criticisms of it.

Mind at the End of Its Tether is Well's shortest book by far, published the year of his death (August 1946) and of my birth (June 1946.)  In The Outsider, Colin Wilson calls it "the most pessimistic single utterance in modern literature, together with T.S. Eliot's 'Hollow Men.'"  Wells' forecasts the inevitable end of human civilization, perhaps of the human species, and perhaps of all life on Earth.

I find this particular Wells essay almost incomprehensible, but parts of it suggest forecasts he had made earlier with more evidence.  But first, I want to focus on a particular response to it.

It is present in science fiction author Rudy Rucker's foreword to the Provenance Edition of Wells' last books.  "When approaching their own deaths, some people fall into what I might call fatalistic synecdoche.  They conflate the whole (the world) with the part (themselves), and announce that the world is about to end."

Another science fiction author--Bruce Sterling--was even harder on Wells in his posts to the 2016 annual State of the World thread on the venerable San Francisco site, the Well.  "In this book, the great speculator is elderly, exhausted, politically disillusioned, fatally ill and also the Atomic Bomb has been detonated," Sterling typed.  "So he's like: Welp!  That's It!  No More Future!  For him, yes, that's true.  Personally, he's toast; no more HG Wells."  (And like us old folks are wont to do, I'm somewhat repeating myself.)

I don't defend that strange little book, but I do think all of this belittles Wells.  I spent the better part of a decade reading him and about him, and a recent return to commentaries on him hasn't changed my mind: Wells has to be one of the most misunderstood writers in modern history--with the precise misunderstandings saying a lot more about that writer or speaker than about Wells.

Nevertheless I take this seriously as a caution.  Because in this past year I myself have given up any faith that human civilization has much of a future, with the future of the species and life on Earth as we know it also in considerable peril.

For the moment at least, I try to separate my perceptions that might well be influenced by, if not age itself, simply having lived so long.  The repetition of the same idiocies gets very tiresome, and there doesn't seem to be much reason to believe that this complex of self-destructive behavior will change, before the collapse of civilization forces such changes.  And even then...

I start to resent my time being taken up by such idiocies, especially since there is rarely anything new about them, except some superficial novelty.  But at least at the moment I can still discriminate between my own reactions, and the evidence before me.

So taken together--a natural withdrawal to potentially more meaningful engagement (or at least less stressful and unpleasant), plus the informed sense that the course of the next couple of centuries and perhaps eons is set--I have ceased for one thing to read or write about what used to be called "current events."

Such political, cultural and social events and trends have consequences, and I keep enough of an eye on them to be warned of personal impact.  I still read the list of daily headlines that the Washington Post emails me, and when I think of it I look at Wikipedia's news of the day (which is usually very different.)  But that's about it. I no longer feel it is useful let alone important to follow and analyze these phenomena, partly because they don't matter much in terms of the likely outcome, and particularly since it is highly doubtful I can influence them (or the response to them) in any way.  Otherwise, I've done my bit.  I'm done.

The baseline of the future is set by the climate crisis, which is now having its first effects.  What has been done to address it is very likely insufficient, and there are any number of reasons for believing that nothing really consequential will be done in time to prevent the conditions that will likely lead to the collapse of human civilization, the end of the current line of "progress," and quite likely the end of life as we know it on Earth.

I note that the public voices who've been warning of these possibilities still dance around this inevitability.  Bill McKibben is saying that civilization has a decade to make the necessary changes. He and others have been saying that for 30 years. The differences are that the necessary changes get more drastic and comprehensive every year, and they will not determine the near future--they may at best save the far future.

  Are "enormous changes at the last minute" (the title of a book of stories by the wonderful Grace Paley) even possible?  Perhaps. But the "last minute" is now, or very soon.  Time grows ever shorter, if indeed there is time.  Meanwhile, the Earth's atmosphere gets hotter and the planet's climate changes, in ways that will essentially never change back.

Climate crisis is the baseline planetary physical condition that attacks the ability of the planet to nourish and sustain human and other life.  It accelerates the destruction of the web of life that has been ongoing for centuries, reflected now in the ongoing mass extinction.  Although books like The Sixth Extinction chronicle how much worse it has already gotten, and how extensive it is likely to be, it's worth noting that it's been going on a long time.  In his 1939 book The Fate of Man, H.G. Wells noted:

"The list of species extinguished in the past hundred years is a long one; the list of species threatened with extinction today is still longer. No new species arise to replace those exterminated. It is a swift, distressful impoverishment of life that is now going on. And this time the biologist notes a swifter and stranger agent of change than any phase of the fossil past can show—man, who will leave nothing undisturbed from the ocean bottom to the stratosphere, and who bids fair to extinguish himself in the process.”

Human civilization expanded across the planet at the expense of the very environment that ultimately sustains human life.  Over recent centuries, the wholesale destruction of forests, across Asia, the Middle East and Europe and still ongoing in the Americas, may itself doom the species doing the destroying.  It has doomed plenty of other species already.

Why can't civilization change to fully address this crisis?  After all, previous challenges were met--from the threat of tyranny in World War II to the self-inflicted apocalypse in the making of nuclear weapons.  One reason is leadership. At this crucial moment, there is none, and I see none on the horizon.

In the past few years I've been trying to wrap my head around the immensity of World War II, which ended just before I was born.  What seems clear is that those 20th century existential crises of the Great Depression and World War II were met only by the extraordinary leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt and (in the case of World War II) Winston Churchill, plus the contributions of lesser known but still essential and able men and women.  Still, World War II was enormously destructive, and the stories of its homicidal stupidities as well as its unknown and even accidental heroisms continue to emerge.

The fact that civilization has not yet been devastated by thermonuclear war is due almost entirely to the decisions of probably a handful of leaders.  When two superpowers were heavily armed with thermonuclear missiles and bombers on hair-trigger alert, only the decisions of fortuitously placed leaders prevented the full use of these weapons, on several occasions we know about.

 Sometimes it was a minor military leader who insisted on waiting for further evidence before launching a strike due to false information. But in better known instances, it was national leaders--in particular, Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and President John F. Kennedy in the United States, who both held off advisers and political pressures to avoid thermonuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.  They later signed the groundbreaking first Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

It could have been otherwise.   In the 1968 presidential campaign, interviewer David Frost asked Senator Robert Kennedy what he thought was his greatest achievement so far.  Kennedy hesitated a moment, and then answered: "I think the role in the Cuban Missile Crisis...The only reason I hesitated at all is because I felt strongly about the election of 1960 and having a role in that change, because I think that affected the course of action and the course of history..."

1960 was the election of John F. Kennedy to the presidency.  RFK returned to the point about the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He noted there were 14 people involved in making the decisions for how the US would respond.  "...if six of them had been President of the United States, I think that the world might have blown up."  He added that "if Mr. Khrushchev had been a different man at that time, the world also would have blown up..."

Right now, at what is likely the most crucial time in human history, we do not have in place anything like the leadership required. We do not have institutions--nor the people that lead them-- with the necessary degree of integrity or intelligence.  In fact, this country and many other nations have been going in the opposite direction, into territory so dangerous, so corrupt and so absurd as to beggar belief.  I don't think I need to say any more than that.

Even if such leadership were forthcoming, it is necessary but not sufficient to meet the crisis of this time.  It requires a society able and willing to follow.

Addressing the Depression and organizing forces for World War II required all of FDR's creativity, determination, political acumen and judgment.  Those who lived through World War II as adults are mostly dead now, so we have only books and other records to suggest the enormity of that undertaking.  Experts today say that addressing the climate crisis would take at least that scale of effort, and that level of concentration, not only by leadership and government, but by society as a whole.  That concentration and commitment was far from complete, but it was considerable--greater I suspect than generations alive today can imagine.

Yet leadership is ineffective unless followers agree with the goal and are willing to be led, even if it is for their own selfish reasons--particularly the more powerful agents of society.  War disrupts the conduct of business, but it also makes some interests rich, so big business largely fell in line.  World War II scaled up and created entire industries.  But most importantly, war (or Cold War) did not challenge the basis or conduct of corporate capitalism.

Addressing the climate crisis threatens large economic interests.  There's plenty of evidence that systematic climate crisis denial has been funded by fossil fuel corporations and those it has made wealthy. But more importantly, the changes necessary to save the planet fundamentally challenge the premises and conduct of capitalism, which today is virtually the only form of economic power in existence.

a former rainforest

Capitalism has always depended on these two elements: ignoring the future costs of destroying the ability of the natural environment to sustain life, and instituting some form of human slavery, which today is hidden in faraway sweatshops and countryside.

Exploitation in both of these senses continues on a massive scale, and it is that scale that has caused the climate crisis.  Resistance to ending that exploitation has been and remains overpowering.  The result is a divided and seemingly helpless society, its human weaknesses exploited to benefit current capitalist institutions.

Capitalism of this era, increasingly unfettered by legal or moral responsibilities towards society and the planet, has fed riches to the rich and deprived most others, resulting in deep divisions within society.  The political and communication tools of the entrenched rich have created, manipulated and exploited divisions, encouraging suspicions and rivalries.  Depriving people of economic security--and what's called income inequality is extreme right now--also tends to make them fearful and easier to exploit.

  Dividing elements of the exploited non-rich (on the basis of race, ethnicity,  gender, immigrant status, "intellectual elite" etc.) for their political benefit is one of the oldest and most successful strategies of these self-centered interests.  Popular failure to understand global heating, and to demand action to address it, has been one of their most conspicuous successes.  For these and other reasons, I believe that Kim Stanley Robinson is right: that effectively addressing the climate crisis is not possible in a world dominated by irresponsible capitalism.  No one seems to know who actually first pointed out that "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." However, we do know it was Ursula Le Guin who said (at the National Book Awards) “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings.”  Capitalism will end--I just don't think it will end soon enough.

There is another factor, perhaps even more profound. As big as World War II was and as much as was required, the nature of the task was thoroughly familiar: to fight and win a war.  Everybody understands that.  That's why every time a sustained effort is proposed, it's called a war on something.

(It is true however that, contrary to retroactive propaganda, many Americans weren't really sure why the country should go to war, particularly against Germany, other than because of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  That's why the US government commissioned the "Why We Fight" film series.  Further, there was a great deal of grumbling and obstructionism from big business and its political minions. Still, the general goal of winning the war was understood.)

The situation was a little more complicated in the Great Depression, but getting people back to work and the economy healthy again was an easily understood goal.  Plus the catastrophe was evident; it affected almost everyone's life in highly tangible and persistent ways.

The climate crisis is not so easily comprehended or accepted.  That's what makes it a particular challenge.  The basic goal is simple enough to understand: to save the planet.  To keep the climate from changing beyond what life as we know it can tolerate, the world needs to all but eliminate spewing any more C02 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  That alone won't fix it--the destruction of habitat for non-human life must also be addressed--but it would be a start.

But there are conceptual problems.  One is the need to avoid the two common reactions to a fearful crisis: panic, or refusing to face it because it is too big and too scary to contemplate.  That second tendency, the one that is currently being exploited, is called denial.  Those of us who lived through the Cold War have seen both of these tendencies in reactions to the enormity of nuclear weapons.  There was also a kind of conceptual or emotional standoff between these two reactions, leading to numbed acceptance, and functional denial.

There is a secondary cause of denial: the basic changes necessary to confront the crisis seem too painful.  Giving up oil, which seems to mean cars, and giving up beef, for instance, are simply too much to accept on the say-so of some scientists.

Besides being exploited by those who feel they can't make enough money in a world dedicated to addressing the climate crisis and other ecological threats, this perfectly understandable denial is exacerbated by the nature of the climate crisis: until recently, and in large measure still, it is a phenomenon of the future.  Why worry about it if it isn't here?  It may never happen.  Worry about it then.  But because of the physical nature of the climate crisis, action must be taken in the present.  The future will be too late.  (I've written about this aspect before, as have others. I won't repeat it here.)

There is also the unfortunate fact that, in a sense, the climate crisis will never obviously happen.  The weather will just keep getting sporadically worse until it is worse nearly everywhere all the time, deaths and disease and disasters, likely including violence and war, will increase until over time the world has changed considerably.  But with nothing obviously pointing back to a cause called the climate crisis.

It is the difficulty that human societies and individuals have in seeing the present patterns of the oncoming future--and then acting decisively and comprehensively to meet the onrushing challenges.  But it is the ability to do so that humankind now needs, and has needed for a century.

Through a writing life that extended from the last decade of the 19th century to the 1940s, HG Wells focused on precisely this problem.  He saw that modern weaponry and other changes made strong international institutions necessary to prevent ever more powerful nations from destroying each other, and civilization with it.  His detailed warnings became realities that confirmed his analyzes and mirrored his fictions in two world wars.

Wells urged policymakers and citizens to think about the future consequences of human actions and of scientific discoveries.  He wrote about history as seen through such patterns. Above all, he urged everyone to think about the consequences of present actions on the future, and about visions of better futures to guide the present.

But at the end of his life he lost faith in the ability of humanity to change its way of thinking fast enough, including this approach to the future.  He had seen that human societies and human thinking could continue to develop to meet future challenges.  But the race between  anticipation and catastrophe had been lost, he felt.  Civilization had become so large and complex and destructive, and was changing so extensively and rapidly, that it no longer made sense, it was out of control--out of anyone's control. It was bound to destroy itself. The human mind had developed as far as it would ever develop, it would go no farther--it was mind at the end of its tether.

Maybe today the race between anticipation and catastrophe is more like baseball, and we can avoid the third out and score enough runs in the ninth to win.  (But then there's that old bumper sticker: Nature Bats Last.)  It seems more likely the game is football or basketball, and even if we are driving for the winning score, the game is over when the clock runs out and the fourth quarter ends, and we've lost.  

I don't think it's true that because I see the end of everything coming for myself, I see the end of everything for everyone.  But I was a great deal more anxious about all this thirty or twenty years ago when I was younger, and that's when it seemed possible that the world could grow up in time.  Now that it seems so unlikely that dire fate will be avoided, there's little choice but to accept it. (Bearing in mind the Scott Fitzgerald dictum: "One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.")  Being old probably makes that easier, especially since I likely won't live to see much of it.

But still, it's painful and--in the full sense--awful to contemplate: that this beautiful world will end, not just for me, but for all time.  This is perhaps a particular feature of my generation's old age, another of our firsts...though ours won't be the last to feel this.

I have however thought about the near future and the lives of those much younger than me--the coming decades and into the next century--and I see a world with positive possibilities, even without contemplating any difference in the ultimate outcome.  But I will save those somewhat happier thoughts for next time.