What does this mean in practice? I think we should proceed along two basic tracks. First, we should commit some of our energy to movements that focus on the question of justice in this world, especially those of us with the privilege that is rooted in that injustice. As a middle-class American white man, I can see plenty of places to continue working, in movements dedicated to ending patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, economic domination by the First World, and U.S. wars of aggression.
I also think there is important work to be done in experiments to prepare for what will come in this new future we can’t yet describe in detail. Whatever the limits of our predictive capacity, we can be pretty sure we will need ways of organizing ourselves to help us live in a world with less energy and fewer material goods. We have to all develop the skills needed for that world (such as gardening with fewer inputs, food preparation and storage, and basic tinkering), and we will need to recover a deep sense of community that has disappeared from many of our lives. This means abandoning a sense of ourselves as consumption machines, which the contemporary culture promotes, and deepening our notions of what it means to be humans in search of meaning. We have to learn to tell different stories about our sense of self, our connection to others, and our place in nature. The stories we tell will matter, as will the skills we learn.
In my own life, I continue to work on those questions of justice in existing movements, but I have shifted a considerable amount of time to helping build local networks that can create a place for those experiments. Different people will move toward different efforts depending on talents and temperaments; we should all follow our hearts and minds to apply ourselves where it makes sense, given who we are and where we live. After starting with a warning about arrogance, I’m not about to suggest I know best what work people should do.
I am, however, reasonably confident that if we are to make a decent future for ourselves and our children, we have a lot of work to do. John Gorka also expresses that in his song: “The old future’s dead and gone/Never to return/There’s a new way through the hills ahead/This one we’ll have to earn/This one we’ll have to earn.”
We should not be afraid to face the death of the old future, nor should we be afraid to try to earn a new one. It is the work of all the ages, and it is our work today, more than ever. It is the work that allows one to live, joyously, while in a profound state of grief.
[1] John Gorka, “Old Future” from the CD “Old Futures Gone,” Red House Records, 2003.
[3] Richard Dawkins, “An Open Letter to Prince Charles,” May 21, 2000. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/prince/prince_index.html
[5] Wes Jackson, “Toward an Ignorance-Based Worldview,” The Land Report, Spring 2005, pp. 14-16. http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/10/03/42c0db19e37f4
[6] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
[7] James Howard Kunstler, remarks at the meeting of The Second Vermont Republic, October 28, 2005. http://www.kunstler.com/spch_Vermont%20Oct%2005.htm
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