Hope and young people


 Is this what we are doing then - trying to work out how to communicate some of the science and enable young people to remain hopeful .   

Do we want them to be hopeful so they can live their lives or so they will make change?


The one thing I took from new - materialism via Barad was the idea that we are the natural world - we are not separate from it so we cannot destroy it or save it. We can only shape what we are part of. New materialism puts you in the middle of things along with everything else- this is ontological and not epistemological  hence the coining of the phrase Onto-epitomology  where we don't get to be on the outside of anything.

 

This feeling that humans - us,we, them, they, I are part of nature - not in a back to nature way but is a WE ARE NOT GOD way  - it is not up to us to save the world and this saving may be impossible - we have no ability to save it .We are not custodians for future generations we are part of the planet and its natural course.

 This was a position I found liberating as I had long given up on the possibility that  our species would transform itself in a short term long enough that would make a difference.  Science and art will not save us nor will planting trees - hope will not be found in individual futile gestures that only really  mitigate  against guilt.

I think hope lies somewhere within acceptance and adaptation - coping with the coming change, accepting mass migration and a redistribution of resources. Management rather than Salvation and this is where the science takes us and the tree-scape project takes us.  I ran my first workshops on climate change in the early 90's even then I think it was accepted that the die was cast and the job was to work out how to prepare for what was coming rather than ride at windmills waving our swords.


 

Comments

  1. Kate PahlJuly 28, 2022 at 8:53 AM

    Yes, I think it is good to be in a space of acceptance but it is also good to be more accepting - remember Ruth Ben Tobin on our Conversations.

    ReplyDelete

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