People are often surprised by my affection for America and American people in general. After all, not only am I a raging leftie (and therefore, through groupthink, must hate the Great Satan and all its works), but I'm also "the most English person alive"(TM). This is fair, but only to a point. Because, you see, I am beginning to think that I sympathise with the American 'national character' much more than I had originally thought. True, I'm somewhat more introverted and anti-social than the popular image of America might suggest is appropriate, and I still don't get the appeal of the NFL (seriously, it's rugby with shoulder pads and more ad breaks) - but importantly, I'm goal driven. Over my life, I have enjoyed nothing better than setting an aim, normally a stratospherically high one, and then smashing it. That is a very American trait. It's what got them to the Pacific, to the Moon, and (for better or worse) pretty much all over the globe.
Why this sudden discourse on generalised Americana? Because, over the last few months, I've been trying to deal with the end of a goal - one that, frankly, ended in failure. Like America, it seems I don't do too well with underachievement - and that realisation has led to a whole series of different thoughts.
The most potent train of thought has been depression and disillusionment. It is difficult to commit one's life to something for a year, only to see everything turn out worse than when you began. I'm indulging in hyperbole, of course - after all, we now have an excellent Green MP in Brighton - but the truth is, I had very little to do with that achievement, and a lot to do with halving the Green Party's share of the vote in Hackney North. Where I was personally engaged, the message did not get through.
Or, in my darker moments, perhaps it did get through, and the large majority of people simply did not agree with it. After all, why would people want to listen to someone who, honestly and plainly, is saying that things have to change radically if we are going to have a continued, vaguely sane way of life on this planet? Someone who is openly admitting that our current existence cannot continue, and that it can either end in unplanned collapse or planned transition? These are not palatable truths, even for those who understand why they probably are true.
Those involved in the Dark Mountain Project know better than most that these truths are unpalatable, and that to espouse them is to risk calumny. And yet, I must admit, with each month that goes by, the more I find myself in agreement with a lot of what Paul Kingsnorth and others have to say. Where is our realistic and achievable path towards stopping climate change? Where is our strategy for social change using 21st century 'democracy'? I'm afraid that, to me, it's all looking rather forlorn. And rather than attempting, again and again, to achieve the unachievable - I'm beginning to think that perhaps it is time to acknowledge the truth, stop setting ourselves impossible goals, and start turning our minds to how we are going to salvage what is left after our adolescent, selfish, consumption-fixated society starts falling to bits around us.
That is not to say that we should stop 'trying' or that I advocate a counsel of 'hopelessness'. Rather, it is to use our rational faculties to try to work out what is actually achievable, and focus on that, rather than banging our heads repeatedly against the brick wall of actually existing culture and politics - both of which seem hellbent on plummetting over the Niagra of environmental disaster without even a slight course correction. We should fix our hope on what we can actually do - ameliorating the consequences and building a society for the future within the shell of the old - and focus our 'trying' on projects which are actually going to get us somewhere.
At the moment, I'm not convinced that those projects are situated in attempting to influence existing political and economic structures. Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope so. Right now, as you might be able to tell, I've had one disappointment too many.
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Welcome to my world, Matt!
My journey to where I am involved an immersion in what can only be described as despair. I put a lot of my faith into the 'anti-globalisation' movement: wrote a book about it, got involved, talked it up, hoped. It fell apart, and with it my faith in 'movements' of all kinds.
I spent fifteen years or more campaigning against ecocide: against road-building, deforestation and the biggie, climate change. I am glad I did, but we won none of those battles. I gradually had to admit to myself two things: one, a lot of what I was doing was actually futile. And two, some things were beyond saving or stopping.
When I got to this point I got quite depressed, despaired, felt like giving everything up. I came out of the other side of this, slowly, and started exploring what I thought the consequences of my conclusions were. This was the journey that led me to Dark Mountain, which itself is a constantly evolving movement. What its 'members' have in common is that they too have come out the other side, and want a space for conversations about what we do now.
My current take is this: we are not going to stop climate change. This is at least partly because - as you intimate here - people don't want to. We know we are in overshoot. We do nothing. The BNP got more votes at the last election than the greens. There is no 'movement' of the kind that Monbiot and others fantasise about. People don't care enough to change in anything like the way we'd need to change, and that includes most greens.
Climat change, and the inherent instability of industrialism, are probably going to bring down our 300 year experiment in industrialised modernity. But life, in some form, will go on, as it always has. The questions for me are: what does this mean? How do we prepare? How do we limit the damage to the Earth, if we can? What values should a new outlook be based on?
Dear Matt,
You make it difficult to respond, perhaps because of the sorrowful nature of your post. But let me try!
Your goal, and that of other Greens, may have been difficult, or improbable, but it was not "impossible" as such. You were rational enough to know that nobody's votes were in the bag until they were in the bag.
You rightly aimed high, but surely that ambition is conditioned by the importance and value of the goal; not the uniqueness of your own contributon to that goal. Such realisation may help you to reconcile that the only failure would have been not to have given it your best shot - which I take it is not the case.
You will agree with me that, in our laudable quest for objectivity in all things :), we need to review not just our political means and likelihood of success, but also the strength of our resolve.
We can strengthen our resolve, by consolidating, reinvigorating or extending our politics next time - whether incrementally or in leaps and bounds - or we can withdraw.
But this is not a Sisyphian struggle. It's not a futile hope with the outcome already pre-determined. Herculean maybe.
Godstead in your soul-searching. You of all will know that the personal is also the political.
Shahrar
PS. Did you like Pat Benatar's Hit me with your Best Shot or Phil Collins' Against all Odds? Products of the USA :)
Someone who is openly admitting that our current existence cannot continue, and that it can either end in unplanned collapse or planned transition?
Sounds to me like you need a few beers. Look we got here by muddling through, with a touch of serendipity. That is our future. That's how life works. It's a game of chance. That's what makes it exciting and worth living.
Do you feel lucky? Well do ya? Coz I do!
I'm not sure we did get here by muddling through. Sure, that's how life tends to end up for individuals in many ways, but we got to our current ecocidal situation because commercial and political elites got together to create a system that worked for their interests. It's a process of global enclosure, which has been going on for centuries, starting with the enclosure of common land and ending with the enclosure of the gene pool. That's where we are: stuck with a giant machine that needs to eat the world in order to sustain itself. But I don't think it got there by accident, and I think that Matt's worries about it are justified. 'Muddling through' is probably not going to good enough now; though it is probably also all we can do.
Many of us had similar election results. Looking at what the other parties that got more votes than us had to offer, it is odd we did not do better.
But you must not take it personally. All who stood raised awarenss. The main thing is we got an MP, that was our goal.
Well, *I* always knew you had a lot of affection for Americans. :-)
I'm sorry you still feel this way. I think you did a pretty great job, if you look at the larger context of everything that happened on that election night and how well the Greens fared on the whole. Blaming yourself for a sweeping national trend is both super-unfair (to yourself) and unhelpful (to the movement). I think that maybe you need to take a bit more time, a bit more distance, and _then_ figure out what your next goal is. Skype date soon?
I think, perhaps, that I haven't explained myself properly.
Clearly, there is an element of ego to my disappointment and reassessment. It's not nice, personally, to lose electoral ground after taking over someone else's mantle. But that really isn't the main source of what I am feeling.
The main part of what I am feeling is just a realistic assessment of where we have gotten to, how much effort was put in to get there, and how much further we have to go. I just don't see the route forward any longer, using the methods and techniques we have been using (or, indeed, using any methods or techniques - I'm not suggesting that direct action is going to get us any further).
Basically, most people just don't give a flying *&^%. And we should probably recognise that, and spend our time on projects that have a chance of succeeding, rather than those that don't.
Of course, those who know me will be aware that there is a part of me that almost enjoys playing the part of John the Baptist, proclaiming in the wilderness, "make straight the way of the Lord"....but it doesn't get us anywhere. It's probably time to change what I'm up to in order to adjust to that fact.
I think you are an inspiration. You have contributed to the re-evaluation of my life. The experience of helping you and your colleagues in the election campaign put me back in touch with my core values, hence the VSO experience in The Gambia. One step at a time.......
Some books that might help (other than the Dark Mountain book, of course :-)):
The Long Descent, John Michael Greer
Eaarth, Bill McKibben
When a Billion Chinese Jump, Jonathan Watts
All posit that we have overshot, that traditional forms of 'activism' and politics, and indeed ways of seeing, are now dust, and start to think, at least, about where this leaves us. Hope in the dark!
Focus on what you can achive.
What is that prayer?
Lord give me the courage to change what must be changed, the humility to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know th difference.
I wouldn't beat yourself up over all this. You gave it your best shot. We really can't do any more.
Exactly the stage I seem to have reached. :(
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