My partner, trying to teach the tots about clockwise and anticlockwise, gets annoyed with me when, trying to join in, I get confused about whether I'm supposed to "be the clock" or "mirror the clock".
Being the change I want to see in the world (and I'm not, by a long way) has had me wrapped up for a long time, but I'm getting confused as to whether that's really where I should be.
I want to know my kids, and the whole of humanity, have a future and my motives range from the personal and selfish to the intellectual and abstract.
On the intellectual front, I want to know that our great achievements were not for nothing. That our music and art and philosophical breakthroughs and great novels will be there and will be enjoyed by someone like me in the very distant future. My babies are my proxy for all that, I think of them sometimes as the first chain in a link to a distant time.
On the personal front though, I am starting to think of them and even myself as victims of our time. The ones who inherited a world that was too late to save. And this makes me really scared.
And a victim mentality isn't good.
It doesn't make me want to be the change or save the world. It makes me want to protect myself and my kids from it with all the might of a last ditch overweight footprint. Buy and hoard stuff we might need in difficult years. Avoid sharing the message so I don't create competing demand for stuff I might need to keep us on top of things. Quit my save the world job and go back to work in my higher-paying former career so that I can cushion us all against the inevitable future financial downturn.
It's a panicked, knee-jerk, out-of-control sort of feeling. And I wonder how much of the consumption culture we see is other people - not disengaged from the bigger picture of a devastated biosphere and a decimated social fabric, but rather attempting to fiddle while they know Rome burns. If the glaciers are going anyway, let there at least be some singing and shopping.
I'm trying to keep a lid on this feeling, but it's really an effort of will at the moment - which may signal impending madness - which is a very real possibility given my genes. But I think too exploring the idea offers a useful insight into the link between disempowerment and selfishness / self-preservation and credit being the opiate of the masses and a window into how to galvanise wider change.
Or something.
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2 comments:
Hmmm. I guess your silverbeet isn't doing so well?
This post made me stop and think, Mandarina.
I think you speak of two different drivers for consumption. One is the desire to hoard goods or money due to fear of future deprivation. You want to stock up now so that you might be able to survive longer. The other is where people know disaster is looming and deliberately party hard (consume) to make themselves forget. You seem to imply that the latter response is somehow more sinister.
Both are responses based on fear.
It reminds me of the lead up to 2000 and Y2K when we were inundated with images and stories of people stocking bomb shelters and cabins with supplies whilst the rest planned wild parties.
I suppose we have to find our own way (but it helps me to read about others thoughts). I know I have yet to give enough thought to how to 'galvanise wider change'. When my mind veers towards such thoughts it tends to quickly slide away again, precisely because of the overwhelming feelings you describe.
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