If I were to be an archeologist, symbolically speaking I would be someone searching for remnants of giving a damn about each other and our world. In any case I am not yet ready to suppose these would be remnants are not alive and even well in many places as we speak, or as we shudder.
I may need help in understanding what is going on regarding climate change. I think I understand that some political leaders are talking war with North Korea to distract us from issues that are very troubling domestically. But when it comes to the physical climate I don’t completely get it, even though sometimes I suppose I might.
I insist in thinking, or supposing that I am thinking, that no matter one’s political persuasion, most people don’t want the world, as we know it, to end. I stand and sit corrected immediately since I realize that there are religious people at home and abroad, who do want the world to end since that will mean their God will lead them to everlasting joy. Never mind the disturbing notion that it would take an Apocalypse to organize such a festive situation, I don’t even see the time to go there right now.
As for the rest of people, the ones that don’t yearn for an Apocalypse as soon as possible, what about that thing called cooperation? What about the fact that corporations and private citizens that are in favor of the denial of climate change, don’t give a damn about any of us on whatever sides of the aisle we sit on, figuratively or literally?
I so want to be reasonable here, even understanding. I get why Trump supporters and many conservatives in general, hate, despise or at least mistrust liberals. And I hear Bill Maher’s voice here (besides this fact I don’t think there are other psychotic elements, at least for the moment) saying what a woos I’m being in sounding like another self-hating and –abasing and guilt bound liberal, spouting Mea Culpa wherever possible. I don’t see it this way because I do feel that many of us—and I do mean “us”—have been demeaning to people upon whom we looked down on for what seems like forever. The Vietnam War was some time ago but it is fairly widely known that many liberals had compassion only for the enemy and very little for our own soldiers whom we thought of as making despicable choices, as if many of them felt they even had one.
So I get it. I get that many people want to ridicule liberals or see them or us as pathetic or toxic in one way or another. So, I’d say, can we talk? Can we talk it out or at least find some way to look at climate change for one, without having our differences—even our mistrust—stop us at every step of any process?
I don’t want big corporations, oil companies, etc. to get rich at the expense of ending the planet, and poisoning all living things and beings. I don’t like the idea at all. At the same time I kind of am pretty sure that seeing terrible scenes of damage and hearing terrible descriptions of deadly scenarios won’t touch most people. We play so much with dread, in our addictions to hearing and seeing and feeling it nightly (how do people sleep after news shows anyway?), in our addictions to creating and watching films and video games that make us immune from the real thing. We make it so habitual that it can seem like someone warning about climate change is just a grumpy grownup trying to interfere in our fun. After all, we were meant to have fun, right, to take what we want and make it seem like it’s what we need?
I’m just saying I need some help here. And in return I’m prepared to give some help. I am writing about the human climate, and hope to share this in a few months at most. I’m trying to figure out how best to understand the things that stop us—even liberals—from facing our own shadows and flaws in ways that might free us better to understand not only our own motivations but also those of each other.
I have been spending some time in Italy over the summer, and of course you know that things are by no means perfect here. While the bulk of the world’s “World Heritage” sites are here, I’m really more about saving the planet than I am with heritage per se at this point in time. I’m a silly optimist only in than I am deadly afraid of pessimism and I’m terrible at it. So I’m begging even though I tend to think begging does little to nothing. Still I can’t help it and I can’t quite be convinced that my state of mine warrants psychiatric or even spiritual intervention at the moment.
Apropos, though, of being in Italy, I do get the news online but the obsession with American surround sound scary things, scary propaganda, and scary possibilities, is lessened quite a bit. You know, people elsewhere sometimes think about other countries, like their own countries even.
But back to my state of mind, and perhaps to the fact that I should have put that in the title so as not to attract only readers who might be interested in archeology. I write because, in part because I need to, something many writers feel. I write because I’m trying to work things out, even as I kind of know I can’t do this on my own.
I write because, even though I know you are busy being or becoming famous or busy because you are trying to get through the day, I’m still hoping for listeners and for help.
Hoping is not yet a crime. Right?