Thelma, Louise and Six Degrees
When I watch a movie, my thinking always wanders to the same few questions.
• How is this a story for our time?
• What does this film tell us about ourselves, our deepest feelings, our secret thoughts, our invisible yearnings?
• And how conscious are the filmmakers themselves about these processes?
Because we seem to be living in a time of converging crises, and because I am sensitive to that, I view most films through that lens. Being both a filmmaker and a cultural critic, it is an occupational hazard that I quite enjoy.
As Copenhagen unfolds, I notice some patterns in the media conversation: new examinations of confusion and denial; repeated attempts to explain and convince; more proposals of crucial solutions and necessary policies; timely reports on the severity of the situation. One question that seems to wander through these articles and essays and reports is this: why can’t we seem to get our shit together when it comes to climate change? The failure of Copenhagen feels, to many, like a foregone conclusion. So, like, What the What?
Good question. One that seems to apply to much of the present predicament in which we find ourselves. And one, I think, that will benefit from a viewing of Ridley Scott’s 1991 “Zeitgeist-catching” road movie, Thelma & Louise.
Go watch it. I’ll wait.
OK. You back? Good. Let’s move on.
So, if the question is why can’t we seem to get our shit together when it comes to climate change? then most of the answers I hear seem to fall into one of three categories. It’s because we (or our leaders) are:
• stuck in distraction and/or denial,
• greedy, unprincipled and maybe even psychotic or evil or
• just too stupid to go on living.
To me these are all reasonable explanations. Distraction and denial are surely in force, as are those other human possibilities: greed, psychosis, evil, and stupidity. If you view our movies, as I do, as the stories of Imperialism, which reveal how we view both the world and ourselves, then you’ll find overwhelming evidence to support these assessments. But I think I see something more at work here. Something more fundamental, perhaps, or more invisible. And invisible, maybe, because it just breaks too many rules, to speak about it.
Here’s what I see: our collective death wish at work.
Hang with me for a moment. I have no doubt that our egos have been left battered, bruised, and pretty much insane by the experience of being born into captivity in what Derrick Jensen calls “the culture of make-believe”. I’ve experienced that insanity intimately in my own life. And once I identified it, I could see it all around me, at work in the world. But I also have a sense that my true self, my essence, that good and beautiful being I came here as, has not been destroyed. My animal body senses, perceives, and moves through the world at levels above, below and beyond the warped and word-bound ego that thinks it is in charge. My essential self remains in close and constant connection with a reality that far exceeds any mental constructs my thinking might wish to lay on it.
What if, apart from the denial, stupidity, or greed to which our ego-bound thoughts and words are too often constrained, our bodies know exactly what’s coming down? What if the reason we’re not getting our shit together when it comes to climate change is because our essential selves are not buying a bit of what our egos are being told about how to address this “problem”? What if, in fact, at some deep level from which we cannot even speak, those parts of our being that have not been distorted, distracted or destroyed by the absurdities of Empire regard climate change, in some crucial way, not as a “problem” at all, but as a “solution”?
Hard to imagine? Let’s go back to Thelma & Louise.
This movie was a “huge critical success”, clocking in as the 88th best-reviewed movie of all time at metacritic.com. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, and won for Best Original Screenplay. If it’s correct to call this film “Zeitgeist-catching”, then what part of “the defining spirit or mood of our times” does it catch? Pull over there. Let’s check the map.
Thelma and Louise leave their loveless, abused, and unsatisfying lives behind for a weekend fling together. A bit of fun leads to the attempted rape of Thelma, in response to which Louise kills the offender. They run, sure that they’ll never get a fair hearing in a court of law, and their attempts to flee to Mexico spiral out of control. As the charges against them pile up, they find a surprising exhilaration in their unanticipated life of crime. It all comes to a standoff at the edge of a cliff. Trapped in a situation with no acceptable solutions, poised between a line of state troopers and the sympathetic detective who has been trying to bring them in on the one hand, and the vast unknown of that cliff on the other, Thelma and Louise choose the cliff. The film ends with that iconic freeze frame, as they launch themselves in their ’66 Thunderbird into the only freedom they can imagine.
If that’s the map, then the territory is our own world, our own culture, our own lives. If Thelma & Louise shows us the Geist, it’s the Geist of our own Zeit. And if we allow that as our starting point, then the connections come easily enough. Did not the culture of civilization, at some point, take off on a weekend fling of unexpected exhilaration that spiraled out of control, bringing the entire planet face to face with our present predicament? And have not many people’s lives, at least those lived here in the heart of Empire, become so loveless, abused and unsatisfying that we’re poised now to do almost anything to get out of them? Have we not truly managed to do something no other living creature has managed to do, which is to make ourselves, individually and collectively, miserable?
Aye, now I’ve done it. I’ve violated a deep taboo, spoken the unspeakable. Because, well, we’re so happy, we Americans. Aren’t we?
I mean, sure, we’ve got corrupt leadership, economic insanity, and the end of cheap energy to contend with. We’ve got climate change and population overshoot and mass extinction to think about. We’ve got dying oceans, dying forests, dying aquifers, dying krill, dying caribou, dying everything. We’ve got nuclear power and nuclear waste and nuclear weapons and depleted uranium. We’ve got fucked up political systems, health care systems, educational systems, economic systems, agricultural systems, and septic systems. We’ve got racism, sexism, narcissism, workaholism and fascism. We’ve got child abuse and elder abuse and spouse abuse and animal abuse. We’ve got rapes and murders and suicides. We’ve got unwed mothers and single parents and children having children. We’ve got addictions, distractions, obsessions and compulsions. We’ve got unemployment and underemployment and homelessness and debt. We’ve got boring, meaningless work, longer hours, longer drive times and falling real wages. We’ve got unsatisfying relationships, loneliness, divorce and broken homes. We’ve got mental illness, stress, busy-ness, depression, despair, medication and “the deliberate dumbing down of America”. We’ve got obesity, diabetes, asthma, cancer and heart disease and all those other “diseases of civilization“. And sure, all of these things seem to be spiraling out of control, as if Conquest, War, Famine and Pestilence just stormed onto our polo field and started to beat the ever-loving crap out of our players.
But, c’mon! We’ve also got 24,909 tunes on our iPods! We’ve got Trundled Duck Confit with a Gorgonzola Reduction! We’ve got shamanic excursions into the heart of the Andes! We’ve got that new James Cameron movie coming out! In 3-fucking-D! Surely it all balances out? Surely, surely, this all counts for something? I mean, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right? And the upholstery in this ’66 Thunderbird is just luscious, isn’t it?
I’ve got to stop and wonder whether comfort and distraction have been confused with joy, fulfillment and meaning. I acknowledge that it’s possible to find moments of comfort and happiness even in prison. That doesn’t mean we’re not in prison. I view this as our deepest denial, the denial of the truth of our own life experience, the denial kept in rigid place by our desperate story of The American Way. As David Edwards says in his interview with Derrick Jensen,
What prison could be more secure than one we’re convinced is “the world,” where the boundaries of action and thought are assumed to be, not the limits of the permissible, but the limits of the possible? Democratic society, as we know it, is the ultimate prison, because who’s going to try to escape from a situation of apparent freedom? It follows, then, that we must be happy, because we can do whatever we want.
Copenhagen unfolds. The cliff approaches…
Go back to those last minutes in the movie. We learn, finally, how deep Louise’s wounds go, how vast is her pain. We see the chase. The attempted escape. The final capture. We see the line of police cruisers. The helicopter hovers menacingly overhead. The sniper rifles aim their way. The “good cop” has failed to bring them in but argues angrily for one last attempt. The “bad cop” uses his PA system to order them to give up. Thelma and Louise are not buying any of it. They’re fed up with living lives in prison.
Thelma looks at Louise. “Let’s keep going,” she says
“What do you mean?”
Thelma looks out over the cliff, nods her head almost imperceptibly.
“Go,” she says.
Smiles and tears flit across their faces.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
They kiss, their faces a study in love and grief and terror and power.
Louise hits the gas.
They hold hands.
They speed toward the cliff.
And they’re gone…
Can we just hold silence here for a few seconds?
Thank you.
I think Ridley Scott failed in this moment, as Roger Ebert so gratifyingly pointed out. Having spent two hours building up to this point, Scott could not hold it. Rather then just sit with the tension, the grief, the surprise, the pain, or the exhilaration, his freeze frame dissolved way too quickly into white. And the white dissolved right into rolling end credits, that haunting score, and a snapshot review of their happier times. As Ebert said, “Can one shot make that big of a difference? This one does.”
But now, here in our Zeit, we are given an opportunity to correct that failure. In this time of seeming collapse, as we sit staring over our own collective cliff, perhaps because, 18 years since the movie’s release, we are more desperate now, or perhaps because we have each other, we can hold the shot that Ridley Scott could not. We can sit with that tension, that grief, that surprise, that pain, and that exhilaration. We can hold that freeze frame and feel it to the very depths of the canyon underneath. We can look at this hidden piece of Geist and see what it is that the public, as a whole, seemed to resonate with so deeply. And we can learn, perhaps, in doing that, what there is to be learned in this moment.
I wonder if we’re not getting our shit together when it comes to climate change because, at some level, we’re not buying it, just as Thelma and Louise didn’t buy it, no matter the assurances of the nice white guy in the suit, or the threats of the stern authority figure in the uniform. We’re not buying the notion that this predicament will somehow get “fixed” by any combination of carbon caps, emissions agreements, green shopping, alternative energies and new technologies under the sun.
Some months ago, the specter of 4 degree C temperature rise started bouncing around in the news. Just a few weeks back, there were new reports that we’re on our way to 6 degrees C if we keep going as we are. And another new study reports that global CO2 emissions have risen 29% in the past nine years, indicating our commitment to doing just that. Six degrees moves us into the realm of the End-Permian extinction event, during which roughly nine-tenths of the life forms on the planet said their last farewells.
It seems…. well… unlikely… that corrupt and insane leaders will have much say in such matters, as energy, environment and economy slip rapidly from our hands, as if they ever really were in our hands to begin with. Conquest, War, Famine and Pestilence seem now to have made their way up to the clubhouse. Hard to believe that that padlocked gate is going to hold.
And I wonder if we’re not buying any attempt to fix this problem that has as its goal the preservation of the culture of Empire. I think, collectively, our bodies are not buying that. Our sane essential selves are not buying that. iPods and duck confit DO NOT outweigh the costs to our souls of lives lived in prison and the destruction of the community of life. And sadly, we do not see that anything less than global catastrophe will free us from our collective insanity.
It is forbidden to say this out loud, of course, even to ourselves. It’s just too painful, to face into just how miserable we have become as a people, how lost, how wounded, how stuck. And how pointless life seems. As we asked in What a Way to Go:
“Are we destroying the planet, as Dmitry Orlov asks, just ‘to be somewhat more comfortable for a little while’?”
It’s too much to bear. And truly, why should we? Maybe Warren Zevon was right. If the planet’s now headed toward six degrees, “as the mystics and statistics say it will,” why not go out like desperadoes, our foot on the pedal, our hair just flying in the wind, taking out Empire as we go?
And “heaven help the one who leaves.”
Ultimately, what I think we are not buying, body and soul, is the notion that this is all there is, this “physical reality” of corrupt leaders, insane systems, working, shopping and fucking and dying. We’re not buying this whole “materialism” thang, this deadened world, this end of magic, this loss of meaning. We’re not buying it. The costs are too high. The benefits too shallow. And the growing edges of our own science seem no longer to support such notions. The anomalies have been piling up in the corner for so long now that we can hardly get through the door. We can still sense, despite the bullshit that has been heaped upon our minds, a Cosmos far more wondrous than either the suit or the uniform can even begin to imagine.
Indeed. Go back to that last scene. Watch closely. Look at Thelma’s face. Watch Louise’s reaction. The excitement mixed with terror. The wonder fused with grief. The pain of wounds so deep they drive us over the cliff. If Thelma and Louise are running away in their final act, they are also running toward. It’s in their eyes. They can see it. Beyond that cliff lies not only the end of this madness, but the beginning of something new. A step into that unknown Cosmos that has never abandoned us, even as we abandoned it. Plunging over a cliff is not an act of control. It’s an act of intention. And surrender. And trust.
Climate change may be a fuck-all mess, but at least it’ll get us out of this nightmare, and take us to some place new.
Hit the gas.
“Go!”
I do not wish to be mistaken here, though I’m fairly certain that I shall be. I merely wish to point out that, from where I sit, these forces are alive in our collective heart. I know they are alive in mine. I have no idea whether Thelma and Louise made the right choice. I do not know that we “should” hit the gas, whatever that means. The full manifestation of current trends is poised to take out a great deal more than human beings. It already has. It would certainly be my wish to kill off just the culture, rather than the vast majority of the community of life. As Derrick Jensen said in What a Way to Go:
So many people are so very, very unhappy. And they want this nightmare to end. And they don’t recognize that the death that they want is a cultural death, and is a spiritual and metaphorical death.
This death wish is here, part of the spirit of the times, and I say that it’s exactly what Thelma & Louise tapped into, exactly what caught its viewers in the throat, exactly what caused the members of the Academy to honor that Best Original Screenplay. Our collective misery, and our wish for the death of the culture that underlies that misery, hover still in that great freeze-frame of our present predicament. If we fade-to-white too quickly, if we insist on our snapshots of happier times, then we will miss a deep truth of this moment, and the opportunity to learn from this moment what there may be to learn.
Our failure to respond may, indeed, spring from denial, greed, and stupidity. Those are all likely suspects. But it may also be grounded in the deep longing of our bodies and the wisdom of our souls. Whatever the reasons, when it comes to our collective reaction so far, we’re not buying what’s being sold. We do not seem eager to “save civilization.” It may behoove us to wonder why that is.
If we face into this death wish, if we stare into our collective misery, both as the conquered and as the conquerors, and allow the truth of our culture, a culture that would drive us to this cliff, to rise into conscious acknowledgment, we may find, in doing so, a choice that now eludes us. It’s a possibility. One that I don’t think we have much explored.
We’re sitting on a cliff in a ’66 Thunderbird, staring into the abyss of the insoluble predicament. None of the choices we can imagine are acceptable.
Now what?
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December 11th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Thanks, Tim. This was cool.
Fuck, man… I just cried for a couple of minutes before I pulled up you guys’ site. This was a welcome affirmation. *SIGH* I think about the future my family faces. My wife and son. Parents and siblings. Nieces and nephews…
…Speaking of movies, I really want to see The Road. Trailer had me in pieces…
For me, the challenge is to accept my mortality and act according to my principles no matter what I think the outcome (which I can not know EXACTLY) may be.
I gotta drop my son off at school. Daydream du jour: Go out blazin’.
Love,
Jason
December 11th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I’ve been secretly thinking this very idea. That we somehow want to kill off the planet or ruin the economy just so we can move on. Even if what moves on isn’t us exactly. Thanks for putting it into words.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Hey Tim,
Well, I gotta agree with you for the most part. I’ll just try to fill in a couple of details and flesh it out.
First, “Thelma and Louise” sucked as a zeitgeist.
Try “Vanishing Point”. Better car, better background, and it’s got better skin and a better ending ‘mort’. I think it’s even got a snake and probably a sailor. (all good movies have a sailor, a snake, and good morts, as well as skin shots). A gay-ass powder blue Ford (Freakin’ Oblivious Redneck Driver) sailing through the air doesn’t hold a candle to a 1970 Dodge Challenger smashing into two bulldozers at over 100mph.
The point being that the Empire always wins unless we can leave it. There is no way to leave it except the Big Out. In Vanishing Point, Kowalski (an ex-cop) steps out of the Law for 1 1/2 hours and we go with him. When he dies without the ‘happy ending’, we die a little bit, too.
A ‘happy ending’ is the fiction that brings us back into the fold of the Empire with our popcorn and soda container placed neatly in the trash.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense. When (as Derrick puts it) the violence goes uphill, it causes a lot of anguish in the System of systems. Thelma and Louise didn’t send the violence back up the chain of command. Kowalski WAS the chain of command, and committed violence against himself.
The only mistake you make with the ‘death wish’ is in believing that people actually make decisions about their own future that are premeditated.
We do stuff. We have reasons for doing stuff. In that order. The only time we really make a decision without coercion by the forces of marketing and peer stupidity is when we say “no” to something. There is no way for the System of Systems at Copenhagen to say “no” to burning anything and everything that makes money. Religion and order over the ages have trained humans to wait for answers from “on high”, when they have always had the power to say “no” to the next trinket, the next credit card, the next gallon of gas, but they have conditioned themselves not to use that power for their own future good.
“Any true environmentalist would commit suicide.” -unknown
December 11th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Hi Tim,
Well done! I really enjoyed this piece. Thank you.
I agree that at a deep (soul) level, we probably don’t want to save this civilization. I know I don’t! But, damn it, can’t we scale back the human population and get rid of predator culture/empire without losing the polar bears, penguins, manatees, elephants, tigers, gorillas, cheetahs, and all the other beautiful creatures? I mourn the loss of the more-than-human world, the glorious Cenozoic and it’s magnificent biodiversity, FAR MORE than the probable die off of bloated human populations. Take away fossil-fueled technologies and centralized, power-hungry predator cultures, and leave the Earth in peace. Let humans learn to live with Nature again and watch our over-weaning egos shrink. I guess we won’t get sane enough to survive before it’s too late, but I sure as hell hate it that we’ll take so much with us!
Love,
Suzanne
December 11th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Hi Tim,
I always wondered why I found TEOTWAWKI so incredibly seductive. Now I know. Yes, I want to move on and a lot of other people do too. The irony is that all the people who don’t will make it inevitable that we will.
Warm regards,
Bodhi
December 11th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
You need to read “The Denial of Death,” by Ernest Becker.
December 12th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Tim -
Thanks for your thoughts. I too struggle with “Now what?” Your movie, books and countless web pages are part of a picture that few people are willing or possibly even capable of perceiving. There is an anecdotal story about the original inhabitants of the American continents being unable “to see” Cortez’s sailing ships because they were so far out of their experience as to be incomprehensible. Regardless, they were certainly incapable of perceiving that these ships were signs of their imminent doom. I think our culture behaves similarly.
We have mental frames that define our perceptive capabilities. These frames are given to us by the “mother culture” to quote the Daniel Quinn term. Most people within a culture operate unconciously within their frame, actively rejecting attempts to penetrate or break the frame. The human capability to create a cultural frame, based on tradition and not solely instinct, is what gives us an advantage in the savage world. It may lead to our permanent demise, as well.
I prefer to focus on the ability or inclination of some people to breakdown their cultural frame, to form a larger transcendent frame. Fortunately, only a small number of people have this capability otherwise chaos would ensue, whether in a tribal, corporate or cultural situation. Normally, outsiders are left to anonimity and obscurity. The web has changed all that.
What would I know about Peak Oil were it not for the ASPO and The Oil Drum? What would I know about the clash of civilization and environment were it not for Derrick Jenson and your movie and posts? What would I know about the efforts of Michael Pollan’s Dilemma, Will Allen’s Growing Power and Joel Salatin’s Polyface and countless others to open our eyes to other possibilties for a symbiotic relationship with our environment. It seems to me that the web has helped spawn another frame for many people. I like to think of it as a frame with one side missing, more of a box with an open top, but that’s a topic for another muse.
So back to “Now what?” I think it comes down to food, not healthcare, not Afghanistan not Tiger woods. FOOD! As long as the culture, big business, controls the food supply most people, all of us to a certain extent, will march to the dominate tune. This is where we must make a stand. Backyard gardens, compost piles, Farmer’s Markets, CSA’s, local economic development - there is so much that can be done to improve our immediate and collective lives without taking on the system. I think the system, the dominate, mother culture is a runaway train. While the party goes on inside most people will blissfully ride along until the cataclismic end. I will not jump in front of the train in a useless attempt to stop it but I will run along side trying to get the attention of anyone looking out the window and convincing them to jump off.
I am enternally grateful that you and your fans are part of my frame. Until my last breath, I am dedicated to creating an alternative culture, one that exists in harmony with nature, for my family, friends and species.
In solidarity,
Steve Kane
Thousand Oaks, CA
December 12th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
HI Tim,
You captured it exactly with one sentence:
comfort and distraction have been confused with joy, fulfillment and meaning.
Bob
December 13th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Hey Tim, at least you are still writing - I have reached the point where I am just about speechless with almost nothing left to say. I am sure you know how that is.
Yeah, I have some ideas - some of which I posted on your old blog - but i doubt they would be relevant to most.
Anyway, I seem to remember that you said a while back that you were reading Pinchbeck’s 2012 book.
I ask because, though I do not think the mass spiritual awakening he talks about will happen - though I spent most of my adult life working toward it - I still think there is a strong spiritual component to what is going on.
Maybe some day I will say more.
BTW, I lost two friends because of your film, and what surprised me was that both of them were women!
Well, hang in there.
December 13th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Powerful stuff. I know that for 20 years I have marveled and screamed at how all the politicians and “big” people have seemingly understood climate change, the probable consequences - and still compartmentalized it away while they were handling the budget, the next press conference the next election.
Global warming or any of the other really serious issues never got seriously touched. As a result we will get burnt. We will have created our own public hell. And we can see it as clearly as night following day.
Sometime soon we will face the realization that peak oil is upon us (2-5 years) and that global warming is on a runaway path and unstoppable ( 5 - 10 years). At that stage we will effectively be Thelma and Louise in mid air waiting to crash. Feeling the wind in our hair for the last time knowing that very soon there will be catastrophic ending. And that we were responsible for it.
All around our society we will see the unmistakable signs of collapse. Increasing climate catastrophes which firstly wipe out cities and people and then collapse economies and countries. Peak oil will become clear and cities will start to fail as power supplies become erratic and then collapse. And the prognosis will be clear and terminal.
So what will our society look like with a population that starts to recognise that we truly are going to hell in a hand basket ? How many people will continue to stick to work, moral codes, dreams of the future ?
I can start to see what could happen. But it’s late and I want to actually sleep tonight rather than terrify myself with a future that hasn’t materialized.
In fact I want to live each day as if it is my last. Enjoy it, appreciate it, make it sing. Do good things. Make other people happy because in the end that is all any of us can do.
Lets go
Joe
December 13th, 2009 at 8:44 am
A note about comments:
Here’s how it works here - we treat each other with respect, as colleagues who are doing their best with what they have to live in this time, to see what’s so, to follow their hearts and live according to their own best wisdom. This is not a place for name-calling and attack and violent communication. You can get that elsewhere.
If your comment has not been posted, it’s because I found that basic respect lacking. If you’d like to try again, to express what you want to say in a non-violent manner, I invite you to do so. You might find some useful guidelines here.
Thanks, all, for your comments. I appreciate them and will respond where moved to do so. Peace, all. Tim
December 13th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I read this article in www.energybulletin.net and responded to them as follows, and I hope they will print my comment below your article:
It is eye-opening to read from a working artist. I am unfamiliar with
the film, with film-making, or with concepts of death wish. However, I
know what most working artists know and few others do, that body
intelligence forms long before the brain develops language. That’s
where all the arts do their most profound work, beneath language to
basic body understanding. I think he is correct that, for most of us,
our bodies know the truth about climate change. I discussed, just this
summer, with my physician, how I felt pain in the world whenever I was
outside. As he spoke of nature healing himself and described a walk with
his dog, I suddenly saw him grip, wide-eyed and stiff, in recognition.
It was a strange moment. I fear I upset him profoundly.
There is a lot I could say on your subject, but you said it well enough that I can’t improve on it. Excellent work. For the record, I’m a pianist, not much of a word person.
December 13th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Sad to say, but I believe that the recognition of population as the real environmental problem has come too late. The earth simply cannot absorb the current population with its appetite for energy and resources. We will see the coming of a worldwide economic, social, and environmental collapse within 25 years. I predicted this in 1969 and am 63 and childless. It will be interesting to watch as I can sit back and say I told you so without agonizing over the fate of children and grandkids.
December 14th, 2009 at 12:08 am
I feel the cliff up ahead also. It is energizing to read the words of others that also see where we are.
So what will it look like if we are to avoid the bigX?
Probably a lot of people out working the land with hoes and rakes and shovels is what it’s going to take.
Current solar income, through photosynthesis, created and powered all of life up till a couple of hundred years ago and created all the fossil fuels that ever existed while doing so. We have had this blip of stored concentrated energy and now we have to go back to operating on current solar income.
In making this transition we have to heed a reality that I can illustrate with a quote from Lawrence Summers,Secretary of the Treasury Dept. under President Clinton and currently the director of the National Economic Council. This excerpt from a 1986 profile of Summers that ran in the Boston Globe was reprinted in the Oct.12, 2009 New Yorker. The article by Ryan Lizza quotes Summers as saying,
“When I look out the window at my back yard, I can’t think of anything interesting to ask. I mean it’s green and growing—-but nothing occurs to me that any concentrated effort of thought could possibly enlighten. Whereas in economics, statistical, and mathematical kinds of things, I can think of lots of questions.”
The National Economic Council coordinates all economic policy in the Obama Administration and it’s director sees no interesting connection between green and growing and economics.
Sunshine is the only income we’ve got. If there is a way out of this it is through management of photosynthetic systems. I have no idea how many we can feed. Agriculture is the term for soil degradation ,fossil fuel squandering and toxic pollution, all with the help of Govt. subsidies. Agriculture borrows from future generations. We can’t do agriculture if we want to improve our lot. Agriculture doesn’t operate as an energy system. It is a consumer of fossil energy, technology and intellectual property products with food as a byproduct. This disconnect that places markets before production is a liability against civilization.
At solarincome.com we are working to keep the electricity on so we can work on these other problems. If the grid goes down we’re over the cliff. We have a project that we all can do that will save power plants worth of electricity. It is “shade where you need it.” We have products for sale but if you want to make your own we will help you if we can. Please copy our designs of GreenShade at solarincome.com. We don’t have to win this game to win, we only have to die trying.
December 15th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I don’t have any profound words, Tim, but wanted you to know that I’m still reading and still get it and I miss you. Hugs.
December 15th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
great article my friend.very thought provoking.thanx
December 16th, 2009 at 1:24 am
Timely re-invocation of that off-the-cliff freeze-frame image from the other side of the millennium, and some very worthwhile musings in your meditation on it’s iconic meaning to our collective unconscious nearly two decades later.
But, sadly it’s far too clean and beautiful of an exit to stand as a metaphor for what humanity is collectively on the verge of bringing about in this century. We’re obviously not talking just two souls making an independent choice of their own free will, nor a crash site that will be a tiny smudge at the bottom of a Grand Canyon otherwise preserved in National Park status.
And in an era of religious zealots conflating their own notions of righteousness with some supposed divine imperative to extinguish many other innocent lives along with their own in suicide bombings aimed at a radical end to the collective status quo, I think it behooves us all to be very clear what we are (and are not) suggesting when we urge our fellows to contemplate a response to “our collective misery, and our wish for the death of the culture that underlies that misery, hover(ing) still in that great freeze-frame of our present predicament.”
But I do endorse your very graphic invocation of the cliff-edge metaphor as an invitation to look inward, as well as all around us, at the abundant evidence that we are at the end of the line.
“Now what?” was a good way to end your piece and I have a suggestion for one little avenue of inquiry that some of your readers might find grist for the mill. That being the sequel to the book Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, which you site in the Book List on your website, by William R. Catton, Jr. (my father) who was one of the speakers in your excellent film What A Way To Go.
It is Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse, available at: http://www2.xlibris.com/BOOKSTORE/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=60202
Thanks again for your great film, and all of the honest and heartfelt sharing you’ve continued in other ways since you made it.
Sincerely,
Steve Catton
December 16th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Suicide before we have even tried a real resistance? I just don’t get it, Tim.
I don’t want to die, but if I must because the insane people running the show are not going to stop their rapaciousness (And they are not - this is so obvious it is absurd to have to mention it) - climate destruction is here to stay as long as we have the current system in place - then why don’t we talk about gathering, resisting, finding a way to stop them? Why would you immediately go to a Thelma and Louise? Why is everyone so ready to give up, go on to the next level, the “sweet hereafter”?
This is what is real, right here, right now. Why would you talk about suicide when an actual resistance hasn’t even been brought to the table? What about revolution? Is that a bad word or something? Talk about unspeakable, try: self-defense!
Let’s make a list of the biggest perpetrators of the violence against us and our homeland. I will give you a small one: The Bilderberg Group, Monsanto, Cargill. There. Three main perpetrators to start with. If people gathered and took self-defensive action all holy hell would break loose for sure, but you know what? All holy hell is coming anyway, so why not try to stop them?
Why not act in self - defense?
You have a forum over there/here. You have started people thinking about all this, talking about it. With the summit happening in Copenhagen people are thinking about it more and more. Now is the time to encourage people to rise up, gather for action, not lay down and accept the inevitable!!! This is pacifist nonsense. We are many, they are few. Target their ability to run their war machine (they have already stated how vulnerable their computer systems are to hackers and how they are working hard to fix this) and you have made them weak where they were previously strong. If only people would get straight about gathering and acting together, to resist this. There is no other way.
I can’t support this romanticizing the end with a Thelma and Louise analogy.
You have brilliantly faced the first part of this problem, Tim. You and Sally made a dynamite movie. You have a website that has so much great information. You have people talking. It is just a short step to resistance……… Do you love your life? Then fight! There is not much time………
Best,
Jennifer
December 17th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Hey All,
Just finished two big pieces of work. Now got a few minutes to catch up.
Thanks for your many and varied comments. I haven’t seen Vanishing Point, Dan, but might check it out. I think I’m making different distinctions of self than you, which leads to the confusion regarding decision-making. I’ll chew on that some more. I don’t think much of this is conscious, let alone rational.
Suzanne, thanks for your love and compassion. I’m right there with you.
Gordon, I have. Is there something you want to say about that?
Steve K, thanks for your commitment.
Joseph, I think you may be right about that mass spiritual awakening. I’m not really expecting “mass” anything at this point, though human extinction would certainly be a mass consciousness change, wouldn’t it? We’ll see how it goes. I’m going to keep walking the path the Earth calls me to in any event. Sorry to hear of your two lost friends. I know how that goes.
Steve C, thanks for the kind words and the tip to your father’s new book. I heard about it just recently and was so glad. He’s a gem. And he deserves to have his voice out there. He was so far ahead of so many of us! I’ll put something on my main page soon. You’re right, the metaphor do fall apart, don’t it?
Jennifer, your comment does not resonate. I have neither advocated suicide nor argued against resistance. I did something very different from that. You do not seem to have read what I wrote.
Thanks to all of you others who’ve weighed in with your thoughts, hopes and ideas. I’m going to dive back into my novel now. See you next time. Take care out there,
Tim
December 18th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I find that everything I can conceive of that is wrong in the world is due to their being too many people. What we need really badly is an old fashioned human dieoff, an epidemic of epic proportions! It would help matters on many fronts simultaneously. Just the sheer decrease in the number of consuming bodies would obviously be an immediate help. Then I am certain “the economy,” that vague thing out there that is the sum total of our collective buying and selling decisions, would be rocked to its foundations since it could no longer grow and necessarily contract. Folks from all walks of life and professions would disappear, as in drop dead, so shit everywhere would just not work or function, at least like it had prior, and so this would also be a force to shut down the economy. End result? A dramatic decline in CO2 emissions. Mission accomplished. I was hoping H1N1 would be that force. It could still mutate into something far more deadly…we can only hope.
A spiritual awakening sounds brain dead. What’s the evidence for this? Did the Shroud of Turin amount ot a hill of beans? Yet millions persist in believing this 2000+ yr old crap about the supposed existence of god and the son of god and so on. We don’t need more of this crap-ola in the world, we need less spiritualism if anything!
Pandora’s box is open. We have lots of knowledge about how our body’s function, how various other organisms function and how the planet functions. This is all evidence based knowledge. I’m kind of partial to evidence based living. Without it, we gradually return to the Middle Ages.
Excellent, thought provoking piece, Tim!
December 18th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Apologies Tim!! I initially read what you wrote differently than your intention in writing. I just reread it and now I get it. I’m a little trigger happy right now. COP 15 has me a bit unhinged.
Best,
Jennifer
December 19th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Thanks to all for great comments!
Tim: you are probably right about different perspectives on thought. My perspectives are pretty fringe-ey, so don’t sweat it if you don’t understand my thoughts.
Jennifer: I’m with you. I recommend “Pump Up the Volume” with Christian Slater: instead of suicide, do something crazy.
Tom: I just want to reiterate what George Monbiot says, and it is to think about what we say about population: “Those who cry “overpopulation” are shifting the blame from the rich to the poor.”
If we eliminated 294 million people in the U.S. right now, the top remaining 2% would just use robots to build robots to consume the same amount of resources and maintain their domination as the ‘top tier’ of consumers.
It isn’t population: it’s particular activities and attitudes about where humans fit in the real world.
The number of people doesn’t matter so much as what people are FOR. We can add to the future resources or we can take away from them. Net Useful or Net Consumptive: take your pick personally, locally, regionally, and species-wide. A species survives long term only if it adds usefulness to itself and its sources of life.
Best wishes to all, and an atheist Merry Christmas!
(That means “Have a nice day on the 25th of December.”)
December 19th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Thanks, Jennifer. Understood. Unhinged is a good word to have on hand these days!
Tom, the words “religion” and “spirituality” do not refer to the same thing, as far as I’m concerned. They need to be teased apart, I think, to be useful terms. I have found the process of doing that to be highly rewarding.
Best,
Tim
December 24th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Thanks Tim for this lovely piece.
In answer to the question “Now what?” I would like to offer some lines from a Native American Ghost Dance song:
“The whole world is coming,
a nation is coming, a nation is coming,
the Father says so, the Father says so.
Over the whole earth they are coming.
The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming,
the eagle has brought the message to the tribe.”
Greetings, Ben