Love of the World

At the end of "Capitalism and its Critics" we are focusing on the apparent growth imperative of capitalism and the equally apparent ecological limits to economic growth. This is a sobering topic. It seems to be a situation of an unstoppable force accelerating toward an immovable object, and we are caught in the middle. For today's students, there are plenty of other reasons for pessimism as well. The political forces of ethno-nationalist, populist authoritarianism are growing globally. Some like that; some think it's wrong. Many who understand history sense its dangers. But wherever you stand politically, that trend is not a sign of an optimistic age. It is a retreat behind walls, a retrenchment of identities, a general melancholy of political introversion. And it is a despairing of global cooperation at a time when we need to solve global collective action problems more than ever. Not only to face the coming climate apocalypse, but also our other self-imposed existential threats like nuclear escalation and the reckless AI arms race.

I hate to end on a downbeat, but what's a professor to do?! Offer some reasons for hope? OK, well, yes, I clearly should do that. So I will.

In the first place, almost all students I meet, from all sides of the political spectrum, care about the environmental and social issues raised this class raises. They are curious about them, and in many cases are inspired to find solutions. We are not as divided as we think. People who like capitalism want to solve them. And anti-capitalists want to solve them.

The two sides, if there are two sides, definitely have different names for their solutions. For some, we need to overthrow capitalism and achieve socialism. For others, we need to fix or purify capitalism, and kill socialism once and for all. 

Take some concrete examples of social and economic innovations that grow out of awareness of some of the issues we have discussed: 

• Workers' cooperatives such as the Mondrogon Collective
• Community and conservation land trusts (which have been especially useful for indigenous land rights)
• Resident-owned rental communities
• Credit unions
• National forests and parks, wildlife preserves
• Carbon fee and dividend schemes
• Public works programs on green infrastructure

I’ve heard these things called 'creeping socialism' by capitalists and I’ve heard them called 'warmed-over capitalism' by socialists. I don’t care so much what they're called. They are worthwhile attempts at solutions to some pressing problems.

There are more alignments and potential alignments across political divides than people think, when it comes to actual, concrete ideas for changes in how we live together. If we focus on what abstractions we want to destroy, we will probably find less common ground and more division. If we focus on what concrete, practical arrangements we actually want to achieve, the opposite will probably be true. 

But I would also offer a more general message, not of optimism exactly, but of affirmation: 

Love the world and affirm life. 

If we see lots of unsolvable problems on the horizon--if we are worried about nuclear armageddon, global environmental despoliation, and climate apocalypse--we should ask ourselves, why? The answer, I hope, is because we love life, care about others, and love the world. 

The world: it's an interesting word in northern European languages. It comes from two germanic roots: were (man) and alt (old). "Old man"? How did that become "world"? 

The world is not the same as the universe, and it isn’t exactly the same as the planet either. A planet may exist whether any conscious beings live on it or not. A world is something lived, experienced. The world lives on as such after you’re gone. It is something that’s shared with other people, and something that we can leave our mark upon. The world is both social and material. Both socially constructed and real. It is what things seem to be and what things are. It is what we experience and what exists beyond our experience. It is the environment and the lived environment. It is things, places, beings, and the meanings they hold for us.

One day we will all die, and one day our world will probably die. Though it may yet persist for quite a while, perhaps for eons. It’s not a bad idea to prepare for the apocalypse. But also prepare for the not apocalypse. Things might just keep going.

And while the world is still here in some form, and while we are here, we should love it.

Loving the world is active. You love it by partaking of it. Or, that's how it seems to me anyway. You love it by working and struggling, harvesting and eating, learning and exploring, fishing and swimming, building and acting, and by doing these things together with others. But these things should be approached as sacraments.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an Anishnaabe author who wrote a book called Braiding Sweetgrass. She talks about harvesting sweetgrass as a kind of sacrament. It would be the height of ingratitude to harvest it greedily—as merely a commodity, as the Cargill corporation harvests soybeans--without giving back to the sweetgrass and giving back to the land. But it would equally be the height of ingratitude not to harvest it, to neglect it. This kind of sacrament, partaking of the world with gratitude, is loving the world. It's also probably part of the solution to many of our problems.

In Works and Days, Hesiod says we should plough and plant, reap and sow, build and hew and work and struggle and plan and prepare. He says "act in this way: work upon work upon work…"

But he also says, 'when thistle blooms, when goats are fattest, at that time, let there be a rock’s shadow and bibline wine. Let there be bread made with milk, cheese from goats, and meat from a forest grazing cow. Eat your fill, sitting in the shade, and drink some gleaming wine mixed with three parts water from an ever-flowing spring.' (I'm paraphrasing rather liberally.)

For Hesiod, both the work and the midsummer picnic are sacraments of love for the world.

In the Analects, Confucius asks his disciples what they would do if their talents were recognized and they were put in charge of state policy.

• The first one said he would expand irrigation and increase grain production.
• The second said he would raise the population and strengthen the army.
• The third said he would see that the ancestral rites were properly observed.
• The last one said: With four or five friends and six or seven children, in the spring after the clothes are newly made, I would go swimming in the River Li, and walk home singing songs in the rain.

Confucius says to the fourth one, "I'm all with you…" (Again here, I am retelling this passage from my memory of the translation I read many years ago.)

I've thought a lot about this passage. What is Confucius saying? You should retreat into private life? Politics isn't important? Indulge yourself? Does everyone needs to carve out more "Me time?" More more self-care? I don't think that's the point. I think the point is that, while the world deserves care and stewardship and struggle, the world also deserves gratitude and sacraments of joy.