According to the American writer Rebecca Solnit, it was no coincidence that the Christchurch mosque massacre took place on the same day and in close vicinity to a climate protest by youngsters with hope and idealism in their hearts: "It was a shocking pairing and also a perfectly coherent one".
Was it? Surely such perfect coherence - or synchronicity - is in the mind of the beholder ...
But then Solnit is an idealist who specialises in discerning causal relations and meaningful connections between events; a woman who believes in harmonious global unity, which she describes as "the beautiful interconnection of all life and the systems [...] on which that life depends".
Other than the murderous racism, the thing she really dislikes about white supremacists is that they refuse to care about climate change and thus threaten to destroy or disrupt the above systems, making the world not just warmer, but more chaotic, "in ways that break these elegant patterns and relationships".
But then Solnit is an idealist who specialises in discerning causal relations and meaningful connections between events; a woman who believes in harmonious global unity, which she describes as "the beautiful interconnection of all life and the systems [...] on which that life depends".
Other than the murderous racism, the thing she really dislikes about white supremacists is that they refuse to care about climate change and thus threaten to destroy or disrupt the above systems, making the world not just warmer, but more chaotic, "in ways that break these elegant patterns and relationships".
This chaos, according to Solnit, is essentially an extension of terrorist violence; the violence not of guns and bombs, but of "hurricanes, wildfires, new temperature extremes, broken weather patterns, droughts, extinctions, famines" that the poor Earth is coerced or triggered into unleashing.
And this is why climate action, she says, has always been and must remain non-violent, in stark contrast to the actions carried out by men like Brenton Tarrant. For environmentalism is a movement to protect life and restore peace and harmony; protesting against global warming is "the equivalent of fighting against hatred" and disorder. In other words, it's a form of counter-terrorism.
And this is why climate action, she says, has always been and must remain non-violent, in stark contrast to the actions carried out by men like Brenton Tarrant. For environmentalism is a movement to protect life and restore peace and harmony; protesting against global warming is "the equivalent of fighting against hatred" and disorder. In other words, it's a form of counter-terrorism.
Personally, I think such claims are highly contentious, to say the least. But who knows, perhaps Ms. Solnit is right. After all, not only does she know a lot of climate activists, but she also knows what motivates them ... Love! Love for the planet, love for people (particularly the poor and vulnerable), and love for the promise of a sustainable future.
How many people at the opposite end of the political spectrum from herself and her friends she also knows isn't clear. Presumably not many. But that doesn't stop her from dismissing them all as irresponsible climate change deniers, unwilling to acknowledge that "actions have consequences", and full of the kind of libertarian machismo and entitlement that ultimately ends in violence.
What Solnit doesn't seem to consider is that the Earth is a monster of chaos and indifference; that it's not a living system or self-regulating organism and is neither sentient nor morally concerned with the preservation of life.
I think it's mistaken to think of the planet as some kind of home, sweet home and to ascribe the world with some sort of will. But, if we must play this game, then it's probably best to take a neo-Gnostic line and accept that all matter and events are imbued with the spirit of evil.
Indeed, push comes to shove, I'm inclined to think that human agency and geological catastrophe conspire not because innocent Nature has been groomed by terrorists or provoked into taking her revenge due to man-made climate change (as some followers of Lovelock like to imagine), but because they are both expressions of what is a fundamentally immoral existence.
Finally, Solnit might like to recall this from Sade writing in Justine: "Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power."
See:
Rebecca Solnit, 'Why climate action is the antithesis of white supremacy', The Guardian (19 March 2019): click here to read online.
Marquis de Sade, Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue, trans. John Phillips, (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Rebecca Solnit, 'Why climate action is the antithesis of white supremacy', The Guardian (19 March 2019): click here to read online.
Marquis de Sade, Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue, trans. John Phillips, (Oxford University Press, 2012).
See also the excellent essay by David McCallam entitled 'The Terrorist Earth? Some Thoughts on Sade and Baudrillard', in French Cultural Studies 23 (3), (SAGE Publications, 2012), 215-224. Click here to access as an online pdf via Academia.edu.
Amongst other things, McCallam indicates how eighteenth-century discourses on revolutionary politics and the aesthetics of the sublime provide the conceptual framework for the contemporary idea of the Earth as terrorist; an idea, developed by Jean Bauadrillard, that allows us to think terror attacks and natural disasters interchangeably.
Although Stephen's riposte (for reasons) hardly reads as a point by point rebuttal of Solnit's article, but as we have already engaged in a brief off-blog skirmish about this piece (during which we were presented with the mind-numbing dichotomy of being 'for' Love or 'for' Chaos, with, apparently, nothing in between), here are our compressed responses to stir the pot - see below.
ReplyDeleteIl n'y a pas de hors-blog.
Delete1. We don't think Sade was discussing or anticipating environmental ethics or ecodical events in the cited extract from 'Justine' - a novel, as far we recall, about sadism and sexual perversion.
ReplyDelete2. As a post-Jungian, we can vouch for Jung's important essay on synchronicity as certainly not asserting that synchronous events are merely mental projections - which might, rather ironically for the blogger, itself be regarded as a classic statement of philosophical idealism. For Jung, such phenomena attest to a remarkable tendency in the universe to impose patterns Jung described as activated by an 'acausal connecting principle', even if registered (how could they not be?) by an individual psyche. His analysis helps us to become more nuanced and sophisticated discriminators in the sphere of what is stupidly referred to as mere 'coincidence'. Readers of his work will be familiar with Jung's classic example of the scarab beetle entering the analytic consulting room.
Even if meaning (like beauty) is in the eye of the beholder, however, what this points to is the exciting contestability of perceived patterns in the world, which, in our view, Solint makes a persuasive case for the contiguity of the Christchurch slaughter and that morning's climate strike that generates her reading. In the end, the nihilist tends to believe nothing really means anything, and in doing so can disappear, like Alice, down a rabbit hole of his/her own making. Imaginal or poetic meaning, by contrast, says 'look at this - isn't this symbolically striking', compelling assent by empirical or, at a push, transcendental evidence. (If all that comes back is a cynical voice from a dismal corner, so much the worse for poets in a destitute time!)
3. As for sad sacks like the identarian Christchurch killer, terrorism, racism and a murderous indifference to our planetary fate (and by extension, everything/everyone on it) consitute, for us at least, a list of good reasons for despising him. If Solnit wants to call him out for the monstrous cunt he is, we're happy for The Guardian to give her a platform to do so.
4. We do think there is a vital conversation to be had about the way in which separation, masculinity and violence are lived out in the world – over to Jordan Peterson if he’s got the balls to take Solnit on! We also agree that Baudrillard's neo-Gnostic 'transparency of evil' hypothesis is a crucial check on the hubris of moral perfectionism (in which regard he writes, 'all liberation affects Good and Evil equally. The liberation of morals and minds entails crimes and catastrophes.') Evil is part of the world; indeed, as the Gnostics believed, evil was the world, or, more precisely, our hunger for worldliness (though this was an article of religious faith for them as early Christians – which, we don't know, when 'push comes to shove', Stephen may also spiritually share in).
In the meantime, we’d be interested to read a point by point repudiation of Lovelock's influential and science-transforming thesis (borne of his eight or nine decades as a professional scientist) rather than merely settle for anti-Solnitian counter-assertion. We don't know whether the earth is a living organism (who could for sure?), but there is science to show this is a plausible ecopoetic picture or metaphor at least. In the end, we suspect, everything IS connected, materially and psychically, or, more precisely and paradoxically, is 'connectively disconnected'. Paradox is, we would further suggest, the only way to go in all sophisticated adventures in thinking, rather than'the dreary dance of opposites'! We’re all alone (with our evil and good), but we’re all intervolved. There are no I-lands.
1. Sade is about much more than cruelty and sexuality and his engagement with Nature is fairly extensive. Indeed, he roots his atheistic and asocial philosophy of libertinism in a concept of the latter and often cites the destructive and wasteful character of nature as justifying human violence.
Delete2. I'm really not keen to discuss articles of psycho-poetic faith. If it makes you happy to believe that the universe has a 'remarkable tendency' to impose patterns of meaning - that there is some kind of intelligent design - then that's fine. But you can't expect others to share your apophenia.
(As a side note, my mother sees chickens and the face of a cat in patterns on the carpet and I often wonder at the relationship between pareidolia and dementia.)
For me, Solnit is exploiting the Christchurch shooting as an event simply to push her own political agenda as a climate alarmist. Before the blood was even dry on the floor, she was spilling ink to let us know how, actually, the tragedy was all about her. Sorry, but I find that pretty nauseating.
3. Well, you know that Brenton Tarrant - as a self-professed white supremacist - is a racist, but how do you know what his views are on the natural environment etc? You're making the same assumption as Solnit. As a matter of fact, Nazis are often quite eco-conscious (see Anna Bramwell's work on this); apart from blood, soil is an important concern for them.
I don't like your use of the word 'cunt' here and feel it is inappropriate; as well as murderous racism and planetary indifference, Solnit also wishes to convict Tarrant (and other men like him who are so afraid of fluid bodies) of toxic masculinity, so I doubt she'd be happy either to see this term used.
4. As far as I know, even Lovelock himself is embarrassed by some of his past claims concerning Gaia's revenge etc. (and certainly at how some readers have interpreted his work).
If you don't know whether the earth is or is not a living organism, then, again, discussion is made difficult (though of course you do know, which is why you then concede the idea of Gaia is an ecopoetic metaphor). The earth gave rise to and sustains life - and we might better understand that process - but that doesn't mean it is itself alive.
See Nietzsche, 'The Gay Science', section 109, that opens: "Let us be on our guard against thinking that the world is a living being."
Just quickly, Stephen, in response to you, but we've made our points, we feel, as fully as we can, for other readers to ponder and engage with as they see fit.
ReplyDelete1. Yes, we'd accept there's probably more to say about Sade and nature - beyond the scope of the enforced character limit on this platform (and our time/energy/knowledge). We're sure you know (and probably care) more than us about his authorship here.
2. We didn't, and wouldn't, use the word 'faith' to talk about our points about Jung, patterns and poetry, but were pointing out that invoking the Gnostics is to conjure the ghost of (early) Christianity, which surprised us to say the least in context. (What do you know about either the Demiurge of the true God, we're now wondering?)
3. We'll see what more we can find out, if we can summon the motivation, about Tarrant's ecological thinking (if he thinks at all in this domain), but, irrespective of the supposed 'green' credentials of a handful of Nazis, we'd be flabbergasted if he has any concerns for the future of the earth given his evident contempt for the people who live on it. A man who guns down men, women and children to satisfy his warped agenda probably won't be terribly sensitive to the inner or outer lives of trees, flowers and birds, we imagine. And, for the record, we're quite happy to call him a cunt (again) - a perfectly decent Anglo-Saxon word used by both men and women, in our experience, as a standard term of workaday abuse.
4. Like any decent thinker, Lovelock has obviously shifted his positions down the years, though we've seen no evidence of his explicit 'embarrassment' about any of his stances - why should there be? What are your sources here in his own words, or is this just convenient speculation? However, we do think there's evidence to suggest the media have diluted and/or marginalised his more apocalytic conclusions over the years, and, quite possibly, his collusion with such.
5. We don't see why Solnit's article is all about her - on the contrary, it builds a narrative that is coherent, considerate and very outward-facing, much like New Zealand's dignified and sensitive Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. By contrast, the TTA post hardly acknowledges the dead, let alone offers any critique of the terrorist, only an ad hominem attack on Solnit herself. We'd have hoped for better.
Finally, Nietzsche, like Frasier, ‘said a lot of things’, and many of them were contradictory (as he himself admitted, and even seemed to enjoy). None of us 'know' very much about anything, which is why we do best to trade in contestable metaphors. Which doesn't mean, of course, that all argument ceases - it just operates at a (truer) poetic level.
If the 'I' is a convenient fiction that already contains a multitude, then why spurn the first person singular? Unless one is royal or acting as a spokesman for others, such nosistic practice seems unnecessary and a little affected, I think.
Delete(3) Why do you say 'supposed' green credentials when it comes to the Nazis, as if you would cast some doubt upon this?
Whether you like it or not, there was widespread support for animal welfare, for example, amongst the leaders of the Third Reich, and a number of measures were enacted to protect wildlife and the environment; they banned vivisection, regulated animal slaughter, and restricted hunting.
Further, wasn't one of the most disturbing facts to come out of the Holocaust the fact that men who could sanction the murder of millions, could also be lovers of art, fond of children, and kind to animals?
Tarrant isn't contemptuous of all people: just some people. And acts not in the name of hate, but in the name of love - hoping to secure a future and a homeland for those he deems to be his own kind. That's the thing that idealists, like Solnit who bang on and on about Love, do not seem to appreciate.
(Note: if interested, then Lawrence's 1923 novel 'Kangaroo' is an excellent examination of how ideal love becomes toxic and how hate is often just a form of love on the recoil.)
(5) I didn't think Jacinda Arden's response dignified and sensitive; I thought it shameful virtue signalling. Her putting on a headscarf and posing as a modest Muslimah for the day, is a form of blackface as far as I'm concerned.
How might one acknowledge the dead? Should I have posted a picture of a teddy bear and a lighted candle on the blog?
Sorry, but I'm not going to pretend to care about people I've never met in a land I've never been to. But nor am I going to try and exploit their death, by producing a quick opinion piece for 'The Guardian' in which I flag up my own moral superiority and green credentials.
How might one critique a terrorist? It goes without saying they and their actions are abhorrent.
The original post wasn't about the Christchurch massacre, however, it was about the way in which such is quickly co-opted by those in politics and the media.
Always entertaining, Stephen, and thought-provoking. And worrying.
ReplyDeleteI/we don't really want to get into a detailed discussion of the use of pronomial conventions/strategies in regard to poetic/writing practice (which wasn't what we posted to address - though Nietzsche didn't go far enough here), but it seems strange for you to critique art/writing on grounds of 'affectation' (which is all it is, or a sophisticated exercise in style or pretence, as surely you'd agree, and have in fact claimed on many occasions, or one of your authorial selves did at least).
Call us (or me, if you need to) old-fashioned, but Nazis who invade other countries, burn down everything in their way, and exterminate native populations (including in their own nation) aren't quite the best qualified to lecture me on the environment. Just a personal view. We don't give a shit about their incidental views on vivisection, and nor does anyone, we suggest, save pedantic historians of the minutiaie of fascism and its myriad absurdities.
There's love, love and love, we guess. Murderous love, included. You turn your guns on Solnit's harmless humanism, but why not do the same on Tarrant, and his own form of murderous (allegedly love-driven) idealism and rage?
Is there any love that isn't idealistic in the end, and wants to protect something/someone, and hence is political?
An unreflected psychological question implicit in your scarily dismissive attitude to the suffering and death of people whose countries you happen not to have lived in and/or haven't met (which, for most of us, is most of the people of the world) highlights a rather important issue about compassion and its limits - one that it behooves all of us, we suggest, to reflect on profoundly.
Personally, we're glad that the debates are following quick and sharp on the heels of the Christchurch hell, whatever they may or may not do for Solnit's and Arden's literary/political careers (who we don't think were just 'virtue-signalling'- Arden's responses were measured, respectful and, we think, heartfelt).
'How might one critique a terrorist?' It would be nice to see a critical blog like TTA doing just that. Or at least starting to.