It’s a beautiful afternoon in Austin, Texas. I just returned from a six-mile walk through our neighborhood. The sky is a cloudless, fathomless blue that hurts your eyes when you look at it for too long. Riots of wildflowers have crowded the empty lots and undeveloped fields. I paused momentarily to refill my water bottle in the park and stood under a tree, enveloped in green-gold, marveling at how beautiful the world can be in the springtime. At one point, I thought, “THIS is what it means to be alive.”
Last week, during my zen group’s Wednesday night Gaia meditation, we read Thich Naht Hanh’s 2015 statement for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). True to form, his statement is written in simple language that anyone can understand, but it’s also a powerful call to action:
Only when we’ve truly fallen back in love with the Earth will our actions spring from reverence and the insight of our interconnectedness. Yet many of us have become alienated from the Earth. We are lost, isolated, and lonely. We work too hard, our lives are too busy, and we are restless and distracted, losing ourselves in consumption. But the Earth is always there for us, offering us everything we need for our nourishment and healing: the miraculous grain of corn, the refreshing stream, the fragrant forest, the majestic snow-capped mountain peak, and the joyful birdsong at dawn.
Earth Day is tomorrow, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how skewed and bizarre our world has become these last few decades. Much ink has been spilled about this, but I can’t overstate how violently the separation between our selves and our world has been during my lifetime.
We have rich people going to space on the backs of literal enslaved people working in cobalt mines in the DRC, then celebrating it as if they were moving humanity forward. We have people in high positions of religious and political leadership denouncing empathy, arguing that slaughtering women, children, and the elderly in Gaza is some great and holy cause. There are actual fascists infiltrating governments around the world, and democratically elected leaders refusing to do anything about it because they don’t want to jeopardize their stock portfolios. Madness.
I’ve been off most of my socials this month, and while I always get a fresh perspective when I have a break, this time, the truth about what is happening – and how utterly, comprehensively disempowered 99.99% of humans are to do anything about it has become crystal clear. We sit on the internet all day talking about problems, and maybe, occasionally, we’ll go to a pep rally or fundraiser – but nothing is being done to address the root causes of the harm being visited upon our planet and her most tender, innocent inhabitants.
I don’t want to live this way. I don’t need to live in perpetual outrage over things I can’t control. I want my brain and nervous system back so I can actually DO something useful with my time and energy. Mostly, I want to live – really live – before it’s too late.
I’ve spent decades sitting on the internet, listening to people tell me all this posting is helping. It’s working! We’re making a difference! We’re changing things! All the while watching as our rights are systematically stripped away and fascism rises again. Is it possible that we’re deluding ourselves? That the thousands of hours we spend sitting on these apps that are made with gamification techniques to keep us there so they can suck our data and sell us shit isn’t actually helping? Maybe – just maybe – the answer to our ills can’t come from being on the internet. Maybe we need to log the fuck off and go attend to the people around us in real, tangible ways.
We’ve been seduced by the idea of scale. If 500 people don’t agree with or support something, is it worth doing?
Once again, I’m reminded of the words of Viktor Frankl:
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
The world isn’t going to be saved by influencers or algorithms or AI. It’s going to be saved by the handful of people who refuse to be influenced or manipulated, and who are willing to give their last piece of bread away to those who need it. It’s going to be saved by people who do what needs to be done without an audience or without an expectation of getting something in return. Not even Likes.
I’ve given up trying to stop what’s coming. It’s already here, stronger, more organized, and better equipped. There is no meaningful opposition. Leaders have chosen themselves over us. And you know what?
Whatever. Same as it ever fucking was. Ultimately, this is the human race. It’s what we do. There are always tyrants, sycophants, traitors, and liars. There is always a privileged, comfortable bourgeoisie comprised of cowards and enablers who smooth the way for tyranny. And there are always the rebels, revolutionaries, and those who stand on principle. Choose your fighter.
But before you do, take a minute. No, take an hour. Or two. Get out in the sunshine. Drink some water. Watch the squirrels frolicking in the park. Listen to birdsong. Smile at a stranger. Admire the wildflowers. Your choice will become clear.