The Life Force and a Sense of the Elegiac

I am 48 years old. I am in good health. I wonder if my life will be cut short by climate catastrophe and its consequences. In recent years, I have written angrily about what is occurring in the Earth system as the result of the highly elevated levels of carbon and other toxins that humans have introduced into the atmosphere, the ground and the waters. As we lurch into 2016, I think that such a tone is no longer necessary. My anger has grown out of a feeling of indignation that a species would pursue such a blatantly horrific and destructive course for itself and its fellow Earth creatures. I thought that by expressing this - often incandescent - rage I could provoke ripples on down the line of causality that might alter the course of the plodding, stupid beast that is global industrial consumer society.

A feeling of rage toward the operatic stupidity of civilized human behavior is very natural; indeed, I consider it a sign of the life force radiating within one. However, directing a prolonged scream toward The Madness in an effort to draw attention to The Madness is no longer needed. The ravages of climate change and the strange, at times almost whimsical movements of the weather and the rubble and the refugees left in its wake are now a constant presence. Bizarre swings in the weather act now like a high, circling bird who swoops down at odd times to crash through the windows of our dwellings before exiting once again toward the heavens and the renewal of its high hunter’s arc.

I don’t believe I have the mental or the emotional profile to engage in acts of sabotage that might make a dent in the death machine and its gloomy, dumb march. I can and do participate in local movements against extraction industries and on the myriad other issues of social and animal and environmental justice that our present lifeways force. I am focused on a massive personal shift in consciousness and living that is based on the principle of entering into relationships with other people, other biota and other places as fellow subjects to be listened to and not objects to be exploited.

But the question returns: How to express the bewilderment, the frustration, the rage and the despair that all arise within one upon witnessing the galloping ruin and the obtuse and wretched mentality that is driving it? Not expressing our feelings in the face of such loss causes soul sickness. I believe we will only know how to voice these feelings by voicing them. Expressing the truth is like pulling back the curtains to reveal the sun shining outside: the contours of perception and the world are changed as we speak and relate. We learn how to speak by speaking. As for myself, I feel I can now voice my range of emotions on this topic without focusing on angry yelling and gesticulating toward the destruction. The destruction has become very evident and becomes more so with each passing day. A sense of the elegiac is important now and it may even help to drive changes on the level of Deep Culture (to use Gary Gripp’s term) that are the only thing that may slow the burning of the world.