Don't Hate Nothing Except Hatred

The Chambers Brothers

Dylan's advice is as good now as when he wrote it forty five years ago.  The polity of the world is extremely fragmented and competing truths all beat their chests full of certitude.  Everyone is screaming at everyone else, and I know that I am completely guilty of the same fault.  I'm a news junkie who, mostly, listens to NPR or reads stuff on the web and rants at some folks, cheers for my side, and cringes about the causes that worry me  In Chronicles Vol I, Dylan said that his fame was "big enough to fill a football stadium," but it's a lot smaller than the vast ocean it would take to contain the level of hatred present on this planet.  "Meanwhile, life outside goes on all around you."  Like the Chambers Brothers said, "There are things to realize." things that require our collective attention that are a hell of a lot more important than the next quarter's economic numbers or whether there's going to be a new version of the iPad by Christmas (both of which are important to me). 

Take the grim reaper of climate change, for example.

Franny at a Glacier

The other day, I watched "The Age of Stupid" and left the theater in near despair.  Franny Armstong's documentary was made in 2009 specifically to influence the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change.  It's grounded in the virtually overwhelming evidence that atmospheric conditions of our planet are approaching a tipping point at which a lot of really bad things are going to happen.  Yet, we move along in our daily affairs as though this approaching tsunami doesn't actually exist,  

John Coleman

For example, an incredible 70% of people who report the weather in the US media do not believe there is such a thing as global warming!  Like Sarah Palin, they rack it up to "natural causes" from things like sunspots.  To the gleeful applause of his fans, the founder of The Weather Channel, John Coleman, claims that "Global Warming is the greatest scam in history!" and sues Al Gore for fraud.  (Full disclosure: I use The Weather Channel all the time.  Further full disclosure:  John Coleman is not a meteorologist; he has a degree in journalism and invented the highly successful local news format known as "happy talk.") One of my best friends contends that "gas coming from cow dung is as big a contributor to global warming as human emissions.  And, what about photosynthesis? Doesn't that release CO2 into the atmosphere."  Louie, the 65 year old guy who bags my groceries at Market Basket points to an ice cold day in February when I tell him that I want to use my own cloth bag rather than consuming plastic that comes from oil and exclaims, "Ya don't see any global warming out there today, do ya!"

Folks, there is no disagreement regarding the scientific evidence for global warming.  There does seem to be a lot of wiggle room regarding what it's going to mean and exactly when those results are going to show up, but the fact that human behavior is altering the climate of this planet is beyond dispute.  I wish with all of my I-love-my-consumptive-lifestyle heart that this were not the case, but it is.  

Now, if there were ever anything to be alarmed about on a global basis, this would seem to be it.  It is incomprehensible that there are not worldwide continuous protests about this ever encroaching threat, but there aren't.  Copenhagen was a disastrous failure and I would bet that most people didn't even know that it was happening let alone follow it closely.  

How do I explain this: we are asleep.  

From "Night of the Living Dead"

When I was in my 20s and the war in Vietnam presented an immediate threat to me and every other young man in the US, you better believe that a lot of us were not asleep.  Someone was trying to kill us for a lie.  Mark Twain said something like, "My country, always; my government, sometimes." and that was definitely the way I've felt from 1966 on.  Ben Johnson said something like "there is nothing like the prospect of noose in the morning to focus the mind." It was impossible to not pay attention to the fact that the Vietnam War was a complete crock that could get you killed, wounded or in the psyche ward.  

But, we got beat, left, and things essentially went back to normal in the Etas Unis, i.e., time to get a job, raise a family, consume, return to essentially "conservative" politics, take vacations, try to save money, worry about retirement and go through Wall Street's gyrations.  

The ugly bugger called Salmonella

The threat of Global Warming is entirely different than that posed by the immediacy of war and death.  I'm presently visiting Mexico where I contracted Salmonella a few days ago at a restaurant.  I went to see a great caring homeopathic physician here, Dr. Sylvia, who advised me not to eat any vegetables prepared by eateries:  "Because they can't see the microbes, they don't believe that they are actually there."  This is the nature of a lot of systemic phenomena like greenhouse gases: they're there all right, we just don't have to pay attention to the extra 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 lbs. of CO2 we put up there every year because we can't see 'em.  Outta sight, outta mind.

Our species has demonstrated that it can rise to the occasion when faced with existential threats, and there is no better example of this than the allies defeat of the Axis in World War II.  Hitler in particular exemplified the worst sort of evil that humanity has ever faced, a highly armed, malignant and merciless tyrant who would have devoured all of civilization and life.  The West and the Russians faced him and his fascist allies in Japan down at an unfathomable cost.  That was an instance in which there was a brief moment when there was an organized "hatred of hatred." 

The foe we face now is of a different order.  "We have met the enemy and it is us."  Our own pattern of consumption and self-aggrandizement are driving global warming, and I speak as a participant.  It is not hatred we must hate now, but an ignorance of how systems operate.  We must discard our most cherished myths–religious, national, political, and –most challenging of all–personal.

It is time to change.

We can do this.  

Two weeks after the outbreak of the Civil War/War Between the States, Lincoln gave an inaugural address and his words seem relevant to this moment:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

We humans, with all of our disparate and incredibly legitimate and countervailing truths, share the great gift of consciousness.  Death knocks at our door.  Awake and united, we can turn it away.