Small deaths and the real death: how humans are failing

Guest post by Federico Tabellini

This article was originally published last year on the Italian blog ‘Effetto Cassandra’. I repropose it here because I think the coronavirus crisis has made it somehow more relevant. The current situation raises new questions: is this new crisis just another ‘small death’ on a much wider scale? Or is it an opportunity to highlight the global ecological crisis we’ve been ignoring for decades? If it’s the latter, will the lights turn off once the emergency is over? Will the world return once more to blissful ignorance?

Seneca used to say that death, real death, is a process  lived day by day. Yet people deal with the real death only when its effects come to a head – when the proverbial last straw breaks the camel’s back, and the camel falls upon us with all its weight. Then, yes, we notice both the straw and the camel. Until then, however – or perhaps we should say, until now – the small deaths dominate our thoughts.

The difference between these small deaths and true death lies in three factors: spatial proximity, temporal proximity, and speed of execution. What's near worries us more than what's far, the present issues more than the future ones, the event more than the process. Such is human nature. We are biologically programmed to pay more attention to current events, the forthcoming ordeal, the tragedy that we can experience first-hand. We mourn the tree burning in the garden while the forest on the horizon is slowly eaten up by parasites.

The media and the political sphere, instead of compensating for this human weakness, inflate its effects. They concentrate on events because events have a wider audience. They sell more. On the front page, the terrible flood: 24 injured and 3 deaths. Facebook is grieving. The systematic accumulation of plastic in the oceans that risks compromising entire ecosystems forever? Page 15, after the sports section. On prime time, a special report on a local earthquake: six deaths and tens of people injured. At 2 a.m. a documentary on the sixth mass extinction: no meteorites this time, only pink apes with an insatiable hunger.

But it’s not our fault if the true death is slow and prosaic, boring, lacking dynamism. The media cannot be blamed if we struggle to stifle a yawn while looking at it. There are some who’ve tried hard to make it look more interesting. The most effective way is to transform it into an event: capture it in a dramatic instant, when it’s more photogenic, and present it as ‘news’. We’ve all seen the best snapshots: Earth Day, the latest fruitless international political meeting to fight climate change, Greta Thunberg. The most politically active among us took a step further to reverse the decline: they shared the news on Facebook. Unfortunately, their heroic efforts have yet to change the world.

And then there are the modern stage democracies [1], which function in more or less the same way. What matters here, again, is the audience. Politicians who propose short-term sectorial solutions to ephemeral problems – the small deaths – can reap rich rewards at the ballot box. Those who propose systemic solutions to hinder the deterioration of the ecosystems – the real death – are welcomed by a thunderous silence. The necessary complexity of such solutions, after all, is difficult to explain to an electorate concentrated on the here and now. It can’t be condensed into a TV interview, a tweet or a Facebook post. The fact that those solutions require time intervals much longer than those of a single political term to bear fruit doesn’t help, either. Proposing and implementing long-term solutions is simply not politically profitable.

‘But those solutions would save billions of lives in the coming centuries!’ 

Who cares? The men and women of the future cannot vote for the political leaders of the present. So let’s muddle on with yawn-proof marketing stunts! Preserving biodiversity in mountain areas? Useless, the most you’ll get is some praise from a few animal-rights activists. Instead, save a dog from a flooded area and tweet a picture with it. You too can become a national hero!

And this is how the world dies, you know? Not gunned down onstage, but one small piece at a time, far from the spotlights. In the meantime we, the pink apes, jump from event to event, like mosquitoes chasing lights around a Christmas tree. Imprisoned in the ephemeral. Absorbed in our little problems, or maybe fleeing from stress, seeking refuge in a shelter of entertainment and consumption. The camel is still standing, barely. For a few more years.

[1] The concept of ‘stage democracy’ and its profound effects on the political agendas of the states are explored in my book ‘A Future History of the 21st Century: how we overcame the crisis of civilization’.

Resignation and optimism on the brink of the apocalypse

Guest post by Federico Tabellini

Despite the misleading title, I will not talk to you today about the coronavirus, but of that other, far more insidious crisis that we cannot hope to solve with a vaccine. The global ecological crisis: a crisis in which we are the virus. I would like to share with you some brief reflections on human agency, human nature and their relationship with the possibility of a sustainable society. I know, philosophical stuff – but with very practical implications. 

The idea for this article came from a series of conversations I recently had with a reader of my book ‘A Future History of the 21st Century: How We Overcame the Crisis of Civilization’. The text debates the nature of the current socio-economic system, and analyses which of its structural elements constitute obstacles to our transition to a sustainable society. It then discusses how we could potentially overcome those obstacles, focusing on specific economic, institutional and political reforms. All of this while avoiding the well-known trap into which many Degrowth theorists still fall today, which can be summarized by the dead end idea that bottom-up change is the only way out of the crisis, and that to change the world we first need to change ourselves. In short, this is a dead end idea because it cannot be translated into concrete policies. Conversely, to be carried out successfully, a bottom-up change requires a top-down change that facilitates and supports it. In other words: institutional, political and economic reforms.

After this necessary introduction, let’s get to the core topic of the article. The reader I spoke of earlier agrees with the book’s analysis of our current situation and acknowledges that the solutions proposed could produce the desired transition to a sustainable steady-state economy. However, he argues that human nature will never allow us to implement those changes. In other words, not only can human beings not change themselves – they can’t even change the very institutions they created. And this is not an unlikely change either, he claims, but an absolutely impossible one. This is the same as saying that we are trapped in a car that is heading speedily towards a ravine, with a functioning brake in easy reach of our hands, but sadly we are programmed not to pull it.

To put it another way, the problem is not to be found in a defect of the hardware (our hands) or in the resilience of the system (the car), but rather in the software code (our head). The software, he argues, is programmed for accumulation, for a growth without limits and without purpose, for constant acceleration. These things are not cultural constructs, but rather inalienable characteristics of human nature.

He then proceeds to claim, based on fringe clyodynamic theories – which he of course accepts as undisputable scientific proofs – that history demonstrates this; that civilizations have always grown until they could, and when they stopped doing so, they without exception collapsed. The only solution, he concludes, is exactly that: collapse. A non-solution. Worse still: to embrace the very idea that a solution is not possible. That we cannot pull the brake. That we cannot change direction. That we need to give up and accept that we are going to fall into the ravine, and die along with the system. Not everybody, of course. Those of us that will survive will have the chance to start again, little by little, from down there, the slow climbing of the cliff. Only this time with fewer resources. And this ad infinitum, with our heads forever preventing us from learning from the mistakes of the past: until the final suicide.

Of course – I’m sure you’ve guessed it by now – I do not agree that this is the unavoidable destiny of our species. I do acknowledge, however, that we are indeed genetically programmed for accumulation and growth, and that we are not programmed to individually impose limits to ourselves. We get immediate pleasure from accumulation, while the most we get from limits is a kind of long-term serenity. To obtain the latter we need effort and perseverance, while to accumulate more and more, we just need to follow our instincts.

In other words, starting from a clean sheet and without culture, we tend to long for growth. To have more, to produce more, to do more. What I do not agree with is that our culture has to strengthen this inclination, and cannot instead compensate for it, for everyone’s sake.

Let me be clear: contemporary global culture intensifies these human tendencies more than any other culture that preceded it. The fact that we live inside this culture makes us see it as the most natural outcome of human nature, just as the ancient romans thought of their own culture as the peak of human civilization. Neither they nor we were right, of course. In the same way as we constrained our human tendencies to indulge in gratuitous violence, and no longer slaughter slaves in an arena, so people in the future can stop growing their production and consumption beyond the carrying capacity of the ecosystems. What allows us to do this is human agency: the ability to change our culture and our institutions based on what we think is right. In this case, what is right for most people (including the author of this article) is to increase the lifespan of the human race on this planet, and make sure that life is worth living for future generations.

In this sense, we should note that our current situation involves never before seen elements that work in our favour. Here are some of the most significant:

1.      Today, for the first time in history, we know that our socio-economic model is environmentally unsustainable, and that a change is necessary (although there is currently no complete agreement on what type of change we need, or how to produce it).

2. Today, for the first time in history, the entire world is interconnected, and can potentially discuss shared solutions (although coming to an agreement is not as easy as we hoped).
3. Modern technologies make producing the goods and services essential to human survival more efficient. We produce and consume too much, but each unit we produce and consume has a lower impact on the environment compared to the past.
4. It is now a consolidated fact that beyond certain levels of consumption, further consumption does not equal more well-being for human beings.[1] We already passed those limits, which means that a reduction of our per-capita consumption would not produce a reduction in aggregate well-being.

There is also historical evidence that points towards the possibility of complex social models that are not based on the relentless accumulation of material goods.

There have been entire communities in Asia and Africa that for centuries lived in societies in which the individual accumulation of material goods was socially sanctioned. These are examples of instances in which culture compensated nature, producing ecologically sustainable social models as a result.

Thus, the real fundamental question is not whether it is possible to build a sustainable society, but rather whether it is possible to do so without sacrificing the fundamental values of the West and people’s well-being. If by ‘fundamental values of the West’ we mean things such as human rights and political and civil liberties, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’ (you can find a demonstration of this in my book). If we instead mean unchecked capitalism and a lawless market, then the answer is ‘realistically, no’.

However, we do not need to ask history to know this, because history does not include the full range of possible futures. If there is a constant in human history, it is novelty. The creation of new things that constantly confute the idea that history is destined to repeat itself. History is not the full toolbox we have at our disposal to build our future. Many things that exist today did not exist before. These things are as varied as computing technologies and the internet, but also liberalism, the state of law, and human rights. We also, for the first time, live in a full world, without new frontiers to exploit. Human history has always been a history of exploitation because, among other things, there was an abundance of resources to exploit; now we are consuming (far) more than what nature produces. The situation has changed, and there is no reason to believe that we cannot change also. Before we did not need to change. Now we do. The very fact that we can see this as a problem is a relatively new thing, and a hint that we have the power to solve it.

My reader, however, appears to be blind to the very possibility of change, any change. This is because he draws his arguments not from history, but from an interpretation of history. A highly deterministic interpretation that excludes human agency. Doing so, he looks at the forest as an actor independent from the trees it is made up of. In this way, culture becomes an entity separated from people, which controls them as a puppet master. It has its own will, or moves as if it had one. There is no way we can control it. And even when it looks like we are in control, in reality we are just executing its directives. It is not the trees that make up the forest; it is the forest that makes up the trees.

Conversely, my position is one shared by most social scientists: the forest makes up the trees and at the same time, the trees make up the forest. The influence is mutual. Under certain historical conditions, it is mostly the forest that shapes the life of the trees. It decides where they lay roots, where they extend their branches, where they spread their seeds. In times of uncertainty and crisis, however, the trees can shape the life of the forest. They can shape which direction it expands. Whether it grows or retreats. If it provides sufficient nourishment for the living beings that inhabit it.

In a similar fashion, human beings are not slaves to their culture, although going against it, to change it, requires a considerable effort. An effort that the majority will not want to undertake unless they perceive it as absolutely necessary. Unless – and this is the main message I want to pass here – they believe that a change is possible.

Such a change is not likely to occur spontaneously, without direction. Most great changes in history have occurred when capable and innovative leaders (not only politicians, but also intellectuals) come together with a mass of people united by a common goal. A mass that starts small, but little by little grows until it reaches the critical threshold necessary to spark a change. This happened with women’s rights, with workers’ rights, with the liberal-democratic model, with communist revolutions, with Nazism. Change is not always positive. But it is almost always possible.

This does not mean it is probable. Often it is not. Today I think it is not probable. But it is possible. And this is really, really important. Another thing is important: change becomes more probable if we believe it possible. If the ideas of my aforementioned reader spread, change would become less probable: a self-fulfilled prophecy that could condemn our race (and others, too) to a dreadful future.

It is true: human beings are, to a certain extent, programmed by genes and culture. But they can also reprogram culture. Often they can only do this indirectly, like when the standard working day was reduced to 8 hours (an institutional reform). This produced more free time for individuals, which in turn translated into a proliferation of new activities, giving birth, among other things, to the entertainment industry and sport (previously, sport had been something that only athletes and nobles engaged in).

In conclusion, between my reader and myself there is both agreement and disagreement. We agree that the world is hurrying towards a ravine. We disagree on the possibility of pulling the brake. I firmly believe that resignation is the worst enemy of change. It paralyzes us. And I believe that optimism is needed more, not less, on the brink of an apocalypse. If we want to produce a positive change in the world, we need to look at the ravine with a smile on our lips, but also – and especially – with rolled up sleeves and our brains at work. It may be highly unlikely that we will be able to pull the brake. Nonetheless, we have the moral obligation to try. Success might not be probable, but it is surely possible. And this possibility, being rooted in the present and not in the past, is something that no deterministic interpretation of history will ever be able to disprove.

[1] See, for example, D. G. Blanchflower, A. J. Oswald, Well-being over time in Britain and the USA, in “Journal of Public Economics”, 88 (2004), pp. 1359-1386; R. Layard, S. Nickell, G. Mayraz, The marginal utility of income, in “Journal of Public Economics”, 92:8/9 (2008), pp. 1846-1857; D. Kahneman, A. Deaton, High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being, in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America”, 107:38 (2010), pp. 16489-93; E. Proto, A. Rustichini, A Reassessment of the Relationship between GDP and Life Satisfaction, in “PLoS ONE”, 8 (2013)_.

A Future History of the 21st Century: how we overcame the crisis of civilization'

Guest post by Federico Tabellini

In this age dominated by the here and now, discussing the future is a rare thing. When we do discuss it, most of the time it is to point out how badly things could go in the next few decades. And yet, what I want to present to you today is a book about the future. About a prosperous future (for a change), and the path that – if taken – could link it to our present. Here are some of the reasons why I really think you should read it.

First reason. It contributes to the solution of well-known problems: the environmental crisis (in a broad sense), limits to growth, technological unemployment, over-consumption; the list goes on. In the book, the analysis of these problems and the description of how we might overcome them are both based on consolidated academic approaches. Some of these approaches are often considered incompatible with one another in the social imaginary. The most significant achievement of the book is perhaps its attempt to integrate these different approaches into a coherent, organic framework. I believe it’s a successful attempt, but I will let readers judge for themselves.

The first section of the book (chapters 1 and 2) offers an ‘overall picture of the situation’, describing the profound nature of many of the issues dealt with on this blog, while the second (chapters 3-7) proposes possible scenarios for the implementation of solutions to the contemporary crises. It also describes the mutual interaction between these solutions, as well as their plausible consequences on society.

The focus is on the long run, and the approach is global, as are the challenges we face. The solutions proposed are also global, and are considered not only in their short term implementation but also in their long term effects. We could draw a comparison with the popular book by Tim Jackson, ‘Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet’, but my approach has a somewhat broader scope. As Jackson did in his book, I describe in detail several macro-economic and institutional reforms we should implement to counter the crises, but I also discuss issues such as the role of education and the social dynamics that link the various actors that would carry out the change.

Second reason. The book adopts a systemic approach in both the arguments it presents and the conclusions that it draws from those arguments. The premise is simple, almost banal:

'The final goal of any society is to produce the greatest possible well-being for human beings in the long run.'

On this premise, appropriately problematized (what does ‘well-being’ mean? What do we mean by ‘long run’?), a series of logical steps are inserted, which illustrate how the solutions to many of the great crises of our age become far more obvious once we abandon a sectorial approach and embrace a systemic analysis of the problems. Doing so also sheds new light on the deeper connections between the various challenges we face. These connections mean that efficient solutions to each and every one of them can be successfully implemented only if carried out simultaneously and synergistically.

To conclude, a final note. ‘A future history of the 21st century: how we overcame the crisis of civilization’ is an essay, but it is built around a narrative device: the reforms and proposals that it describes are presented from the perspective of a fictional author writing at the end of our century. It’s a little like reading a history book, but instead of the past, it describes the future. I think this small detail, aside from making the read more pleasant, adds a level of realism to the dissertation.

The book is available worldwide on Amazon. All in all, I truly believe that you won’t regret reading it. And if you do read it, please share your opinions – I will be happy to answer and discuss any of your queries.

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