Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Today
Speaker 1: we are bringing you another one of our Drilling Deep
Speaker 1: series in which Adam Lowenstein talks to an author about
Speaker 1: a recent book that touches on climate, or politics, or democracy,
Speaker 1: or some combination thereof. Today Adam speaks with when Stephenson,
Speaker 1: the journalist, an activist, and author of the new book
Speaker 1: Learning to Live in the Dark, essays in a Time
Speaker 1: of Catastrophe. In it, Stevenson argues that the only way
Speaker 1: to confront the crises of our time is to meet
Speaker 1: despair head on, to see it for what it is,
Speaker 1: to feel it, and to accept what it means about
Speaker 1: where we are and where we need to go. Over
Speaker 1: the summer, Adam spoke with Stevenson about how he processes
Speaker 1: his own climate despair, what scholars of totalitarianism like Hannah
Speaker 1: Arentt and Albert Camu can teach us about fossil fascism,
Speaker 1: and whether a mass movement for climate action might not
Speaker 1: come together until enough people are desperate enough. This conversation
Speaker 1: is a lot like how Stevenson describes his book. It's
Speaker 1: about how to live into this era of climate and
Speaker 1: political and social catastrophe. While holding on to our humanity.
Speaker 1: Just a note before we get into it that this
Speaker 1: conversation does briefly discuss suicide. If you are in crisis,
Speaker 1: please call or text or chat with the Suicide and
Speaker 1: Crisis Lifeline at nine to eighty eight, or contact the
Speaker 1: crisis text line by texting talk tl K to seven
Speaker 1: four to one, seven four one. Here's Adam and.
Speaker 2: When m.
Speaker 3: As a starting point, I wanted to ask you how
Speaker 3: you're feeling about having this book out in the world,
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of a lot of you and
Speaker 3: a lot of processing in the book that is now
Speaker 3: available for everyone to see and feel and read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, uh, it feels it's strange. I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, I've written personal essays for a long time. Uh.
Speaker 2: And you know it's worth it's worth noting off the top,
Speaker 2: right that like, the vast majority of this book is
Speaker 2: not about me. Uh, there's a there's some very personal
Speaker 2: stuff in it, of course, but but and and that
Speaker 2: runs kind of as a thread through the through the essays,
Speaker 2: you know, all the way to the end. But but
Speaker 2: the vast, vast majority of the book is not about me.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's a it's a risk, right, it's
Speaker 2: a risk one takes as a writer if you're going
Speaker 2: to get personal, and it's even a risk of another
Speaker 2: of a special kind as a you know, and I understand,
Speaker 2: I understand why the reasons why, just as a you know,
Speaker 2: a white straight cismle you know, writing on the you know,
Speaker 2: within the left, you know, to kind of be personal
Speaker 2: because it's like, well, why should my story matter that much?
Speaker 2: You know? And I try to acknowledge that obviously off
Speaker 2: the top, like what are my struggles compared to you know,
Speaker 2: you know, the vast majority of people on the planet,
Speaker 2: you know, right, you know, and even in my own
Speaker 2: community for that matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wrestle with that idea of it almost feels
Speaker 3: indulgent sometimes. I don't think it does to most people.
Speaker 3: On the other side, your book did not feel indulgent
Speaker 3: or self indulgent to me, But it can feel that
Speaker 3: way from the writer's perspective.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. And so and that's why we have editors,
Speaker 2: and that's why we you know, that's why you know,
Speaker 2: this was not a blog, right, I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: just spewing this out there. This is very carefully considered,
Speaker 2: you know, writing. But I do think it's important to
Speaker 2: bring the personal. It can be important, you know, to
Speaker 2: bring the personal into books like this. I mean, maybe
Speaker 2: it's worth saying just like what kind of a book
Speaker 2: this is and what kind it's not, and like why
Speaker 2: I wrote it. I mean, it's definitely a climate book, right,
Speaker 2: but I mean that is the overarching and the and
Speaker 2: the and the unifying kind of you know, thread or
Speaker 2: theme you know of the book. And I'm a climate
Speaker 2: writer and a climate activist and so on. But it's
Speaker 2: it's really not a typical climate book, at least I
Speaker 2: think the way that usually is that, you know, is
Speaker 2: the term is used in the publishing world, you know,
Speaker 2: because it's not a policy book, and it's not a
Speaker 2: solutions book, you.
Speaker 4: Know, which I found very refreshing. Okay, I'll probably get
Speaker 4: into that a little bit later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah we should. We should. There's lots to
Speaker 2: be said about that. But it is, as you've noted,
Speaker 2: it's a very personal book and you know, and it's
Speaker 2: and it's a very literary book, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's about much of it. Most of it. These
Speaker 2: essays are about writers and thinkers, you know, and and yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a certain amount of political analysis, and you know,
Speaker 2: even polemic in the book. For sure, that's certainly part
Speaker 2: of it and part of who I am as a writer,
Speaker 2: and you know, but but more than that, I think
Speaker 2: it's what it is essentially, is a kind of moral
Speaker 2: ethical inquiry into as kind of the title implies, like
Speaker 2: how to live into this era of climate and political
Speaker 2: and social catastrophe that's upon us while holding on to
Speaker 2: our humanity. I mean that that phrase, you know, can
Speaker 2: become a cliche, of course, but I hope that in
Speaker 2: my book it's not, because I try to go very
Speaker 2: deeply into what that means under various you know, various scenarios,
Speaker 2: and what it has meant in the past, and what
Speaker 2: there is to learn, you know, from writers and thinkers
Speaker 2: of the past, so on that kind of personal level.
Speaker 2: You know, when I was in my really darkest moments
Speaker 2: in sort of twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, like a lot
Speaker 2: of other people, you know, and then again at various
Speaker 2: times over these last eight years, as I was writing
Speaker 2: this series of essays, I went looking I kind of
Speaker 2: instinctively reached for a certain group of writers and thinkers
Speaker 2: of the mid twentieth century, you know, these kind of iconic,
Speaker 2: and I it certainly wasn't the only person doing this
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, you know, but these like
Speaker 2: iconic anti fascist and anti totalitarian thinkers and writers like
Speaker 2: Hannah Arendt and Albert Camu and Simon Vais and others,
Speaker 2: you know. And I even ended up, you know, looking
Speaker 2: very closely at the great anti colonial revolutionary fronts, finol.
Speaker 2: You know, that's where the book ends up. And I
Speaker 2: was looking for a sort of like the intellectual and
Speaker 2: moral and even spiritual sources of or resources sort of
Speaker 2: like for not as I say, you know, not hope,
Speaker 2: because I feel that term and that concept is kind
Speaker 2: of abstract and is means many different things to different people.
Speaker 4: But more like we'll get into that a bit, like yeah, weinge.
Speaker 2: Into that too, more like, as I say, resolve. What
Speaker 2: I needed was resolve to just stay in the fight.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I went looking for a reason
Speaker 2: to live and to keep fighting. And what I found
Speaker 2: in these writers and others, you know, including contemporaries of ours,
Speaker 2: is really universal human solidarity. I mean, that's that's what
Speaker 2: I found and or had reaffirmed for me, you know.
Speaker 2: And I mean like across all our divisions of race
Speaker 2: and gender and class and ideology and religion, you know,
Speaker 2: just probably the most important quote in the book, or
Speaker 2: one of them. There are a lot of quotes in
Speaker 2: this book, maybe the most important, the one that means
Speaker 2: the most to me. I use as one of the
Speaker 2: epigraphs for the book. It's from Camu's novel The Plague, which,
Speaker 2: if you or anyone else listening to this has not
Speaker 2: read Camu's The Plague, I highly recommend it. But it's
Speaker 2: where the main character, Doctor Rue is talking to priest
Speaker 2: Father Parlous. The doctor says to the priest at a
Speaker 2: very intense moment in their fight against the plague, we're
Speaker 2: fighting for something that brings us together, beyond blasphemys and prayers.
Speaker 2: It's all that matters when I look at across our movements,
Speaker 2: you know, on the left, and I think about my
Speaker 2: comrades and just and I think about members of my
Speaker 2: own family who are deeply conservative. For that matter, I'm
Speaker 2: looking for, you know, what it is that could actually
Speaker 2: hold us together in the face of just now unimaginable
Speaker 2: you know, suffering and oppression and pain, you know, and darkness.
Speaker 3: That gets at something that we've sometimes explicitly throughout the book,
Speaker 3: which is this idea of despair? Yeah, and I think
Speaker 3: to say that the book is just you processing a
Speaker 3: sense of despair, it is that, but it's a lot
Speaker 3: more than that. And you go two great lengths to
Speaker 3: differentiate despair from nihilism or on the other end of
Speaker 3: the feel good spectrum, optimism and hope. As we talked
Speaker 3: about briefly before, can you talk about what despair how
Speaker 3: you think about despair in the context of the climate crisis.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you're right, I mean this is central. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is the title of the book, right, how to learn,
Speaker 2: you know, learning to Live in the Dark, which was
Speaker 2: the title. It's sort of the title essay of the book.
Speaker 2: My essay on Hannah Arendt in the Time of Trump
Speaker 2: and Climate was the first essay I really wrote in
Speaker 2: this series back in twenty seventeen. I was looking for
Speaker 2: someone who could help me, you know, confront really look
Speaker 2: into the abyss, right, and there are few who did
Speaker 2: that kind of more productively than Hannah Arendt. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess the first thing that's important to say is
Speaker 2: that given what we're up against, right, that despair is warranted.
Speaker 2: That's really central for me, and that it's not you know,
Speaker 2: I say this kind of flippantly, but not really because
Speaker 2: I say, you know, it's not a sin, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know for Catholics it's like one, I'm not Catholic,
Speaker 2: but I was raised in a conservative Christian family. But
Speaker 2: you know, despair is not a sin, okay, as some
Speaker 2: would say. It's not like moral weakness or a flaw
Speaker 2: in your character. It's entirely understandable. In fact, it's rational
Speaker 2: on some level. But but given those caveats, right, it
Speaker 2: is dangerous. It can lead to some very dark places
Speaker 2: almost by definition, right, it is those dark places, and
Speaker 2: and so it's dangerous, and it's defeating, you know, especially politically,
Speaker 2: like for anyone engaged in social and political movements, it's defeating.
Speaker 2: So it's something that needs to be worked through, preferably
Speaker 2: with others, like preferably in community, right if possible, or
Speaker 2: you know, like myself, with a therapist. You knows, as
Speaker 2: I did and still do. You know, but I think
Speaker 2: I can honestly say that I've I've learned to live
Speaker 2: with despair or you know, even the kind that has
Speaker 2: led me at times to question my own desire to live,
Speaker 2: you know, like I've never really been truly like in
Speaker 2: a suicidal place, Like I've never attempted to end my life,
Speaker 2: but i've but I've been close to that, I think,
Speaker 2: And and it's worth also saying that, you know, anyone
Speaker 2: listening to this, if that's where you are or you
Speaker 2: know have been there or are there now, please please
Speaker 2: like talk to talk to someone, Talk to your friends,
Speaker 2: talk to your closest friends or loved ones, someone you trust,
Speaker 2: you know, if you need to talk to a therapist,
Speaker 2: please reach out. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is nine
Speaker 2: to eight eight. Yeah, I mean, I take this. I
Speaker 2: take this very seriously. I don't I don't lightly write
Speaker 2: about this, you know, it's a I take it seriously
Speaker 2: as a response, you know, my responsibility as a writer
Speaker 2: broaching this topic in public. But really, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: we don't want to lose you. You know, we don't
Speaker 2: want to lose anyone. We can't afford to lose you.
Speaker 2: You know, you're needed and you're loved, and there is
Speaker 2: help if you reach out for it. So I just
Speaker 2: want to say that. But there's more, so much more
Speaker 2: to be said on this. But I guess the most
Speaker 2: important thing also is that about you know, the way
Speaker 2: I come at it in this book is I found
Speaker 2: that what's required for me to live with my despair, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't believe this despair is like an end point.
Speaker 2: There was a beautiful essay by Hanef Abdekery in The
Speaker 2: New Yorker recently about despair. I think it was called
Speaker 2: in Defense of Despair.
Speaker 4: I think I saw that beautiful essay.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend it, and and it wasn't really at
Speaker 2: all about climate change or anything. But one of the
Speaker 2: main points he was making is that it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be an end point. You know, something that it's
Speaker 2: not giving up, right, it's not giving up. It's something
Speaker 2: that you can work through and learn to live with.
Speaker 2: Because I can say, even though I've learned to live
Speaker 2: with it, it's still there, right, It's still in me.
Speaker 2: So what I found I needed was not just some
Speaker 2: kind of quote unquote hope you know which I mean,
Speaker 2: what does that word even mean anymore in the context
Speaker 2: of climate like we really have to I mean, now,
Speaker 2: I know a lot of people do use that term
Speaker 2: and have written about it beautifully, and so I think
Speaker 2: there are good answers to that. But but I just
Speaker 2: needed something sturdier, like I needed, like I said, resolve,
Speaker 2: Like for me, hope is abstract, it's you know, resolve
Speaker 2: is visceral. It's like in your body, it's what you Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I had to actually kind of let go of hope,
Speaker 2: you know, any kind of abstract, cost free hope, you know,
Speaker 2: in order to find my resolve.
Speaker 3: When it comes to thinking about despair. I think I've
Speaker 3: found that the honesty around it to be pretty refreshing
Speaker 3: and feels like if we are to confront this, this
Speaker 3: crisis of our making pretending it's not so bad, it's
Speaker 3: probably not a good place to start.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I know that that's very well said, and
Speaker 2: I think that that's really partly what's been driving me
Speaker 2: for several years and writing about this. You know, I
Speaker 2: want to give a shout out because I think there
Speaker 2: are other writers that, certainly in the climate space, who
Speaker 2: have have done this. I'm certainly not the only one,
Speaker 2: and shout out to Mary Heglar, who I know as
Speaker 2: a friend of drill and is someone who I think
Speaker 2: has has done a wonderful job over the years of
Speaker 2: being of that emotional honesty you know, that kind of
Speaker 2: not just intellectual honesty, but emotional honesty about about dealing
Speaker 2: with this, uh, with this stuff. And you know, I
Speaker 2: think if if there's something I can say that is,
Speaker 2: you know, for lack of a better word, hopeful.
Speaker 4: I am pro hope.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I actually think I think choosing hope is the only
Speaker 3: way forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it can coexist with despair in
Speaker 3: a way that you you managed to thread that needle
Speaker 3: in this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and to not And just to be clear,
Speaker 2: like I know plenty of people who have who have
Speaker 2: found their way to a more complex and deeper meaning
Speaker 2: of hope than the kind of simplistic, you know version,
Speaker 2: that shallow version that it gets thrown around so often.
Speaker 2: But and I deeply respect that. And well, you know
Speaker 2: what those folks and I are probably talking about the
Speaker 2: same exact thing. You know, I've just found some other
Speaker 2: words for it. But if I could say something, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: like positive, it's that I think what I have found
Speaker 2: is that for me, the resolve is found in relationship
Speaker 2: to other people. It's found in other people, It's found
Speaker 2: in each other. Right, Like the title of my first
Speaker 2: book was what We're fighting For? Now is each other right,
Speaker 2: And so for me, the source of my resolve is
Speaker 2: that human solidarity. It's it's you. You know, it's you, Adam,
Speaker 2: It's you and all the folks that drilled and everybody
Speaker 2: listening to this podcast. You know, it's like, y'all are
Speaker 2: the source of my resolve at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: And I think that what I you know, I've found
Speaker 2: over the course of a decade and a half working
Speaker 2: in social movements, you know, mainly the climate justice movement,
Speaker 2: is that's what it is for most people. That's what
Speaker 2: keeps us going is each other and that sense of solidarity.
Speaker 2: That might sound somewhat pat or something, but sometimes the
Speaker 2: simple things, simple statements are true.
Speaker 3: I don't think it does sound pat, although I like you,
Speaker 3: I understand how people could take it that way. In
Speaker 3: part for something that you for a reason you mentioned
Speaker 3: in the book, or at least that you touch on
Speaker 3: in the book, is words like solidarity are too often
Speaker 3: thrown around. But the idea of solidarity, and I think
Speaker 3: you discussed it in the context of global solidarity. We
Speaker 3: like to talk about it, but it's the phrase in
Speaker 3: some ways has become almost meaningless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it is meaningless without the kind of action
Speaker 2: that's really required in order to body it and to
Speaker 2: you know, make it real. And I would also another
Speaker 2: shout out, I mean I would I'd really send people
Speaker 2: to the writing of Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt Hendrix
Speaker 2: and or you know, they add on solidarity that is
Speaker 2: really a beautiful exploration of what it means and should
Speaker 2: mean and can mean for us right now.
Speaker 3: What you mentioned there about the kind of authentic, real solidarity,
Speaker 3: the human connection, the person to person engagement, the thing
Speaker 3: that keeps you going, the thing that will probably keep
Speaker 3: the climate movement going, the thing that will keep humanity
Speaker 3: going as it has thus far, is you know, being
Speaker 3: with other people. That is that's definitely a theme in
Speaker 3: the book. And you talk, you know, whether it's Camu
Speaker 3: or Hannah or Rent or some of the others, there
Speaker 3: is this idea that they come back to a lot
Speaker 3: that you surface in your own book, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: a real human being in front of you versus an
Speaker 3: abstraction of the concept of humanity. You know, describing people,
Speaker 3: let's say, as superfluous is sort of a key tenet
Speaker 3: of a totalitarian state, totalitarian way of seeing the world.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about that a little bit, you know,
Speaker 3: to talitarianism as a way of understanding the climate crisis.
Speaker 3: And I feel like we don't we hear a lot
Speaker 3: about Hannah Rent and other philosophers these days for good reason, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but we don't hear it in the context of climate
Speaker 3: as much necessarily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is a really central question. And
Speaker 2: what kind of dawned on me is I was reading
Speaker 2: The Origins of Totalitarianism. You know, it's great work that
Speaker 2: she first published in the early fifties and then updated
Speaker 2: in the later sixties. What is it that enables a system,
Speaker 2: a political system to develop that essentially dehumanizes everyone who
Speaker 2: is under its domination? And there, of course are historical.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can go back well before the mid
Speaker 2: twentieth century and look at the system of chattel slavery
Speaker 2: or the global slave trade, or definitely colonialism, and which
Speaker 2: closely related of course, And as I think it was
Speaker 2: a mess Are who made the seminole argument that in
Speaker 2: some ways totalitarianism and fascism and in Europe in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century was sort of was colonialism coming home to
Speaker 2: roost in Europe. But what struck me about that in
Speaker 2: relation to the climate crisis. I was trying to somehow
Speaker 2: come to grips with what kind of mindset enables someone
Speaker 2: in a political system to pursue relentless expansion of fossil
Speaker 2: fuels in the face of the science that we have.
Speaker 2: And as we all know, the leaders of the fossil
Speaker 2: fuel industry and the lobby and the politicians who are
Speaker 2: all part of that, they know full well what they're doing.
Speaker 2: They know full well what the climate science says, and.
Speaker 4: Some of them knew before we did it.
Speaker 2: Exactly Exxon has known for many decades. And what kind
Speaker 2: of a mindset allows you to just keep the pedal
Speaker 2: to the metal and accelerate into the abit off off
Speaker 2: of the cliff.
Speaker 4: Yeah they're not all sociopaths. There's a lot of them. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 4: they're not all right.
Speaker 2: And the answer is maybe just as simple as that.
Speaker 2: It doesn't require theorizing, you know, the relationship between that
Speaker 2: and totalitarianism. Okay, in some ways I am overthinking it, right,
Speaker 2: but it helped me. It helped me because you know,
Speaker 2: aren't you know? Analysis of the totalitarian mindset really helped me.
Speaker 2: And it had to do with the kind of that
Speaker 2: this belief in the limitless nature of power, okay, and
Speaker 2: a kind of pursuit of power and domination that requires yes,
Speaker 2: turning you know, entire populations of humanity and and you know,
Speaker 2: really everyone under its sway, treating them as superfluous meaning
Speaker 2: you know, not at all useful or relevant to the
Speaker 2: ultimate end, which is, you know, complete domination. And if
Speaker 2: you think about it, that is precisely what the fossil
Speaker 2: capital regime really is pursuing. It is a form of
Speaker 2: global domination, you know, it is it is subjecting the
Speaker 2: entire human population to these catastrophic consequences and to the power,
Speaker 2: the sheer economic and political power of this industry and
Speaker 2: its political regime. Right. You know, I could probably do
Speaker 2: a better job of articulating all. Read the book. Read
Speaker 2: that chapter. It's the first chapter of.
Speaker 3: The book, though it does pop up throughout the rest
Speaker 3: of the book.
Speaker 2: The y Yeah, yeah, I come back to it, of
Speaker 2: course at the end. And maybe I don't know if
Speaker 2: you were planning to ask me about this, but yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go there. Yeah. The last chapter, which is a
Speaker 2: new essay and it's the one long essay of the
Speaker 2: book that's original to the book, is about fanol Franz Fanol,
Speaker 2: who folks aren't familiar, is the author of the great
Speaker 2: anti colonial revolutionary manifesto, The Wretched of the Earth right,
Speaker 2: which came out in nineteen sixty one or two, and
Speaker 2: he was deeply involved. He was a martiniquean French black
Speaker 2: writer and psychiatrist who was educated in France and ended
Speaker 2: up getting deeply involved in the Algerian War of Independence,
Speaker 2: the Algerian revolution that threw off French French colonial rule.
Speaker 2: I write about Phenoe in the context of Gaza and
Speaker 2: the genocide that we're now seeing there. I was looking
Speaker 2: to that because again I have this sense that the
Speaker 2: climate struggle, climate justice struggle will never really be as
Speaker 2: radical as it needs to be, as fearless and as
Speaker 2: serious as it needs to be, until enough enough people
Speaker 2: are desperate enough to really lay everything on the line.
Speaker 3: Which is where spoiler alert, but this is not a
Speaker 3: book that will be minimized by hearing. That is the
Speaker 3: essentially where you conclude the book.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly exactly. I'm reading Phanoe in the context of
Speaker 2: both the Gaza genocide and the global climate catastrophe, which
Speaker 2: is also, as I argue, a kind of genocide at
Speaker 2: least for large portions of the global population. And so
Speaker 2: so I write there at the very end of that chapter.
Speaker 2: You know, as in the history of anti colonial liberation struggles,
Speaker 2: the climate justice struggle, the fight for a habitable planet
Speaker 2: and a livable human future in which justice is still possible,
Speaker 2: will not be radical enough or fearless enough until enough
Speaker 2: of us are desperate enough to risk everything. And then
Speaker 2: the question, maybe the only question left at this hour,
Speaker 2: is whether we will hold on to our humanity in
Speaker 2: our desperation. I look at phenomen because he he is
Speaker 2: in so many ways and has been ever all through
Speaker 2: the you know, beginning in the in the that great
Speaker 2: period of anti colonial independence movements in the sixties. Once
Speaker 2: The Wretched of the Earth was published, he became this
Speaker 2: icon of the anti colonial struggles, right and and this
Speaker 2: voice and this you know, great prophet of and that
Speaker 2: book famously opens up with this discussion of violence, of
Speaker 2: anti colonial violence in particular, and he's been held up
Speaker 2: as this kind of apostle of unlimited violence against against
Speaker 2: the colonizer. And you know, as I've as I started
Speaker 2: reading about phenol and then really closely reading the book,
Speaker 2: it occurred to me that he and others have seen
Speaker 2: this as well, not just is that he's actually not that,
Speaker 2: you know, he always he always affirmed the right to
Speaker 2: armed struggle, you know, armed anti anti colonial revolutionary struggle.
Speaker 2: But he was not a proponent of of just unlimited
Speaker 2: violence and especially against civilians. He was part of the
Speaker 2: f l End of you know, the Front the Liberal
Speaker 2: the Algerian revolutionary movement UH and and its tactics of
Speaker 2: you know, indiscriminate violence against French settlers and you know,
Speaker 2: civilians and against the French army armed forces was really
Speaker 2: influential and including influential to the Palestinian liberation struggle. But
Speaker 2: one of the things that Phenol goes right on to
Speaker 2: say after that famous or infamous opening chapter is that
Speaker 2: is that an unlimited violence, and you know, UH, an
Speaker 2: indiscriminate violence can actually destroy a movement and can actually
Speaker 2: just from a purely strategic standpoint, can be counterproductive. And
Speaker 2: then he goes on by the end of the book
Speaker 2: as a psychiatrist who treated patients you know, in Algeria
Speaker 2: both and and in Tunisia where he he and other
Speaker 2: f l IN leaders fled after the first couple of
Speaker 2: years of the of the war. He did all sorts
Speaker 2: of patients he treated, you know, Algerian independence fighters and
Speaker 2: French civilians and French military and police who had been
Speaker 2: involved in torture and in all kinds of atrocities against
Speaker 2: the Algerian population and so on. And that final chapter
Speaker 2: of The Wretched of the Earth is incredibly powerful and
Speaker 2: eye opening in just the way PhNO somewhat subtly because
Speaker 2: he wasn't going to just he wasn't going to just
Speaker 2: you know, denounce the FLN's tactics. Don't and I don't
Speaker 2: think that he ever would have, honestly, but he was
Speaker 2: complicating the whole thing. He was showing the costs, the
Speaker 2: very real, undeniable human costs of that kind of a war.
Speaker 2: And what's very clear is that he's focusing on the
Speaker 2: individual person, you know, the costs at that individual, individual,
Speaker 2: personal level. And when you look at some of Phenon's
Speaker 2: other writings, famously Black Skin, White Masks, which was his
Speaker 2: first major book, which is still today valued for its
Speaker 2: insights into race and colonialism, he did adhere to a
Speaker 2: kind of universal humanism. That's what he wanted, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, even someone like Edward said, who you know,
Speaker 2: you know, you won't find a better anti colonial theorist
Speaker 2: than Edward said, you know, pointed out about Phenol that
Speaker 2: he wanted a kind of humanism in which the colonized
Speaker 2: and the colonizer, or the European and the Algerian or whoever,
Speaker 2: were able to come together. That's pretty idealistic, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: but it was worth it was really worth delving into.
Speaker 2: And so there has been talk about a climate movement
Speaker 2: that adopts a more Funonian approach, right as opposed to
Speaker 2: a Gandhian approach. Famously in Andrea's Mom and his big blockbuster,
Speaker 2: if there was ever an unlikely bestseller, it was his
Speaker 2: book How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which you do discuss in an earlier chapter in
Speaker 4: this book.
Speaker 2: I discussed in the book a little bit, and I
Speaker 2: interviewed Mom back in I think I was the first
Speaker 2: American journalist to interview Mom about that book, right before
Speaker 2: it came out back in December twenty twenty. He has
Speaker 2: this much quoted line about, you know, we've had a
Speaker 2: Gandhian climate movement. Maybe there will come a time, you know,
Speaker 2: when we'll need a Fennonian, got it, you know, climate movement?
Speaker 2: And I ask what that would really mean, and I think, like,
Speaker 2: oddly enough, it doesn't necessarily mean a violent climate movement.
Speaker 2: I mean, it probably mean means, And I personally have
Speaker 2: come around to the conclusion that, yes, I accept the
Speaker 2: idea that some sort of violence, some sort of even
Speaker 2: armed struggle, might one day be justifiable, you know, it
Speaker 2: might even now be justifiable in the in the case
Speaker 2: of you know, climate catastrophe and climate injustice in some
Speaker 2: ways because it is a form of colonialism, it is
Speaker 2: a form of totalitarian you know, domination.
Speaker 3: And to say that climate change itself is not a
Speaker 3: violent undertaking, right, right, right to miss the obvious right.
Speaker 2: But taking my cue there from Fanlane, and what I
Speaker 2: learned about Phenol is that, like fhanone, you know, will
Speaker 2: we be able to still hold on to our sense
Speaker 2: of humanity, our sense of universal humanity and humanism in
Speaker 2: that process?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: But it does matter how we fight. It matters not
Speaker 2: just strategically, but its on some deeper level.
Speaker 4: Yeah, toward the.
Speaker 3: End of the book, I'm going to quote you here
Speaker 3: you say that anyone involved in left politics should be
Speaker 3: asking themselves now just how far I'd be willing to
Speaker 3: go as an activist in the struggle against the fossil
Speaker 3: fuel industry and its political backers. And I'm wondering where
Speaker 3: you can take this in whichever direction you'd like, but
Speaker 3: where either where you come down on that personally, or
Speaker 3: how you would encourage folks on the left to to
Speaker 3: think about that question.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, first off, I would say that it's
Speaker 2: going to be it's something that each person has to
Speaker 2: answer for themselves, right. It's obviously it's not something that
Speaker 2: I or anyone else has any right to prescribe for
Speaker 2: anybody else, right. And that's one reason that these questions
Speaker 2: and this topic is always personal. But I think the
Speaker 2: reason we need to be asking ourselves that question is
Speaker 2: that I feel strongly that we're going to need, and
Speaker 2: we need right now and have needed for a while,
Speaker 2: a kind of movement that is willing to take big risks,
Speaker 2: and that requires individuals who are willing to take big risks.
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't mean, by any means that everybody
Speaker 2: in the movement, any everybody needs to be willing to
Speaker 2: take large, you know, huge personal risks that are like
Speaker 2: our legal or physical risks, you know, not saying that
Speaker 2: at all, but there is something to be said about
Speaker 2: a kind of risk, aversion that has existed, you know,
Speaker 2: in our politics and in our and in the certainly
Speaker 2: the mainstream climate movement for a long time. You might
Speaker 2: just say it's an aversion to political risk or whatever
Speaker 2: and risks. Now, let's let's be clear, like the risk
Speaker 2: level has gone way up since the inaugurate second and
Speaker 2: auguration of Donald Trump and so, and these are real
Speaker 2: and these are not evenly distributed, right, risk is not
Speaker 2: evenly distributed by any sense of the imagination, right any stretch.
Speaker 2: Someone like me, a white guy like me, you know,
Speaker 2: my level of risk is considerably lower than a lot
Speaker 2: of other people who I've worked with over the years,
Speaker 2: and you know, done actions with and worked side by
Speaker 2: side within the climate movement, and certainly right now when
Speaker 2: you look at the kind of action that's being taken
Speaker 2: to protect communities in la for example, from mass deportations
Speaker 2: from ice and we're talking about people taking real risks.
Speaker 2: But the point is, the point is when people are desperate,
Speaker 2: when people are oppressed, when people are we can look
Speaker 2: to the history of of of movements by oppressed peoples
Speaker 2: for inspiration and for examples of of movements that have
Speaker 2: been willing to take enormous risks, right, and I think
Speaker 2: that it's important to recognize that we're in that we're
Speaker 2: in that position now. You know, again the risk isn't
Speaker 2: evenly distributed, but even even someone like me or you
Speaker 2: is facing a level of threat and let's say it oppression. Uh,
Speaker 2: that's that's, you know, something we've never never faced before,
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's just climate change, or whether it's
Speaker 2: the political situation, whether it's fascism. That said, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: in I'm in favor of a kind of movement that
Speaker 2: is willing to break things, that is willing to you know,
Speaker 2: within within reason and without trying to harm other people.
Speaker 2: You know, is is willing to to go out and
Speaker 2: create a crisis, create in some ways create chaos, uh,
Speaker 2: for the fossil fuel industry, and force a kind of
Speaker 2: crisis on them that they've never had to really face before.
Speaker 2: And Indale's all sorts of risks, you know. I talked
Speaker 2: about this with Andrea's mom. You know, it's like, of course,
Speaker 2: everything from political blowback to security state repression, you know,
Speaker 2: are our increasing fascist police state that we're facing. But
Speaker 2: we got to ask ourselves, at what, at what point
Speaker 2: you know, does this become unavoidable? Right, what point does
Speaker 2: it become unavoidable? You know, I've worked in spaces and
Speaker 2: and I've worked on direct action campaigns where these kind
Speaker 2: of risks were taken very seriously. I haven't I haven't
Speaker 2: ever sabotaged anything. But but okay, something else to say
Speaker 2: on that is that I think it's really important I
Speaker 2: say this in that in that same chapter you were
Speaker 2: just quoting from really important to acknowledge that going out
Speaker 2: and committing some kind of quote unquote revolutionary act, right,
Speaker 2: like blowing up a pipeline or whatever, that in itself
Speaker 2: does not make a revolutionary movement or a revolutionary politics.
Speaker 2: So so called revolutionary tactics do not make a revolutionary
Speaker 2: politics all by themselves. Only movements can do that, right. So,
Speaker 2: for me personally, in order for that kind of radical
Speaker 2: action to really make sense, it would have to be
Speaker 2: first of all, very carefully considered as strategic. It would
Speaker 2: have to be sustained, you know, not just one offs, right,
Speaker 2: and it would need to have the support the backing
Speaker 2: of Now, obviously that backing may not be public, it
Speaker 2: may not be explicit over you know, but it would
Speaker 2: have the backing of a movement, right of a of
Speaker 2: a large movement, and those conditions do not currently exist.
Speaker 2: So I don't think it would necessarily make any sense
Speaker 2: to go out and sabotage a pipeline or whatever at
Speaker 2: this moment, because I don't think those It might be
Speaker 2: just a waste of effort and a waste of a life,
Speaker 2: you know, being sent to prison. But then again, if we're,
Speaker 2: if we're collectively working toward that kind of you know, explicitly,
Speaker 2: that kind of of a strategy, that kind of a goal,
Speaker 2: I think those conditions certainly could exist, and maybe sooner
Speaker 2: rather than later. You know, I think there are a
Speaker 2: lot of people in this country and internationally who are
Speaker 2: getting who are getting to this point. I think those
Speaker 2: copies are really important.
Speaker 3: The fact that that movement does not exist right now
Speaker 3: gets at something that you talk about in the book,
Speaker 3: which is and I'm curious if I'm fraving this in
Speaker 3: the way that you'd say is accurate the climate movement
Speaker 3: more broadly, which has never been one monolithic entity. Yes,
Speaker 3: but it does come in for some criticism I think
Speaker 3: deservedly so in the book, as I think you're arguing
Speaker 3: not appreciating the extent to which more radical and revolutionary
Speaker 3: thinking is probably required if we're to make any sort
Speaker 3: of substantive political change. Is that a fair way to
Speaker 3: summarize it.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, it's not to say that that there isn't
Speaker 2: a role for the mainstream. That's not to say that
Speaker 2: at all. I'd be crazy if I thought that the
Speaker 2: entire movement was gonna was going to become as radical
Speaker 2: as I'm talking about. But it's something well known in
Speaker 2: social movement theorizing and study history, which is the radical flank. Now,
Speaker 2: the climate movement has had a radical flank for a
Speaker 2: long time, ever since, certainly even you know, certainly even
Speaker 2: before I got into it back in like twenty eleven
Speaker 2: or so, and I reported on on and wrote about
Speaker 2: a lot of the some of the people who were
Speaker 2: very much part of that radical flank back in the
Speaker 2: earlier years of the movement, sort of around the Keystone
Speaker 2: fight and so on. There's the radical flank effect, you know,
Speaker 2: has been seen many times in history, and it opens
Speaker 2: up space, you know, political space for the main The
Speaker 2: more you know, mainstream part of the movement, the sort
Speaker 2: of political inside game to work, it can and it
Speaker 2: can also kind of shake things up and break up,
Speaker 2: break up a situation that's become kind of ossified, right,
Speaker 2: so it can create new dynamics that you know didn't
Speaker 2: exist before. This might be a good place in the
Speaker 2: conversation for me to I first wrote it back in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, kind of the peak of or almost the
Speaker 2: peak of Green New Deal advocacy and the building of
Speaker 2: the Green New Deal Coalition, which, by the way, as
Speaker 2: critical as I may be at times, you know, that
Speaker 2: was the most hopeful thing that I had ever seen.
Speaker 2: And I still think, you know, we need to be
Speaker 2: looking back to that period of like twenty eighteen to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, when the Green New Deal Coalition was coming together.
Speaker 3: We probably don't have time to get into this, but
Speaker 3: I would say it's not conspiratorial to say that the
Speaker 3: explosion of quote unquote moderate center and corporate climate commitments
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty was certainly not
Speaker 3: unrelated to the immense popularity of the Green New Deal, Yes,
Speaker 3: which was far more threatening to them than posting a
Speaker 3: green pdf on their website.
Speaker 2: Yes. And I'll go further, and I'll say, look, we
Speaker 2: had the Green New Deal concept and policies even were
Speaker 2: central to Bernie Sanders' twenty twenty campaign definitely moved Biden
Speaker 2: well to the left on climate. Build Back Better wouldn't
Speaker 2: have existed without the Sanders campaign and the Green New
Speaker 2: Deal being at the center of that, right, That's why
Speaker 2: we had people like Varshny Prakasha, the Sunrise Movement and
Speaker 2: sitting you know, being as part of the Sanders team
Speaker 2: that sat down with the Biden team and hashed out
Speaker 2: what became Build Back Better. Right now, of course that
Speaker 2: was all eviscerated and became the Inflation Reduction Act, which,
Speaker 2: as useful as it has been for spurring you know,
Speaker 2: clean energy development in this country, obviously was not anything
Speaker 2: like a Green New Deal, even though of course it's
Speaker 2: labeled that by everyone on the right, you know, but
Speaker 2: that's a whole other.
Speaker 4: Topic, right right, Yeah, I've distracted us there and the fact.
Speaker 2: That it's now being completely dismantled, and yeah, but I
Speaker 2: think this would be a good place for me to
Speaker 2: inject this idea, which is when we talk about the
Speaker 2: climate movement, the climate justice move movement, or what we
Speaker 2: often call nowadays the climate left. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: term that's a term that I think also was kind
Speaker 2: of born out of the Green New Deal coalition, you know,
Speaker 2: which was bringing labor in and was bringing a lot
Speaker 2: of people who hadn't traditionally been part of the climate
Speaker 2: movement into the conversation into the organizing. Right. So when
Speaker 2: we think about the climate justice movement or the climate
Speaker 2: left and its relationship to the broader left, okay, I
Speaker 2: think is crucial. I've felt for quite a while now
Speaker 2: that the time for a mere climate movement or even
Speaker 2: climate justice movement has passed. That I think it had
Speaker 2: passed even by twenty nineteen, okay. And what I mean
Speaker 2: by that is it's clear that a climate movement, or
Speaker 2: even what we call nowadays the climate left, is never
Speaker 2: going to build enough just sheer political power on its
Speaker 2: own to literally overthrow the fossil capital regime. Right. And
Speaker 2: I think of something that Olaf M. E. Taiwa wrote
Speaker 2: last year in a really good piece in Boston Review.
Speaker 2: He made it so explicit where he said something like,
Speaker 2: you know, the strategic imperative is that the strategy has
Speaker 2: to be the complete defeat, the utter defeat of the
Speaker 2: combined interests of oil, gas and coal producers, right in
Speaker 2: order for any of our climate justice goals to be
Speaker 2: even a remote possibility. I think it's pretty clear that
Speaker 2: no individual, kind of siloed social movement on the left
Speaker 2: is going to build the kind of power required to
Speaker 2: do that. So what we need, and I think what
Speaker 2: we've always needed, is not so much a climate movement
Speaker 2: or a climate left as an actual left, you know,
Speaker 2: like a resurgent revolutionary left, you know, and revolutionary can
Speaker 2: mean all sorts of things, right, But I'm mainly talking
Speaker 2: here about political revolution, you know, maybe something a little
Speaker 2: more sweeping and transformational than you know Bernie was talking
Speaker 2: about in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty where he popularized
Speaker 2: the phrase political revolution. Right. But what we're talking about
Speaker 2: is a left, a movement of movements, a popular front,
Speaker 2: if you want to call it that that has both
Speaker 2: climate survival okay, so meaning deep decarbonization and economic and
Speaker 2: social justice right at its core. Right, And that was
Speaker 2: the idea of the Greed and is the idea of
Speaker 2: the Green New Deal coalition, right, But it needs to
Speaker 2: be expressly revolutionary or transformative in its goals. It's political goals,
Speaker 2: and that isn't going to happen with any one individual
Speaker 2: movement on the left, it will take the entire life
Speaker 2: and then some coalition building will will mean including the
Speaker 2: center left in that. That's not something that's really on
Speaker 2: the table right now, which could be, which is another
Speaker 2: reason for you know, despair, right, because we need that,
Speaker 2: We needed this yesterday, we needed this ten years ago.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think that there's a lot of
Speaker 2: self blame, self recrimination in a way in the climate movement,
Speaker 2: a lot of you know, this feeling that we have failed.
Speaker 2: But I'm not really sure why we've put that entire
Speaker 2: like world saving burden on ourselves as climate activists. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not like climate activists can do this on our own, right,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not just a climate.
Speaker 3: To overthrow the most powerful industry in the history of humanity.
Speaker 2: Right, It's not like the climate movement it so alone
Speaker 2: has failed. It's like the entire progressive left has failed. Okay,
Speaker 2: Like the left should have prioritized climate and climate justice
Speaker 2: decades ago. Right. There are all sorts of reasons why
Speaker 2: it didn't, and some of that is the blame of
Speaker 2: climate activists and the environmental movement for sure, Right, But
Speaker 2: at some point you got to ask yourself, like Why
Speaker 2: wasn't there something like a Green New Deal coalition bringing
Speaker 2: labor and racial and social justice into the you know,
Speaker 2: one big movement. Why wasn't there that twenty years ago?
Speaker 2: Because it was clear years ago what we were facing.
Speaker 3: I found it righteous and clarifying the way you phrase
Speaker 3: it in that twenty nineteen essay about the Green New Deal.
Speaker 3: I think everyone from essentially the center right on leftward
Speaker 3: at this point would not consider themselves ourselves as climate deniers.
Speaker 3: But you describe in that essay any as you put it,
Speaker 3: any thing less than revolutionary political change is essentially a
Speaker 3: new type of climate denial. Maybe this gets back to
Speaker 3: what we were talking about a little bit before, where
Speaker 3: despair is a reflection of being honest. It seems like,
Speaker 3: again not just the climate movement, but the center and
Speaker 3: the left more broadly, we have engaged in what, in
Speaker 3: hindsight seems like at least a decade of this new
Speaker 3: climate denial, of thinking, reassuring ourselves that piecemeal, incremental, market driven,
Speaker 3: technocratic tweaks to the way things are can solve this problem.
Speaker 3: Whatever solve means, whatever solve. But yeah, can you talk
Speaker 3: about what that? I guess why you think of this
Speaker 3: as a new form of climate denial.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't mean to say that it's obviously,
Speaker 2: as you were getting out there, it's not denial of
Speaker 2: climate science, although it's denial of what climate science tells
Speaker 2: us is really necessary at the political and economic level, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, climate sciences has been quite clear. I mean,
Speaker 2: the IPCC itself came right out and said in twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen that you know, to you know, in its famous
Speaker 2: report on one point five degrees C and the difference
Speaker 2: between that and two C and what would be required
Speaker 2: to actually achieve one c one point five C, which
Speaker 2: is now pretty much the game. That game is up.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're already passing it, but they've made it
Speaker 2: very clear that it was going to require unprecedented transformative
Speaker 2: change at the political and economic level. So what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about, though, is a kind of political denialism, you know,
Speaker 2: or maybe call it just wishful thinking, Okay, might be
Speaker 2: kinder way to put it. It's inconceivable that our current
Speaker 2: two party system are current the Democratic Party that we
Speaker 2: have today as the only opposition to MAGA and the
Speaker 2: right and the full control of the false fuel industry
Speaker 2: over our politics at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of reasons for despair, Yeah, it's the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party taking on Trump and magazine exactly.
Speaker 2: It's inconceivable that the current current iteration of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 2: you know, is capable of what we're talking about. And
Speaker 2: so clearly there has to be at the very least
Speaker 2: a kind of political revolution within the Democratic Party, but
Speaker 2: more likely, in order for that to even be a possibility,
Speaker 2: there has to be a broad, broad, uh you know,
Speaker 2: bottom up you know, mass uprising of some sort kind
Speaker 2: of you know, truly mass movement that can force the
Speaker 2: issue and that can really bring things to a halt, right,
Speaker 2: And so there has been taught. One of the most
Speaker 2: positive developments I think in recent years has been, uh,
Speaker 2: maybe longer than just recent years, has been the call
Speaker 2: from the UAW and you know Sean Fayne for kind
Speaker 2: of synchronous strikes right in twenty twenty eight, and you know,
Speaker 2: basically a general strike, the idea of a general strike,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the level of political uprising that we're
Speaker 2: talking about. That's the kind of mass movement that we're
Speaker 2: talking about, right It's got to be at that scale
Speaker 2: and that level, and that isn't happening right away, and
Speaker 2: it can't really happen. It can't just you know, you
Speaker 2: don't just snap your fingers, and you know, a guy
Speaker 2: like me doesn't just write an op ed piece saying
Speaker 2: we need a political revolution, that something to just organically materialize. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like, as Jane mcleavy, the great labor writer, late
Speaker 2: great labor writer and organizer, always said, right, there are
Speaker 2: no shortcuts, and she was referring specifically to, you know,
Speaker 2: within labor organizing. But I think it's true broadly of
Speaker 2: left you know, mass movement organizing. There's not really a
Speaker 2: shortcut to this. Now. On the other hand, we are
Speaker 2: not starting from scratch, right. There's been a lot of
Speaker 2: movement building over the last decade, and I think we
Speaker 2: can continue to build on that where we need to be,
Speaker 2: and there are some real positive developments in that era,
Speaker 2: you know, along those lines.
Speaker 3: As we're talking, and as I was reading the book
Speaker 3: and in general, as I'm following the trajectory of humanity
Speaker 3: and the climate, I come back to what you write
Speaker 3: about in the very last part of the book that
Speaker 3: you were quoting earlier about and I don't actually, I
Speaker 3: don't say this with a sense of fatalism, although it
Speaker 3: might come off that way. It does feel like there
Speaker 3: will come a point when, again paraphrasing you hear that
Speaker 3: enough of us are desperate enough that something there will
Speaker 3: be the conditions for such a movement to come together.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I don't think that it will just be
Speaker 2: climate that will cause that desperation. That was also kind
Speaker 2: of what I'm getting at there, right, you know, I
Speaker 2: wrote that in that piece in twenty nineteen. I was like,
Speaker 2: the only thing worse than climate catastrophe is climate catastrophe
Speaker 2: plus fascism, right, which I hate to say, is kind
Speaker 2: of where we are, right. And that's been an idea
Speaker 2: that has circulated for a long time. Right, We've known
Speaker 2: for decades and people have warned that, you know, climate
Speaker 2: change itself could very easily give rise to the kind
Speaker 2: of you know, social situation, social breakdown that could lead
Speaker 2: to fascism. And of course we've had forms, certainly fascistic
Speaker 2: forms of control and governance, you know, in this country
Speaker 2: and elsewhere for a long time. But I don't think
Speaker 2: what you said there is fatalistic in the least. I
Speaker 2: don't see it that way, because the whole premise right
Speaker 2: is to fight on no one In my book, is
Speaker 2: talking about folding up their tent going home, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: all right, but it's it's it's being honest and facing
Speaker 2: up to the conditions that we have and that we
Speaker 2: are facing, and that what we are going to be
Speaker 2: living into in the coming decades. And so those are
Speaker 2: the conditions under which we're going to have to practice politics,
Speaker 2: than which we're going to have to build movements, and
Speaker 2: you know that we're going to have to fight, and
Speaker 2: in some ways that's going to make our task far
Speaker 2: more difficult, and you know, maybe in some ways it
Speaker 2: might actually open up opportunities.
Speaker 3: When we accept or come to terms with the fact
Speaker 3: that the old rules don't really apply anymore. That does
Speaker 3: I think there's a sense of freedom that can follow that,
Speaker 3: right exactly, In writing these essays and reviewing them for
Speaker 3: this book, did you personally get where you wanted to
Speaker 3: get or where you needed to get, Whether that's a
Speaker 3: sense of clarity or I guess piece of some kind,
Speaker 3: did you get where you needed to get with this book?
Speaker 2: Do you think personally? Yeah? I mean, man, that's a
Speaker 2: tough question, because you know, you know, some days I
Speaker 2: feel that way, in other days I don't. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess it depends on when you.
Speaker 4: Catch me right how about right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say that right now I
Speaker 2: feel about as as mentally healthy as I probably ever get,
Speaker 2: which which isn't to say that I'm entirely mentally healthy.
Speaker 2: You know. The despair is always there, you know. It's
Speaker 2: like like I use this phrase in the book, and
Speaker 2: I'm on the other side of despair, you know' I've
Speaker 2: I've worked through it. And that doesn't mean it's just
Speaker 2: gone away and everything is great, everything is fine. But
Speaker 2: I'm learning, you know, I'm learning to live with it.
Speaker 2: And again, I can't stress this enough. You know, the
Speaker 2: the healthiest things I do, the healthiest things in my
Speaker 2: life are being part of communities, Being part of communities
Speaker 2: of people who are actually working together on this. Being
Speaker 2: in isolation, being a self sufficient individual, you know, is
Speaker 2: not the way.
Speaker 3: It was interesting going back to what we were talking about,
Speaker 3: focusing on the you know, the dignity of the individual
Speaker 3: human being versus the abstraction the idea of humanity, and
Speaker 3: thinking about that alongside this idea that we none of
Speaker 3: us can do this alone. There's a way of seeing
Speaker 3: people as individuals while also recognizing that the sort of
Speaker 3: neoliberal individualistic approach to surviving in the twenty first century
Speaker 3: is doomed to fail. And I found it interesting to
Speaker 3: the way you talk about them getting all sorts of balloons.
Speaker 4: Now thanks to.
Speaker 3: Zoom Zoom really liked my point. But the way that
Speaker 3: you talk about the individual and the way that the
Speaker 3: you know, these philosophers and thinkers who you cite talked
Speaker 3: about the individual. It's almost like reclaiming the individual, the idea,
Speaker 3: the value, the dignity, and the individual from the way
Speaker 3: it's been warped by the right, by the neoliberal you know, capitalists.
Speaker 2: And to some extent by the left as well. Although
Speaker 2: what I'll say there is I'm not I'm certainly not.
Speaker 2: I am not a member of the anti woke liberal consensus.
Speaker 2: You know, that's not me at all. But I do
Speaker 2: think what I was trying to break down here is
Speaker 2: this kind of simplistic binary that kind of opposes collectivism
Speaker 2: and identity politics, you know, group based politics with individualism.
Speaker 2: Like I think that it's never that simple. And most
Speaker 2: of the people I know and have been in deep
Speaker 2: conversation with in the climate justice movement, and you know,
Speaker 2: people of all all identities, one thing that we seem
Speaker 2: to agree on is that that that's fart, is that
Speaker 2: that that's far too simplistic, That that that a healthy
Speaker 2: community and a healthy movement values every individual right at
Speaker 2: the same time, that we recognize difference, and that we
Speaker 2: especially recognize differences of privilege and of you know, social oppression. Right. So,
Speaker 2: so all that said, I guess what I'm trying to do,
Speaker 2: or what I realized at some point, is that I wasn't.
Speaker 2: I'm just not willing to give up, you know, a
Speaker 2: sense of universal humanism, a sense of universal human solidarity, right, Like,
Speaker 2: and I think it's important, you know, I'm looking back
Speaker 2: to these writers who are part of the liberal humanist tradition.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, Hannah Arendt and Albert Camu are not
Speaker 2: necessarily authors thinkers that you'd expect to find in a
Speaker 2: book published by Haymarket. Okay, the Market Books, a self
Speaker 2: described radical left publisher, right, I mean, these are these
Speaker 2: these folks are are liberal humanists, and they have a
Speaker 2: lot to answer for. I mean, that tradition has a
Speaker 2: lot to answer for, right, But I'm not willing to
Speaker 2: throw out the humanist baby with the liberal bathwater, you know,
Speaker 2: Like I'm not a liberal anymore. I'm I'm I'm far
Speaker 2: I'm way too far left to be considered a liberal,
Speaker 2: right right. But I do consider myself a universal humanist,
Speaker 2: and I think it is possible there is such thing
Speaker 2: as a as a radical left humanism.
Speaker 3: There's a question you ask in the book, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to pose it to you and see if you
Speaker 3: you have come to an answer or some semblance of
Speaker 3: an answer through this process. Okay, And you ask, what
Speaker 3: does a life of radical.
Speaker 4: Commitment look like?
Speaker 3: And I'm wondering if you have if you have an
Speaker 3: answer that I guess that's satisfied you for now, because
Speaker 3: there's no way to answer it clearly and unequivocally right
Speaker 3: right right.
Speaker 2: And I, first of all, again right off the top,
Speaker 2: I would say I wouldn't try to prescribe for anyone.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to tell you, Adam like, what a
Speaker 2: life of radical commitment must look like for you, all right.
Speaker 3: Although I wouldn't mind some guidance. It would make the
Speaker 3: you know, the figuring out of life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, Well, there are kind of two operative
Speaker 2: terms in that question, radical and commitment. The kind of
Speaker 2: radicalism I'm talking about there is the kind that both
Speaker 2: has a radical analysis, right. It's it's on that intellectual
Speaker 2: level that sees the problem, you know, in a radical
Speaker 2: sense of seeing going to the root of the problem,
Speaker 2: which for me and many others increasingly is our capitalist
Speaker 2: system and is our system of you know, are the
Speaker 2: legacy of colonialism and slavery and all of that, which
Speaker 2: are totally capitalism, and those are totally intertwined. But it
Speaker 2: also refers to a kind of radicalism I don't want
Speaker 2: to say merely of tactics, right, like the willingness to
Speaker 2: go sabotage of pipeline or something, but kind of on
Speaker 2: a personal level, that willingness to do the things that
Speaker 2: others will find extreme to do and say, the things
Speaker 2: that will be called extreme, called unreasonable, well outside the
Speaker 2: Overton window, you know of polite discourse, polite and reasonable discourse.
Speaker 2: And so I think, what does that look like? Well,
Speaker 2: we can look at all sorts of examples from history, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, the abolitionists were were the radicals of their time,
Speaker 2: and we're considered dangerous and extreme, and you know, pretty
Speaker 2: much in every successful social movement in American history alone,
Speaker 2: you can look back and the people who led those
Speaker 2: movements were the radicals of their time, and they were
Speaker 2: considered extreme and they and they had that radical analysis too, right,
Speaker 2: that's what was driving those movements. So yeah, Like for me,
Speaker 2: the word commitment then is, let's say I reach a
Speaker 2: point where I am I get it. I've kind of
Speaker 2: reached that point intellectually and internally, you know, in terms
Speaker 2: of my result to you know, take action or say
Speaker 2: the things that need to be said. The commitment part,
Speaker 2: I think has to do with the long haul, staying
Speaker 2: in it, sticking with it for the long haul. That
Speaker 2: really is what the book is all about. Right. Where
Speaker 2: does that kind of commitment come from? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. The best answer I have is that
Speaker 2: it comes from my comrades, right, from that collective sense
Speaker 2: of solidarity. Right. But that's in some ways too easy
Speaker 2: an answer, you know. I think just each one of
Speaker 2: us it's spiritual. You know, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean it's religious in any like conventional sense,
Speaker 2: but for some people it is. For me, it actually is,
Speaker 2: but it's it's somehow it requires a willing to, you know,
Speaker 2: an introspection and a level of self inquiry into parts
Speaker 2: of ourselves that we don't really understand.
Speaker 3: I think that's a good place to end it. I
Speaker 3: will just say that, even though it is a heavy
Speaker 3: book a heavy topic, it did as I was reading
Speaker 3: it and then having this conversation with you just now,
Speaker 3: it makes me feel like we're going to find our
Speaker 3: way through it. Don't know how, but there's something about
Speaker 3: confronting the darkness or the despair head on insolidarity with
Speaker 3: other people that makes it feel doable. Not without struggle
Speaker 3: and strife and hardship, but certainly doable. So I am
Speaker 3: very grateful for you for writing the book and for
Speaker 3: this conversation, So thanks very much when really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you and amen, brother