Climate change is well underway. Although its effects are so far invisible, mass extinction number six is also underway. As I have noted before in these random musings, we humans are at the top of the tree, sawing away at the bottom.
These are recent items of evidence:
Spring came very early this year.
It is hot; too hot to enjoy the world outside.
Storms are intense. In the west, wildfires burn. In the southwest, temperatures are unusually high. 130 F in Phoenix?
As evidence of what I take to be subliminal human reaction:
The so-called Brexit vote (The United Kingdom voting in a referendum to leave the European Union), stirred up by discontent, immigrants of color, and unscrupulous politicians (perhaps an oxymoron), has broken out into acts of unseemly public display and violence.
The elevation of Donald J. Trump from loudmouth reality TV star and fractious businessman to the putative leader of the Republican Party, or at least its presumptive nominee for the upcoming presidential election. Much has been written about the fracture of the conservative movement in America, the turmoil in the Republican Party, and the unrest of caucasian citizens. Trump’s most popular populist bit is his “wall.” He’ll make America great again by isolating it from the influx of immigrants of color. He supposes the Brexit vote is corroboration. In a sense — in my sense here — it is.
The relentless spate of gun violence, in particular the shooting of 102 people with 49 fatalities, an even 50 if you include the perp, apparently a conflicted gay on LGTB+ crime, with an odd overtone of ISIS. There are many other instances, larger and smaller, in diverse locations; guns, particularly automatic and semi-automatic military weapons, are readily available. But we have proved that much damage can be done with improvised weapons made out of other available materials.
Change is inevitable; we fear change.
Widespread stress makes me think of Julian Jaynes. Again. The idea of Jaynes that I find most applicable is that stress can (and he says has) altered the psyche. In Jayne’s theory, the human mentality was once ‘bicameral,’ i.e., two-chambered. One chamber spoke (we heard voices). The other chamber obeyed. (Actions were either instinctive, automatic, or directed.) The stress of mass migrations and social upheavals created consciousness as we now know it. We still ‘hear voices,’ but we hear them as part of our internal dialogue.
I wonder if the events of climate change, more global and widespread than the upheavals of 3 millennium ago, will (or are) changing human consciousness. I find it far easier to contemplate the demise of humanity in general than to contemplate my own mortality. It is difficult to actually imagine the two proceeding in parallel. On a recent Amazon book buying spree, prompted by the redeeming of a gift card (there’s the gift that can be costly to get!), I bought a slender volume by David Reiff, the son of Susan Sontag, called “Swimming in a Sea of Death.” The work is a memoir about his mother’s death from cancer at age 71. He is at metaphorically at sea in this writing, without a boat. The text searingly explores emotion, connection, and meaning in the close encounter with the final illness and death of a woman of notable intellect, creativity, and stature.
It is too easy to say, but we are all swimming in a sea of death without a boat.