Humility + Care < 1.5°C
It’s a simple, symbiotic equation that the «most intelligent» life form on Earth should not have too hard to grasp. After all, pushing beyond the 1.5°C threshold, which places life conditions beyond planetary boundaries, is not something any intelligent species would do. And yet we stick to another equation, the one that inflates the anthropocentric sense of superiority. The one that gives entirely different results:
Greed + Hubris > 1.5°C
The world is shared, not owned. It is the result of infinite interactions driven by constantly emerging interdependencies, producing something greater than its parts. Life is a continual process of emergence, and despite markets’ efforts to put a price tag on it, life is priceless.
All life is priceless.
While markets set a price for things, value is set through values. Only through values do we get to cherish relationships rather than things because values drive our attention and awareness.
The first equation has for too long now been driving the markets. Increasing profit, no matter what.
When we do the maths from the position of greed and hubris, we activate the depletion mindset.
But when we do it from the position of humility and care, we activate the symbiotic mindset.
The depletive mindset operates under the illusion that actions have no consequences and acts as if there was no tomorrow.
The symbiotic mindset acknowledges that our existence is the result of cooperation, interaction, and interdependencies.
The first equation is our false impression of superiority, pushing us beyond planetary boundaries. Out of the natural state of Earth, which works as a system of systems that constantly seek equilibrium and homeostasis.
Change is the natural state of life. The illusion of constancy that we are trying to create and impose on the world through control is artificial. It is unnatural and it keeps us away from the natural ability that all life forms have to adapt to a changing environment. But not only are we losing the ability to adapt, but we are forcing conditions for thousands of other species beyond sustainable limits.
Our limits are not technological, ideological, or religious. Our limits are biological and ecological. Pushing forward beyond planetary boundaries is not something any intelligent species would do.
It makes “climate change into something we can no longer reverse, but something we have to adapt to, cope with, and mitigate as much as possible, as James Bridle predicts. I fully agree with him and recommend reading Ways of Being, which has inspired this post.
“We find ourselves standing upon a ruined planet, not smart enough to save ourselves, and no longer by any stretch of the imagination the smartest living things around. Our very survival depends upon our ability to make a new compact with the more-than-human world, on which views the intelligence, the innate being of all things – animal, vegetable and machine – not as another indication of our own superiority, but as an intimation of our ultimate interdependences, and as an urgent call to humility and care”. James Bridle, Ways of Being.
Our ability to adapt to climate change depends on finding new ways of being in the world. This has a lot to do with our ability to move away from control/exploit mentality and make care and humility central to how we relate to the world around us.
Earth is homeostatic, and the future is symbiotic.
Boris Matijas 