In Gratitude for Jimmy Carter

It was in March of last year that I started drafting this article. I had just heard that ex-President Carter had gone into hospice care. I was preparing to post an article about him as soon as possible after his passing—but he is still alive and has recently said he has to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris! So, I am posting this on the day before his 100^th birthday. 

Jimmy Carter in 2021

James Earl Carter, Jr., who “everybody” knows as Jimmy, is the only U.S. President I have shaken hands with—and on two separate occasions. Although not agreeing with him on everything, I have highly admired him for many decades now and am grateful for his long life and meritorious work.

Although I have mentioned Jimmy in several blog posts, the most I wrote about him was in the article posted on the day before his 90^th birthday, on September 30, 2014 (see here). Now near the end of his long, productive life, I am writing mainly regarding two important emphases he made as POTUS.

Part of what I have included in this post is based on Randall Balmer’s 2014 book Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. While having great respect for the author, I did not particularly like the title of that book: I thought the term redeemer applied most aptly to Jesus Christ.

Recently, though, I read “Redeemer President,” the fifth chapter of Balmer’s book and was quite favorably impressed with what he wrote there—and I understood what he meant by Jimmy being a “redeemer.”

As Balmer explains, it is hard to imagine Carter being elected president “had it not been for Richard Nixon.” As the new president took the oath of office in January 1977, he “represented a clean break with the recent past, an opportunity to redeem the nation” (pp. 76, 77).

Early in 1977, Carter called the nation’s attention to the energy crisis. That was particularly in his April 18 “Address to the Nation on Energy” (see here). It was in that speech that he declared, [“”]

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war."

His early recognition of the growing ecological problem was noted in what I called “the most important book you’ve never read” in this March 2023 blog post).

William Cotton, the author of that book, Overshoot (1980), mentions Carter favorably several times in his powerful book and writes most about Carter’s speech in July 1979. The title of that address was “Crisis of Confidence,” but it became known as his “malaise speech.” (Click here to read the transcript.)

That 1979 talk was an important one—and was basically correct. But it was not well received and was detrimental to Carter politically—and it was one of several reasons why he was soundly defeated in the 1980 election.

In a perceptive February 2023 article, though, David French wrote “The Wisdom and Prophecy of Carter’s Malaise Speech” (see here). The eminent NYTimes columnist averred that “Carter’s greatest speech was delivered four decades too soon.”

Carter’s emphasis on human rights was another key element of his presidency. Balmer wrote that “Carter sought to nudge the United States away from the reactive anticommunism of the Cold War and toward a policy that was more collaborative, less interventionist, and sensitive above all to human rights” (p. 79).

That emphasis was grounded in Carter’s Christian faith. “Jimmy Carter’s religious values were never far from his presidency or his policy” is the title of a March 2023 post on ReligionNews.com, and “human rights” is the first topic of several mentioned in that perceptive article.**

World peace is the second topic given in the above piece. Carter is quoted as saying, “There’s no doubt in my mind that the greatest violator of human rights that we know is armed conflict.” Consequently, “Carter’s presidency made the biblical concept of shalom seem less of a distant dream.”

These are just some of the reasons I have deep gratitude for Jimmy Carter and honor him on this day before his 100^th birthday. My double hope is that he will still be alive on January 20 and lucid enough to enjoy fully VP Harris’s inauguration as the 47^th POTUS.

_____

**That article (found here) was written by Lovett H. Weems, Jr., who for 18 years was president of Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City before moving to a faculty position at Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

Note: I learned from Heather Cox Richardson’s September 27 newsletter that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has provided invaluable help before, during, and following last week’s landfall of Hurricane Helene, was initially created under President Jimmy Carter in 1979. In that piece, Richardson also writes that Project 2025, calls for slashing FEMA’s budget and returning disaster responses to states and localities. 

 

Confronting Life After Doom with Resilience

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog are likely aware that I am a big “fan” of Brian McLaren. In a March 2017 blog post, I placed him on my list of “Ten Most Admired Contemporary Christians,” and he is on my list of “Top Ten” theologians and/or philosophers by whom I have been influenced.*¹

Beginning with McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian (2002), the first of a trilogy that was significant theology written as novels, I have read many of McLaren’s fifteen sole-authored books and learned much from them.

In a March 2018 blog post, I made extensive reference to his 2006 book, The Secret Message of Jesus, in which he emphasized that the Kingdom of God is more about society than about individuals.*²

That emphasis on the Kingdom of God being primarily about human society in the present world rather than the heavenly realm where individuals are transported upon death is a major reason many contemporary conservative Christians do not regard McLaren highly.

Brian (b. 1956) first wrote about the growing global ecological crisis in Everything Must Change, his 2007 book which I finished reading in June 2008. I thought it was so significant that in 2020 I placed it on the list of my favorite non-fiction 21st-century books.*³

Since I don’t include more than one book by the same author in my list of favorite books, I have replaced McLaren’s previous books in the list just mentioned with Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, which was published the middle of last month.

McLaren’s Life After Doom is essential reading for all of us who know about and care about the future of life on planet Earth. On the dust jacket, environmentalist Bill McKibben says this book is as “rich and thoughtful as all of Brian McLaren's work, but with a particular urgency!” I fully agree.

Early in “Welcome to Reality,” the second chapter, McLaren succinctly sets forth the diagnosis of the predicament he examines throughout the book: “Our global civilization as currently structured is unstable and unsustainable” (p. 23).

Some scientists and eco-theologians, especially William Catton, Jr., and Michael Dowd, have made this same diagnosis.*⁴ But this is the first time a major Christian writer has analyzed that predicament so thoroughly and so clearly—and with a pastor’s heart.

Throughout this challenging book, McLaren explores four possible scenarios for the years ahead. In the second chapter, he calls those scenarios 1) “Collapse Avoidance,” 2) “Collapse/Rebirth,” 3) “Collapse/Survival,” and 4) “Collapse/Extinction.”

Since it is clear that he thinks only the last three are feasible, at the end of the first chapter he warned his readers that the following chapter would be “rough sledding.” Then chapters three and four are “pastoral” in nature: he helps his readers face the fearful future in ways that are not debilitating.

How can/should we live life after doom? In the fourth/last part of his book, McLaren elucidates what he calls “a path of agile engagement.” Michael Dowd’s emphasis on “post doom, no gloom” provided helpful light for these dark times. McLaren’s last chapters are even more beneficial and encouraging.

In chapter 17, Brian repeatedly stresses that despite all the ugliness, “beauty abounds.” In the next chapter, he cites and heartily agrees with the words, “It is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much” (p. 224).

Chapter 19 emphasizes the need to live with the dream of the kingdom of God which is “not a destination after death: it is the higher, bigger, vaster, deeper way of life here and now” (p. 236).

The following chapter is “Find Your Light and Shine It.” If we do that, even in this time of doom, we can have “an abundant life, a meaningful life, abounding with beauty … whatever the future may hold” (p. 249).

“Whatever you do, it matters.” Those words (on p. 253) are the crux of McLaren's final chapter, which closes with 15 numbered paragraphs expounding that basic assertion.

So, even if we are—or because we are(!)—living life after doom, let’s live resiliently, not giving up, giving in, or giving out. Paraphrasing Maya Angelou, let’s do the best we can until we know better—and then, let’s do better!

____

*¹ I first published that list in my book subtitled The Story of My Life from Birth until My 82^nd Birthday (2020).

*² That emphasis was also the title of  #7 in my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2019).

*³ In the 2023 updated version of my life story book, I replaced McLaren’s 2007 book with Do I Stay Christian? which was published in 2022.

*⁴ In Appendix 1, McLaren lists what he considers the five best books dealing with “our predicament.” The first is William Catton’s Overshoot (1982)—and “The Most Important Book You’ve Never Read,” my 2/23/23 blog post, is about Catton’s book. Then McLaren gives Michael Dowd’s videos as the first of the five best video/audio resources. Many of you will remember that I have written about Dowd several times, the first being in my 1/25/22 blog post. McLaren mentions that Dowd was his friend who died while he (Brian) was writing this book.

 

Crises within Crises

For this blog post, I originally intended to write only about COP28, the international meeting dealing with the ever-growing environmental crisis. Then, I read powerful opinion pieces by Robert Kagan and became alarmed at the expanding political crisis in the U.S.

But how can we neglect to consider the crises in Gaza, Ukraine, and other countries where warfare continues, such as in Myanmar and Sudan that get far less press coverage? In addition, there are millions of individuals in our world who are facing personal crises of various sorts.

Indeed, there are crises within crises that threaten the well-being and even the survival of individuals, nations, and the world civilization as a whole. Please think with me about these crises, beginning with the outer circle that includes the whole world and moving down to the inner circle of individuals. 

The ever-growing environmental crisis was the central concern of COP28, which met in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.*¹ The first COP meeting, convened in Berlin, was in 1995 and there have been yearly meetings since then.

As I have repeatedly pointed out over the last two years, the current ecological predicament is a crisis that threatens the very existence of the world as we know it (TWAWKI). Some progress was made toward alleviating the global environmental crisis at COP28, but it’s probably too little too late.*²

There will be dire consequences for most of the world’s population if drastic changes are not made soon, which is highly unlikely. This is the existential crisis in which all the other crises exist.

The wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza are crises for people living in those areas of the world. But there is an ongoing possibility that they will expand into larger wars. In the worst-case scenario, either of these wars could conceivably escalate into World War III.

These crises are rather localized now, but they might conceivably enlarge to rival the ecological crisis as an existential threat to TWAWKI.

Within these two larger crises is the political crisis in the United States. While this crisis is only brewing at present, there is a real and present danger of democracy being replaced in the U.S. with a form of fascism.

I had not been aware of scholar and journalist Robert Kagan until this month, but he is an editor at large for The Washington Post (WaPo) and has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as to Democratic administrations via the Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kagan (b. 1958) left the Republican Party due to the party's nomination of Donald Trump and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

Kagan’s Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 WaPo articles were titled “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending,” and “The Trump dictator-ship: How to stop it.” (These are long pieces, but well worth reading and reflecting on.)

Some Republican politicians are sounding the same warning. For example, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney's new book (released Dec. 5) is titled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. (Hear her talk about that in this Dec. 4 interview on NPR.)

On Dec. 10, Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, expressed the same sentiment, although more mildly, on “Meet the Press.”*³

There is a lot that can happen between now and Election Day next November, but USAmericans must be aware of the danger of losing their democracy—and minorities, the poor, and the underprivileged are the ones who would suffer most under a non-democratic government.

We common people may not be able to do much about the ecological crisis or the crisis in Ukraine or Gaza, but we do have the power to vote and to encourage our friends and neighbors to be informed and to vote accordingly.

The inner circle is the crisis of individuals who are suffering from illness, poverty, discrimination, or personal tragedies. We pray that many of these people will experience new hope during this Christmas season. Who is one such person you can help between now and December 25?

_____

*¹ COP stands for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Click here to access the UNFCCC website.)

*² Here is the link to a helpful summary of the mixed results of COP28 on The Guardian’s Dec. 14 website.

*³ See here; Romney’s discussion of this matter begins at about 7 min. 45 sec. into the program. 

Remembering Martin Buber and the Importance of Dialogue

My previous blog post was about a contemporary Jewish woman who is an atheist. This post is about Martin Buber. a historical Jewish man who stressed the importance of dialogue between people and of the encounter with God, the basis of his philosophical thought and writings. 

Martin Buber was born in 1878 (145 years ago) to an Orthodox Jewish couple in Vienna. From 1881~92, he was raised by his grandfather in what is now Lviv, Ukraine. In 1899, while studying philosophy in Zürich, he met Paula Winkler, who was a Catholic, and they married in 1901.

Martin and Paula, who converted to Judaism, worked as a couple in the Zionist movement. Unlike most Zionists, though, the Bubers believed that that movement should focus on fostering cooperation between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and they envisioned a binational state where both could coexist in harmony.

Buber was a prolific author, and Ich und Du, his best-known and most influential book, was published 100 years ago (in 1923). It was first translated into English in 1937 and issued under the title I and Thou.

A central emphasis of Buber’s book is the difference between the word pairs “I-It” and “I-Thou.” His philosophy centered on the encounter, or dialogue, of people with other human beings through relationships, which ultimately rest on and point to a relationship with God, “the eternal Thou.”

In 1938, when he was 60, Buber moved to Jerusalem where he resided until he died in 1965.

“I-It” is the primary stance of modern science. As Buber states in I and Thou, “the basic word I-It” is “the word of separation.”**

In the I-It realm, the natural world and everything in it is seen as something to be observed, examined, categorized. It is completely related to in an objective manner. Other humans, too, are often seen objectively. In that way, they, like natural phenomena, are experienced but not encountered.

When the physical world is considered an It, it can be used and manipulated for one’s own benefit without compunction. That, in fact, is one of the reasons for the ever-growing ecological crisis of the present time.

Unfortunately, when people are considered as Its, they too can easily be used, manipulated, and discriminated against without qualms. That is seen most clearly in the way enemies in warfare are always seen as Its who need to be destroyed.

“I-Thou” is primarily the stance of those who emphasize relationships and seek interaction with other people and even the natural world through subjective encounter rather than objective experience. 

The I-Thou (I-You) realm is one of dialogue, where there is mutual respect between people. Both the I and the You speak clearly and listen attentively, accepting both the uniqueness and the similarity of each other.

This I-Thou relationship can be enjoyed to a degree with even the non-human world, and that has been practiced by animistic religions such as that of traditional Native American peoples and of Shinto in Japan.

In the Handbook of Contemporary Animism (2013), Graham Harvey sees the animist perspective as similar to Buber's emphasis on "I-Thou." Animists relate to the world of animals, trees, and even inanimate objects in an I-Thou manner rather than in an I-It way.

And even in the present time, some modern environmentalists are called “tree-huggers” because of their desire to embrace an I-Thou relationship with the world of nature.

The distressing problem, however, is that modern industrial civilization and a world of eight billion people cannot be sustained by a worldview that relates to nature primarily in an I-Thou manner.

According to Buber, the basis of all I-Thou relationships is God, “the eternal Thou.” Through encounter with the eternal Thou, individuals are transformed and their understanding of the world and their place in it is fundamentally altered.

Buber believed that such encounter is essential to human flourishing and meaningful existence.

In my view, Buber was correct, indeed, and that is the reason I want us all to remember him and his emphasis on the importance of encounter with God and of having dialogue with other people.

_____

** The first (1937) English translation of Buber’s Ich und Du was by Ronald Gregor Smith. This citation is from Walter Kaufmann’s 1970 translation (p. 66 of the Kindle edition). At the beginning of that edition, Kaufmann has a helpful prologue of more than 40 pages. Buber’s book alone is only about 120 pages, but it is difficult reading and most of us need to read it more than once in order to fully grasp what he is saying. 

Praise for the Pope

Like most of you who read this blog, I am not a Roman Catholic, but I have considerable appreciation for Pope Francis. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936, ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1969, and elected Pope in March 2013. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. 

Pope Francis speaking at the Vatican on 10/4/23]

There are many reasons to praise Pope Francis. For example, just nine days ago (on 10/4/23), the Pope issued an “apostolic exhortation” under the title Laudate Deum (=Praise God). That document, which can be read in full here, was directed “to all people of good will” and was “on the climate crisis.”

Last month, I read much of Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis’s encyclical officially published by the Vatican in 2020 on October 4, the feast day of Francis of Assisi. While there was much good and important content, I was somewhat critical of it as it seemed to be lacking specificity or concreteness.

This month’s new document, however, which is a commentary on Laudato si' (=Praise Be to You), the Pope’s major 2015 encyclical on the environment, is generally quite specific and concrete. In the second paragraph of this recent “exhortation,” the Pope says:

…with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.

Over the past twenty months, I have cited Michael Dowd and others who have spoken warningly about collapse, but here is a clear statement about that fateful future by the Pope.**

Also, an Oct. 4 Vatican News article (see here) states that in Laudate Deum the Pope “criticizes climate change deniers, saying that the human origin of global warming is now beyond doubt.”

Early this month, the Pope convened the three-week General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, sometimes called the Super Bowl of the Catholic Church. It drew bishops from around the world to discuss hot-button issues.

Some of those issues are whether priests should be allowed to get married, if divorced and remarried Catholics should receive communion, whether women should be allowed to become deacons, and how the church will handle matters around the LGBTQ community.

It remains to be seen how, or when, these contentious matters will be resolved, but for those of us who are egalitarians, the Pope’s willingness to consider such matters is certainly praiseworthy.

Sadly, many USAmericans have little praise for the Pope. Politics takes precedence over their religious faith. Or for others, they hold to an outdated, conservative Catholicism and are, literally, more traditionally Catholic than the Pope.

According to an Aug. 28 APNews.com post, “Many conservatives have blasted Francis’s emphasis on social justice issues such as the environment and the poor,” and they have also branded as heretical his openness “to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive the sacraments.”

As an example of politics taking precedence over the position of the Pope, consider the contrast between Francis’s recent “exhortation” regarding global warming and U.S. Catholics.

The Pope, as well as the preponderant majority of climate scientists around the world, emphasizes that “the human origin of global warming is now beyond doubt.”

But last month, Pew Research Center (here) reported that only 44% of U.S. Catholics say Earth is warming mainly due to human activity—and of U.S. Catholics who are Republicans or lean Republican, only a strikingly low 18% think that global warming is human-caused.

In response to such criticism, the Pope has called the strong, organized, reactionary attitude of some Catholics in the U.S. Church “backward,” and has stated that their faith has been replaced by ideologies.

Francis reminds these people that “backwardness is useless, and they must understand that there’s a correction evolution in the understanding of questions of faith and morals” that allows for doctrine to progress over time.

Such progressiveness is one of the main reasons I have praise for the Pope. His deep concern for the future well-being of all people around the world has led him to claim that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.

Would that all Catholics, and all Protestants as well, could embrace these progressive ideas of the forward-looking Pope.

_____

** With considerable sadness I am sharing the news that Michael Dowd (b. 11/1958) died on October 7 as the result of a fall in a friend’s home. More information about his death and memorial service is available here. 

“We” Most Probably Won’t Do It

For decades now, I have had high regard for Al Gore, who served as vice president of the U.S. from 1993 to 2001 and who barely lost the presidential election in 2000. Since then, Gore, who celebrated his 75th birthday earlier this year, has been known primarily as an environmentalist.

Logo of Climate Reality Project
(started by Gore in 2006, new name in 2011)

An Inconvenient Truth is the name of Al Gore’s film about his campaign to educate people about global warming. in July 2006, June and I went with friends here in Liberty to see that powerful new documentary, which includes Gore’s slide show about environmental issues.

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

In January 2008 I had the privilege of hearing Gore speak (and show slides), and I was highly impressed with not only what he said (and showed) but with him as a genuine, insightful person. I thought again how it was such a shame that he didn’t become POTUS in 2001.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is Gore’s 2017 film documenting his ten years of effort to combat global warming after his first film that had garnered so much publicity. (I can’t explain why June and I hadn’t watched this until last week; it certainly was well worth watching.)**

The climax of this documentary is about the Paris Agreement reached at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP 21). On Earth Day (Apr. 22) 2016, 174 countries signed that agreement.

But Gore’s joyful hope soon turned to feelings of despair as the Trump administration announced in 2017 that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Agreement as soon as possible (in 2020).

The film, of course, doesn’t show how Pres. Biden announced on his first day in office that the U.S. was rejoining. Since then, Biden has continually pushed measures to counteract the steady and detrimental increase of global warming, in spite of constant opposition from the GOP.

But has he done enough? Perhaps he has done about as much as he could have done because of the climate change deniers, but no, he has not done nearly enough to stem the coming collapse.

Al Gore remains hopeful that “we” can solve the problem of climate change, etc. A 9/20/19 opinion piece in the New York Times is titled: “Al Gore: The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win.”

Speaking at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs in Oct. 2021, Gore declared, “We have the solutions…. I have an enormous amount of hope about our future.”

Then last month, David Gelles published an article based on a recent interview with Gore. The NYTimes reporter stated that “the events of the past few weeks have Gore even more worried than usual.” Still, “Despite the apocalyptic weather news, Gore is also hopeful.”

Gore said in that interview, “The faster we stop burning fossil fuels and releasing other planet-warming emissions, the more quickly global temperatures can stabilize.” Further, “We know how to fix this…. We can stop the temperature going up worldwide…” (bolding added).

While these words are perhaps true, the sad fact is that in all likelihood, “we” won’t do it. All the books and films about global warming end with what we need to do. But in spite of some encouraging signs, we (meaning the vast majority of people on Earth) don’t seem to be making much progress.

Part of the Paris Agreement goal was the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO²) in the atmosphere to no more than 350 ppm. In 2006 that figure was 380 and it had risen to 410 by 2017. But now in August 2023, it is 420, and it keeps going up, as is clearly seen in the following chart. 

I’m afraid the much-respected Mr. Gore is somewhat affected by “hopium” (holding on to false hopes that prevents us from accepting reality). “We” are most probably not going to prevent the coming collapse resulting from overshoot.

But we (you and I) can work to push the collapse further into the future.  

_____

** We watched this on Amazon Prime (at a nominal charge), and then discovered that the DVD was available at our local library. In addition to the two books published with the same titles as the two movies, and several earlier books, Gore is also the author of The Assault on Reason (2007, 2017), Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis (2009), and The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change (2013).

Note: The Buttry Center for Peace and Nonviolence at Central Seminary in Kansas is offering a five-part course titled “Creation Care in a Changing Climate: Doing Our Part to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Please click here to learn more about this course, and if you would like to participate, you can register there. (Courses such as this can help with doing what I suggest in the last sentence of this article.)

Living/Dying in the Capitalocene

The term Anthropocene is increasingly being recognized as a proper term to depict the current geological era, replacing the long-used term Holocene, the era that began some 11,650 years ago. This new term was helpfully explained in an article about two new movies that opened last week.*

Theologian Joerg Rieger, however, thinks there is a more accurate term to use for the present age, and he writes about that in his new book.

Joerg Rieger is a professor of theology at Vanderbilt University. He was born in Germany and will celebrate his 60^th birthday next week. An ordained Methodist minister, Rieger had already authored/edited 20 books when he joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 2016. 

Theology in the Capitalocene: Ecology, Identity, Class, and Solidarity (2022) is the title of Rieger’s significant new book. Since I am also writing a review of it,** I asked GPT chat for help. Here is how they described the book:

Theology in the Capitalocene by Joerg Rieger is an important and thought-provoking book that offers a critical examination of the intersection of theology and capitalism in the context of the Anthropocene era.

Rieger’s book is not a quick read nor is it easy to digest all of his salient emphases. One criticism I have of his valuable book is the overabundance of references to other scholarly works.

This would be an excellent book for doctoral students writing their dissertations on related issues. But it may be overwhelming for the general public. And even I, who finished a doctoral dissertation over fifty-five years ago (though in a far different field), found his book challenging.

Here are some of Rieger’s main emphases that are worth serious consideration, and I am grateful to him for introducing each of these.

* Emphasis on the importance, and neglect of serious consideration of, “unpaid reproductive labor” that is directly linked to discrimination against women.

* Emphasis on the distinction between power and privilege. This has ramifications that are often overlooked.

* Emphasis on class as a societal structure rather than “classism,” which is largely based on stereotypes.

* Emphasis on “deep solidarity.” I have long thought that solidarity is something that we who are privileged, to whatever degree, can choose out of loving concern by becoming allies of those who are “underprivileged.”

While there may be reason to retain some of that emphasis, Rieger stresses that solidarity is a fact that needs to be acknowledged rather than something chosen in an over/under relationship.

All of these, as well as his prevalent emphasis on ecological concerns, are related to the pernicious power of capitalism in the present world.

My main criticism of Rieger’s book is his apparent belief that the serious ecological predicament facing the world today is a problem that can be solved. His position contrasts with what I have written over the past eighteen months about overshoot and the collapse of civilization.

Most scholars who are currently university professors and embrace deep ecological concerns hold the same position that Rieger does. The following words spoken in the 1930s are still quite relevant and true today: 

I can certainly understand why one in Rieger’s position would not want to publicly talk about the possible “end of the world as we know it” in a decade or two. If they believed that to be true, most high school students would likely decide that there would be no use going to college.

Rieger does show considerable compassion for the people who are suffering now because of capitalism as well as for the natural world that is being ravaged by the forces of capitalism, and I appreciate that concern.

Still, there needs to be more awareness that we who are now living in the Capitalocene era will soon be seeing massive numbers of people (and non-human life) dying in this present age because of the ever-expanding predicament produced by capitalism.

­­­­­_____

* See “‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ tell the same terrifying story,” an intriguing July 19 opinion piece in The Washington Post.

** Last month I received a free Kindle copy of Rieger’s book by promising to write a blog article and/or review of it. The promise was made to Mike Morrell, who operates “Speakeasy,” a website that offers “quality books in exchange for candid reviews.” Here is the link to the rather long review I have written, subject to further revision. Among other things, that review amplifies the too-brief treatment of Rieger’s emphases given above. 

Too Many People, or Too Few?

This blog post is about the human population of the world. Are there too many people, or are there too few? 

(A slightly inaccurate graph of the world's population growth, but the point is well made.)

The county of my birth is very small; it could be argued that there are too few people there. I was born in Worth County, Missouri, which is the youngest of the 114 counties in the state. It is also the Mo. county with the smallest land area and the smallest population.**

According to the U.S. census records, the peak population of Worth Co. was in 1900 when the number of residents reached nearly 10,000. But in the 2020 census, the population had dropped to under 2,000.

It can be argued, with good reason, that there are now too few people in Worth Co. for it to be viable still, and the same is true for many rural counties across the nation.

The population of some nations is decreasing, and some people in those countries are worrying about there being too few people—especially too few of the “right” kind.

I have long been concerned about the rapid increase of the world’s population. When I was born in 1938, there were about 2.2 billion people living on this earth, but by 1998 (just 60 years later) that number reached six billion—and this year it topped eight billion!

If my home county had grown by the same percentage as the world’s population between 1900 and 2020, it would have a population of around 49,000, not fewer than 2,000.

But already by the early 2000s, there was serious talk about the declining population in Japan and the need to encourage more Japanese women to marry and for couples to have more children.

And it is true, many of the wealthy countries of the world are losing population, and even some in China, until this year the world’s most populous country, are increasingly concerned about the current population decline there.

The cover story of the June 3^rd-9^th issue of The Economist was “The Baby-Bust Economy,” and they highlighted the problem of the declining population growth in most of the world’s wealthiest countries: “The largest 15 countries by GDP all have a fertility rate below the replacement rate.”

Thus, they project that before the end of this century “the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death.”

The unchecked growth of the world’s population has long been a concern of some scholars, and others. It was 225 years ago when Thomas Malthus published the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798).

Malthus (1766~1834) was an English economist and demographer and is best known for his theory that population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply and that betterment of humankind is impossible without stern limits on reproduction.

Malthus was the first to write publicly about carrying capacity and overshoot, which are central themes of William Catton’s book that I introduced in my March 23 blog post, and that perceptive author refers to Malthus several times.

Malthus didn’t know of the coming industrial revolution in the 19^th century or the “green revolution” that began in mid-20^th century. But as Catton clearly explains, the extension of the carrying capacity of the earth was primarily based on the exploitation of depletable and non-renewable fossil fuels.

It was quite disappointing that the concluding paragraph of The Economist’s recent cover story states, “Unexpected productivity advances meant that demographic time-bombs, such as the mass starvation predicted by Thomas Malthus in the 18th century, failed to detonate.”

True, such time-bombs haven’t detonated yet. But why do they think that those time bombs are not still ticking in this world with its continual global warming, ongoing over-consumption of non-renewable resources, and increasing inequality and strife between the “haves” and “have nots”?

Because of the current, but insufficiently understood, ecological crisis, there will most likely be a drastic, and catastrophic, decline in the world’s population long before the end of this century.

Fortunately, rather than being a problem, the current decline in population pushes the coming catastrophic decline further into the future.

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** You might also find it interesting that the land area that became Worth County in 1861 was the most northwestern corner of the United States after Missouri became a state in 1821. 

Having Hope, Feeling Hopeless, Being Hope Free

As you see from the title, this blog article is about hope, but please note that it is only about hope in the here and now. Hope for or in the “afterlife” is certainly of great importance, but this post is only about the hope we have, or don’t have, in this world at this time. 

Hope is a widely used word and an appealing concept. I have long been an ardent advocate of hope, in spite of not always being optimistic.*

Often, though, hope is just a word expressing what we desire: we “hope” it won’t rain on our picnic planned for the weekend or we “hope” our team wins the game we have tickets for. But such hope is nothing more than wishful thinking and has negligible impact on what we will do or not do.

In a more robust sense, hope means to work for and to wait for something with the confident expectation and anticipation that it will at some point, sooner or later, be fulfilled. In that sense, hope is grounded in a positive view of the future that we believe is conceivable.

Challenging circumstances sometimes siphon off hope, but then through determination one can cultivate new hope. In fact, “New Hope” is the name of two churches that are very meaningful to me.**

In numerous ways and at numerous times, having hope is a good and positive mindset, one to be affirmed and promoted.

When we no longer have hope, we feel hopeless, and that is usually an uncomfortable state of affairs.  

In his book Die Wise (2015), Stephen Jenkinson writes, “Hope is very often a refusal to know what is so, and steadfastly it is a refusal to live as if the present moment is good enough and all we really have. Hopeless is the collapse of that refusal, and it looks a lot like depression.”

So, feeling hopeless is often a negative state of mind and one we want to avoid as much as possible. But, realistically, sometimes it is necessary to give up hope and to deal with what is rather than what we would like to be otherwise.

For example, when a terminally ill person’s loved ones give up hope, they put that loved one on hospice, seeking to make them as comfortable as possible for the remainder of their days, no longer hoping that they will miraculously regain their health.

Some who see the current ecological crisis most clearly think the struggle to save the environment is hopeless. Thus, Guy McPherson avers, “The living planet is in the fourth and final stage of a terminal disease. . . . it is long past time we admitted hospice is the only reasonable way forward.”***.

There is a close relationship, then, between hopelessness and being hope free.

Why can being hope free be considered a good thing? Well, hope can be, and perhaps often is, a refusal to accept reality. In that way, it is ill-founded and detrimental. To be hopeful in spite of clearly having a terminal illness is not helpful.

In January of last year, I made a blog post about the “serenity prayer” attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. That prayer begins, “GOD, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can; and the Wisdom to know the difference.”

Perhaps some of us have mostly emphasized the second part: the prayer for courage to change things. But maybe the first part is more important: the prayer for the serenity to accept things that cannot be changed, thus, to be hope free.

That doesn’t mean being constantly depressed as when we feel hopeless. Rather, as is expressed in the longer version of the prayer, it means “Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.”

Accordingly, hope free advocate McPherson, who thinks “near term human extinction” is certain, writes, “I recommend living fully. I recommend living with intention. . . . I recommend the pursuit of excellence. I recommend the pursuit of love” (Only Love Remains, p. 175).

Amen.

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* Some of you may remember my Oct. 30, 2021, blog post titled “Hopeful, But Not Optimistic.” (Click here if you would like to read it again—or for the first time.)  

** You may want to (re)read this blog article I posted about those churches nearly ten years ago.

*** McPherson (b. 1960) is Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, where he was a tenured professor from 1989 to 2009. The words cited above are from his 2019 book Only Love Remains: Dancing at the Edge of Extinction (p. 199). He is also the author of "Becoming Hope-Free: Parallels Between Death of Individuals and Extinction of Homo Sapiens," Clinical Psychology Forum, No. 317, May 2019.

Thinking Seven Generations Back and Forward

Some Native American nations hold dear the idea that the potential benefits or harm that would be felt by the next seven generations should be amply considered when making major decisions.* That seems to be a very significant idea—and one almost impossible to implement sufficiently.  

I asked AI to create an image that refers to taking care of
the earth for the next seven generations. This was the result.

I began thinking about seven generations while working on this blog post that originally was to be primarily about the Louisiana Purchase.

The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed 220 years ago this week, on April 30, 1803. That was of tremendous importance for the United States, which had become a nation only 27 years earlier.

That purchase was a major accomplishment of President Jefferson and one of the most significant events in the history of the young nation—and even in the history of the nation up until the present. It is widely considered to be the greatest real estate deal in history.

The U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory from France at a price of $15 million, or approximately four cents an acre. It added to the United States an area larger than eight Great Britains, doubling the size of the United States and opening up the continent to its westward expansion.

Jefferson explained his action to Congress by saying that this fertile and extensive country would afford “an ample provision for our posterity, and a wide spread for the blessings of freedom and equal laws.”**

President Jefferson was perhaps thinking about the next seven generations in his efforts that led to the acquisition of that huge territory for the U.S.

Without question, that purchase had tremendous benefits for most White U.S. citizens—and considerable harm for Native Americans— for the next seven generations, and more.

Thinking Seven Generations Back

For individual persons, seven generations go back to their grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents. In my case, Hartwell Seat (1749~1827) was my seventh-generation grandfather whose family name I bear. George Seat (1878~1952) was my grandfather, and Hartwell's grandson Franklin (1818~1905 was George’s grandfather. 

So, seven generations before I was born in 1938, Hartwell Seat was born in Virginia just six years after Thomas Jefferson’s birth. In 1797, Hartwell and his family migrated to Tennessee, just a year after it had become the 16^th state of the USA.

The Mississippi River was the western border of the new state and at that time it was the westernmost edge of the United States. Just seven years later, though, the vast expanse of land on the other side of the Mississippi became U.S. territory.

When working on this article, it was a bit of a shock when I realized that the Louisiana Purchase, which had always seemed like ancient history to me, was made when my seventh-generation ancestor was 54 years old and living less than 200 miles from the eastern border of that vast new territory.

Just fifteen years later, Littleton Seat, my sixth-generation grandfather, migrated with his wife Elizabeth and two young daughters (as well as two of his brothers and their families) to Missouri Territory. That was three years before Missouri became the 24^th state in 1821.

Littleton’s great-grandson George, my beloved Grandpa Seat, was born just 75 years after the Louisiana Purchase, and his death was just one year shy of being as long after his birth as the Louisiana Purchase was before his birth.

Thinking Seven Generations Forward

Now, turning from the generations of the past (and the Louisiana Purchase), what about the generations to come? With me as the first generation, my first two great-grandchildren, who were born in 2022, are the fourth generation. Their great-grandchildren will be the seventh generation.

It is hard to imagine what all will happen and how the world will change during Nina’s and Vander’s lifetime. How can we even begin to imagine what the world will be like when their great-grandchildren are born? That will be well into the 22^nd century.

But maybe the Native Americans were right: we need to consider how the decisions we make now will affect the seventh generation in the future. Of greatest need along this line is concerted thought and action regarding the current global ecological crisis.

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* In the 2022 book What We Owe the Future, author William MacAskill writes about "longtermism: the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time" (p. 4). Early in "The Case for Longtermism," the first chapter, he cites a Native American who wrote, "We . . . make every decision that we make relate to the welfare and well-being of the seventh generation to come. . . . We consider: will this be to the benefit of the seventh generation?" (p. 11).

** Jefferson’s words are cited on page 49 of William Catton’s book Overshoot, which was the main topic of my March 23 blog post, and it was related to the author’s explanation of the significance of the Louisiana Purchase in expanding the “carrying capacity” of the United States at that time.