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.

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* 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. 

The Most Important Book You’ve Never Read

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but my guess is that none of you regular readers of my blog have ever read William R. Catton Jr.’s book Overshoot. I read it for the first time this year (and plan to read it again). I wish I had read it forty years ago; it is, truly, a book of great significance. 

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change was first published in 1980 and is still in print. (I read the Kindle version of the 1982 paperback.) Eco-theologian Michael Dowd, whom I have referred to repeatedly, says Overshoot is the most important book he has ever read.

All of the first part, “The Unfathomed Predicament of Mankind” can be read on Amazon.com’s webpage (see here). There the author asserts, “Today mankind is locked into stealing ravenously from the future. That is what this book is about.”

Catton (1926~2015) goes on to state that “contemporary well-being is achieved at the expense of our descendants.” He then says,

A major aim of this book is to show that commonly proposed “solutions” for problems confronting mankind are actually going to aggravate those problems (p. 3).

At the end of the first chapter, the author declares, “This is not a book to be read either casually or passively.” Indeed, it is not.**

Catton explains the circumstance and consequence of what he calls “new ecological understandings.” This is summarized in Table 2 (on p. 71) in Overshoot (pasted here), and I encourage you to read it carefully. 

Having watched several videos by Dowd and having read the illuminating books by Ophuls and Catton, I have, reluctantly, adopted the first position, that of realism.

The second of the five “labels” is perhaps the only one that needs some explanation, although the position it designates is widely held. The term “cargoism” is based on the “cargo cults” in the Pacific island societies, especially the pre-literate Melanesian peoples.

Whatever was needed was “miraculously” brought in on European cargo ships. In a similar manner, many contemporary people have “faith in science and technology as infallible solvers of any conceivable problem” (pp. 185-6). Thus, such faith in sure-to-come technological solutions is called cargoism.

Perhaps the most common position for socially aware people is the third one. They realize there is an environmental problem and so they seek to do something (or many things) to address the problem. But such actions don’t solve the deep, underlying predicament; it is merely cosmeticism.

Some people, though, just completely disregard the “circumstance” and the “consequence” as described by author Catton, and this widespread position is called cynicism.

Many other people, and perhaps this is the largest group, don’t just merely disregard but actually deny both circumstance and consequence. This is the position of ostrichism.

So, here are the questions I leave with you. Which of these five terms best describes your present position? If you don’t hold to the first position (realism), are you satisfied with your current stance and would you recommend it to others? Why or why not?

Of course, many of you may think all this is too painful to think about—and I certainly understand why you may feel that way. But refusing to think about the issues is, in effect, “ostrichism.”

As for me, I want to continue advocating realism, believing that that is the best position for promoting both a social conscience and mental health for oneself as well as the optimal future for humankind.

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** Three times in the first chapter, Catton makes reference to Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977) by William Ophuls, whom I introduced in my March 1 blog post. 

See here for helpful biographical information about Catton. 

"Memento Mori" for the World?

In this year’s first blog post, I wrote some about the ancient idea of memento mori. (If you didn’t see or don’t remember that, click here.) Now, referring to some of my most important posts from 2022, I am wondering whether memento mori can apply to the world, not just individual people. 

Once again, I am linking to significant ideas of Michael Dowd, by whom I have been significantly influenced.* In December of last year, he posted a new YouTube video titled “Sanity 101.” The full version (here) is over 90 minutes long; the “Cliff Notes” version (here) is 30 minutes.

At some point, I encourage you to listen to one or both of those videos, which have the subtitle, “Living Fully in an Age of Decline: Essential Wisdom for Hard Times.”

While still fully affirming the reality of overshoot and the collapse of what he calls TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), his emphasis in this new video is “post doom, no gloom.”

Dowd’s main point is that we humans today should not deny what we find disturbing or frightening but fully accept reality. In his opinion, formed by extensive reading of scientists and informed thinkers, the predicament of overshoot and collapse of the world’s civilization is certainly real.

So, acceptance of reality means making the most of the present rather than holding on to hope of change for the better in the future. Accordingly, he speaks pointedly about hopium, that is, holding on to false hopes that prevents us from accepting reality.

Memento mori for us individuals means that we live as meaningfully and as purposefully as possible now, fully realizing that we will die at some point in the future.

Rightly understood, memento mori is not a morbid dwelling on our approaching death, whenever that may be, but a healthy emphasis on living life to the fullest today, and every day.

Perhaps this significant idea needs to be applied more broadly: since the collapse of the world as we know it is inevitable, we need to make our existence in this world now as meaningful as possible, living in this post-doom time with no gloom.

This is a fruitful way for us older people to think. But what about our grandchildren (a disturbing matter I plan to write about next month)?

In spite of all I have learned from Michael Dowd, I have a couple of lingering questions/criticisms of his central emphases.

1) He repeatedly talks about the collapse of more than 100 civilizations in the past, emphasizing that the current industrial civilization’s collapse will be similar to those. But it seems to me that his point would be made more strongly if he talked more clearly about the uniqueness of TEOTWAWKI.

None of the collapsed civilizations of the past were as global in scope as the impending collapse, which could—and likely will!—mean a “mass extinction.” According to National Geographic, there have been five mass extinctions in the history of the earth; the sixth has already started.**

The Nat Geo article says the sixth mass extinction may occur as soon as 2260; Dowd says it is most likely to occur in this century. so why, I wonder, does he repeatedly emphasize the collapse of human civilizations in the past 4,000 years, none of which, obviously, led to mass human extinction.

2) Dowd repetitively emphasizes the futile nature of all human efforts to prevent collapse. All current attempts to stem global warming are based on the belief—or at least the hope—that that activity can and will result in reversal of collapse. Dowd refers to all such efforts as hopium.

But even if all human actions are insufficient to deter mass extinction, which they probably are, surely that doesn’t mean that concerted efforts would not postpone that fate to some extent, and maybe even significantly.

Concern for my grandchildren and now for my two great-grandchildren, makes me want to do more to help push as far into the future as possible what might well be sure mass extinction.

If we take seriously memento mori as individuals, we still do what we can to postpone our death, which is sure to occur at some point.

Similarly, if we apply the concept of memento mori to the present world civilization, shouldn’t we wholeheartedly do all we can to delay the coming collapse/extinction for as long as possible?

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* Last year I mentioned Dowd in four blog posts; the first times are here and here.

**The last mass extinction occurred about 66 million years ago, long before the first civilization of homo sapiens, which began less than 4,500 years ago. 

Do I Stay Christian? Pondering McLaren’s New Book

In an appendix to the book that I wrote telling the story of my life up to my 82^nd birthday, I have several “top ten” lists, including one of “theologians and/or philosophers.” Although he is neither a professional theologian nor philosopher, the youngest person on that list is Brian McLaren (b. 1956).

Currently I am slightly revising and updating that book I wrote for my children and grandchildren, and I have just added McLaren’s 2022 book, Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned, to my list of top ten 21^st century non-fiction books. 

No, I am personally not considering giving up being a Christian. Neither do I include myself among the doubters or disillusioned, although I am often disappointed with how so many Christians have lived and are living.

But certainly there are many thoughtful people now who have already left Christianity or are seriously thinking of doing so. With my lifelong interest in Christian apologetics, I was most interested in seeing what McLaren would say to those who have left, or would like to leave, the Christian faith.

The book has three parts: the first is “No,” ten chapters giving reasons for not staying Christian. Part II is “Yes,” ten chapters giving reasons for staying, and Part III is “How.”

There is much of considerable value in McLaren’s book, but I am not attempting to review his book here or to summarize the wealth of ideas worth thoughtful consideration. (I have made a page containing some of McLaren’s important statements, which you can access here.)

The ninth reason McLaren gives for not staying a Christian is “Because of Christianity’s Great Wall of Bias (Constricted Intellectualism.”) Although he has brief paragraphs about seven other biases, in that ninth chapter he mainly considers the “confirmation bias,” and it is worth pondering.

“Confirmation bias names our brain’s tendency to reject anything that doesn’t fit in with our current understanding, paradigm, belief system, or worldview,” writes McLaren (p. 67). This bias, he contends, has skewed the thinking of many Christians about nuclear war and ecological crises.

Perhaps this is the reason Mommsen failed to deal with ecological overshoot, which I wrote about in my July 5 blog post.

Mommsen, the able editor of Plough Quarterly, certainly is not “guilty” of the errors of the conservative evangelicals who believe the (eminent) “second coming” of Jesus will take care of the problem of ecological overshoot (although they haven’t used that term).

As far as I know, Mommsen has not written about the “rapture,” which has been emphasized in much conservative Christian eschatology. nor does he write explicitly about the second coming of Jesus. ⁺⁺

But perhaps Mommsen’s belief in rather traditional ideas about God acting in “supernatural” ways to consummate the world as we know it, maybe even in the lifetime of people now living, is the reason he overlooks overshoot—and the same is likely true for most traditional Christian believers.

On the other hand, perhaps it is Mommsen’s belief in the Kingdom of God (KoG) that blocks his acknowledgment of overshoot.

Emphasis on the KoG has been a central emphasis of the Bruderhof from the beginning, although he/they have not committed the “liberal” error of thinking that if we just work hard enough, we humans can “bring in” the Kingdom of God on earth.

Perhaps “confirmation bias” of Mommsen and others, traditional and liberal, has prevented serious consideration of the collapse of the world as we know it.

That collapse is projected by scientists based on their investigation of facts rather than theological (or ideological) beliefs that would skew their thinking because of confirmation bias.

(Of course, scientists are also sometimes biased, but generally they are far quicker than religious believers to recognize and correct those biases.)

In his next-to-last chapter, McLaren begins a prayer for overcoming the confirmation bias with these words: “Source of all truth, help me to hunger for truth, even if it upsets, modifies, or overturns what I already think is true” (p. 210).

This is my prayer also.

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⁺⁺ My March 25, 2015, blog post was titled “Do You Believe in the Rapture?” and it has had more than 3,000 pageviews (!) as well as far more comments than usual.

** Some of you may be interested in watching (some or all of) a YouTube interview of McLaren and his book I have introduced above: Do I Stay Christian with Brian McLaren: One Question with Pastor Adam.

 

Overlooking Overshoot

As most of you know, I am a big admirer of the Christian group known as the Bruderhof and am a regular reader of Plough Quarterly, their excellent publication. However, I have both appreciation for and some serious questions about their Summer 2022 issue titled Hope in Apocalypse. 

“Hoping for Doomsday”

Peter Mommsen, the great-grandson of Eberhard Arnold (1913~82) who was the founder of the Bruderhof, is the able editor of Plough Quarterly. I have often been helpfully informed and challenged by his perceptive editorials.

I was dissatisfied, though, with his six-page editorial in the current issue of Plough. It is titled, “Hoping for Doomsday: The times are troubled. That’s why we need the promise of apocalypse.”

While Mommsen writes some about the possible disastrous effects of climate change, he seems to think that it is less a threat to humanity than the potential destruction of earthly life as we know it because of nuclear war.

After briefly looking at those two apocalyptic threats, he writes,

one day homo sapiens will go extinct, with or without our help through carbon emissions or nuclear war, and the game will be over. At least that is what current scientific models foretell. Perhaps it will be at the next round of global glaciation, predicted in a hundred millennia or so . . . .

What he goes on to say in that paragraph is what I learned in the 1960s. But, and this was my dissatisfaction, he makes no reference to what some scientists (and others) have said in recent years about ecological overshoot.

In passing, Mommsen does mention Don’t Look Up! the movie I wrote about in my Jan. 25 blog post (see here), but he makes no reference at all to the frightening phenomenon of overshoot.

Ecological overshoot occurs when human demands exceed what the earth’s biosphere can provide through its capacity for renewal. According to some ecological scientists, the industrial world is nearing the overshoot apex and will soon begin to collapse, an irreversible phenomenon.

For a good introduction to this matter, see Michael Dowd’s video Overshoot in a Nutshell: Understanding Our Predicament and also YouTube talks (such as this one) by William Rees, professor emeritus of British Columbia University. These articulate what some scientistic models are now foretelling.

(Rees, b. 1943, is primarily known for creating the ecological footprint concept. Wikipedia, here, gives a good, brief introduction to Rees and his academic work.)

Mommsen’s failure to make any reference to the concept of ecological overshoot and the work of thinkers such as Dowd and Rees is a major deficiency in his editorial.

Why is Overshoot Overlooked?

A main reason is doubtlessly unawareness. In spite of valiant efforts by Dowd, Rees, and others to warn us of the perils of overshoot/collapse, there is little public awareness of that real and present danger.

My “Google alert” for overshoot in recent weeks has yielded surprisingly few “hits.” There are some pertinent articles found at EcoWatch (such as here), but these important essays are read by relatively few people.

Most, I’m afraid, don’t know (and don’t care?) about what is likely to happen before the end of the present century.

But some are aware (to varying degrees) of overshoot but find the idea unbearable. Some who do know at least something about overshoot just don’t want to think about it, because it is too upsetting to consider.

Perhaps a major reason overshoot is overlooked by many, especially serious Christian thinkers such as Mommsen, is that the possibility of such is unthinkable.

Earlier this year, Brian McLaren’s new book Do I Stay Christian? was published. While he does not say a lot about overshoot, he does mention the concept and makes a passing reference to Michael Dowd.

The seventh chapter of McLaren’s scintillating book deals with “Christianity’s great wall of bias, which includes the “tendency to reject anything that doesn’t fit in with our current understanding, paradigm, belief system, or worldview” (p. 67).

Perhaps this helps us understand Mommsen’s lack of serious attention to overshoot.

Much more needs to be said about this—and I plan to write at least a little more about it soon.

“Listen to the Scientists”: Considering the Limits to Growth

This post is directly related to the one I made on January 25. It is about the possibility of an “ecological Armageddon” (words not used but implied in the 1/25 post), which might occur even before the end of this century. 

Becoming Aware

I have been much concerned about this issue for 50 years, and more. By 1970 or ’71, I had read Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb (1968), or had read enough of and about that book, to be greatly concerned about what was often called “the population explosion.”

Then in 1972, the Club of Rome published another highly significant book. It was titled The Limits to Growth, authored by Donella H. Meadows et al. The New York Times (here) summarized the central thesis of that book succinctly:

Either civilization or growth must end, and soon. Continued population and industrial growth will exhaust the world’s minerals and bathe the biosphere in fatal levels of pollution. As the authors summarize, “if the present growth trends continue unchanged, the limits of growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next hundred years.”

It was, however, many years later before I began to be aware of the serious problem of global warming—and I recently learned that the term “global warming” didn’t even appear in a scientific article until 1975.

In fact, as late as that year, some were still talking of climate change making the world too cold—which is why the term global warming is now much to be preferred to climate change.

In recent years, though, I have been very aware of the danger of global warming, and my 1/5/20 blog post was titled “Climate Crisis: The Challenge of the Decade.”

However, I have only recently become aware of the fact that global warming itself is not the primary ecological problem confronting humankind. Rather, global warming is the result of a network of problems all related to unrestrained growth, which is also called overshoot.

EarthOvershoot.org explains, “Overshoot is when a species consumes resources and generates wastes faster than the ecosystem in which it inhabits can replace those resources or absorb those wastes.”

Further, “Climate change is just one symptom (and a pretty big one) of a much larger ‘disease’ called overshoot. Overshoot is the all encompassing threat to sustainability posed by too many people consuming too many resources and emitting to much waste.”

The concept of overshoot clearly acknowledges the limits to growth—of the world’s population, of the consumption of nonrenewable resources, and of the global standard of living (and the stock market).

Unquestionably, we all need to be deeply aware of this perilous predicament.

Becoming Alarmed

“Listen to the scientists” has been widely used over the past couple of years in the attempt to get people to fight the covid-19 epidemic by getting vaccinations and wearing masks. That is good advice.

But I am afraid that, as William Rees forcefully emphasizes, politicians as well as the general public don’t listen to scientists well when it comes to considering overshoot / the limits to growth.

Rees (b. 1943), who has a Ph.D. in population ecology, was a professor at University of British Columbia from 1969 to 2012. During that time, he coined the phrase/concept ecological footprint (in 1992).

Since his retirement, he has continued to be an active advocate of protecting human life on this planet. Several recent talks are available on YouTube, and in one of them, he wisely emphasizes the great need for politicians and the general public to listen to the scientists.

In February 2020, Rees gave a talk entitled “Will Modern Civilization Be the Death of Us” (see here). I encourage you to watch that video as well as other more recent talks you can easily find under his name on YouTube.

Given the alarming facts that Rees graphically presents, I wonder when, oh when, are we the general public and political leaders going to listen to the scientists about the limits to growth?

And when, oh when, will we (humankind) begin to take more decisive and meaningful steps to limit growth?

Facing the Grief of Looking Up, Looking Forward

Don’t Look Up has been a much-viewed, much-discussed movie this month. There has been a wide variety of comments about that Netflix film both by “professional” movie critics and by amateur reviewers (like me). Unlike some of the professionals, though, I think it was quite significant. 

The Grief of Looking Up

Don’t Look Up is ostensibly about a huge (the size of Mount Everest) comet which is on track to crash into the earth about six months after when it was discovered by a grad student at Michigan State University. She and her professor seek to warn the world of the coming disaster.

Their message of impending doom, however, is not well received. The media is more concerned with the latest news about celebrities and the President is more concerned with the upcoming election and the breaking news about her own personal scandal.

Additionally, wealthy capitalists seek to take advantage of the looming catastrophe for economic gains. And then soon numerous science (comet) deniers emerge, rallying under the cry “Don’t look up!”

Even though that is what the film is about on the surface, it was produced as a satire about the current crisis of climate change (better labeled as global warming).

A large segment of society—politicians, capitalists, media personalities, and many of the general public—is like the science deniers in the film, but their rallying cry for maintaining the unsustainable present is “Don’t look forward.”

The Grief of Looking Forward

In the past couple of weeks, I have learned of, and been challenged/shaken by, Michael Dowd. A constantly evolving thinker, Dowd (b. 1958) is an American progressive Christian minister (ordained by the UCC) and an “eco-theologian.”

His recent work has been focused on the worldwide ecological crisis, which he is certain will lead to TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).

My initial introduction to Dowd’s alarming thought was through two thirty-minute YouTube videos produced in November 2021: “Collapse in a Nutshell” and “Overshoot in a Nutshell,” both having the subtitle “Understanding Our Predicament.”

In addition, I watched (and recommend) Dowd’s 25-minute video, “Serenity Prayer for the 21^st Century: Pro-Future Love-in-Action,” produced in June 2021. According to Dowd, “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change” includes, or is primarily, TEOTWAWKI.

I have many questions and reservations about Dowd’s disturbing message, but what he presents is certainly something that all of us critical thinkers must take seriously—and his suggestions on how to deal with the grief of looking forward may well be very valuable for us all.

So, What Should We Do?

Whether Dowd’s dire analysis is completely correct or not, of greatest importance is to realize as fully as possible that the ecological crisis is much more critical than most people, probably including most of us, have acknowledged.

The result of unchecked global warming is not just one problem among many equally serious social problems. Indeed, it is not a problem that will likely be solved; rather it is a predicament from which there is likely no escape.

If humankind, probably in this century, will likely experience a collapse of civilization as we know it, what should we do? Dowd’s advice is to work through the stages of grief, accepting what is most probably inevitable, but still living each day with joy and thankfulness in spite of the looming doom.

He emphasizes the need for “adaptive inattention” to the crisis, seeking the well-being of people now. We can seek to be agents of calm amidst the coming chaos.

While the film Don’t Look Up doesn’t deal directly with the grief of looking forward, the final prayer at the “last supper” of several of the characters in the movie is a good one for us to pray at this critical time:

Dearest Father and Almighty Creator, we ask for your grace tonight, despite our pride; your forgiveness, despite our doubt. Most of all Lord, we ask for your love to soothe us through these dark times. May we face whatever is to come in your divine will, with courage and open hearts of acceptance. Amen.

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** Even though he is an ordained Christian minister, Dowd says nothing about what Christians have affirmed for 2,000 years: the coming of a “world without end.” I am planning for my first blog post in February to be about that.