by Lisa Hymas, reposted from Grist
We had lots of questions for acclaimed biologist and conservationist Edward O. Wilson when he dropped by the Grist office recently while touring to promote his latest book, The Social Conquest of Earth.
But Wilson directed the toughest question of the day back at us: Why aren’t you young people out protesting the mess that’s being made of the planet?
As we squirmed in our seats, Wilson, 82, continued: “Why are you not repeating what was done in the ‘60s? Why aren’t you in the streets? And what in the world has happened to the green movement that used to be on our minds and accompanied by outrage and high hopes? What went wrong?”
We didn’t have great answers, so we’re going to turn the questioning on you, dear readers: Why aren’t you out in the streets? And if you are, where, why, and who else is out there with you? Should more of us be staging ’60s-style protests? Can online activism or lobbying in the halls of power make just as much of a difference, or more? Tell us what you think in comments below.
Now back to the questions we asked Wilson about his life’s work and his new book. Over the course of his long career as a professor at Harvard, he’s conducted pioneering research on ants, written seminal books on sociobiology and biogeography, published ant-centric fiction in The New Yorker, and led major efforts to preserve global biodiversity. His new book traces human morality, religion, and arts to their biological roots, and turns traditional Darwinism on its head, arguing that social groups and tribes are the primary drivers of natural selection.
Q. The title of your book has the word social in it. Social has become a buzzword for online networking, this new way of forming groups. Are you on Facebook? Are you using the internet to look at the way groups behave?
A. No, others are doing that.
We are entering a new world, but we’re entering it as Paleolithic brains. Here’s my formula for Earth’s civilization: We are a Star Wars civilization. We have Stone Age emotions. We have medieval institutions — most notably, the churches. And we have god-like technology. And this god-like technology is dragging us forward in ways that are totally unpredictable.
We have not gotten beyond the powerful propensity to believe our group is superior to other comparable groups. However, we are draining away the instinctual energy from nationalism — that’s a big help. I think we’re seeing the beginning of the draining away from the dreadfully dissolutive, oppressive institutions of organized religion. Seeing what’s happening is part of the reason for the Tea Party and the populist revolt now that has kidnapped the Republican Party. There’s a resentment about the old bonds and the old groups dissolving and new groups being formed.
Q. Have you seen concern about biodiversity decline over the last decade? A lot of energy seems to be going toward climate change and not as much toward biodiversity.
A. Isn’t that astonishing? We’re destroying the rest of life in one century. We’ll be down to half the species of plants and animals by the end of the century if we keep at this rate. Very few people are paying any attention, just dedicated groups. The only way we’ve been able to get people’s attention is through big issues like pollution and climate change. They can’t deny pollution because you can give them the taste test. You can say, “We just took this out of the Charles River. Here, drink.” But they can deny climate change. We’re in a state of cosmic or global denial.
However, there are changes. The general direction is going up the right way. The only question is how much damage are we going to do to biodiversity before we catch on. Right now I’m going to national parks around the world — I’ve been to Ecuador, Mozambique, the southwest Pacific, all of Western Europe. I’m going to write a series on national parks — what the basic philosophy of national parks and reserves should be, and how it relates to our own self-image and our own hopes for immortality as a species.
We have to do everything we possibly can. I like to tell this the way a former Southern Baptist would tell it, in the original accent. Then you’ll see what I’m trying to say when I say we have to use every weapon at our disposal, all the time, everything from science to activism to political influence, etc. So this is Billy Sunday, a pioneer in Southern evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the ’20s: “I hate sin. I hate sin so much I’m going to fight it till my arms won’t move no more. When my arms don’t move no more, I’m gonna bite it. And when all my teeth are gone, I’m gonna gum it.” Now you get the picture. We all have to do that. When there’s nothing else at hand, gum it.
Q. Some of our readers sent questions for you via Twitter. One asked, What three lessons should we learn from ants?
A. None. We learned a lot of science from ants, but, for heaven’s sake, let’s not do what ants do. Ants are totally subservient to instinctual rules. Males are produced only a short time each year, and they have only one function, which I won’t go into, and when they perform that, then they die. Also, ants are the most war-like of all known creatures. They are at perfect harmony in a colony, but they’re always at war with any colony they encounter. And furthermore, a lot of species kill and eat their injured. So let’s not go the ant way.
Q. Here’s another: What findings among all of your research still surprise and amaze you?
A. Well, after I found them, they don’t amaze me.
Q. One of our readers wants to know what your favorite ant is.
A. Aren’t some of the readers worrying about biodiversity?
Q. We got four or five variations of this question: Are we doomed?
A. I’d like to say no. I’m surely not going to be stupid enough to say yes. What I will say is: no, I hope.
Here’s my favorite little maxim. It’s from Abba Eban, foreign minister of Israel during the 1967 war, one more dumb, senseless war in the Middle East: “When all else fails, men turn to reason.”
I think maybe we are really and truly ready to start trying to solve problems for once in human history by using our forebrain.
Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+. This piece was originally published at Grist and was re-printed with permission.
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I spent several years in the streets in the 80s-90s….. intentional poverty, jumping fences at nuke bomb facilities, boycotting fossil fuel transport for a year…..
but I’m not now.
OK, Ok, you might say that’s because I’m in my tepid middle age with wife kid and mortgage. But you would be wrong.
I’m not in the street now because I do not see global warming as the problem. If that were the problem, the market and technology could theoretically fix it. Instead, bad as it is, I see global warming as one manifestation of the real problem, and that problem is nonstop economic growth. We are addicted to it. Anyone who peeps into the well sees in the murky depths that capitalism is fatally flawed because it requires nonstop economic growth. The implications are so profoundly enormous that, IMO, there will never be enough comfortable individuals to make the commitment to call for abandoning capitalism and find some sustainable alternative. The gut power the corp is mightier than the intellectual and moral discipline of us collective individuals.
It’s called evolution. We are not hard wired with the ability to dramatically turn our tribal way of life on our head. All we are wired for is a certain degree of adaptability when change happens anyway.
So in sum, in my view, the might of the corporations can only be broken one way, and that way is…. thru natural consequences. On the bright side, we are also hard wired to cast our most important experiences into stories, myths, art, religious interpretations…. and so if I had a time machine what I would most like to do is to return 5000 years in the future to listen to the stories they tell about our time today. Hopefully the story of Noah and similar tales become one with caretaking, management, and sustainability. If not…. well…. natural consequences.
Lessons are repeated until learned.
“so if I had a time machine what I would most like to do is to return 5000 years in the future to listen to the stories they tell about our time today.”
With all due respect for your important protest work on the issues you mentioned, I think you seriously underestimate the climate problem. On our current course, I would not want to see what human life on Earth will look like in 50 years, let alone 5,000(!). We are really close to the edge now. It’s a full planetary emergency, and I wish we knew what to do to help fix it. For starters, I think E.O. Wilson is right that we should be protesting in the streets.
TS
“The gut power the corp is mightier than the intellectual and moral discipline of us collective individuals.”
If we believe this, they have already won.
Nothing is mightier than the moral courage of the human being, because our moral actions ultimately proceed from love. Nothing is more powerful than love. Nothing.
Here is a quote from R. Buckminster Fuller:
“Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socioeconomic ploys — legally enacted game-playing — agreed upon only between overwhelmingly powerful socioeconomic individuals and by them imposed upon human society and its all unwitting members.”
It was true when he said it, and it’s still true today.
Two questions.
(A) How much knowledge do either of you have about what I might be doing instead of street protesting?
(B) Do either of you think it is ironic to chastise me for a failure of civil disobedience when you yourselves have not recently been behind bars?
And I bet all of thee…. read your Gandhi and MLK first…. and do not try to blow up bridges in Cleveland (check todays headlines)
In 5000 years humanity will have been extinct for about 4900 years, give or take. The reason that this tragedy is occurring is because the global human system has been taken over by the worst amongst mankind- the greediest, the most violent, the most unscrupulous, those most antipathetic to others, etc. These creatures have fashioned an economic system, capitalism, that furthers their machinations, and turns all that is living into the dead stuff of money. From time to time in history various groups of humans attempted to fashion societies that were sustainable, lived lightly on the planet, and that saw living systems as spiritual goods, rather than raw material for profit-making. All these, the various utopias, socialist experiments, indigenous societies in the New World etc, were destroyed, one after the other, by the pathological plunderers. They only care for money and power, and have no interest in human life after their own deaths. Their final, Pyrrhic, victory, is at hand.
By 2100 under B.A.U. consumer-oriented civilization will certainly be “extinct”, but the species itself? Not even a single breeding pair of bug eating people in a deep cave? Show us the peer reviewed research that seriously contemplates that possibility please.
I am bypassing the streets and going straight to the halls of power, and to the pages of my local newspapers.
Citizen lobbying is my path. It is just one of the many ways we will need to employ to turn this ship away from the iceberg.
One of the critical mistakes the captain of the Titanic made was reducing speed. We need to go full speed ahead, with full-spectrum approaches.
So, yes, by all means, take to the streets. Throw yourselves on the levers of power until the machine can’t function anymore. As for me, I will be working with our duly elected representatives behind the scenes. Both are ways of generating political will, and both can — and will — work.
I’m working my butt off for Citizens Climate Lobby too…hours a day.
But all of us in Madison agreed we needed a more aggressive ad hoc arm–and accepted Bill McKibben’s request that we start a 350.org chapter.
We have, and it’s starting to gel. It complements our CCL work. We’ve been in the streets and we’ll be there on May 5th for connect the DOTs.
I hope you will all look at 350′s website for a “connect the DOTs event” near you.
There’s a time to get off the computer and out the door–and May 5th is a great place to start.
E.O. Wilson is a national treasure. I was in the streets in the 60′s and 70′s, and he’s right–but not just about the young kids–but about my generation. We screwed this thing up, and we’ve got a responsibility to try to fix it.
I’m luckily moving to Madison on Friday, May 4 (really!), just in time for your 350 event. Where is it and when is it being held? I’ll be there, and I’ll be in the streets, and writing letters and I work in the sustainability field.
I think humanity and our atmosphere is screwed, basically. Karmic harvest of all that capitalism. It’s just too bad we’re taking so many species down with us …
I’m a pessimist who is still living and acting as an optimist.
I am in the streets! Join us, please. History shows the effectiveness of social movements to create change. I’m an Occupier, a member of the People’s Library working group and a climate activist. The halls of power are corrupt, the system is broken–there is not a path to change other than street protest and radical system change. It’s hard and dirty work, but if we want a clean energy future and if we want to stop the growth juggernaught there is no other way.
On May Day of all days we should honor the work done by previous generations–work that got us the 8 hour day, ended child labor, and led to the Clean Air Act–by following in their foot steps to fight the good fight.
“Why are you not repeating what was done in the ‘60s? Why aren’t you in the streets? And what in the world has happened to the green movement that used to be on our minds and accompanied by outrage and high hopes? What went wrong?”
Well, a lot of protests are scheduled for today and we will see how many focus on climate change or the environment. As for what happened to the green movement, I think you might agree that the most significant triumph lately was Bill McKibben’s effort to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, if only temporarily.
Don’t be too surprised that many young people do not understand that “biodiversity decline” is the new speak way of saying extinction event. But what do you expect with the quality of media today. I would argue that the evidence for “god-like technology” is seen in our advanced communications ability but it is being used for lies and propaganda instead of informing and formulating solutions. Meanwhile the electricity that enables the new media to function is still generated using old 19th century technology, hardly god-like.
Lollipop demonstrates exactly why I’m not out in the streets, despite being disgusted and angered by much of what I see going on (especially the brutal wars of conquest overseas). She/he deplores the “broken” system and the “corrupt” halls of power, and I certainly don’t disagree. There is no future in that kind of centralized, statist hierarchy, where power is wielded over all by bureaucrats and politicians. Yet, that is PRECISELY what Lillipop wants MORE of. She/he trumpets laws passed in those very “corrupt” halls of power, and enforced by that same “broken” system, laws replete with loopholes and exceptions crafted in back-rooms to satisfy the demands of the rich and powerful, while screwing individuals and entrepreneurs who don’t have lobbyists or fat campaign donations. When you deal with the devil, you always get burned. No thanks, I am not going to go asking the government to do anything else. They do FAR too much already.
Ummm, I’m an anarchist. No halls of power or law with loopholes for me. But good try.
E.O. Wilson asked: “Why are you not repeating what was done in the ‘60s? Why aren’t you in the streets?”
Let’s be clear about “what was done in the Sixties” — keeping in mind that what is called “the Sixties” actually spilled into the early Seventies.
At the peak of the public protests against the Vietnam War, about half a million people marched in the streets of Washington DC on a single day, for all practical purposes shutting down the nation’s capital. I was one of those marchers.
And that was just one of multiple, comparably large-scale protests — that came years after the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago, where the Chicago police committed mass brutality and mayhem against the young supporters of peace candidate Gene McCarthy.
The response from “the establishment” was National Guard troops, tear gas, and mass arrests (thousands of people were rounded up and held without charge — not to mention without food, water, medical care or sanitary facilities — in the DC football stadium). The response was peaceful student protestors (and innocent bystanders) gunned down by the National Guard at Kent State.
Those protests did help bring the Vietnam War to an end. But only after a decade of war and 50,000 young Americans killed (not to mention about two million Vietnamese civilians).
Circling the White House, as with the Keystone XL protest, is great theater. And it apparently did succeed — in getting Obama to postpone his approval of the full pipeline until after the 2012 election. And hey, that’s not nothing.
But if you want to talk about “protesting in the streets” to actually STOP global warming, then ask yourself what will it take to get half a million people to show up in DC and shut down the government with their own bodies, in the face of tear gas and bludgeons and mass arrests?
I’d like to take a stab at answering E. O. Wilson’s question honestly. I am a 28 year old scientist in the SF Bay Area who has participated in protests before, though not many. It’s difficult to be totally honest about this because it constitutes a major admission of guilt, but I suspect I’m not alone, so here goes.
1. I’m not in the streets because there does not exist a climate-based protest movement. There is not even a more vague “green” protest movement. It comes up as a subordinate issue in other protests, but there is nothing focused on the issue and certainly no clear goals (i.e. “we want a price on carbon”). Now that I take a minute to think about it, the Keystone XL protest is a clear exception. I knew about the protest in DC, though I didn’t know about any in my area. Perhaps that is my own failing.
2. I am not in the streets because my senators and representatives for miles around are in agreement on the importance of the climate issue. I accept the criticism that I could get on the streets to give them support for pushing that agenda.
3. I am not in the streets because a big part of me doubts the efficacy of protest. This is probably the hardest admission to make, because it is the most pessimistic and I don’t think of myself as a pessimistic person. I suspect it is also the most relevant to my generation. It is a significant commitment of resources to protest, certainly to do so regularly. And as someone who doesn’t enjoy protest for its own sake, I want to feel like I’m accomplishing something for the time spent. It’s very hard to feel that way when you try to find examples of protest being the actual tipping point in an issue. Successes certainly exist, but they seem to be largely limited to local issues with immediate consequences for those involved. Combine with points 1 and 2 and it’s hard to escape the skepticism that I would be accomplishing anything. This is related to:
4. I am not in the streets because climate change does not affect my life. Okay, maybe *this* is the toughest admission to make. Don’t doubt that I understand the horrible, effectively permanent consequences that are in store. But the dirty truth is that if those consequences were moved up by 50 years you could almost guarantee a massive response. The choice to me at the moment looks like this: Make a significant sacrifice to protest for what seems like an improbable gain vs. make no sacrifice to stay at home and live my life knowing what is in store. That is an equation for guilty inaction, and that’s where I find myself.
My guilt is tempered to some degree by the fact that I try to make my work relevant to climate change. Of course the same argument about the likelihood of success applies, but it’s a lot easier to overlook that when you get a salary for doing it.
This whole discussion points toward a second question, which I’ll go ahead and voice:
“What would it take to get you in the streets?”
I need to get back to work, but I’ll check in later and see if I can’t give a coherent answer to this question.
Why aren’t people in the street? One word: care. People don’t care.
An Egyptian academic analysing the role of social media in the Egyptian revolution reckoned the revolution succeeded because enough people cared – really cared – and had a way to express it and organize as a large group. I would argue that right now not enough people really care. Why not? Because it does not affect them. It will probably take an environmental catastrophe on a global scale to bring about real change.
I think you’re absolutely right that not enough people care. They also don’t know enough – they don’t know that by the time we have a conspicuous “global environmental catastrophe”, the chance to save human civilization may be gone, forever.
TS
The crazy warm weather up north in March, last April’s tornadoes, the drought we’re having in N. Florida…. how can people not see what’s going on? The freakn’ sea ice is melting in the arctic! Global warming isn’t in the future; it’s here… Many Americans are sleepwalking through their lives, plugged into the mind control of corporate TV and going shopping so they don’t feel as badly that they’re working jobs they don’t like… If they woke up and looked around, and read a little, they’d care. And if the oldsters looked in their grandchildren’s faces and imagined their futures, they’d care.
“how can people not see what’s going on?”
Part of the answer is the notion of “Shifting baselines”Title>
The scale of this thing is phenomenal and real change seems glacial as the melt rate accelerates . . .
One of EO Wilson’s statements is worth some kind of echo chamber:
“We are entering a new world, but we’re re-entering it as Paleolithic brains. Here’s my formula for Earth’s civilization: We are a Star Wars civilization. We have Stone Age emotions. [Steven Pinker's last book might fit here.] We have medieval institutions . . . And we have god-like technology . . . dragging us forward in ways that are totally unpredictable.”
An idea that is further discussed in part by Clay Shirky’s “Cognitive Surplus” in the section “Three Ways to Manage a Revolution,” with his response being with “As Much Chaos As We Can Stand,” concluding that “it has to be with the citizens of the larger society, the only group who can legitimately decide how they want to live, given the new range of possibilities;” which kind of agrees with EO Wilson’s conclusion; I think.
Wilson is such a fine writer and it’s great he finally got published in The New Yorker, as I’d had the fortune to ride down an elevator with him a few years back hearing him express some dejection that they’d rejected everything he’d submit.
And, Occupy Wall Street has started a very important level of awareness.
More than ever the larger society must be engaged to act on the crisis in the most rational way.
And, it seems there’s terrific opportunity for smart money according to a recent McKinsey report.
Three Charts That Illustrate Why Solar Has Hit A True Tipping Point
”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/30/473744/three-charts-that-illustrate-why-solar-has-hit-a-true-tipping-point/
“
PLEASE STOP TALKING THIRD PERSON
The question is why are YOU not in the street? Along those lines, I noticed on Grist someone wondering if E O Wilson has done any civil disobedience lately?
Mr. Wilson is 82, as the article mentioned. It’s not his future that is in terrible jeopardy. If I were 82, though, I would sure as hell be wondering what is wrong with these young folks these days. I guess we just haven’t had enough pain yet to really motivate us. I hope for all our sakes the pain kicks in before too much longer.
went to several protests last autumn. What happened was that many issues people were raising were very specific and others were broad ranging. Being naive to much of the detail, I thought the best place to be was back home, on the www becoming more informed.
Joe said it well in “Hell and High Water.”
“Get informed…get political.” One without the other seems pointless.
I haven’t been in the streets for a while. The last time, I dressed up like a fish for a DOW pesticide protest. It’s been a while.
If the U.S. and the rest of the G8 were democracies, I would think street protests would have a chance. But those days are long gone. We’re dealing with corporate controlled states now. The corporations don’t give a crap about votes, they control the media, they control the politicians and they control the sheep.
No the only way you affect change today is by money. Notice how successful the Koch brothers are at pushing their agenda. But I’m guessing none of us here are billionaires so we can’t follow the Kochs’ strategy and we don’t have the time either.
So I’m thinking the only way to make changes in this world is to affect the bottom line of these corporations that run the world.
The Kochs are pretty insulated from the general consumer but many corporations aren’t. The media is a prime example. They need people to watch, to subscribe, to click. If you can get enough people to stop doing those things, I think you will get some change.
Perhaps the organic food movement is a good example (although it has been corrupted to some extent) People used their money to protest industrial agriculture. 10 to 15 years ago organics were hard to find, now they’re everywhere. Has it changed big Ag, not much, but it certainly gave them a push back they weren’t expecting.
Maybe it’s time for people to really start to think about how they spend their money. Don’t fly, buy local, buy solar panels, buy an electric bike, etc., etc. and convince others that they should too. Get as many corporations out of your life as possible and get the rest to notice.
I guess that was a bit of a rant.
“Maybe it’s time for people to really start to think about how they spend their money.”
Excellent Gandhian idea! During one of the gulf wars I boycotted anything that moved by way of fossil fuel combustion. Everything.
Time to ask people to take the pledge? Just say NO to fossil fuel powered transport!
And I forgot… just say NO to all petro-agribusiness raised meat products. When you walk to the meeting, and eat vegetarian then people in your daily circle will ask “why?” If you don’t do those things, getting together with like minded folks on the weekend for a street party, errrr, I mean PROTEST doesn’t mean much.
At a Critical Mass rally (which is a mob of bicyclists on city streets) during gulf war 2 I asked the crowd at open mic how many had driven to the event with their bike on the car. You wouldn’t believe how many raised their hands. Lifestyle FIRST, protest SECOND.
You’re right… the more you work on your own life … while also working in the larger social arena on these issues … the better you feel, b/c you are DOING SOMETHING and living your values, and you are serving as an example. I gave up my car 18 months ago, and now bike everywhere in this suburban city. Many people have told me it’s inspired them and some are definitely on their bikes more. Hey, it’s something.
Interesting trio of comments, Julie, with which I tend to agree.
This is a very good blog — great resources on the science, politics, extreme weather events, and possible solutions, but it is not too concerned with the existential challenge (on an individual and collective basis) with what climate change is going to do to the art of living. You seem to be well ahead of the curve.
A lot of science blogs, almost all of the so-called skeptical movement, and nearly all mass media want all things green and environmentalist to “die” in the words of the Breakthrough Institute. It’s very hard to protest on the streets when you’re being that thoroughly vilified.
Also, of course, it won’t be covered. The era of accurate mass journalism is long over and it won’t be back.
I minimze my own personal pollution
I vote green when it is an option
Guess the reason I don’t demonstrate is that it seems a waste of effort with the citizenry we have been blessed with, seems they couldn’t care less and no amount of education has been able to shift them
If I did go into the street it would be as part of a green revolution, I’m not that far gone yet
I must demur on EO Wilson’s assumption that the youth don’t protest effectively. It took a multi-generational effort, but we got a delay on the Keystone XL. There were many young people at the protest.
This is not the sixties. Nowadays folks can pull together a massive petition via social networking, and thereby conserve on the fossil fuel it would take to gather at a march in Washington.
My adult children cheer me on when they can’t go themselves, and then I take a bus.
They make other decisions that consciously exert economic pressure, such as more use of bicycles, less consumption of meat, and the like.
And they vote.
Young people are protesting in great numbers all over the place. A big part of the Occupy protests going on have an environmental component. We had a massive protest in London last year which was largely an anti austerity march but there was a big environmental faction present.
And I think the history books will peg the Arab Spring as being indirectly driven by climate change. You can’t call those insignifigant.
We’ve seen a lot of protest already and I suspect it’ll get a lot bigger.
I don’t think protest ever achieve much. on the odd occasion, they might score a success but most of the time they just make people feel like they can “do something” without actually do anything!
I think the problems we have result for the social economic system we have. I would rather direct my energies to the core problem and propose a feasible alternative. To that end, I work with other on designing and implementing a sustainable socio-economic system that balances our needs with the ecosystem and has its roots in science.
Why am I not out on the streets protesting?
Been there – done that!
Now I’m a community college professor in the classroom teaching about ecology, the diversity of life, environmental ethics, etc to everyday citizens seeking to change their lives and their communities. I encourage these students to think for themselves and to dialog about the status quo. Most importantly I help people remember that they are part of a larger community of life; that we are but members of this community and not rulers thereof, and that we are also under the same influences of natural selection as other members in that community.
It isn’t that I don’t think protest is useful – it has its place, but it isn’t the only way to effect change. Righteous anger should be heard and channeled in a way that truly will cause change, and yes young people can do this, but it isn’t just the young, anyone that can speak or write can do the same.
Early on I took as my role models the likes of Rachel Carson and Dr. Wilson – writers truly can change the world and the way we think about it, but numerous educators influenced those visionaries.
The most powerful way you can change the state of things is to be educated – not just protest. Never under-estimate the power of an informed and passionate individual – there are many paths.
Activist, turned teacher, perhaps progressing towards “natural philosopher” ……the phrase that long ago scientists use to be called.