Planetary narratives and local politics – HuffPost

One problem with American society is that many of the successful, intelligent and otherwise kind people are far too busy pursuing success, so that they fail to put their skills in service to political and social transformation. As I see it, this is one of the major blind spots of common sense attitudes of libertarian, liberal and conservative citizens alike. Too many of us remain practically indifferent to the astounding magnitude of political corruption, violence and economic upheaval in America and the world over. Here the actual drivers and machines of political speeches, free markets and promises of progress are dominated by globalizing market trajectories, corporate party interests, and relentless profiteering couched in the language of liberty and the good life.

Meanwhile at home, the life of success, family and profit seems harmless and even well deserved (hard work!). But outside the bubble of nostalgic patriotism and the complex lie of greatness that masks a tremendous disparity between 1st and 3rd world countries and a "secular aristocracy" in America that hordes over 90% of its wealth and resources, a sober look at the international landscape reveals crises that would make even the most mediocre moralist commit to politics and real change.

And yet most of us remain complacent and perpetually default to a benefit-of-the-doubt attitude, which is ultimately nothing more than a form of wishful, even magical thinking - opium of the masses as Marx once put it. What to do? How to come together and act without merely waiting for mass-scale catastrophes and the exposure of unbearable crimes to prompt urgent civic responses and leadership from the ground up?

Brilliant political theorist and ecologist William Connolly illuminates this problem from a global perspective in his new book: Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming. Here's a passage that captures some of his aims and orientation. Notice his use of the phrase 'passive nihilism' which speaks to the concerns just articulated:

"The challenges of today solicit both an embrace of this unruly world and pursuit of new political assemblages to counter its dangers. Today the urgency of time calls for a new pluralist assemblage organized by multiple minorities drawn from different regions, classes, creeds, age cohorts, sexualities, and states. This is so in part because the effects of the Anthropocene often hit the racialized urban poor, indigenous peoples, and low-lying areas hard, while its historical sources emanate from privileged places that must be challenged from inside and outside simultaneously. Militant citizen alliances across regions are needed to challenge the priorities of investment capital, state hegemony, local cronyisms, international organizations, and frontier mentalities. Some adventurers I will consult already record and pursue such countermovements.

What follows is a series of attempts to face the planetary. Not only to face down denialism about climate change but also to define and counter the passive nihilism that readily falls into place aft er people reject denialism. By passive nihilism I mean, roughly, formal acceptance of the fact of rapid climate change accompanied by a residual, nagging sense that the world ought not to be organized so that capitalism is a destructive geologic force. The ought not to be represents the lingering effects of theological and secular doctrines against the idea of culture shaping nature in such a massive way. These doctrines may have been expunged on the refi ned registers of thought, but their remainders persist in ways that make a difference. Passive nihilism folds into other encumbrances already in place when people are laden with pressures to make ends meet, pay a mortgage, send kids to school, pay off debts, struggle with racism and gender in equality, and take care of elderly relatives. Or, similarly, they may eke out a living in the forest and try to figure how to respond when a logging company rumbles into it. Or, on another register, they may teach students who both want to believe in the future they are preparing to enter and worry whether that lure has itself become a fantasy. The sources of passive nihilism are multiple. Under its sway, as we shall see, many refute climate denialism but slide away from stronger action. That is the contemporary dilemma. Few of us surmount it completely. But perhaps it is both necessary and possible to negotiate its balances better" (2017, p. 9).

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