Solutions are social and will arise from understanding ourselves

-      by Robert McLean.

Solutions to climate change are inherently social and they will only arise when we better understand ourselves.

The late Spanish philosopher and author, José Ortega y Gasset, never mentioned climate change (he died in 1955), but he knew much about the human condition.

 



José Ortega y Gasset died in 1955, but he
knew something about climate change
or at least those responsible for it.

Writing in “Man and Crisis”, which first appeared in English in about 1958 and of course had no connection to or was influenced by our response to climate change, but it does help us understand the human condition and so why it is that something unequivocally threatening to humanity seems to escape us.

Writing in chapter six, entitled “Change and Crisis” he says:

“With some shame we recognize that the greater part of things we say we do not understand very well; and if we ask ourselves why we say them, why we think them, we will observe that we say them only for this reason: that we have heard “We have never tried to rethink them on our own account, or to find the evidence for them. On the contrary, the reason we do not think about them is not that they are evident to us, but the other people say them.

“We have abandoned ourselves to other people, and we live in a state of otherness, constantly deceiving and defrauding ourselves.

“We are afraid of our own life, which is synonymous with solitude, and we flee from it, from its genuine reality, from the effort it demands; we hide ourselves behind the selves of other people, we disguise ourselves behind society.”

That, obviously is not the solution to climate change or the mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions, but it is a thoughtful piece that is about helping us understand who and what we are and within that understanding, somewhere, hides the social solutions to the unfolding difficulties climate change will bring to societies around the world specifically, and humanity generally.

Yes, many people, from our decision makers down, listen without challenge to others who are ill-informed about the dynamics of climate change for a host of disparate reasons, among them that intellectual laziness seems to leave them open to the opinion and reason of others.

Also, values and morals become imbedded because of family and wider social environments and so to challenge them intellectually would be personally disruptive, forcing the individual to actually think for themselves, decide what is good and bad, right and wrong, evil or not and so shape their lives accordingly.