Maybe World Environment Day is Žižek's 'pseudo-activity'?

-       Robert McLean

World Environment Day is well intentioned, but I fear falls foul to what Slavoj Žižek calls “pseudo-activity”.

The Slovenian psychoanalytic philosopher, cultural critic, Hegelian-Marxist, and author has written in “Trouble in Paradise” that we have an urge to be active.

He says that in “pseudo-activity” we have “the urge ‘to be active’ to ‘participate’, to mask the Nothingness that goes on.

“People intervene all the time, ‘do something’, while academics participate in meaningless ‘debates’, and so on, and the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from all this,” he said.

World Environment Day obviously focusses our thinking, but is it just another example of Žižek’s “pseudo-activity”?

Check out what the United Nations says about “WorldEnvironment Day.”

A day when we should all make a decision

What does the June 5 “World Environment Day” mean to Beneath the Wisteria supporters?

Trees are the "lungs or the earth"
 and yet we treat them with
alarming disrespect.

Those of us who gather Beneath the Wisteria on the last Saturday of each month consider our response to climate change, but integral to our discussions are a broader concern about our environment.

Considering that, World Environment Day should be one of the pinnacles of our year or at least a time when we should be thinking about how our various addictions, whatever they might be, are impacting on the world’s eco systems.

The phase “World Environment Day” rolls off one’s lips very easily and so mostly passes without having any lasting impact.

Maybe it is a time when each of us can make a decision to think somewhat more deeply about what it really means and what we can do as individuals to ensure that the environment that was, until recently, ideal for the human species, continues or at least is maintained.

Many things need to be done, but probably the most challenging, and undoubtedly the most confrontational and within that the most disruptive and divisive, is to discuss honestly how we should address our exploding population.

Predictions point to a world of nine billion people by 2050 and with seven billion today the world has already exhausted many of its resources and our environment is truly suffering and so on June 5 it would be appropriate for each of us to think about what role we can play, as individuals, in helping promote a greater understanding of the need for population control.