Learning to Die
In his essay Learning to Die in the Anthropocene[1], US writer Roy Scranton speaks plainly. During his service in the army, which for him in Iraq was associated with the daily awareness that he could be killed at any time, he learned how to deal with bad news. As for our future, he is deeply pessimistic.
For Scranton, it’s not just about rising seas, but also about secondary effects of climate change and the problems associated with human overpopulation and our dependence on fossil fuels. What can we do today to mitigate or even stop the ever-increasing damage, Scranton asks.
In his later essay, Raising a Daughter in a Doomed World,[2] he writes that the point is to make as many people as possible aware that our capitalist-based civilization is doomed, because only that will motivate us to find ways to transform our destructive civilization into something else. He writes, “The more we try to hold on to an old way of doing things, the more unprepared we will be for the change that is coming.”
For Scranton, our only remaining defensible free choice is to work for the continuation of all humanity and all living things, even if we are very likely to fail in doing so. It is precisely this inconsistency in his call for a struggle that we are ultimately certain to lose that accounts for the echo that Scranton has provoked.
Yes, he is concerned with a salutary shock. Indeed, with six degrees of global warming, we are triggering an uncontrollable warming process that will completely wipe out our biosphere and human life as we know it.
But don’t we still have options for action? We could still switch to geothermal, wind, solar and, if need be, nuclear power. We could personally eat much less meat and avoid fossil fuels. We would need plants that tolerate drought and heat better. We would need to restore forest and scrubland areas and greatly expand protected areas in forests and the ocean.
Some transhumanists go even further. They want us to voluntarily change ourselves to cause less global warming. Genetically engineered meat allergies and reduced body size, as well as pharmaceutically enhanced empathy and altruism, are supposed to do the trick.[3]
But this is not the disillusioned perspective Scranton gives us: The climate catastrophe can no longer be stopped. Our civilization will inevitably die, even though our species might continue to live in a greatly reduced biological, cultural, or institutional form.
Scranton attempts to answer the question of how we can deal with the inevitable decline of civilization, impending migrations of peoples, and resource scarcity without tearing ourselves apart before our time.
His simple answer is that we and our culture are not only mortal, but already dead. Only this anticipatory awareness of death, cultivated as it were on a daily basis, allows us to be prepared and alert enough to prevent the worst from happening for as long as possible, to prolong our remaining lifespan and yet also to enjoy it.
[1] Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of Civilization, 2015
[2] In: New York Times, 18 of Juli 2018
[3] Liao, M. S., Sandberg, A. & Roache, R. (2012). „Human Engineering and Climate Change“. In: Ethics, Policy & Environment, 15 (2), S. 206–221
First published on German on Medizindoc.
