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Arendt tackles Climate Change By Mathew Pye

“Educa�on is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable." Hannah Arendt “The Crisis in Educa�on” (1954)

The “No Common Sense” series mobilises some great Philosophers to tackle climate change. Each book is writen in dialogue with the strongest minds of the past and in consulta�on with the latest climate science data and analysis.

In this book Hannah Ardent helps us probe the deep reasons why, in the face of such a catastrophe, our responses have been so banal. Her unﬂinching analysis of the human condi�on is matched by a brave and unsen�mental insistence on the power of love and natality.

Thinkers in this series:

1. Arendt Tackles Climate Change (2024) 2. Nietzsche Tackles Climate Change 3. Descartes Tackles Climate Change 4. Popper Tackles Climate Change 5. Paine Tackles Climate Change 6. Rousseau Tackles Climate Change 7. Plato Tackles Climate Change (2022)

(all the books have been writen, I am just looking for a publisher)

Contents Chapter 1 – Introduc�ons Chapter 2 - Thoughtlessness Chapter 3 - Thought Control Chapter 4 - Public Space – Private Space Chapter 5 - Hopelessness Chapter 6 - The Retreat into the Self Chapter 7 - On Bureaucracy Chapter 8 - On Organised Lying Chapter 9 - The Na�on State Chapter 10 - Conclusions

Chapter 1 Introduc�ons

Hannah Arendt This series of books starts with the voice of Hannah Arendt. In a discipline almost en�rely dominated by men, it is wonderful to be able to start this series with a brilliant female voice. Her books are writen with striking vitality and authen�city. Many scholars and cultural commentators have praised her uncompromising and compelling analysis of modern �mes. Yet if we were to try and categorise Arendt’s muscular contribu�ons to philosophy, things get problema�c. She is an author who rather deﬁes classiﬁca�on. So, whilst there are bulging set of reasons to compliment her, the fact is, she is quite tricky to introduce. The New York Times labelled Arendt as “a woman of this century” 1 in 1982. “Indeed, she remains a woman of this 21st as well. Her wri�ng can be as abstract as a Jackson Pollock pain�ng and as concrete and par�cular as the daily poli�cal news.” 2 Photograph of Hannah Arendt in 1933

We could start by thinking about her as poli�cal philosopher. This would recognise the centre of gravity of her interests. However, such a classifica�on is does not fit her so well, because she does not go about her analysis of poli�cal life in a tradi�onal way; and that label would crop out the remarkable range of her thinking. The different chapters of this book will demonstrate the diversity of her analysis of the 20th century. She examined the totalitarian regimes of the early decades and the consumer culture of the later decades, all through the different lenses offered by History, Sociology, Psychology and Literature. In fact, arguably Arendt’s most original contribu�on to Philosophy came in the field of ethics. Her study of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was a major advance in Western thought about the

Peter L. Berger, “A Woman Of This Century”. New York Times, April 25, 1982, Sec�on 7, Page 1

Scot, J.V., “What St. Augus�ne Taught Hannah Arendt about “how to live in the world”: Caritas, Natality and the Banality of Evil.” 2010. Eastern Michigan University.

nature of evil. Her book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem” (1961) was writen from her observa�ons in the war tribunal, it will occupy us in Chapter 2. Arendt lived through the pivotal events of the 20th century, not as a detached analyst, but as a woman who wrestled with everything, with all of her spirit and intelligence. Most famously, she looked unflinchingly at the apocalyp�c regimes of Hitler and Stalin, determined to understand the underlying forces at work. Her analysis in “On the Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951) is carried by a sweeping historical narra�ve that makes it very readable; many have called it a “page turner”. By contrast, Arendt also took into her hands, words of everyday use, such as “thinking”, “ac�on”, “space”, and “love” and wrestled out of them, with similar resolute strength of mind, new concepts. Her book, “The Human Condi�on” (1958) is complex, technical and hard to follow, but again, she makes important advances in mapping out key social and poli�cal ideas. Arendt was a prolific academic at many leading universi�es in the USA, and the scope of her interests drew large and eclec�c audiences to her lectures. She was a brilliant teacher, and like any good teacher, it doesn’t really mater what material they are handling, what maters is that they pull you in to a place of depth. Arendt does that. Whatever page you are on, when Arendt is teaching there is a sense that you are with someone who is uncompromisingly driven to get to the truth. This yearning marks all of her prose. Arendt is in con�nual conversa�on with herself, and with the different voices of the world. Behind all the details of the following chapters, behind all the different angles of her life and insights, there is an overriding hankering for what is real. In fact, Arendt herself has a concept for this. In her very first book, writen in her early 20s, she describes it as “amor mundi”. In English, “a love of the world”. It is a phrase that deserves to stand alone for a moment, before we venture into the wider world of her ideas. An understanding of this concept will help us navigate through the rest of Arendt’s ideas in the following chapters, as it demonstrates what Arendt’s fundamental project was.

“Love and St Augus�ne” (1929)

This recogni�on of amor mundi is important because it is founda�onal for Arendt; not least because she developed the idea in her first significant book, “Love and St Augus�ne” (1929). It was her PhD text, writen under the guidance of the famous psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers. Even though Arendt would go on to make seminal contribu�ons to the 20th century philosophical canon of books, she would con�nually return to this first text. The fact that Arendt devoted her aten�on to Augus�ne (354CE - 430CE), an Early Church Father, was a bit of a prickly choice at �me when the mood music in Philosophy was either playing in the darker tones of Existen�alism, or with the modern vibes of Phenomenology. Furthermore, although love had been examined in the history of Philosophy, most notably by Plato and Schopenhauer, it was not a tradi�onal subject of enquiry. Again, Arendt shows her independence of spirit and mind.

She wrote to Karl Jaspers, “I’ve begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world … Out of gra�tude, I want to call my book on poli�cal theories “Amor Mundi”.

Amor Mundi In the briefest terms, Arendt notes that the concept of love is not simple. Inside a singular word there is a complex constella�on of different cultural points and tradi�ons. Following the lead of Augus�ne (in his “City of God” (426CE), Chapter 14), she maps out of different types of love. But depar�ng from Augus�ne, she brings the reader to her central idea: amor mundi. Her bulging taxonomy of love sets up two major points of contrast. Firstly, she atends to roman�c love, which she defines as “love-as-craving”. In this type of love, the world shrinks away, as the person that we pang for becomes the measure of everything. This type of love reaches out, with vulnerability, towards someone. 3 Secondly, by contrast, Arendt describes how human beings have a deep innate sense of value and beauty (“love-as-memory”). This experience of love pulls inwards. Our longing for happiness can be so profound that it is something that we experience as having its essence in a realm beyond this world. Fundamentally, Arendt’s concern is that love is commonly understood, or orientated, away from the world. In roman�c love, compared to the object of our passion, the world typically shrinks into the background. In a transcendent experience of love, the true value of an ac�on or a person is located in reality that is above this one, so the present world is thereby rendered rather blank in value. For example, Arendt is cri�cal of Augus�ne’s understanding of the word “caritas” (from which we get the words charity and care), because she suspects that when Chris�ans step out of their own egos and act as ‘good neighbours’ (Mathew 22:37-40) their charity is not authen�c. Arendt argues that the heart and mind of the carer is, in a sense, absent; because this world is only a shadow of the next life, and it almost seems as if people exist in order to provide an opportunity to do some good works. So people just become instrumental to a distant good, and love becomes func�onal. Therefore, having iden�fied love as an irresis�ble and vital aspect of the human condi�on 4, Arendt wants to make sure the world is not overlooked or forgoten. Her concept of Amor mundi is the an�dote to such a retreat. She invites us to be fully human through our prac�ce of it. For Arendt it was important to be directly engaged with the world, with all its jagged edges and with our gloves off, so to speak. Arendt argues that being a full human being requires us to be present, ac�ve and open, in all the funk of public life. Arendt agrees with Augus�ne when he wrote, that the ordo mundis (the order of love), “is writen in the hearts of men, which even iniquity does not erase.” Whether it is the craving of roman�c love, 3

An introductory sketch does not allow for an expanse of details. So tucked into the footnotes here, a few extra descrip�ons of love as craving can be added. For Arendt, this craving emerges from a sense of lack, and is marked by a fear of loss, as the object of desire may not always be available or reciprocal. Arendt describes craving love as characterized by forge�ulness, both of the self, because the craving is always reaching outwards towards something else; and also a forge�ulness of the world, because all that maters is the object of desire. 4 Arendt, following Augus�ne, notes that “there is no greater asser�on of something or somebody than to love it, that is, to

say: I will that you be – Amo: Volo ut sis”.

moments of joy or deep compassion, our experience love throws into sharp relief our deepest urges and values with the messy reali�es. Love is powerful, it has the trac�on to pull me towards this laptop in atempt to understand it beter and to ac�vate its potency into the world, and perhaps it had the gravity to pull a reader towards a book like this. But how do we hold onto an inward “order of love” yet manage to take up our place in a world that has so many injus�ces. How can we manage to care, when the gap between what is and what should be, can be so painfully wide? These ques�ons burnt the soul of Augus�ne, who had been infused with a profound sense of divine love and yet lived in a Roman empire that was, in many respects, not at all holy. Rather than recoil from the ver�go, Arendt invites us to sustain it. Rather than retreat into the self or into transcendence, she wants us to be bold enough to plant our feet in the public space with amor mundi, with all the richness of the imperfec�ons, plurality, and complexity that this brings. From her earliest years, Arendt was compelled to confront “the actual problem of how to live in this world”. She commented, “we can only take shelter by showing ourselves, risking showing ourselves. We withdraw ourselves from others through concealment; but only the others, their love, can save us”. Words, words, words. But wait. Is this not all absurdly abstract? Perhaps this book of Philosophy was picked up nervously, precisely because of a lingering fear that it would just be playing around with words and concepts. Perhaps the last few paragraphs have started to fa�gue the abstract muscles in the brain a bit too far? How do defini�ons really help us? What is a book of Philosophy actually ‘doing’? Where is the ac�on taking place? Is not contradictory of Arendt to talk about engaging in the world whilst si�ng behind a desk? Indeed, we can easily imagine Arendt spending hours, bent over words, like a desk lamp, at a dissec�ng table. Moreover, how can such ‘concept spli�ng’ help us with something as material as the climate crisis? Surely, given the urgency of the changes that need to happen in the infrastructure of the world, the last thing we should be doing is just shuffle around the furniture in our heads? Thoughts are phantoms, ac�on is real. Arendt has an empha�c answer. Her wrestling with the concept of love was not undertaken as an aloof librarian, detached from reality and only taking pleasure from pu�ng things in order, and ge�ng certain classifica�ons correct. For Arendt, language is not important in itself. It is important because it actually structures our world. Our ability to put words on things is like a superpower that we have. It gives us a way to stand back from the material reali�es of the present. Our ability to reason and think enables us to create, to be original, to transform things. Or in Arendt’s language, we have a God-like capacity to ini�ate “new beginnings.” She wants to regenerate our thinking so that we can live more fully in the world. We are stuck in a climate crisis because we have not understood the true scope of it, and we have not had been given the space to imagine how beau�fully the world could be regenerated. We are in a rigidity trap, at so many levels. This entrapment is economic and social, poli�cal and psychological, and all these layers can be opened up with new ways of thinking about it all. What is required to break out of these nega�ve feedback loops is a profoundly different way of thinking about the state we are in. Admitedly, thought seems to be so thin, so ghostly. Yet, everything is organised and Copyright © Mathew Pye April 2024

conceived through words – so although our vocabulary and ideas might look like an unlikely star�ng point for social transforma�on, they are in fact profoundly potent. The birth of new systems of thought in our head, lead us into fresh and vital actual worlds to live in. Properly harnessed, Philosophy can take us to an en�rely different vantage point on the world and with amour mundi, transform it. Tinkering with the current system has not, and will not be good enough. We need to think deeper, and act deeper. We need to be radically exploratory. Breaking out of the rigidity trap requires new paradigms of thought and economics. A breakout that requires new defini�ons, new words, and new narra�ves. It will not happen on its own. The taxonomy of love that Arendt offers the reader through Augus�ne, might look like it is just word spli�ng, and maybe just a bit head spli�ng at �mes. But she is onto something. And to finish this introductory chapter, and to bring this all together, we will follow Arendt’s lead. The word “growth” will be put onto the table. It will be picked up and examined, not simply as a mental exercise, but with amor mundi in the background. Growth “Growth”. One word. It is a simple word that sounds posi�ve and natural. “Growth” is the mantra of all economic ac�vity and ambi�ons. It seems self-evidently good. It stands in healthy contrast to many nega�ve words, such as shrink, regress, downturn, reduc�on, loss and fall. Yet, if we crack this word open with genuine openness of mind and heart, then it soon becomes clear that there are profound problems with our simplis�c use of the word when thinking about the economy. Growth is not always good, especially not in a limited space. The growth of a gut line is not ideal for staying inside a pair of trousers. Growth is not good when it is out of control, especially when cells have flipped into cancerous overdrive mode. Simply, growth cannot be put about in public discourse as if it is self-evidently good for an economy. In Hickel’s clear minded book, “Less is More” (2020) he writes, “What is striking about all of this is that people are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to jus�fy the con�nued pursuit of economic growth. Whenever there appears to be a conflict between ecology and growth, economists and poli�cians opt of the later and try ever more crea�ve ways to get reality to conform to it. … And yet, remarkably, none of these people has ever bothered to jus�fy their core premise – the assump�on that we need to keep increasing produc�on, year-on-year, for ever. It is simply taken as an ar�cle of faith. Most people don’t stop to ques�on it, and indeed in some circles to do so is a kind of heresy. But what if the assump�on is wrong? What if high-income countries don’t need growth? What if we can improve human well-being without having to expand the economy at all?” When we think about economic growth, how fruity is our thinking? What kind of society are we trying to grow? Our use of the word “growth” has become so thoughtless and banal. Is it not uterly bizarre just how limited the public discourse is about growth. For such a ubiquitous word, for such a fundamentally organising principle of our en�re civilisa�on, how odd that we don’t really subject it to scru�ny. If we could teach young people in our schools, and pollinate the media with a new understanding of the word “growth”, it could bust us out of the systems rigidity trap that we are ensnared in. We need to “rewild” the concept in our heads, just like we need to rewild the vast tracts of land that have been made so sterile by our destruc�ve commitment to chemicals and monoculture. Copyright © Mathew Pye April 2024

We can all remember a teacher who was able to open up new dimensions to things, either in our percep�on of the world, or in our percep�ons of ourselves. Hannah Arendt has that superpower. When she was wrestling with words like “love” and “ac�on” she was hauling up to the surface wonderful new frameworks to understand the world with. Conclusion Arendt loved the world. And if there is a deﬁning characteris�c of her work, it is marked by her commitment unearthing “new beginnings” with all her intellect and energy. She greatly admired Socrates. He was a man who simply walked the streets of Athens asking diﬃcult ques�ons. In his grounded and civic life, by simply asking open ques�ons, he brought out of people important fresh insights into themselves and the world. Socrates once called himself a midwife of the truth. Arendt shares many of Socrates’ skills and ambi�ons. The public space needs revitalising, the hard ques�ons need asking. Climate change demands that we urgently start asking the right kind of ques�ons. Arendt is a formidable thinker who can certainly help us tackle climate change.

“I personally do not doubt that from the turmoil of being confronted with reality without the help of precedent, that is, of tradi�on and authority, there will ﬁnally arise some new code of conduct.” Arendt, speaking at a symposium, “The Crisis Character of Modern Society” 1966.

A quick biography

Before ge�ng into the details, it is probably helpful to just establish the basic coordinates of her life. Arendt was born into a secular Jewish family, in the town of Linden in 1906 (now a district of Hannover, Germany). She had a progressive educa�on which eventually took her to Marburg University in 1924. Here she met, fell in love with, and had stormy 4-year affair with one of her professors, the genius Mar�n Heidegger (she was 17, he was 35 when it started). A rela�onship made even more controversial by the fact that Heidegger was a supporter of the Nazis. Indeed, by 1933 the Nazi Party had gained full control of Germany, so Arendt, an outspoken cri�c and ac�vist against the regime, fled to Paris; and then, as most of Europe fell to Hitler, onto the safety of New York in 1941. She remained in New York (as a ci�zen from 1950) un�l her death in 1975, aged 69. Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Fotografie, Archiv Barbara Niggl Radloff

She was already a writer of tremendous authority and fame in her own life. Her relevance has never faded. In fact, a quick survey of the major issues that confront modern society today underline just how valuable her body of work remains. Not least, for opening up some vital and fresh dimensions to the climate crisis.

Chapter 2 On the banality of evil

Rethinking our common sense about morality The first book in this series, “No Common Sense” finished with an extended look at the abysmally dark chapter of the twen�eth century that happened under the Nazi regime. Some details of the Third Reich were used to establish, empha�cally, that we do have an agreed set of basic moral boundaries. Immediately a�er the war, trials in Nuremburg, Dachau, Auschwitz, Chelmo, Riga and many other courts, confirmed the judgement of humanity about the atroci�es that were commited. A later Nazi war crime tribunal was held in Jerusalem in 1961. It was the trial of the Nazi desk killer, Adolf Eichmann. Arendt’s sat in observa�on of the trial. Her descrip�on of key courtroom moments captured the harrowing details of grief that were outpoured anew, some 16 years a�er the war had ended. Arendt’s reports for the “The New Yorker” magazine eventually became her book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem” (1961). The material that she wired back to New York was compelling, not simply because of her ar�culate and poignant accounts of the suffering of her fellow Jewish people; something else was at work in the text. What Arendt’s probing mind had iden�fied and started to explore was a disturbing new dimension to humani�es setled understanding of evil. What Arendt opened up was the uncomfortable truth that there was more to understand about evil, beyond the headline judgements about the depravity of the Third Reich. This new dark centre of gravity was discovered in the figure of the man in the dock: Adolf Eichmann. This chapter will hopefully unfold how Arendt’s groundbreaking reflec�ons on the nature of evil also carries with it some important insights into the ethical dimensions of the climate crisis we are faced with today. Back in 1961, her reports on the trail were not without controversy. By bringing Arendt’s

study of Eichmann back into play with the climate crisis there will likely be two reasons to find things uncomfortable. The first discomfort with Arendt’s work was sharply felt back in 1961, with the original context of her book. It is normal to recoil from any no�on that there is anything more to say about good and evil when the boundary lines were so clearly illustrated by the Nazis. It is normal to flinch if we are invited to look further than these crimes, to do any more thinking about our moral map. What more could be said? What else could be added? Indeed, does it not diminish raw horror of the Third Reich if we try to add any further commentary? Secondly, an extended use of the Nazi war trials seems a long distance away from anything to do with climate change. What do concentra�on camps have to do with levels of CO2 in the atmosphere? What do SS vehicles have to do with solar panels? Indeed, it might seem inappropriate to put these two worlds side by side. The following text will hopefully jus�fy this juxtaposi�on, whilst recognising from the outset, the unique terror of the holocaust. The only detail to insist on at this introductory point in the chapter is that, without undermining the scale of the suffering that Hitler brought upon millions of people, the scale of the climate crisis must not be underes�mated. If we only consider the climate crisis to be concerned with more floods or the fate of the polar bear, then such a juxtaposi�on would indeed seem uterly crass. If we allow Arendt to interrogate our world view, there is much to be gained. Indeed, Arendt’s contribu�on to our awareness of the climate crisis is par�cularly welcome because the main moral map of the crisis is so well known. The narra�ve lines about different climate injus�ces have, quite rightly, been well trodden. What Arendt gi�s us is her unusual ability to flip the readers expecta�ons and say something refreshingly new. And so, to Jerusalem.

Eichmann in Jerusalem At the Nuremberg Trials, the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss had iden�fied Eichmann as a key part of the opera�on that had exterminated around 3 million lives 5. However, under a false iden�ty, Eichmann had fled to Argen�na. In 1960, the Israeli Mossad agents eventually caught up with him, just outside Buenos Aires, bundled him into the boot of a car, and smuggled him onto a plane to Jerusalem. As the trial opened on April 11th 1961, observers in the courtroom could see one of the major cogs of the Nazi machinery now finally sat in the dock. The trial was screened on US and Israeli television. In the courtroom, it was observed by a philosopher, Hannah Arendt. Eichmann had been responsible for the transporta�on of millions of Jews to their deaths, but there was “no satanic greatness” on display behind the glass. He was an extremely mundane bloke, full of a cold (in the first days of the trail), and full of clichés. In a disturbing way, Eichmann appeared as trivial and shallow. His recollec�on of the events was very clumsy and his explana�ons were full of contradic�ons. He was o�en vulgar, and it became clear through ques�oning that he simply could not understand a point of view other than his own. The Israeli court psychiatrist who examined Eichmann found him a, “completely normal man, more normal, at any rate, than I am a�er examining him” 6. During the trial, Arendt wrote some sketchy

5 In his aﬃdavit he stated 2,5 million had been gassed or burnt and a further 500,000 had died through starva�on or

disease. 6 Eichmann in Jerusalem, intro xv.Penguin,

thoughts to her philosophical friend Karl Jaspers, “Eichmann is actually stupid…, but then somehow, he is not”, and noted that he showed a kind of “brainlessness”7. Following the trial, she recapitulates all the mind-numbing suffering of the holocaust, in her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, and at the same �me, Arendt vividly captures Eichmann in all of his banality. This horrendous parallel between the mass murder of millions and the superficiality of a bureaucrat in the SS regime who was proud of his efficient work is one that is uterly jarring. How could any human being sign off on those train �metable sheets, knowing the human content and des�na�on of that railway traffic? Where was Eichmann’s inner moral voice? Where was the deskkiller’s conversa�on with himself? Arendt later explained her work by using Richard III as a contrast. In Shakespeare’s play, the opening monologue finds the protagonist in a tormented inner conversa�on with himself. “Now is the winter of our discontent…” and then, as Richard no�ces the appearance of his rival brother, his speech abruptly turns, “Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes”8. Whilst King Richard could not be held up as a good character, he is at least in a dialogue with himself about his iden�ty, his plans and his mo�va�ons. Eichmann had no such second voice in his head. Arendt notes, “… the only specific characteris�c one could detect in his past as well as in his behaviour during the trial and the preceding police examina�on was something en�rely nega�ve: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authen�c inability to think”. This ‘thinking’ for Arendt was not the everyday, rou�ne thinking that we all do. This ‘thinking’ was the very specific ac�vity of taking a cri�cal distance from one’s self. It is the exercise of judgement, the exercise autonomous reasoning. Arendt writes, “When confronted with situa�ons for which such rou�ne procedures did not exist he [Eichmann] was helpless, and his cliché-ridden language produced on the stand, as it had evidently done in his official life, a kind of macabre comedy. Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conven�onal, standardised codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognised func�on of protec�ng us against reality”. Indeed, Eichmann’s main defence in this trial was that he was just carrying out orders. For example, he claimed that when he was informed by Rheinhard Heydrich that, "The Fuhrer has ordered the physical extermina�on of the Jews", Eichmann claimed to have responded, "I didn't say anything because there was nothing more to say… I now lost all joy in my work, all ini�a�ve, all interest." Arendt’s book was sub�tled, ‘A Report on the Banality of Evil’. Although the word ‘banal’ only appears in the last line of the work, it is the central idea behind the rest of the text. It is a quite brilliant exposure of evil as a priva�on. Arendt showed the cruel power of an absence of good. “Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension yet — and this is its horror! — it can spread like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay to waste the en�re world. Evil comes from a failure to think.” 9 There, on display in a glass box, was a very different kind of evil. It was evil demonstrated as a profound lack of thought and care. It was shallow and rootless. The four month trial of Eichmann was, in Arendt’s concluding words, a “long course in human wickedness… - the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil”. 10

The doer and the deed Many readers had clumsily taken deep offence with the associa�on of the holocaust with the word banal. But Arendt insisted repeatedly on the difference between the doer and the deed. The shallowness of Eichmann’s character sat in awful contrast to the depth of the suffering that he was causing. It is a dis�nc�on that is fundamentally important to her book. The doer was banal, but the deed was horrific. It is a dis�nc�on that opens up a very effec�ve point of entry for thinking through the morality of climate change. In the case of climate change, there is a huge gulf between the doer and the deed. There is no morally depraved group that are piping gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere because they are filled with biter animosity to people groups who live in houses close to the sea. No raging despot has set up a massive exhaust tube for emissions to wipe out, once and for all, the poorest, most vulnerable people of the world. Crudely put, climate change is the result of billions of well-meaning people just going about their lives inside an economy that is maintained, 82% of the �me, by the burning of fossil fuel. In fact, the contrast between the inten�ons of the doers of climate change and the results of their ac�ons is perversely wide. Not only are modern human beings not ac�vely organising the extermina�on of a par�cular race of people, but quite the opposite is true. It is a total mismatch. How could a honeymoon flight to an exo�c island, to celebrate the deep love between two people, have anything to do with the sinking of an en�re island culture? How could the construc�on of a state-of-the-art hospital, to save thousands of people from cri�cal diseases and injuries, have anything to do with mass starva�on? Could the beef burgers at a child’s birthday party really cause the ruinous flooding of another child’s home? We are insulated from thinking about the consequences of our economic ac�vity because it is such a stretch of the imagina�on to think that noble acts can have such ignoble consequences. This gap between the doer and the deed, which distances climate change so far from our common sense, is a major reason why we don’t take meaningful ac�on. Yet really, is it appropriate to put Eichmann into a book on climate change? Is it not the forced evacua�on and deaths of millions of innocent people an impossible distance from a few unusually hot summers? As always with climate change, all of these reflec�ons can be seen as wildly out of place un�l the sheer scale of the environmental catastrophe facing us is acknowledged. Any ethical delibera�ons on climate change have to be rooted in a realis�c vision of the science. If our understanding of climate change science is shallow, then our reflec�ons on the ethics of climate change will not get out of first gear either. For anyone who is open minded and open hearted enough to engage with the human consequences of our current eco-system going over a �pping point will accept that such a juxtaposi�on is jus�fied. It is not that we are like Eichmann, but we are all prone to mere common sense thinking about our situa�on that is not plugged in, at a meaningful level, with the seriousness of what is going on. Imagine… Indeed, the French philosopher, Jean-Pierre Dupuy in his book, ‘Pour un catastrophisme éclairé’ (2004) examines the cogni�ve difficul�es we have with ‘risk’ when we atempt to contemplate a disaster on the scale of climate change or nuclear war. He writes, “In order to prevent a catastrophe, one needs to believe in its possibility before it happens." Dupuy cites World War One as an example of his reasoning; few believed it was possible before it happened.

Dupuy’s reflec�on is confirmed by the popularity of the pre-war pamphlet: ‘The Great Illusion’. Writen by Nobel Prize winner Malcolm Angell in 1910, it was a very comfor�ng read for those Bri�sh people who leafed through its pages. In considera�on of all the bombas�c na�onalism flying around Europe at the �me, Angell's central point was that, “the economic cost of war was so great that no one could possibly hope to gain by star�ng a war the consequences of which would be so disastrous." 11 It eventually sold over two million copies. Those who read his ideas before 1914 were comforted by the common sense reasons to remain calm 12. Run-away climate change is equally inconceivable. In essence, it will be so unimaginably costly that we cannot imagine it. As it is not in the interests of poli�cians, businesses or the media to put our noses up close to the scien�fic facts, most ci�zens of the developed world live at a comfortable distance from the reality of it. Eichmann was not the SS solider with his hand on a pistol or a gas-tap. He sat at a comfortable distance from the real ac�on. He worked in an office. He was surrounded by papers. He dealt with numbers and deadlines. There was no need for him to imagine the trauma on the lines of death that that he was busy with. Indeed, in one uterly startling line of tes�mony, he proudly tes�fied that, “In the department that I ran, I did not tolerate violence”. The �cking of the clocks and the tapping of the typewriters in his offices were all that was required to block out the voices of terror on his punctual network of trains. He enjoyed a distance from the ac�on that afforded him the op�on of simply not allowing the second voice in his head to ask him any uncomfortable ques�ons. He lived within a world of clichés. He lived his life full of false necessi�es. Likewise, for climate change, there are some very dangerous clichés about. As consumers we are happy to recycle, the fight against the plas�c in our food chain is an important one, and reusing our towels in a green cer�ficated hotel is not an unhelpful gesture. Moreover, many of us do these things earnestly and with a genuine concern for the planet. However, these gestures only make the most uterly superficial difference to reducing emissions, and so they just seem to serve as in immunising shot against the truth. Being known inside my school as someone who is ecologically concerned, I am approached almost weekly by students and colleagues who sincerely want to make a difference, but virtually every plan of ac�on, remark, or sugges�on is related to recycling or marginal reduc�ons in waste. There is no doubt that recycling is a good place to start in primary schools, where children can learn a sensi�vity about the human impact on the planet. It is a very tac�le response to the problem. However, recycling has become such a cultural cliché that I have proposed explicitly banning the prac�ce in our secondary school, just to make a more important point. For a moment of perspec�ve, the en�re amount of plas�c is produced by the world’s economy is only responsible for 1 in every 257 tonnes of global emissions 13. There are many key environmental problems associated with plas�c that are not connected to climate change and such issues deserve some space. However, as an educa�onal ins�tu�on we are responsible for providing a clear landscape of reality for young minds that do not yet have the maturity or experience to see their knowledge in perspec�ve. And when the overwhelming focus of environmental ini�a�ves in secondary educa�on are focused on

11 In fact, this is the historian James Joll’s succinct summary of Angell’s work. (Joll, James (1992) The Origins of the First

World War. London and New York: Longman. p.202 ISBN 0-582-08920-4)

12 Those who read it a�er were hoping that his arguments, along with the devasta�on caused by the conﬂict, would

conﬁrm Woodrow Wilson’s hope that World War 1 was ‘the war to end all wars’.

13 www.onlyoneearth.science

these problems, rather than the risk of the planet’s eco-system entering into an unstoppable collapse, it is hard to argue that we are providing an advanced level of educa�on. We do not ask our Baccalaureate students to do simple spellings and addi�on, so why do we tolerate such a limited response to the most significant threat to their welfare? We don’t encourage our students to wash their hands more regularly when they are dying of sep�caemia. Our students have a right to know the truth and pacifying them with a lame understanding of what is really going on is not honest. It is not helpful. Recycling simply acts as insula�on from the hard ques�ons of reality. Where does this general ecological delusion comes from? Is it a lack of knowledge? Is it a lack of thought? Is it a so� form of propaganda that comes from the machinery of those in power, or is it a self-delusion? This is not the place now to untangle this knot, it is just important to note that how we understand our social reality is not neutral. Our responses to ecology are embedded in social context which filters informa�on and shapes our reac�on. Being a cultural here�c is not comfortable for either the here�c or those who have sincere and wellfounded concerns. Conversa�ons about these priori�es are o�en messy. Wri�ng as a teacher, we should not dare to call our educa�onal programmes modern, if students can graduate from our school with only the sketchiest understanding of the crisis. The hard conversa�on about our systema�c failure to actually teach young adults about the sixth mass ex�nc�on event that is happening at their feet needs to happen. It is not an easy conversa�on. It raises fundamental ques�ons about what it means to be educated. But we owe it to our students to look at this reality in an unflinching way. It would be inconceivable that a student could go to university not knowing who a man called Adolf Hitler was. Yet it is en�rely probable that a student can go to university today without knowing what a �pping point is. This level of ecological illiteracy should shock us, and the fact that it is not a major priority for the majority of policy makers, school directors and teachers demonstrates that we are far too comfortable in our roles and too detached in our thinking. Our ecological illiteracy is a product of a whole matrix of social and economic factors. In many respects, it is difficult to get a clear view of the crisis. The media, the internet, and an educa�onal system that is s�ll rooted in a 19th century paradigm, hardly make it easy. Eichmann was deeply embedded in Nazi ideology, and he clearly had no excuse. He had direct responsibility for the immediate transporta�on of Jews to their deaths. He knew what he was doing. The reason that Eichmann could be guilty of organising the deaths of millions of Jews was because he was guilty of a breath-taking level of self-decep�on. This juxtaposition (not equa�on) of Eichmann with the normal ci�zen of the world is a deeply uncomfortable one to make, both for the writer and the reader. Indeed, it was not without real controversy that Arendt used the word ‘banal’ in the context of the Holocaust. Here, in alignment with Arendt, there is no claim that there is ‘a litle bit of Eichmann’ in all of us 14. There are no adjec�ves strong enough to mark the categorical difference between a well-meaning consumer on the one hand, and Eichmann’s poisonous ideology on the other. However, the appallingly brutal fact is that millions of people will die as a consequence of gas, and it is happening under the watch of a cultured and scien�fically advanced society again. And so, the ques�on poses itself, ‘how could it possibly be true that the mass destruc�on of human civilisa�on could occur in a society of ra�onal people?’ Eichmann’s banality forces us to realise that our understanding of how evil can arise cannot

14 Although Arendt did tackle the very thorny issue of how compliant some of the leaders in the Jewish communes were in

the iden�ﬁca�on of Jewish community members for export to the camps.

simply be limited to common sense. Our understanding of what it means to good cannot be to common sense either. In ‘The Human Condi�on’ (1958), Arendt writes: “It is quite conceivable that the modern age—which began with such an unprecedented and promising outburst of human ac�vity—may end in the deadliest, most sterile passivity history has ever known”. How can humans be so capable of technological advance and so crea�ve in social organisa�on, and yet at the same �me, be so incapable of stopping such an obvious and catastrophic danger? It doesn’t feel like it at all, but these are extra-ordinary �mes. The powerfully striking claim that Arendt makes in her observa�on of Eichmann is that “not thinking” can actually be genocidal.

Chapter 3

“On the Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951) Eichmann was thoughtless. Is it not also true that our modern society is also thoughtless about climate change? It is categorically true that we are very though�ul about a vast range of social issues, but somehow climate change is the most fundamentally important problem that we are not thinking about. Arendt sat in close observa�on of Eichmann in 1961 and her insights are rooted in the daily observa�ons at the trial, but at the same �me, Arendt is working to understand something beyond him. Eichmann was a sharp example of a Nazi desk-killer, but he was part of a system that had pulled quite ordinary people into an abysmal situa�on. It was cri�cally important for Arendt to understand the psychological and social precondi�ons that made it possible for people to par�cipate in such destruc�ve regimes. In fact, Arendt had been working for years on establishing a fuller understanding of the human condi�on. She wrote ‘On the Origins of Totalitarianism’ ten years earlier, in the immediate shadow of the soul-crushing developments of Nazism and Stalinism. It is a book in which she grapples with the new totalitarian poli�cs that had so deeply marked the first half of the century. There is a lot of history in the 500 pages that she writes, but it is the first major theore�cal atempt to understand the appalling seizure in human affairs that shook everything up. The book made her intellectual reputa�on and it is a highly engaging read. The awful mul�-dimensional puzzle posed to Arendt by these regimes was, how could they manage to develop and func�on with such an overpowering and with such invasive force? Her responses to this ques�on could help us understand the modern crisis of climate change. Indeed, totalitarian regimes demanded the most urgent scru�ny because Arendt was convinced that both Nazism and Stalinism had not exhausted their poten�al. Her work on totalitarianism was writen with Nazism and Stalinism at the front of her mind, but her later experience of the Cold War

(especially McCarthyism) and the surge in consumerism in the 1970s, confirmed her understanding that even openly democra�c socie�es are capable of hos�ng and endorsing ‘thoughtlessness’. Her words from 1951 strike with bristling relevance today: “Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on poli�cal forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence (who think that everything is possible if one knows how to organize masses for it) and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.” A reading of Arendt’s work now, especially in the light of climate change, shows how much of her wri�ngs transcends their context. Arendt’s insights show how totalitarian systems of control can lead to large-scale human suffering, and how democra�c socie�es are not immune from such dangers. What’s next? Arendt’s wri�ng defies categorisa�on. There are so many overlapping themes in her work and she approaches poli�cal and ethical reality in a highly independent way. Using her three major works, “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and “The Human Condi�on”, this book will group her ideas into the key concerns that Arendt held concerning our poli�cal life: • •

•

• • • • •

Thoughtlessness - as with Eichmann, the main precondi�on of totalitarian rule is a shallowly rooted thinking. Thought Control - once people are atomied and deprived of any signiﬁcant conversa�ons with their past, their community or themselves, they are then prone to manipula�on. Public – Private Space - Arendt looks back to An�quity to pay respect to how both Greek and Roman society had a genuinely dis�nct public space in the centre of their poli�cal life. Hopelessness – Nazi and Stalinist regimes created and preserved their control by demolishing people’s hopes. Hopelessness is also very real today. Retreat into the Self – Philosophy is o�en caricatured as a retreat from the world, Arendt staunchly argued that it must not turn inwards. On Bureaucracy – Arendt observed how the anonymity of bureaucracies make state violence more likely. On Organised Lying – Poli�cs and truth are not the best of friends. Arendt’s work explores decep�on on a number of levels. The Na�on State – The na�on state has brought us a world of human rights, but what if you don’t belong to one?

All of these concerns about totalitarian rule are rather prescient about the current poli�cal order and they make our passive a�tude towards climate change more understandable.

Chapter 4 - Thoughtlessness “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the dis�nc�on between fact and ﬁc�on (i.e., the reality of experience) and the dis�nc�on between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” (On the Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951)

Nazism and Stalinism abolished the dis�nc�on between fact and fic�on through the dark forces of revenge and terror. The space of genuine public discourse was flatened by the atomisa�on of people and the availability of only one kind of story about life. For Nazism, this story was the racial supremacy of the Aryan race in its historical fight for true Lebensraum against defec�ve parasites in society. For Stalinism, the story was the historical march of the Soviets towards libera�on from its class enemies. If the 19th century had been characterised by imperial expansion over land, then the start of the 20th century was marked by an invasive colonisa�on of the mind. Both Nazism and Stalinism only offered their popula�ons one singular way to think. Strikingly, Arendt had noted that this imposi�on on the ‘inner life of the mind’ even had the capacity to dictate how people experienced their own experiences. She offers the example of a Stalin Show Trial in which a factory worker is accused of vandalism. The worker is so embedded in Stalinist ideology that he admits that even though has no recollec�on of any sabotage, ‘The Party must be right’, and so accepts the guilty verdict. His confession could just be read as a resigned plea, which would be coherent with the ability of totalitarian regimes to uterly squash people’s hope; however, that would underes�mate the power of ideologies to colonise the minds of its subjects. His mind was just a satellite state of the centralised consciousness, a humble node in the great Stalinist matrix.

“In the process of imposing his poli�cal dominion over the African, the white man has carved broad and bloody avenues from one end of Africa to the other… what the par�al occupa�on of his soil by the white man has failed to do; what the mapping out of European poli�cal “spheres of influence” has failed to do; what the maxim and the rifle, the slave gang, labour in the bowels of the earth and the lash, have failed to do; what imported measles, smallpox and syphilis have failed to do; what even the oversea slave trade failed to do, the power of modern capitalis�c exploita�on, assisted by modern engines of destruc�on, may yet succeed in accomplishing” 45. Neither does History look back favourably onto the Guatemalan coup 46. Stripped of its Cold War narra�ve it is difficult to believe that economic interests could be so ruthlessly single-minded about bananas. What will history make of climate change once our own cultural blindness is removed? How will history students read the ac�ons of our democra�c governments who facilitated the con�nued profits of a handful of major companies at the expense of so many other lives? The irony of an outspokenly democra�c country invading another to install a corrupt leader will be usurped by the irony of global governments seeking economic growth and pursuing energy policies that lead to a global economic collapse. As Arendt noted: “The outstanding nega�ve quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality.”

(1) Thoughtlessness and (2) Thought Control …this �me together Underneath the cheap slogans that came out of Eichmann's mouth, there was a ruthlessly dark force at work. What lay behind Eichmann’s thoughtlessness was actually a grisly example of thought control. Looking at the trail in 1961 with these two, seemingly contradictory, aspects of his responses put face-to-face, it becomes an invita�on for us to cross-examine our own society. It invites us to look at how our thoughtlessness might also leave us open to thought control. With respect to climate change, the shallowness of our civic aten�on has enabled various short term interests to stall meaningful ac�on. The current combina�on of thoughtlessness and thought control, is se�ng up our current world order for the most withering cri�cism from the people who will inherit the ecological disaster. This seemingly impossible combina�on of thoughtlessness and thought control is what makes modern culture very interes�ng to analyse. Philosophy enjoys paradox and apparent contradic�ons, and the state we are in with climate change is full of them. Perhaps with an apology for resta�ng the central contradic�on one more �me – but it so remarkably easy to forget: How can our democra�cally elected governments allow a catastrophe, with the magnitude of unchecked climate change, to unleash itself on their ci�zens? How can elected leaders, with a mandate to protect the well-being of their people not inform their people of the most basic choices that they are making without knowing it? The threat posed by climate change is just so appalling that once the conclusions of science are held in focus then another part of the brain simply cannot reconcile the lack of policy ac�on with those truths. Maybe it is too absurd. Perhaps, we all just have a naturally child-like ins�nct to trust those in power? Perhaps we are just not prepared to accept a

45 “The Black Man’s Burden”, (1920) E.D. Morel.

46 Outside of the USA a clearly disapproving view was taken by both foreign governments and the foreign press. For

example, the Bri�sh Prime Minister Clement Atlee described it as, “a plain act of aggression".

Ka�aesque world in which our symbolic order is so perverse and uncaring? So rather than doubt the government, we doubt the reality. As the carbon data demonstrated in the first book, “No Common Sense”, we have not managed to stabilise greenhouse gas emission rates, let alone reduce them. We are only a frac�on of the way towards a solu�on to climate change a�er 30 years of trying. The scien�fic consensus is so strong, all the hockey-s�ck arrows are poin�ng to a global disaster, and the projec�ons are hardening into a grim outlook. The ‘litle by litle’ approach has failed but no-one is poin�ng out the failure. When this situa�on is genuinely considered, it just does not fit anywhere with our view of modern government. It is such a viola�on of common sense that it throws you back onto the evidence each �me in order to reassess your thinking. Indeed, one of the darker aspects of teaching Philosophy and Ecology is that young teenage minds o�en see the ar�ficial nature of poli�cal reality for the first �me – and this awakening is o�en a hard one. Poli�cal philosophy can be shocking. It really does not mater if inac�on with climate change is more a product of our thoughtlessness or more a consequence of thought control, the fact is that this is a very odd �me in human history.

Chapter 6 Public Sphere - Private Sphere Social Blindness As explained in the first part of the introduc�on, one of the fundamental problems of climate change is that we are all naturally ‘Mo�on Blind’. We are just a bundle of experiences with no plan-view of what is going on, and so it is very demanding for us to see the pace of change and make reliable connec�ons between the dots of experience. In our ambi�on to see reality more fully, Science can help us overcome this blindness with the help of graphs and charts. Without it, our vision of reality would always be stubbornly rooted in the present, or in a confusing mash of data. It also seems that we are afflicted by a very similar problem which could be designated ‘Social Blindness’ because the same cogni�ve difficul�es afflict our awareness of social reality. We are very forge�ul of how things used to be and find it difficult to get a reliable sense of perspec�ve. We are stubbornly rooted to our current social set-up, we get used to the wallpaper of our values and expecta�ons. It is always a bit alarming to be faced with a different moral world that was once transposed onto the same physical area because our spontaneous moral responses to the world feel authen�c and enduringly stable. For example, we have become so accustomed to a non-smoking policy on-board aeroplanes that it is a real jolt to see old TV footage of passengers si�ng in familiar rows of seats, being served a gin and tonic by an air steward, but then si�ng back and ligh�ng up a cigarete. Whatever the social change, we tend to be very forge�ul of the past. This forge�ulness gives the present a sense of permanence that it does not deserve. It also alienates the past from us so that we become rather deaf to its voice. Therefore, in order to help us overcome our ‘mo�on blindness’, Phillippe Rekacewicz (Geographer and Associate Researcher, Department of Anthropology University of Helsinki) has produced some helpful maps. These maps are not of countries or con�nents, they are not maps of glacial decline or urban growth. Copyright © Mathew Pye April 2024

These are maps of an airport. Rekacewicz is a celebrated cartographer whose maps are rooted in scien�ﬁc research. However, the following sequence of maps are not produced with the help of science, they just take a simple plan view of Oslo Airport. They were not compiled to help us navigate our way through physical space, they were made to help us understand our social space. But there is a parallel between his scien�ﬁc maps and these type of maps, they are both atemp�ng to make invisible trends, visible.

Here is the ﬁrst one. It is from 2005.

In green, on the le�, is public area before the check-in control which leads to another large public area in blue. This sea�ng area has a restaurant and bar, which looks out through open windows to the tarmac. At the back, is a small red area for Duty Free shopping.

In 2006 the airport was developed:

Now the passengers enter through the security control and immediately enter a greatly enlarged shopping corridor. Any passenger, who wanted to avoid the opportuni�es of Duty Free Shopping, would have to squeeze themselves past the shopping trollies that stretch out to the le�. In 2007, the transforma�on of the airport was complete: