Walking around a room with 18 other people, eyes on the floor, lights off, mind adrift in thoughts of death, climate change, and politics, was a confounding experience.
My takeaways from this strange contemplative practice did not become clear until days later. In the moment, the practice seemed somehow ironic and meaningful, yet I could not understand why. I now see my experiences in this practice as almost representing or paralleling the politics of climate change.
Mindfulness among the masses. Image Credit: Unknown
With our eyes on the ground, I felt overwhelmed. Listening to Karen’s descriptions of the world, I felt helpless in the face our extensive problems. There is so much to unpack, not enough time, and I don’t even know where to start. Amongst all these other shoes walking around the floor, how can anything I do be significant? How can I sway people to my side if we all come from different backgrounds, have different priorities, and live in a polarized playground where everything is black and white, or so gray in between that it is unintelligible? This overwhelming feeling is matched in the politics of climate change. It is such an extensive issue that leaders and individuals have no idea where to start or how to help. This overwhelmingness is dangerous because it can lead to stalling on solutions, and inaction which could effectively cause voluntary human extinction.
When we lifted our eyes to acknowledge each other I struggled to remain serious. I found the reality of 19 of us aimlessly wandering the tiny classroom, trying not to hit each other, while listening to poems about death funny. Sort of a “laugh because otherwise you’ll cry” response. This reaction is similar to how many people handle the climate crisis—they don’t take it seriously. They laugh because it is a wild idea that humans could unintentionally cause so much destruction and death while wandering the earth industrializing. They ignore it, because if they believe that there is nothing they can do, then it is better to laugh and cherish what they have while they are alive, rather than to get lost in a spiral of despair waiting to die.
In this practice I felt myself putting on a face for my peers. I couldn’t just acknowledge them with an honest expression of my feelings because that would have been too vulnerable. I felt like I had to smile, exaggerate my expressions, and communicate a false narrative. This, too, is similar to the politics of climate change. World leaders go to climate conferences and exaggerate their actions and intentions, project their virtue and strength, and hide their vulnerability and honest reality of confusion and disaster. We want to die with pride, and for our largely old politicians, acknowledging a problem would mean dying guilty.
Bonn, Germany Climate Conference. Image Credit: UNFCC
Wow, yes! You have described so eloquently my reaction to our active contemplative practice, too. I couldn’t help but chuckle or smirk as Karen asked us to look at each other’s shoes and notice the patterns of how others walked. The same way in which I stifled laughter after being asked to contemplate humanity’s demise I laugh to the jokes I tell of my brother’s untimely death. I know the two seem incomparable, yet my way of dealing with existential death and incredibly personal death is through the joy of humor. This within itself is my management of terror. With every improv comedy performance and sardonic commentary via Instagram story, I attempt to mitigate the very real reality of my life.
I appreciated your candor and honest admission that these exercises seemed trivial or silly as we sandwiched them with discussions of mass death. And I think your comparison of your reaction to this contemplative practice to the world leaders’ engagement at climate summits was thoroughly apt. It is seemingly comical that the world leaders come together to put on a grand spectacle—a theater show with private jets, if you will. I find these conferences to be an opportunity for them to delay their feelings of guilt for not doing enough, as well as another attempt to obfuscate their lack of meaningful action.
But that’s what our lives are, though, right? It’s all theater until the serious times in which we are staring down the barrel of imminent doom. The only problem is that “our imminent doom” isn’t one that is collective. Large swathes of the world are facing that reality right now due to climate disasters and viral infections, many of which are caused or exacerbated by the Global North. This turns the question to those of us who are privileged enough not to be directly impacted by these ails: who do we continue to manage our terror without laughing in the face of others’ worldly collapse?
This reminds me that we must still attuned to the world around us—to develop an internationalist perspective in the face of global collapse is imperative to manage our terror with one another across the globe. The way forth is through the investment in intersectional climate justice movements that are intentional to include the most marginalized on the forefront of their campaigns.
Hi Heidi,
I also struggle with feeling overwhelmed by the climate crisis, feeling as if there is nothing that I can do that will make a difference. I felt that the contemplative practices often forced me to focus on the gravity of the topics we discussed in class. When engaging in discussion, it seemed to me that we were able to tell stories and share opinions academically, but when through the contemplative practices it allowed us to think about discussions in a provoking way within our minds, grappling with the seriousness of what seems like imminent death in our blip of existence in the universe.
However, I also found myself during this particular active contemplative practice trying hard to keep a straight face and failing. During this practice I felt myself feeling that it is good to find little bits of joy in laughter in an intense learning environment surrounding death. After reading your blog post, I can’t help but think: Is there a way that we can find joy in the climate crisis?
I think specifically of the article we read about FUNerals, in which people find joy in celebrating the end of their existence as a person. How can we find a way for politicians and corporations to find enthusiasm in the opportunity to save the nature that we exist as a part of, rather than nature we are existing in? I also feel similarly helpless when I think about what my impact as one person can have on the climate in a positive and negative way, and if it actually makes a difference when innovation and industry seem to be the reason, we have entered this new epoch of the Anthropocene. And with this, no one should have to put on a face in the face of catastrophe as you said you felt you had to during this contemplative practice, so, is there a way we can acknowledge our generation’s burden of saving the world and also celebrate the motivation for activism that we have to change the narrative?
I would love to hear your thoughts as someone who seemed to have overlapping feelings with my own in relation to this unconventional practice.