Experience and possibilities

As an experienced engineer, one can easily look at a proposal for something, parse out the important details, and point out flaws and oversights in design. An experienced psychologist can recognise depression by looking at someone's face. An experienced cook will know just how much water to add to rice, not a drop more, not a drop less. It is with age, with awareness, with an openness to the world, that comes experience--experience that allows us to see the world as it is, experience to understand why, and hopefully, experience to change what is not working.

Yet, experience that is not a positive force can also close off possibilities, for many times, all that we know comes only from what we have experienced. Such experience can ward off imagination. If we cannot imagine, how do we move forward given many of the messes we've created? How can we get past the same old, same old (neoliberal economics, utilitarianism, capitalism, communism, socialism, competition, World Trade Organisation, World Bank, United Nations) that many elders are stuck in? How can we reclaim the possibilities of envisioning a fundamentally different world, and acting on those visions? It is clear then that experience and possibility share a complex relationship.

Grace Lee Boggs, the most youthful ninety-six year old philosopher and activist from Detroit, points out in a conversation with Krista Tippett (embedded in this post below) that first and foremost, we must recognise that,

[w]e have so much to rediscover. There are so many creative energies that are part of human history that have been lost because we've been pursuing the almighty dollar. We haven't recognized at what expense we've done that, expense not only of the earth, not only of people of color, but of our own selves. We no longer recognize that we have the capacity within us to create the world anew. We think we are only the victims.

What possibilities open up for us with this new mentality? Only experience can guide us, says Gloria Lowe of We Want Green, Too!:

Ms. Tippett: So I think, when you tell those stories of working with these guys who are so broken, right, I mean it's just layer on layer on layer of grief and loss and tragedy, it sounds debilitating to work with that, right? It sounds like you would lose hope.

Ms. Lowe: Oh, not at all, not at all. Part of my own personal transformation — I think it's probably the transformation that anyone who has a brain injury goes through — is that you lose contact with the things that you've been taught and, in doing so, you become like the birds. You start to do things instinctively. So you know about the human spirit. So all I did was transfer what I already knew and these guys did what was in their spirit to do. They rose up, they rose up, you know, just by, oh, yeah, I've been doing this for years...

...This floor is laid by a guy who had two head injuries in the military, two. I mean, he's lucky to be alive and just the perfection to see him pull a line all the way from the kitchen to the living room, he's so focused. In their art, in their creativity, and laughing, and they were like a family. So the big to-do is really upstairs. People need to see possibilities once you've begun creating them because then the questions come. What is the advantage of doing this? And it's a very real advantage if the law firm that I worked for did Social Security. If a person hasn't worked, their check is $674.

A house this size was roughly 2,000 square feet. The heating bill in this house, heating and light, was $510. So that leaves you $160? It's very difficult to survive off of that. The heating bill in this house now is like $272 after doing a lot of baking and stuff on the holidays. It's a big difference. That $300 allows me to do something else. I talked to Wayne and Myrtle because the field over here, we're going to take that and we're going to create a garden where kids have raspberries and some fruit they can eat and fruit trees and they'll create their own benches and we'll do things so that they can see a different kind of world, a different kind of life. These kids don't know butterflies. I mean, come on. That's kind of — you don't know butterflies? You know, so this was a part of rediscovering who we are as human beings.

Many, especially those that are so embedded in the way things are, might view these words as romantic and idealistic. They are right, for that is the goal. What comes before being able to see new visions of the world, though, is the ability to overcome the fear of leaving behind what we've created so far. And to do that...

What has brought us here will not take us there

I have been thinking a lot recently about the messiness of listening to elders. Having come from India, from a culture that is founded on respecting elders and listening and following their views, I am constantly battling the tensions between the wisdom that comes from old age and experience, and the ways in which that experience limits the possibilities of change and renewal.

As I wrote previously, I realise more and more each day that much of the advice that my parents gave me when I was young was spot on. I just wasn't mature enough to understand what they were saying. At the same time, the ways in which their experiences have shaped their outlook on the world makes elders bound to the past, a past that has created the present. Last week during the Union of Concerned Scientists and Erb Institute conference on communicating climate change, it was difficult not to notice generational gaps in discussions, and the frankly limited actions that many of the elders in the room thought would be sufficient in changing how the general public viewed climate change and acted on it.

It is clearly the youth that will be living in a drastically changed world, not the sixty and seventy year-olds deciding policy. It was not encouraging to hear from Ana Unruh Cohen, assistant to Congressman Ed Markey (D-WA), that even though the youth were instrumental in garnering public support for the Waxman-Markey bill that would have changed the face of this country, the youth were not present at the table when the policy was being debated and finalised. In the end, of course, the bill did not pass. But the choices we make today, the policies that are passed, the lessons that are taught, are those that we will be struggling with and dealing with in the future. We are where we are today because of what has been presented to us by the past.

It is clear though, that what has brought us here, what the elders have put in place, will not get us to where we need to be. Nothing less than the way in which we fundamentally conduct ourselves in the world will allow us and future generations the resiliency of coping with a changing climate. Climate change presented as an energy problem will only cause future conflict over scarce lithium and rare earth metal reserves. Addressing the problem so builds no resiliency. Following that thread of thought, an ecologically sustainable world is possible only if everything is up for debate.

All is not lost, though. There are some things we can learn from some very inspiring elders. There are ways to create communities of people that are dynamic and resilient, all with a deep respect for other people and most fundamentally this Earth. I am excited to write about these things over the next few days.

When special interest supersedes wisdom

I grew up in a culture that respects elders--their wisdom, their advice, their experience. I believe that certain ways of thinking and discerning only emerge with age, whether it is being able to see through people's arguments, being able to read between the lines of what people say and do. I realise more and more each day that much of the advice that my parents gave me when I was young was spot on. I just wasn't mature enough to understand what they were saying.

On the other hand, we have a world run by elder people that are stuck in their ways, whether it is neoliberal economics, cost-benefit analysis, American domination, and global competitiveness. We are also bound to national and international institutions and regimes that were founded in times when people had drastically different mentalities, institutions such as the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and even the United Nations. Even in most all journalism that I read, in such media outlets like the BBC and the New York Times, the way in which situations here and abroad are analysed is one that treats the world as some sort of infinite reserve of material, a world in which a material and industrial economy can supposedly grow forever.

What has brought us to this point, ecologically, and consequently socially, and consequently economically, is a truly old way of thinking, further influenced by special interests. There seems to be a contradiction then between the wisdom that comes with old age, and the way in which special interests seem to supersede that wisdom. No old person in his or her right mind would say that the way we are treating the environment and ourselves is in the best interest of longevity of the ecosystems that comprise the biophysical world. But this seems to keep happening. We are constantly protesting decisions to go to war, decisions to let financial institutions off the hook, decisions to build a pipeline carrying tar sands across a continent. And that is probably why Abigail Borah, a student from Middlebury College, felt it necessary to take a stand in Durban a couple of weeks ago.



We can see clearly a generational gap, possibly one that existed in times of great change, like, for example, during the Civil Rights movement. This isn't to say that there aren't any elders who are thinking radically differently. But it seems that the world's environment and climate are changing faster than ever before, and that we cannot wait until 2020 for some "meaningful" climate commitment from nations. While the elders won't be alive in twenty or thirty or forty years, the youth will be, and they are the ones that will be faced with the difficult tasks of changing infrastructure, of adapting to a changing climate, of likely dealing with mass migration.

It is very difficult to sit back and hope that the elders running this country will change the way they think and behave. While working in the lab a couple of weeks ago, Scott said to me that it will truly take another twenty or thirty years for a generation of thinkers and actors to get into positions of influence to make meaningful changes in policy and culture. How do the youth navigate this? What might the youth be able to do to counter special interests? And how might the youth remain "youthful" in the future, open to changing ourselves in response to a changing world?