After the Fire
Monday, 09/08/21
I’d been watching the roaring wildfires blaze and torch everything in their path since Tuesday, from a safe distance, across the Attica basin on Mt. Pendeli (near where I live). Via mixed feed of social media, news coverage and my friends’ personal accounts, I followed - in complete shock - the unstoppable advance of this vicious and insatiable menace, leaving behind it a trail of devastation and despair. Was it getting closer? The air was already thick with the smell of smoke and saturated with falling particles of soot and ash from the clouds in the sky above.
And then it happened. Just like a car crash in slow motion or a video compilation of gruesome skateboarding wipeouts, I waited with bated breath for the inevitable to happen and watched it unfold with equal measure of despondency and disbelief. Despite the firefighters’ heroic attempts, the fire had crossed a crucial safety barrier and now, emboldened by the increasing gusts of wind in the area, was heading east. Despite my position of relative safety, I watched as the night sky turned ominous shades of orange and red - progressively more intense - as if to somehow warn of an impending storm.
By Friday afternoon, the fire front had grown to cover tens of kilometers, reducing an unfathomably large area of forest land and many townships, to smouldering ash. The reporting on the ground had turned from desperate to downright heartbreaking as people were being evacuated - forced to flee their homes and leave behind their property and fruit of their (lifelong) labour. In the background, the apocalyptic scenes that framed these unfolding dramas seemed more akin to something out of a Hollywood disaster flick, riddled with heavy CGI.
Soon enough, it was my turn to hurriedly take stock of and pack my most prized worldly possessions. The blaze was just over the ridge to the north, they were saying, and with the air now heavier and smokier than before I began to brace for impact with the inexorable threat headed our way. Under the darkening sky - now raining heavy white ash - I ran frantically back and forth between my house and studio; storing valuable items, securing flammables, packing essentials, dousing trees and ignoring friends and family who were hopelessly reaching out.
Remarkably, a convergence of factors, coupled with the firefighters’ valiant efforts on land and in the air, led to the (certain) disaster being averted and my worst fears never being realised. As the fiery mass of flame and smoke gradually diminished and headed away from my area and towards the west, my panic gave way to relief and then (eventually) to sadness. Following such extreme events, and the range of emotions one is likely to experience during their unfolding, people often bandy around terms like “post traumatic stress” or “survivor’s guilt” with considerable aplomb, but often underplay the inescapable terminus of the emotional journey: anger.
I’ve had to pack my shit at the drop of a hat before and I am now certain I will have to again, in the future. The last time wildfires threatened my home, the flames were 20 meters away and burned a large portion of the forest across my street. Without in any way wishing to undermine the personal struggles and tragedies that many of my countrymen have to face in the wake of this unmitigated disaster, I think it’s finally time - now more than ever - to wake the fuck up and truly realise these events are far-reaching, global and likely existential in nature (pun intended).
Following on from the harrowing reports from similar catastrophes in Turkey, Romania, Italy, Russia, Bolivia, Brazil, the USA and many more - which most desensitised minds will likely forget by the time the weekend rolls around - the IPCC has published a comprehensive, eight-years-in-the-making report today “unequivocally” pointing the finger at us humans for our unmatched contribution to the climate crisis. Whether or not the aforementioned events are a direct result of human activity (or negligence) may still be a point of contention, but there can be little doubt as to how profoundly the decimation of the natural world is accelerating irreversible changes to the planet’s climate. The same goes for an alarming portion of humanity’s complete lack of palpable concern.
In my opinion, it is imperative to increase awareness for these events; what’s causing them and what their long-lasting effects are. There is a fast-spreading global pandemic of apathy that is plaguing our societies - exalting and promoting self interest over the collective good to nauseating degree. We can, to an extent, rightly blame our governments and leaders of industry for their chronic short-sightedness and greed. After all, we want to live in fast-paced, innovative, efficiently allocative, global and resource-bountiful free-market economies, right? But now we, as a global society, are faced with the reckoning of letting market forces of supply and demand govern and dictate our lives to a near-total degree.
“Nothing Will Ever Be The Same” was written in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when I was in a dark place. Like millions of people forced to self-reflect, seek alternate sources of income, hustle to make ends meet, ponder their mortality, fret about the state of the world, mourn loved ones, suffer crippling after-effects of the virus and remain isolated, I did whatever I had to to make it to tomorrow. As days turned to weeks, weeks turned into months and months eventually into a year+ (and counting), I often hoped that this collective and shared crisis we faced as a species might spurt the much-needed impetus for (many of) us to see things differently. To become more appreciative and aware of the world beyond our own selfish and narrow confines. To wonder why this was all happening and how we should do things from now on. Perhaps even to learn to transcend our own interests and strive for the benefits of others, on occasion. At the very least, to spend the time we had all been gifted more productively and wisely. Of course, there were noticeable stragglers along the way - try convincing an entitled, spoiled egomaniac (sorry, I meant DJ) to show some sensitivity and not take a gig on the beautiful beaches of Tulum while Covid cases in the rest of the country skyrocket into unscaled heights. Or a QAnon / MAGA anti-vaxxer that there is no deep-state plot to enslave humanity through mass vaccination programs. But, I remained hopeful.
Ultimately though, we fucked it all up. And now, after yet another massive global wealth redistribution, a colossal and shameful disparity in vaccination access between rich and poor countries and a growing army of self-righteous assholes merrily getting back on with their lives as though the pandemic never really happened (which, to a reasonable degree, is merited), one has to wonder if we are any wiser or better prepared to face the most severe threat facing our existence. From a karmic standpoint, I guess we’ll all get what we ultimately deserve - after all I’ll be one of the last people to tell you how much alfalfa (and by extension, water) your burger had to consume in order for it to taste as good and be as readily available as you have come to expect.
So how do wildfires, the global economy, climate change, Covid and burgers all connect? Pericles, the ancient Greek statesman, left his mark on the world by advancing the foundations of democracy and governing during Athens’s Golden Age, when the arts, architecture, and philosophy—as well as Athens itself—reached new heights. Of his legacy and many achievements, one of the most poignant and memorable statements that has stuck with me is that Athenian citizens regard “a man who takes no interest in public affairs not as a harmless, but a useless character”. Depending on what metrics you use or how far you take the comparison in analogy between ancient Athens and the modern globalised world, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that we are also (still) in a golden era of civilisation - our feats and breakthroughs in the fields of technology, science, engineering and medicine are marvels of their own accord and achieved at an unprecedented and ever-accelerated rate.
It seems odd, then, that so proportionately few of us seem to take any real interest (besides the occasional “like” or “share”) in celebrating, facilitating, developing and preserving this thriving way of life we (can?) all enjoy. In 1858, in “Grundrisse”, Karl Marx argued that full automation (quite possibly what we now expect AI will accomplish) as part of a transition to post-capitalism would enable humans to develop themselves during the time that would be freed up - once the need to produce goods and services (work) was limited by machines. Workers, would be free to pursue their self-development in the arts, sciences, sports, philosophy etc. Nearly one hundred years after Marx’s observation that full automation could help liberate humankind, Herbert Marcuse (in “Eros and Civilization”) asserted we had reached the point at which this was possible. The caveat, according to him, was that the conditions under which citizens are dominated by what he called one-dimensional freedom: an uncritical, pacified approach to thinking about contemporary life. One-dimensional thinking relies on subtle oppression, on convincing people that they are free, on the provision of sufficient goods and services to distract them, on stultified civic discourse, and on the masses identifying with elites. In contrast, two-dimensional thinking enables people to see the possibility of liberation in the current order of things, the possibility of leveraging its contradictions to remake the world.
Perhaps nothing ever being the same is not such a bad thing. After all, Heraclitus’ often paraphrased “the only constant in life is change” quote is the precursor to a multitude of philosophies and dogmas that preach acceptance and embrace of the here and now. My only hope and intention in sharing this project with you is that we go forward into the uncharted future with a renewed sense of awareness, mindfulness and willingness to act. We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards or sleep on attitudes and events that shape the future of our planet - nor tolerate the apathy that makes them possible.