Dieing as a Civilization
Yun-Fei Ji may have accomplished a more encompassing depiction of the dire state of humanity than he consciously intended when he portrayed the villagers dislocated by the Great Gorges Dam. His mournful depictions of masses of forlorn and displaced persons seems to provide a glimpse at the toll that scientists are predicting will be shared by all humans.
Roy Scranton is a veteran who confronted the reality of his death throughout his tours of duty Iraq. But having returned a survivor of daily attacks has not provided him comfort and security. Scranton has diverted fear of his personal demise toward the demise of civilization itself. The danger, he claims, is self-inflicted, caused by humanities profligate and short-sighted greed.
Scranton quotes Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, the commander of the United States Pacific Command, who states that global climate change is the greatest threat the United States faces. Upheaval from increased temperatures, rising seas, and radical destabilizatiom he believes, is more dangerous than terrorism, Chinese hackers and North Korean nuclear missiles.
We face the imminent collapse of the agricultural, shipping and energy networks that will result in a massive die-off in the biosphere. This includes human populations. If homo sapiens survives, it will inhabit an environment that is totally unlike the one we currently know.
Writing in the New York Times, Scranton announced that this grim view is seconded by researchers worldwide, including Anders Levermann, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, and Lonnie Thompson. “This chorus of Jeremiahs predicts a radically transformed global climate forcing widespread upheaval — not possibly, not potentially, but inevitably. We have passed the point of no return. From the point of view of policy experts, climate scientists and national security officials, the question is no longer whether global warming exists or how we might stop it, but how we are going to deal with it.”
This ‘how’ is the challenge currently confronting our entire species. Scranton comments, “In the epoch of the Anthropocene, the question of individual mortality — “What does my life mean in the face of death?” — is universalized and framed in scales that boggle the imagination. What does human existence mean against 100,000 years of climate change? What does one life mean in the face of species death or the collapse of global civilization? How do we make meaningful choices in the shadow of our inevitable end?These questions have no logical or empirical answers. They are philosophical problems par excellence… The rub is that now we have to learn how to die not as individuals, but as a civilization.”