The greatest challenge the Anthropocene poses isn’t how the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, whether we should put up sea walls to protect Manhattan, or when we should abandon Miami. It won’t be addressed by buying a Prius, turning off the air conditioning, or signing a treaty. The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront our situation and realize that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the difficult task of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality.
We are, in case you haven’t heard, living in the Anthropocene. It is the name for our current epoch here on Earth that has been gradually picking up steam and growing into a consensus. The only real argument is what date to pin as the beginning. But that is not what Roy Scranton’s short book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene is about. He writes from a place of acceptance—we are in it deep, it doesn’t matter if it started with agriculture or the industrial revolution. We are so far into it to and have changed our climate so much that we are on the verge of economic and social collapse, and possibly even human extinction.
Even if we stopped all carbon emissions right this second, there is so much warming built into the system already we cannot hit the breaks. Life on this planet as we know it going to end. Whether or not humans go extinct in the Sixth Extinction, which is going on right now, is not entirely in our hands. What is in our hands is how we choose to live out our lives right now, and whether, or how, we learn to deal with death.
Scranton’s is a philosophical little book. He looks at science, looks at what we know from the last time the earth was hot, considers renewable energy, geo-engineering, politics, economics, and our shrinking resources. If you think technology will save us, you are wrong. The tech we need to implement right now does not exist. If you think we can replace everything we use fossil fuels for with renewables and carry on just like we are now, you are wrong. What we need to learn how to do, Scranton argues, is die. We need to learn to give up the society we have, the life we are used to, the world as we know it, so we can let it all die and start to create something different.
Learning to die as an individual means letting go of our predispositions and fear. Learning to die as a civilization means letting go of this particular way of life and its ideas of identity, freedom, success, and progress.
You can argue that climate change is not your fault, that the big corporations need to own up, that government needs to be bold and DO something. You would be both right and wrong. Climate change is a systemic problem, a hive creation. The blame does not fall on just one person, one government, one oil company. It belongs to all of us, each and every one of us is to blame for it.
Cheap energy makes it easy to not think twice about our role. How is driving a car or flying on a plane for a nice vacation, or buying cheap “throw away” fashion, or tomatoes in January such a big deal? It isn’t if you are the only one doing it. But you aren’t the only one. It adds up. Which also means that if you stopped doing all those things and were the only one who stopped, it wouldn’t make a difference. But if we all stopped… Except we won’t because we don’t see it as a problem we can solve or one that is our responsibility to solve. So we keep using cheap (for now) energy, grumbling about ExxonMobil and the government and how somebody needs to do something. Meanwhile the planet gets hotter and resources continue to dwindle.
We spend a lot of energy denying what is going on and our role in it. We need to stop with the denial and face up to the facts. We need to look death in the face and accept that all things come to an end.
Learning to die is hard. It takes practice… Learning to die demands daily cultivation of detachment and daily reminders of mortality… We will always be practicing, failing, trying again and failing again, until our final day.
While Scranton makes a tour of philosophical humanism, his approach to death shakes out to a mostly Buddhist one in which detachment and easing suffering are key. There is no Heaven or Hell, no Savior, no deus ex machina, there is only us and the ever changing universe.
Learning to die means learning to let go of the ego, the idea of the self, the future, certainty, attachment, the pursuit of pleasure, permanence, and stability. Learning to let go of salvation. Learning to let go of hope. Learning to let go of death.
As to what comes after death, Scranton doesn’t speculate. Not that we shouldn’t think about what comes after, we most definitely should. We need to put our imaginations to work, begin to envision what a world without fossil fuels and capitalism and the need for continual economic growth might look like.
You’d think such a book would be depressing, but it really isn’t. Scranton ends on an almost elegiac note reminding us with the help of Wittgenstein that the universe, and thus we, are total and complete. There is nothing outside and nothing lacking. The universe and the earth made no mistakes. Everything that has happened since time began led up to our existence. We are part of the cycle and flow of life. We are made of stardust. Life on this planet has come and gone. Civilizations have come and gone. Our current one has begun to collapse. Will humans go extinct? Maybe. But step outside for a second, look at the sky, the trees, feel the earth under your toes, let yourself feel the awe and marvel of being alive. And be grateful for this moment.
I recently read an opinion piece by Catherine Ingram that espoused similar views. That is, things are hopeless and that human extinction is inevitable. As a result I did a tad of research into what various sciencists think. I found that a some think that it is too late to do anything but the majority think that human civilization might make it. If there are experts saying that there is hope then I think we should not give up. We do not know what the future holds. Obviously the situation is extremely serious and the faster that we take action the better.
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Brian Joseph, Scranton thinks human extinction is definitely a possibility, especially if we continue on a business as usual path. However, he is pretty certain that the global civilization as we know will collapse and at the very least go through a complete transformation. We don’t know what will happen, but as our window for acting gets smaller and smaller, bad possibilities are starting to pile up faster than the good.
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Wow, this seems even bleaker than The Uninhabitable Earth. I haven’t read this book yet, and don’t plan to in the near future, as I can only absorb so much of this topic, but as a parent it is difficult for me to accept his central premise without becoming quite depressed. I guess coming to grips with one’s personal mortality and that of civilization as a whole are quite different. When this book first came out, some of the reviews were critical – as I recall they felt the second half of the book especially was muddled and not well researched. I’d be less inclined to trust him than other accomplished science and climate journalists, although it’s been a few years since this book has come out and he’s gone on to write other well regarded work. I’ve been curious about this book – thanks for having the courage to read it and write about it.
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Valorie, it wasn’t all that bleak actually. I mean, the consequences of our lack of action on climate change is potentially bleak, but Scranton tries to place collapse into a geological time frame and show that everything on earth has always changed and our time is not immune from that, though because of our actions we are bringing on collapse a lot faster than it would have happened if we didn’t change the climate. He’s Buddhist, so works a certain amount of Buddhist thought into the text when it comes to accepting change and mortality. I’ve been reading a lot of climate science lately and most of them are talking about collapse. What that looks like and how it happens is entirely up to us and what we do and don’t do.
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I’ve just started to think about science fiction and the anthropocene, since it’s the theme for next year’s ICFA. Certainly the Oryx and Crake series by Atwood and any of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels seem to offer more warning and possibilities than this book.
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Jeanne, Kim Stanley Robinson is great and Atwood’s series is a good choice too. If you haven;t already, take a look at Paolo Bacigalupi as well as The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch.
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I can see why you’d think of it in this context, but I didn’t like Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan at all. Where it wasn’t dull, it was unpleasant.
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Really? I liked it. Not perfect, and it did have some lagging parts, but I thought the story itself was pretty interesting. When you get your list of books together, I hope you post them because I am super curious to find out what you end up choosing 🙂
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We’ll see if I have the time and energy for a list and maybe a proposal for next year. Some years I have to take a break from ICFA!
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wow, this looks like a bleak and sobering read. That said, if things are hopeless people won’t do any effort to curb over-consumption and unite and take politically hard decisions. I think it’s just too depressing.
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Smithereens, definitely a sobering read. In some respects things are hopeless–we are not going to limit warming to 3C. But anything we can do to limit warming is good. The difference between 3C and 6C is huge and will mean life or death for millions of humans and non-humans.
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Reading stuff like this makes me want to crawl sobbing under a rock. Then I dust myself off and try and make changes. I recycle more, I use less water, I buy more organic, I grow more plants, I grumble when my family wants to take a vacation that means getting on a plane. But it feels like none of it will ever be enough. Adding to the list, regardless. I have to motivate myself to keep going.
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Jeane, I know how you feel regarding individual actions not being enough, they aren’t. But when you combine your actions with mine and with your neighbor’s and the person across town and in the next city, we can reach a kind of critical mass together. It feels lonely and pointless sometimes but you are not alone 🙂
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That’s a really tall order. You’re right, though. Systemic and personal change together are needed. I wonder if the average American can really change their whole lwayof thinking and living – myself included in that. We all seem to be waiting for someone to save us. I wonder about the uber-wealthy sometimes… if they’ll just build compounds with food and air and guards and leave the rest of humanity to duke it out with the scraps.
But you’re also right that we need to appreciate living in this moment, with clean(ish) air and running water and antibiotics. What a marvel. The natural world is so wonderful. I hope that if humanity succumbs that nature will be able to replenish the earth somehow with the creatures that are left.
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The uber-wealthy are already building compounds Laila. For some reason New Zealand is a popular place to do it. There are also security companies popping up that will guard your compound and also provide extraction services should you be away from home and get into trouble. It doesn’t take into account however that if/when collapse happens money will be completely worthless. Though if you are uber-rich you are probably stockpiling gold and things like that too.
I hope the systemic and personal change can happen in an orderly way because it’s going to happen when oil runs out or becomes too expensive to afford for the average person. We can either choose to change now or be forced into it later.
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Great review: thanks for sharing the long quotes and the ideas therein!
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Thanks!
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