Optimism or Fantasism? Activist Utoptimism vs. Reality (repost)

[David A. McKay]

Here's a recent Dark Mountain-linked post from my blog on optimism in the Activist movement and how as it evolves into 'Utoptimism' it becomes detached from reality.

I’ve noticed an increase in the popularisation of fantastical ideas amongst those of an Activist disposition recently – things like supressed free energy technology, New World Order conspiracies and the extremes of transhumanism are becoming seem to be getting ever more popular.  Occupiers in my city (although they haven’t actually occupied anything as of yet, so I use the term loosely) exemplify this with praise flowing in the David Icke-esque direction, whilst amongst student activist groups at the local University similar claims seem to be cropping up ever more often.

Perhaps it’s the bleak situation that we face or the lack of reasonable courses of action that convince people to depart from reality so dramatically.  However, I don’t think these cases represent more than just the tip of an iceberg of fantastical beliefs about the world and the future – and it’s more normal Activists who shoulder the root of it.

Take, for example, the fanfare around Rio +20.  In a few months time the next stop in the seemingly never-ending parade of global environmental conferences of states and their representatives to supposedly thrash out the solution to all our problems will be held in Rio de Janeiro, marking the 20^th anniversary since the last stop there concluded that action would be nice and that states would head towards taking said action (at some unspecified point). Environmental NGOs and greenwashing companies are already cranking up for the prestigious event, once again painting this conference as the world’s next best hope (where have we heard that before?).

It doesn’t take much to see through the hope of such grand exercises. Hope that our own government are committed to the UN process has already been shown up the Prime Minister’s refusal to go along until the conference moved dat..., whilst a leak of a draft of the proposed agreement has shown that no bindi..., instead favouring voluntary targets by each country, much like the UN climate conferences so far. But trumpet this they will, in an extended greenwashing exercise for all the states, companies and NGOs involved, before moving on to the next theoretically crucial global conference.

The NGOs and activists will see through some of the process of course, and when questioned will say it’s not exactly what they want. But hey, it least it’s SOMETHING, at least it’s some PROGRESS!  The feeling that something is at least better than nothing pervades through much of the rhetoric of environmental and social justice campaigners, and on the basis of this we’re exhorted to keep on writing in to our elected representatives, keep on boycotting bad company X, keep on protesting outside either’s headquarters, keep on hoping…

Some of this can be a good idea on occasion – for example, the turnaround by the British government on the proposed forest sell-off has at least been delayed and dredged up the old issue of land rights more into the public domain. Petitions, marches and boycotts can work in some cases, specifically when image is important to the target and when activists’ tactics can tarnish this image enough to make it more productive for the target to change than to stick to their guns. When the issue at stake is one that the target can afford to change, it’s possible.

But we’re not facing these sort of issues globally. We’re facing a network of systematic problems that pervade our civilisation to the core. States and corporations can’t afford to change these, as they’re embedded with the problems; they are products of the rot and so have a lot at stake in the rot’s continuation. Can we petition the state to never go to war or suppress liberty again? Can we boycott the industrial system out of eating the landbase and fouling the world for profit? Can we march enough to abolish poverty?

These points seem self-evident, but to make them is not well appreciated in discourse with many activists. The number of times I or other Dark Mountaineers are painted as being too negative or as pessimists for pointing out the reality of our situation is too long to bear repetition. Instead we’re told that we must be more positive and optimistic about the world – you see, we CAN solve all this problems, if only we try hard enough!

But what if we can’t?

What if the system is too rotten to fix, and too monumental to replace? What if we’ve already done irreperable damage and are destined to do more? What if utopian-optimism actually blinds us to reality?

“NO! It can’t be true! Don’t be so pessimistic – we have to hold the hope that anything is achievable! Together we can do it, if only we believe in our own power! This next conference, we’ll DEFINITELY convince our leaders to ACT, if only we UNITE and try HARD enough!”

If it only it were true.

Too often truthful and frank conversations about where we stand and what we can effectively do in the face of such problems are quashed by a smokescreen of utoptimism, whilst rendering those conversations as pessimistic and doomsterish and thus consigned to the rubbish bin of negativity. And so Activism can proceed afoot, with victories proclaimed when leaders consider some minor possible action or industry changes one particularly harmful process.

I can see why it happens. It’s hard to accept things as they are – the relentless march of destruction and suffering – without comforting ourselves with stories of our own power to stop it. It would be psychologically odd if people didn’t. We have to support ourselves emotionally in the face of such problems, and taking an optimistic stance based on a realistic outlook is a valuable way of soldiering on.

But that doesn’t make utoptimism the right thing to do, or make it capable of producing good tactics. There are some things we can do to prepare and take on global issues, but without seeing reality eye to eye at least occasionally we can get lost in our own comforting stories and become ineffective in the areas we can do something.

The Dark Mountain Project is one of the foremost groups taking a stand against the relentless utoptimism used to justify much groundless activism, and instead aim to take reality on for what it is – I’d reccomend it anyone interested in engaging in honest conversations about these issues.  There are projects and campaigns we should get  invovled with too – protecting your local landbase through a whole spectrum of tactics and building resilience in human and non-human communities is admirable and necessary to preserve as much of natures diversity through this century, amongst other useful things involved in preparing for a precarious future.

Whilst free energy machines and global conspiracies are easily spotable as fantasism, the more subtle and comforting illusions of Activism are more difficult to confront and debunk.  I hope that more environmentalists and social justice campaigners will come to terms with this soon as time runs short to prepare effectively for future crises.  Optimism must be based on reality if it’s to be effective, but utoptimism leads us into fantasy and will direct our energy away from truly useful actions.

[David A. McKay]

Hi Wolfbird, thanks for the comments - some good ideas to chew through there!

I agree with you that everyone has their own vision of reality and so a totally objective and agreed upon reality is not teneable, and that people will people will sub-consciously mould their own vision based on what makes the world most understandable and comfortable (for example believing in New World Orders to gain an easier explanation of the mess the world is in). 

I was aware of these issues whilst writing this, but in the interest of brevity I focused on the impacts of moulding one's own vision of reality in regards to mainstream environmentalism and assumed that there's a way they could be shown to be wrong.  Is that, however, a reasonable assumption to make?  As you say, it's easy for us to see through the utoptimism of much of environmentalism and activism, but perhaps that's easy to do from our position outside that bubble and in a bubble with different assumptions of our own.

Science was the attempt to achieve an objective view of reality, but contrary to its own expectations is still dependent on a subjective metaphysics, consisting of a materialist and reductionist worldview, which leads it up the path of the myth of progress and infinitely bettering technology.  Science, or at least the careful observation and inquiry of the world, has provided useful information to feed into our visions of reality (e.g. that so-and-so process damages this woodland and so on), but it still is interpretable in different ways through different paradigms - for example scientific eugenics seemed fine earlier this century, but not at all now. Not all science has to be based on a reductionist worldview though; in my own day-job I work in Earth Systems science as an attempt to view things more holistically (though it still is materialist).  Even that though is based on a worldview, albeit different from 'traditional' science, so the point that science is subjective still stands.

The trouble with relativism is that if applied absolutely we rapidly run out of anything solid to base our understanding and actions in the world on - one could up in end in a nihilist dead end.  To get around this in my own mind, I decided that we could at least fairly confidently use our own biological situation (i.e. that we're alive and seem to want to do certain things innately) as a means to find at least some, basic direction in life - two life imperatives that humans and non-humans seem to be guided by at least to me are that 1) we try to survive as individuals and as a species, and 2) we try and be content and happy whilst surviving.  These are obviously still subjective views, but I hope are a fairly agreeable set of points to most people that are based on what humans and non-humans spend most of their time trying to do in some way or another.

It's against these points that I try and measure most philosophies and plans for the future, asking whether they are good for both surviving and producing contentment.  Many ideas achieve one and not the other - for example, consumer capitalism aims for the latter but contradicts the former (survival implies long-term sustainability) and often the latter too (beyond all needs satisfied and some comfort contentment does not seem to be things-based).  This still allows for subjective variation though - many would argue that constantly improving technology will solve the sustainability issue and so allow survival and that most people love getting endlessly more stuff - however, I like to think that at least some measure of objective discussion on whether ideas can achieve the two life imperatives is possible.  Different worldviews will still result in different conclusions, but it may help focus the questions for these paradigms to answer somewhat.

Overall though I do agree that 'reality' can't be taken as one completely objective truth to everyone and that people of different worldviews can in

[David A. McKay]

Yes, I'm not too convinced about the safety of home biotech either!  The tools needed for biotech work are getting relatively cheap, so seems unlikely that the genie of diybiotech will be kept in its bottle for much longer - and what with lab studies reporting how, for example, smalpox virus can be built from scratch (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/297/5583/1016), and how a strain of mousepox was accidentally made near 100% fatal through unrelated work (www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/highlights/010117_mousepox.shtm...), it's certainly reasonable to be concerned what could happen by accident in someone's garage (or as Vinay Gupta suggested on his blog, by some annoyed grad student in a university lab somehwere...).

Your example of your local woodland group is telling - indeed a microcosm of the difficulties of global decisions!  I've worked somewhat in conservation and environmental groups who often take very different standpoints on conservation work - removing birch saplings on a heath is seen as good by the former but often debated by the latter, for example.  It clearly depends on what worldview the groups hold and what goals fit into them, but some worldviews seem to produce better results from the viewpoint of survivability and contentment than others - but how to steer towards those!

The issue you raise of getting one set of people divorced from a place to recognise its value and protect it is indeed crucial - those with a sense of connection and understanding of a place are vastly more likely to work to protect and enhance it than those with no obvious emotional connection there.  Perhaps getting people to be aware of and work within their local landscape ecosystems is a crucial component, with easier access to land outside the city available for city-dwellers perhaps.  For example, in Southampton one could try and encourage connections to be forged out of the city to within the two main river watersheds the city lives within...  I'm not entirely sure how, but somehow making it easier for those emotional bonds to the local landbase to be made outisde of the 'usual suspects' seems like valuable work.

Baroness Susan Greenfield's suggestion that we choose technology and not vice versa seems odd-footed as you say - surely for one thing I didn't have the choice as to what technology 'age' I was born into, or what technology I must use to get along within wider society?  One can't easily get away from computers now even if we'd like to, as so much is expected to be done through them!  We do have a choice of whether to directly use them or not, but it's much like the choice to work for a wage or not - it's rather difficult to not to...  I also think the Luddites probably would disagree over whether they chose the newer technologies or not!