What a Time to Be Alive

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)

We are in deep trouble. “We have set our world and our civilization on fire in a number of scary ways, and none of our trusted social institutions are inspiring confidence that they can put the fire out. That is because the social institutions were framed within social narratives or framing stories that are also failing us…fantasies of unlimited growth, wish-dreams about guaranteed happy endings, delusions of power, fables about inevitable progress.” (pg 225)

“It is already too late to keep CO2 levels below 350 parts per million. If it is not too late already, it will very soon be too late to keep Earth’s temperatures below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit proposed by scientists in Paris in 2015 (actually, as of today, it is already too late[1]). It will be too late to save this coastline or that ecosystem, this city or that species, this democracy or that economy.” (pg 227)

It is easy to despair. It is easy to lose hope. It is easy to give up. It is easy to stop raising our voices, especially if we really don’t know what to do in the onslaught of horrific events. (NV: I heard someone say recently that she wished more Christians had stood on the train tracks to Auschwitz and stopped the trains. Today she doesn’t even know where the tracks are.)

What a time to be alive, one can sigh in hopeless frustration and desperation, ready to give up.

Or, what a time to be alive, one can whisper as he or she gets out of bed each morning. “It is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much…We must be careful not to empower our worst human traits by acting as if they are our only human traits. We must not let the worst of us eclipse the best of us, because ‘human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness,’ and often, ‘people have behaved magnificently.’” (pg 224)

“It is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much…remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently.” Doing what we can, saving what we can save, would be a “marvelous victory…not measured by outcome…rather, it is measured by the way we live, by a billion people living as people should live, ‘in defiance of all that is bad around us.’” (pg 225)

As our current narratives and institutions fail, “we can disentangle and step away from them. We can tell better, more honest stories, and we can build better, wiser, more durable, representative and ethical institutions, starting small, and, if necessary, rebuilding from the ruins or replanting in the ashes.” (pg 225)

“A new, humbled, wiser humanity can only be born as the old, arrogant, foolish human civilization is collapsing. Like new life rising from the ashes of a burned forest, a new humanity can only arise when the old humanity is falling apart. Even if that new humanity is short-lived, even if it doesn’t succeed in turning things around, at least it will have flowered in us.” (pg 226)

“True, this isn’t a great time for an easy life, but if you want a meaningful life, you showed up right on time.

You can give up if you need to or want to, or you can deny or minimize the gravity of our current situation. You are free. But if you have the vision and strength, even if the world is shipwrecked, why not choose instead to live with wisdom and courage, saving all we can save, ‘in defiance of all that is bad around us’?” (pg 229)

[1] “The goal to avoid exceeding 1.5 Celsius is deader than a doornail. It’s almost impossible to avoid at this point because we’ve just waited too long to act,” according to Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth. “We are speeding past the 1.5 Celsius line an accelerating way and that will continue until global emissions stop climbing.” Source here.

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