What we want and why we want it

Usefulness and limits of intellectual questioning in an uncertain era

It is unquestionable that we are living through an unprecedented environmental crisis. The effects of this are under everybody’s eyes: billions of regional or local populations of wildlife have been lost in the last century¹, and climate change is causing noticeable and catastrophic events².
Although some deny it, we humans have had a central role in causing this crisis. Scientific evidence about anthropogenic CO2 emissions and their comparison with other climate-changing impacts is plentiful³; 97% of scientists, across continents and disciplines, agree with the conclusions of these studies⁴.

But I am not a big fan of diagnoses that are based on symptoms. Although it has become common exercise, in our superficial age, we should not stop our analysis at the first link of the chain. Often causes are way deeper than we think they are.

Let’s take fossil fuel emissions, by many considered the cause of the problem. They are indeed causing CO2 atmospheric levels to rise⁵, and therefore climate to change, but they are obviously not a cause in and by themselves. Why do we burn fossil fuels? Because we need increasingly more energy, and that is the cheapest and quickest way to obtain it — one may naively reply. Thus, we have already uncovered two deeper elements here: (1) we seem to need more energy; (2) we don’t seem to have time or money to lose in generating it.

Why more energy?

The first point can easily branch out into a very intricate series of even deeper causes. Why do we need more energy? To build things, to develop new technologies, to grow our economies. Why do we need to do this sort of things? Why?

Why Growth?

Does human welfare depend directly on economic growth? Obviously not, and there is plenty of literature on this. Perhaps individual humans don’t need an ever-growing economy, but complex societies do. After all, capitalistic dynamics rely on growth to avoid collapse⁶. But why do we want complex societies? And why do we want capitalism? In fact, do we need capitalism to organise ourselves in hierarchical and complex social structures (cities, companies, social classes, communities), or is it capitalism that produces them in order to sustain itself?

Development, Time and Desire

The same questions that we are firing at the concept of “growth” could be valid for “development”. What do we need new technologies for? I am not questioning whether we need them or not, directly — as it is evident that we think we need them, to the point that we are willing to sacrifice our permanence on this Earth.

From what desires do new objects, services, and tools stem? Freeing time up from hard physical labour, or boring menial tasks? What do we fill that time with? Work in front of a screen, distraction in front of a screen? Wait, but, wasn’t that screen created to solve a problem — or is it part of its cause?
And why do we need more free time in the first place? Free from what? Free for what?

Maybe technological advances relieve us from the heavy burden of undesired suffering — until the point where we won’t struggle to survive and just enjoy life. But are we not there yet? Many human beings clearly aren’t. But is the eradication of suffering something that can be achieved through external efforts? What is the root of suffering? Is it not, in part, the attachment to what we want, or think we need?

Why organise in complex societies?

Some will say that we need more energy and new technologies to solve the problems that technology itself has created. Perhaps they won’t phrase it that way, but that’s what they mean. For instance: there are too many humans on the planet — we need new technologies to feed them. But why are we too many? Because of the agricultural and industrial revolutions? Because that’s what living systems do — grow until they can’t any more?

Whether we like it or not, despite some meagre improvements in solving the problems we have created, most of our efforts as a “developing” and “growing” species have had the effect of increasing inequality. Perhaps that’s also a biological trait that is just surfacing. Do we need inequality as part of a hierarchical social structure? Can we live well within non-hierarchical and equalitarian organisations? Why do we seem to need rich and poor? Why does the hierarchy needed for effective decision-making lead to power and wealth inequality?

I will leave this thread now, but hopefully, I have given you an idea of where it could lead.

Inaction

I know that the danger with this type of thinking is that we might get stuck in an intellectual exercise and not act. We might end up identifying a very deep cause and wanting to change the whole system, rather than starting from more easily approachable tasks. And yet, there is a lot of value in asking why — even up to the point where we are questioning our basic assumptions.

The limits of thought

In my experience, taking our intellectual questioning as deep as we can lead to a major revelation. The limits of thought.
Thinking about problems can help solve them, it can inform the actions that are required to solve them. But there are problems we cannot think our way out of. There are questions and issues that are not resolved by an intellectual investigation. But don’t all issues, if dissected carefully, nucleate at their core from one of such unanswerable questions? What does this imply?
Also, can those problems that can’t be solved intellectually be dissolved, that is, not be seen as problems any more?

How to live simply? It is a big question. Let the answer come into the empty space that one must create in oneself. Trying to live simply is not the way — we don’t know how. Trying to fix it is filling the space with activity, when what is needed is to empty oneself and allow an answer to appear… (Michel de Salzmann)

References

1. Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?
2. Katz, R. W., & Brown, B. G. (1992). Extreme events in a changing climate: variability is more important than averages. Climatic change, 21(3), 289–302.
3. Rosenzweig, C., Karoly, D., Vicarelli, M., Neofotis, P., Wu, Q., Casassa, G., … & Tryjanowski, P. (2008). Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change. Nature, 453(7193), 353–357.
4. Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming — NASA
5. Höök, M., & Tang, X. (2013). Depletion of fossil fuels and anthropogenic climate change — A review. Energy policy, 52, 797–809.
6. Jackson, T. (2009). Prosperity without growth: Economics for a finite planet. Routledge.