Over the past few years, I’ve felt surrounded by the world’s grand demise, but didn’t know how to process much of what I was encountering. Eventually I knew I had to get involved in fighting these large-scale injustices. I was too afraid of the idea of being silent, yet too overwhelmed by the idea of committing myself to making change. I settled on what I saw as a happy medium, making small lifestyle changes that reflected my values and focusing on driving change through education. I thought that if I continued with these practices, I would eventually be able to look upon all the likely destruction and suffering and say, “well at least I did what I could.” It wasn’t until taking this course that I realized I was approaching these issues in a selfish way.
Human being-ness in the Anthropocene, being an actor in this tragedy, should mean focusing all of our energy on listening, empathizing, inspiring, and empowering. Being self-serving and seeing ourselves as individuals (essentially how I was approaching positive change) is responsible for getting us in the mess we now have the responsibility to clean up. Being a human in the Anthropocene should mean celebrating diversity and questioning the one-track mindset we’ve grown accustomed to. We should ponder enormous philosophical questions without letting these questions limit our sense of agency in making smaller decisions. We should recognize that working collectively doesn’t deplete our value as an individual, but that it actually makes each of us more important to the health of the system. Whether we are capable of implementing a selfless, systemic framework necessary for acting the way we “should” is perhaps unlikely. Unlikely as it might be, it is the best shot we have at cleaning up the mess we’ve created. To quote singer/songwriter Father John Misty, “I hate to say it, but each other is all we got.”