Tag Archives: shift

About that shift in consciousness we so urgently need

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Upon seeing these poll results, a friend commented that most people who voted for “shift in consciousness” probably think that others, and not they themselves, have yet to make the shift. If he is right, the “shift” vote comes from people who think of themselves as already having crossed over to the other side. But have they — have we? 

Just what “consciousness” in this case means, or what the “shift” might require of us, remains unclear; and one weakness of this poll (it has many, as Joanna Boehnert and others were right to point out) is that it does not specify what that shift might involve.

I’ve seen people toss the phrase around, and included it here hoping to get a better sense of what they mean by it. Are we talking about widespread public awareness of climate risk, or the knowledge that human activity has caused the climate to change, or the conviction that we can — and must — do something about it? Are we talking about hope? The defeat of climate despair? A new view of the world and our place in it? 

No matter how we may choose to define the shift, it would seem that we have to continue to root out denial, as John Rehm suggested. To be effective, any “shift in consciousness” would at the very least require that people take responsibility. 

That in itself presents a formidable task, especially here in the United States, where an entire political party is dedicated to climate change denial. But it’s also a problem all over the place, everywhere we turn, if we think about how many of our everyday actions involve denial or willful blindness, and how easily our acts can contribute to “a set of acts” that together will cause harm (to borrow Parfit’s phrase). This is why, as Orla De Díez remarked, we have to design to make it “easier for people to behave more sustainably.” We can’t wait for some great awakening.

Another Thought On Gessen’s Shift

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In response to a comment on yesterday’s post about Masha Gessen’s “Trump: The Choice We Face,” I remarked that the opposition Gessen sets up in her essay between realist and moral reasoning seems a little too clean and stark. It is also not one we can carry over, intact, into political life.

We should like to be able to choose, always, between right and wrong, and do what is right; but life does not present itself in these terms, and it’s easy to imagine cases in which moral reasoning might prevail and political action would thereby be limited, or impossible; where strict adherence to the moral could usher in its own Robbespierrean terrors; or where we simply failed to take into account the extent to which moral reasoning is already conditioned and determined by the actual, by the real.

Of course we should try to temper realism with moral reasoning, but we should probably not complete Gessen’s shift: we can never operate entirely from one side or the other.

It’s important to recognize the shortcomings of the transactional and still reserve the power to deliberate about what to do and outcomes we would like to see. A balanced view wouldn’t force the choice between realism and morality, but allow for the fact that sometimes people have to get their hands dirty; and when they must, they can and should act while remaining fully aware — at times they will be tragically aware — of the moral difficulties in which they have entangled themselves.

It’s rare in life, and in political life rarer still, that we are able simply to substitute moral reasoning about right and wrong for practical deliberation, just as it’s always cold and inhuman to reduce practical deliberation to a calculation of costs and outcomes without consideration of what we owe to ourselves and others.