“If Wrigley’s can advertise to get people to chew gum, why shouldn’t I advertise to get them to chew good ideas?
Paramahansa Yogananda
CLIMATE CHANGE
IN
MIND
by Phillip Maiwald
“What if the way we respond to the crisis
is part of the crisis?”
Báyò Akómoláfé
For years, I’ve been thinking about climate change—the “poly,” “perma,” or “meta-crisis” that underlies all these crises—and I’m glad that it’s apparently possible to do so without becoming depressed. When you engage intensively with climate change and its related issues from different perspectives, you eventually begin to develop a sense of these phenomena as a whole—a kind of subjective overview. At some point, you can then identify a few things for yourself as “clear” or at least clearer. For me, these are now the following points:
-Climate change, in its complexity, cannot be explained or grasped using scientific methods. Microbiome research, as well as astrophysics and quantum physics, serve to diminish our understanding of the complexity of living systems rather than provide us with guidance. We need broader avenues of understanding. “Only those lacking imagination take refuge in reality, and shatter against it like cheap glass,” is how the writer Arno Schmidt laconically summed up this mechanism.
-We will not be able to confront, mitigate, or even resolve the complex crises of our time with our usual ideas and approaches. This is not a management problem. Particularly absurd in this context is the notion that we can stick to our reductionist logic, maintain our accustomed standards of living and discourses, and tackle climate change using the technical means of a New Green Deal or something similar—all without having to fundamentally change our thinking or our attitude toward nature, of which, as we know, we are a part.
-It is possible to intuitively grasp the causes of the human-made component of the ecological crisis if we try to understand human beings with all their needs and fears. For our fear is one of the main causes of all those actions that have led us down the path to this crisis: from the era of colonization through the Industrial Revolution to our highly technologized, globalized present.
Postactivism
Between 2015 and 2016, the philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé first articulated the idea of postactivism.
He originally drew on the work of feminist author and historian of science Donna Haraway and her descriptions of a compost pile. Akómoláfé thus began with the idea of “compost-activism,” but subsequently narrowed this concept down to the term “post-activism” without entirely abandoning the idea of a compost pile.
Akómoláfé initially describes the concept of postactivism as a completely open and elusive principle and fundamentally rejects any rational definition of the term. Instead, he speaks of mycelial interconnections, transatlantic slave expeditions, convoluted crossroads, fissures in reality, and encounters with the trickster Èṣù. In his concept, the notion of postactivism is inspired, among other things, by indigenous, animistic worldviews and by Yoruba Black Studies. He also situates the concept within a world of incomprehensible dimensions of space and time, drawing on scientific insights, holobiont research, and astrophysics and quantum physics.
With his idea of postactivism, Akómoláfé invites us to engage in an unusual cultural-philosophical discourse that can enable us to view the current crisis in a way different from what we are accustomed to from a rational perspective.
It allows us to connect with ancient stories and spiritual energies, thereby helping us to remain emotionally capable of taking action in the face of such a crisis, rather than losing ourselves in the confusing numbers and statistics of a biologistic narrative, or in lethargy, grief, or anger.
This approach is healing, because today more than ever, our task is to first and foremost find our emotional footing in this new situation of global crisis. In this sense, understanding Akómoláfé’s perspectives is a stabilizing experience—an exercise in the much-discussed holistic perspective and resilience.
What form of protest do we need?
Postactivism—as I understand it—raises, above all, the question of what form of protest and resistance—but also what form of reality—we actually need today.
Despite our love of complexity, it certainly makes sense today to return to simplicity and clarity in some areas of life. It makes sense to reject boundless consumption and to start making more things with our own hands again. Which cherished habits must we cast aside, what can we do without, and what must we rigorously forbid ourselves as societies?
Another key question is how we, as a civil society, can organize ourselves to work together. We can come together in a decentralized manner through regional or neighborhood-based networks and begin to practice working together in communities. Reaching an understanding without petty objections is anything but easy in the age of individualism. Trying to understand one’s counterpart, enduring compromises, and creating something together is an art that is increasingly worth learning. The artist Joseph Beuys called it the work on a social sculpture.
