What do we not need?
The mind is a restless monkey. Life is simply too interesting. In this age of digital availability, how many interesting topics can we not lose ourselves in? The fact that these extremely exciting topics – depending on where we are in the world and what makes up our world – captivate us so intensely is due to the fact that we feel so alive in these places of interest. This is due to our familiarity with these topics, our enthusiasm. However, there are also many topics in which we feel very alive and well, which we think we know very well, but which we are now obliged to recognize as clearly stupid in view of the current climate crisis. This applies both to mental debates and to the majority of very practical fields of action and production. Why do we humans actually find it so difficult to set priorities in relation to the climate crisis?
An example of what must seem stupid in our occupation today is the topic of time. Or space. Two absolutely fundamental and essential topics, two classics to even determine who we are and what kind of place we are in. It might be important to think more deeply about time and space, because perhaps our activist behavior towards the crisis depends on what kind of understanding we have of phenomena like time and space. Or what kind of understanding we develop of the mortality of our bodies. Let’s leave it until later to unravel the mysteries of time, space and mortality. First of all, let’s deal with the ecological question, which is important right now. Let’s first deal with the climate crisis without thinking about time and space, i.e. from the state of consciousness we are currently in as a civilization.
Another example of what can be considered stupid today is building moon rockets. Or electric cars. Or another smart app that makes our lives a little easier. Or other stuff. We don’t need more and better stuff right now, neither analog nor digital. We don’t need resource-intensive AI. We can take a break, even if it means we might not achieve full employment or economic growth or jeopardize Germany as a business location. The problem of full employment and economic growth is subordinate to climate change for the time being; we will (perhaps) think about full employment again later.
What do we not need right now? First of all, let’s think about it carefully in order to create free contingents that allow us to look at an unusual crisis in an unconventional way. Let’s start by assuming that we can’t solve the crisis in the conventional sense, but that we will find completely new ways of understanding it.
