Today, as the Supreme Court declares that the EPA can’t have the power to regulate carbon emissions that we know probably needs to exist somewhere to mitigate climate change - definitely, solastalgia feels.
The problem that frustrates everyone that actually understands this word, is the dread that between what we need to do, to address climate change, the health of the farm, and the senseless destruction of the natural world and so on, and our capacity to navigate the mechanism to nail down any significant advancements we make. it’s not the awe at the scale of the problem. It’s the intractability of those who don’t want to do the work, or who want a piece of the change to benefit them. And among those who want a finger in the pie of any change to address climate, there is a disgusting tendency to view climate change as the people you like among the young - and especially with the sexual overtones of lusting after younger women: acceptably for what they represent or unacceptably for themselves and their bodies and desires. All this frustration over not just the institutional barriers to climate adaptation, but also the human intransigence to want a piece of any structural, or rather institutional change, is part of Solastalgia. Again here I would say unequivocally that the Politics of desire is no escape from Solastalgia.
To where in philosophy does Solastalgia lead me? Well, it’s going to take looking at some of the places we are unfortunately at right now, factually, but then secondly, to where it goes from there in ideas.
Fossil fuels phase-out is not the end of resource extractivism politics. Congo, Lithium, minerals for making electronic infrastructure, the attempted and failed coup against Evo Morales not so long ago…
Is the US Military really about to fall into the snake pit of the Congo all after more mineral resources, especially after barely getting out of the meat grinder of Afghanistan? The fact that it seems like it’s being considered just shows that foreign interventions by the US Military often really just chase natural resources to govern and take. This is extractivism.
Lithium and batteries seem like a problem sometimes, don’t they? They’re made of minerals that have to be mined. And certain Native populations in the American West have certain legitimate grievances against mining operations. Liquid salt batteries can be made from other salts…but they are large and stationary, and so are capacitors at the moment. Elon Musk seems like he’s losing his mind while there is a lithium shortage. Is there absolutely no escape? To say so, I believe is the lethargy of despair and distraction that is the consequence of solastalgia. It culminates in saying the world gave you trauma when really your trauma (from researching it, for caring about it) gave something to the world. Laziness keeps you from the breakthrough.
Bolivia has some of the largest deposits of lithium in the world. And its Indigenous president, leader of a peasant political coalition was nearly deposed in a US-backed coup. Solastalgia. But then I saw this interesting interview with Evo Morales. Morales, by the way, regained power.
This uncovered a deeper narrative that undergirds solastalgia.
The pre-Colombian New World was connected, North to South America, through Central America, in an ancient trade route that went along the mountains. It was part of an ancient concept called the Eagle and the Condor.
North America looks like an Eagle; South America looks like a Condor - one in flight, the other perched covered and asleep.
The useful distinction is in how societies are constructed what is it, intrinsically, and what does it simply use, from time to time, as a tool, or “food for thought”.
The Eagle and the Condor is not unconnected to the drug trade. Consider for instance, how peyote entered the Native American population of the North, which caused the Ghost Dance. But look deeper. The Ghost Dance was an attempt to rationalize and make sense of peyote, and by doing so strengthen the traditions of work and social engineering that characterize the strength of the Eagle; the North.
Look at marijuana - but not only marijuana; rather, look at the culture that marijuana stimulated - which is the point: to the “Eagle people”, the drug doesn’t matter; it’s what you do with it. And that’s the role that the United States is in, at the moment: We stepped into the shoes of the other peoples that governed the North before. Now, there are Condor-type people in the North and vice versa, but the strength of each has always been, for the North, the Eagle-type intelligence of social engineering and for the South the Condor-type intelligence of the “tyranny of the imagination” which means - except for the skilled - something impossible without drugs.
Look at cocaine, too. Opium and fentanyl, and so on. It’s an old saw, but you can’t ever get rid of the drugs. All you can do is make sure you see it as a tool - and use the tool, don’t let the tool use you.
Go ahead and be macho about it, Eagle men. We’ve staked our manhood and our reputation on our use of tools, and not our ability to live in ceremony. Allow yourself that inspired arrogance to say: with my proper tools I can conquer imagination.
June 30, 2022
What do we say? Yes, first we say that “I’m glad we don’t structure our society based on those drugs” but only the ones that you can really make peace with. And the Evo’s? They say “you speak of peace but not of social justice.” And then, what signify us? We say at first, no to drugs, and then yes to drugs if they can be justified. We say at first yes, that drugs can make people better, smarter, but we say then no, that does not mean that they are only for those of highest status.
From this, you can see that clearly both sides are winning something over the other, and both sides are giving something up to the other, and both sides are holding something eternally in reserve: one side see it, the crypt of the scribe, and the other see it, something about an enchanted forest - neither true, neither a full-throated lie. That’s what it’s like, men. That’s diplomacy. And its statesmanship. And it takes more grit and experience than…well, etc. Suffice it to say, I want a future of people who are confident in skill and practiced when the times call for our contribution. No beginner’s luck. And no taste for first blood but hunger for a conquest of self and self’s capacity regardless of influence on the other.
Long ago, I wrote about a personal childhood story to explain solastalgia, but that was only a proper example, and not the definition. Solastalgia is wider than development discourse or climate change…
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