Finding Harmony
As we gather round the campfire, at the cinema, philharmonic or theatre, we open ourselves to experiencing and sharing emotions. But how best to enjoy them while protecting our planet?
Kamil Wyszkowski*
We – people – have been gathering together since the earliest days. Homo sapiens sapiens is a social species, after all. We perceive and explore the world communally. We cannot survive alone for long. For our species, isolation is a punishment – and a harsh one, at that. We need interactions, emotions, rivalry, tenderness, touch and closeness. Existing as part of a group is an essential element of survival, rooted in primal atavism.
Emotions and empathy
Past atavism shapes our need to experience things and events jointly, at the same time and in the same place. As we gather round the campfire, at the cinema, philharmonic or theatre, we open ourselves to experiencing and sharing emotions. Groups define us – we frequently describe ourselves as belonging to this or another community. Experiencing culture together is one of the most magical human capabilities. We first discovered this magic in caves illuminated by firelight over a hundred millennia ago. It was then that we first started creating culture based on encounters between individuals.
Today these are no longer gladiatorial combats, knights’ duels, sun dances or bloody Tenochtitlan rites. We are constantly searching for ever more sophisticated ways of spending and experiencing our free time. We strive for excitement and adrenaline, or, alternatively, peace, quiet and endorphins. An entire industry dedicated to guiding our emotions has appeared. We submit to conductors shaping our emotions to the rhythm of music, light, dance, the spoken word and stage sets. Everything intertwines, and the way we encounter art and culture is constantly changing. There are no longer predictable concert halls or auditoriums where canons of fashion lock us in rigid boundaries of available options and dress codes. We have more space for extravagance and freedom. Culture has snapped the leash and smashed the barriers which previously jealously guarded the monopoly of how we experience it.
We are also seeing a new kind of empathy. In our hunger for growth and development, we have realised we have gone too far. We have realised that since around the mid-19th century, conventionally marking the start of the Anthropocene, we have destroyed ecosystems, polluted the water, brought about the extinction of many species and caused temperatures to rise which may lead to our self-destruction. We have come to understand that we are the last generation living it up on the top deck of our version of the Titanic, and scientists are warning us that we are heading straight for the iceberg and our ship will most likely sink without trace. And the truth is that the vast majority of us are not partying on top deck – those of us on lower decks have no chance of joining the carousals and will sink sober and with no chance for even a fleeting moment of joy.
Unjust development
Are things really that bad? To save ourselves from ourselves, the United Nations was called into being in the wake of the Second World War. Since 1979, the UN has been warning us that climate change is progressing rapidly and that we must put the brakes on our gluttony and greed, and change the way we develop. We know that since the start of the industrial revolution emissions of carbon dioxide and methane have been growing year on year, and our planet has lost the ability to store the emissions generated by burning coal, crude oil and natural gas created over the millennia from the remains of giant ferns and rain forests dating back to the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The world population has doubled in just the last fifty years, the global economy has grown four-fold and international trade tenfold, while the food industry has tripled in size. Forty-seven highly developed countries are enjoying the top deck of our Titanic, with Poland in 32nd place. The remaining 150 countries where people struggle to make end meets are all stuck on the lower decks.
The costs of such an unevenly distributed and unjust growth are shocking. Currently up to 25% of all species are at threat of extinction and another million are predicted to die out in the coming decades. Humankind has changed 75% of earth’s surface, bringing devastation to ecosystems. Our activities affect around 66% of the total ocean surface, and we have lost 85% of wetlands and marshlands. Over 32 million hectares of tropical forests have been razed to the ground since 2000. A whopping 559 of 6190 livestock species have gone extinct prior to 2016. Insects are dying out on a mass scale, causing losses to food production of over $235 billion. We have also generated around 8.4 billion tonnes of plastic since 1950. That’s over a tonne per person, none of it is decomposing, and production continues to grow.
But are we pausing to reflect on the situation? Global leaders occasionally meet at the UN’s table on our Titanic’s top deck to discuss recovery. The UN has put together a plan known as Climate Action and at each summit the organisation perseveres in naming and shaming the worst offenders to motivate them to get a grip and change course. Is anyone helping the UN? Scientists, certainly, by issuing increasingly alarmist reports. The trouble is, sadly, that wisdom generally loses out to ignorance, as do ambitious reform plans to populism.
Culture to the rescue!
Fortunately, the UN is garnering support from the world of culture – individuals and organisations systematically working on their empathy. They are coming together to act and call for reflection, and are becoming increasingly inspirational. We are seeing artistic trends based on a return of harmony with nature and treating our globe with respect as a common good entrusted to humankind, rather than a planet we are free to exploit as we wish. We have started preparing “green events” which provide education on the threats resulting from climate change, and we are making sure these events don’t damage the environment themselves. We are tracking the carbon footprint generated by our travelling guests and strive to use electricity from renewable energy sources – let’s not forget that on the global scale, 75% of electricity from each socket originates from fossil fuels. We understand that each event has an environmental cost, so we count them and repay them with excess to nature by planting trees, financing parks and collecting rainwater in small butts.
It turns out it’s perfectly possible to hold a concert without resorting to plastic; that we can serve vegetarian food on plates made from wheat bran; that we can pour beer into glasses recycled from coffee grounds, and explain that producing a kilo of beef requires as much as 40,000 litres of water and results in over 36 kg of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere. Perhaps devoted carnivores could be convinced to switch to a delicious vegetarian alternative. We can do without tatty plastic giveaways and switch to a system such as a crowdfunded lottery to fund planting trees. We can switch to Fairtrade coffee and snacks. And if we don’t know how to organise green events, we can look at how others do things. Kraków hosts an annual Green Film Festival in the summer following green event principles.
Or reach for the ISO 20121 norm which sets out standards for such events, and help wisdom overcome ignorance. When we join forces, we can still change the course of this Titanic and navigate future generations to a safe haven.
* Kamil Wyszkowski – Representative and Executive Director of UN Global Compact Network Poland. He has been working for the UN since 2002. Between 2009 and 2014, he was Director of the UN Development Programme in Poland, and has been Representative of UN Global Compact in Poland since 2004. In his spare time he enjoys writing science fiction stories.
The text published in the 2/2021 issue of the “Kraków Culture” quarterly.
