Culture Shapes Society Shapes Politics

(Essay # 9)

In this season the mind turns inevitably to politics. Most of us have ideas about the ways in which our political system needs fixing. Many have written about the major pro-democracy reforms that are needed, including fundamental ones like securing the right to vote, freeing democracy from the clutches of big money, and having the national popular vote elect the president.  We pray that our politics, flaws and all, will work well enough come November.
 
But lately in this season I have been trying to go deeper than my usual dig. In the search to understand “what’s really going on here,” the following thoughts have occurred to me. 
 
We think of our political system being broken, which it is, but what if that is part of a bigger problem?
 
It has often been pointed out, going back to de Tocqueville, that Americans are obsessed with politics. Well, that is certainly true today, and there is very good reason for Americans to be obsessed. What happens this year in our politics is of the greatest importance for both people and the planet. I recently collaborated on a public statement saying that both our democracy and our climate are on the ballot in the 2024 elections. https://saving-democracy.net
 
What is less appreciated is that politics in America have become more important than they should ever be.
 
Our democracy is now saddled with innumerable issues that will affect the future of social and planetary well-being. So the question arises: why is our democracy freighted with so many weighty matters? I believe it is due in important part to fundamental flaws in our society. Those flaws leave too many large issues unresolved, and these unresolved matters, demanding answers and having nowhere else to go, surface endlessly in our politics and overwhelm it. 
 
Let me explain. Here is a thought experiment, the first of two in this essay. Please imagine a society: 
 
(1) that has lost much of its fundamental coherence and is no longer bound together well by shared values, aspirations, and understandings of the world and history;  
 
(2) that is cleaved, riven, by fundamental differences, and these cleavages are all increasingly splitting society in the same way, so that friendships, religion, housing, schooling, views about climate and gender and race and immigrants, and much else become polarized in the same political and partisan alignment; and 
 
(3) where issues on which society is deeply split are the main subjects in national politics and elections, so that elections and political outcomes are transcendently important, engaging peoples' whole sense of meaning and identity. 
 
Perhaps you don’t have to imagine such a society. You may have just read about one like this in the news. Those three points come close to describing our country today.
 
To me, our society has handed over too much to politics. Following from the failure of social norms and cultural values to deliver answers, too much has become political, the political causes all tend to split right and left, and among those causes are many issues of fundamental importance to their constituencies. 
 
In this society, can democracy govern well? I think not. There is lots of evidence to that effect. And in December 2024, the divisions that plagued us in October will likely still be here, mostly unresolved in November. Of course, the election is enormously important; there are more reasons to elect Harris and Democrats than I can count. Just consider this: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/climate/trump-oil-gas-mar-a-lago.html?smid=em-share. But polarization will persist after the election.
 
If this analysis is more or less right, what does it imply? I think it points to certain actions that should be center stage in a Harris administration. Our country needs to pursue, with determination, pro-democracy political reforms (both well-known ones as well as what David Orr calls Democracy 4.0) in close parallel with huge and synergistic efforts aimed at healing a fractured society and building a new culture of community-centered well-being and solidarity. 
 
Here is what I mean:
 
Senator Klobuchar and her colleagues have introduced an impressive bill that would shore up voting rights, protect election integrity, and otherwise greatly strengthen our democracy. The bill’s fate may well depend on the 2024 elections. Kamala has promised to sign the bill when passed.
https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2023/7/klobuchar-colleagues-introduce-legislation-to-protect-the-freedom-to-vote-and-strengthen-our-democracy.

In books and articles, my friend David Orr has written brilliantly about today’s imperative of deeper democratic change, what he calls Democracy 4.0, change that would, among other things, bring the rights of nature and those of future generations into the democratic process.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/democracy-4-0. 

In my Essay from the Edge No. 5 New Consciousness, I did my best to describe the path to a new American society. For example, among the values I discuss in this essay are environmental ones. If our society’s dominant cultural values had included a truly strong environmental ethic, we might have been arguing these past decades about the best way to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but we would not have been divided on whether to do it and do it quickly. These thoughts on societal change are just a contribution to a much bigger project in which we all have a role. https://www.democracycollaborative.org/blogs/5c9duzikm8reorxjyyjcmayv2oggb2-dc6ft.
 
There is another answer, of course—the authoritarian one. It would encourage democracy’s decline and impose its own “solutions” to society’s divisive issues. Trump’s affection for the world’s dictators and strongmen as well as his repeated rejection of democratic norms are another reason to defeat him decisively.
 
To conclude, here is a second thought experiment. In January of 1944, as he was engaged in the planning for D-Day, FDR knew even then of the importance of speaking to the post-war world. And so in his memorable State of the Union address, he laid out his Second Bill of Rights. He saw these rights as “a new basis of security and prosperity … established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.” Here is what he sought for us as rights, not mere goals:
 
“The right to a useful and remunerative job …;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; …
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.”

A few years ago, Lapham’s Quarterly noted that this Second Bill of Rights “was truly radical both then and now—almost as radical as the original Bill of Rights ratified in 1789. And the radical promise of the Second Bill of Rights goes unfulfilled to this day.” https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/second-bill-rights. 
 
I am near tears as I read FDR’s address. Consider how America would look today if this second Bill of Rights had been adopted 80 years ago and built upon as this great President envisioned. The successful struggle to make these rights everyday things would have transformed American society, eventually making these rights integral to American culture. As this new culture shaped new generations, we would become a people and a country fundamentally different from today. Our burden of democratic performance would be greatly lightened and our politics much closer to manageable scale. We must imagine the rights to health care and decent housing as secure as the rights to free speech and peaceable assembly.
 
“Who is there big enough to love the whole planet?” E.B. White wrote. “We must find such people for the next society.”
 
***
 
With special thanks to Tom Kinder, David Orr, and Alan Miller. 

For more on the author, see www.gusspeth.org.
 
The Essays from the Edge are being posted at https://www.democracycollaborative.org/blogs.

 

Silver Linings Playbook–Climate Edition

(Essay #8)

To my knowledge, I have never been accused of erring on the optimistic side of the climate issue, and too often I have been right. Still, I have thought a lot about how to make some lemonade out of this bitter lemon. To pursue silver linings is not to minimize the climate catastrophe now hard upon us. It is only to try to make the best of a bad situation.
 
Here are six silver linings—areas to which we can put our energies. We need to frame a positive politics for the climate issue, and these silver linings can help.
 
First, the most widely appreciated of these silver linings are the many ancillary benefits from the ongoing shift to widespread renewable energy, benefits beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide and methane. The climate requirement will get us out of fossil fuels more quickly and thoroughly than the many longstanding fossil fuel problems ever could. 
 
The benefits will be enormous. The Lancet recently stressed that air and other pollution from fossil fuels contribute to huge health impacts, including asthma and other respiratory diseases, heart disease, cancers, poor birth outcomes, cognitive effects, and premature deaths—these fossil fuel deaths now estimated to be about 350,000 a year in the US. Beyond health benefits, retiring fossil fuels would bring dramatic reductions in surface mining, oil and other spills, pipelines, fracking, and more.
 
Similarly, while climate change promises to be devastating for the Earth’s biota, it is also possible that the imperative of keeping greenhouse gases in the world’s soils and forests will drive major new efforts to conserve natural habitats and healthy agricultural lands. We need to keep the world as green as possible. Climate change’s destruction of much biological diversity is now inevitable. Countervailing conservation is something we have to make happen.
 
Second, the climate disaster could draw communities together, much as natural disasters are documented as doing today. People will be required to fend more for themselves, and they could discover that in so doing they will succeed more often if they cooperate, if they support each other, if they accept and get beyond social and political divisions. The stronger the community bonds, the more intense the interactions across sectors and differences, the higher the spirit, the better off they will be as much of the world seems falling apart. 
 
There is much good that can come from community revitalization. Local, state, and regional governance could grow stronger, and their successes in response to the unprecedented climate challenge can carry over into other areas of public concern. Also, community climate efforts will be paired with individual efforts of homeowners to go solar and adopt climate friendly lifestyles, and in the process that will activate a larger constituency for other needed changes. Here’s another pattern: the fights to “own your own electrical utility” are not new, but the climate challenge is giving them new momentum.  
 
Implicit in these changes at the community level are corresponding changes in individual values. Crises, in this case the climate crisis, can compel a rethinking of what we value most highly and who we are and want to become. The results of this value change can be helpful across a broad front.
 
Third, the technologies driven to commercial scale by the imperative of addressing climate change will have other major benefits beyond climate. One can think of all the uses to which new battery technology can be put. And more: improvements in air conditioning and cooling technologies, electricity grid performance, energy efficient construction, biophilic design, green cities, and much more can better our lives as well as reduce climate threats.
 
Fourth, after decades of denigrating government and worshiping the market, the climate issue is leading to an appreciation of the need for effective, capable, and engaged government and, what’s more, government that is truly democratic—of, by, and for the actual people. The creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy that got us into this mess is not going to get us out of it, at least not until the economic elite are through making money out of both causing the problem and providing their profitable answers. Reagan said “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” But of course, he had it backwards. With good government, we can solve a lot of America’s many problems. 
 
Fifth, the climate crisis is driving a lot of people to distraction, but it is also driving a lot of people to progressive activism. This growth is happening especially among the young and the old (everyone else is working too hard) and, to be sure, the victims, the moms, and the preachers. Here, we recall the leadership Bill McKibben is giving us, including most recently with Third Act for us elderly folks and before that with 350.org, and the powerful mobilization of young people by the Sunrise Movement and others. With climate threats helping to mobilize citizens, we can work to build a powerful progressive coalition addressing a large agenda of national needs.
 
Sixth, and importantly, societies here and abroad will eventually be forced to face the reality that the climate crisis is the result of the failure of economic and political systems. The climate demonstration banner says it all: “System Change Not Climate Change!” An economy so hellbent on profit and growth that it is destroying the planet’s habitability.  A politics so captured by economic interests that it can barely stir itself to save the planet.  Consumers so enthralled by the diversions and infatuations of modern life that they hardly care what is going on around them. That has been the pattern for a half century. But here is the good news: it is beginning to change, and to deal successfully with the climate threat it will have to change dramatically. The oncoming climate calamity is the most powerful argument for transformation of America’s political economy, and with that system change would come benefits for a wide range of today’s challenges.
 
Here is another way of looking at the need for deep change. Adaptation to climate realities will receive huge attention in the future. If tactical adaptation is the practical preparation for climate change’s impacts, then what I would call “systemic adaptation” is the design and adoption of the societal changes needed to correct the fundamental systemic flaws that have brought the climate crisis to our doorstep. Systemic adaptation looks beyond tactical measures like preparing for floods and extreme heat, and it asks what type of societies will fare best for people and the planet in the future. See https://e360.yale.edu/features/systemic-adaptation.
 
All of this raises an interesting question: what about international action? Might the climate crisis establish new paths for international cooperation and inclusion that might carry over more widely? We must hope that it will.
 
The silver linings of the climate storm clouds will not simply materialize down here on land. They must be first appreciated and then pursued as part of the climate struggle. This is a playbook after all. There is much to be done if we want to seize the opportunities just reviewed. Here are a few of the things we need to do, together.
 
We will need to avoid the pitfalls that are all around us in this area. Communities could disintegrate rather than cohere. New technologies, like those for geoengineering, could produce disasters. Climate change could further authoritarian tendencies as societies grasp for security and embrace fake solutions. Elites can be counted on to try to save themselves. Climate change could get too severe for adaptation, even systemic adaptation, to succeed and for the silver linings to be realized. 
 
Paul Raskin and his colleagues at the Tellus Institute have described positive scenarios, but they have also developed a "Fortress World" scenario—a place of gated communities, armed private security and even armies, safe and unsafe zones, all for the privileged elites. As government responses to climate stresses are puny and fail, some expensive private sector solutions are available to the rich while most people are shut out. There are not many silver linings in Fortress World.
 
Beyond avoiding pitfalls, we need to join in supporting the efforts, locally and nationally, to cut by 50 percent US greenhouse gas emissions and to protect 30 percent of America’s land, both by 2030—two ambitious goals already set by the Biden Administration. That means quickly putting a stiff fee on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and halting new fossil fuel investments and leases. 
 
We need to prepare our communities for the full destructive possibilities of climate change while working to bridge social and political divides, build local resilience, and strengthen governmental capacities. 
 
We are in an era of rapid technological change, some of it good and some not so. We need to support an effort to revitalize “technology assessment and choice,” an area where the federal government was once strong. We even had an independent Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, which was eliminated allegedly for budgetary reasons. 

Speaking of budgets, the crazy, broken federal budgeting process needs to be revamped so that careful attention can be given to building government capabilities and carrying out sustained, long-term programs.

 
Environmental and climate advocates need to join with the advocates promoting pro-democracy reforms, including campaign finance reform and public financing of elections. Pro-democracy reform is an environmental issue just as surely as putting a price on carbon or acting to save species. More broadly, advocacy groups need to come out of their issue-specific silos and join together to build a powerful new movement of movements. See the discussion at https://orionmagazine.org/article/6-progressive-books-climate-politics.

Regarding system change, the first steps toward a new system of political economy that gives priority to people, place, and planet occur at the personal level with the rise of a new consciousness. For some, a new consciousness can arrive as a spiritual awakening—a transform­ation of the human heart. For others it is a more intellectual process of learning to see the world anew.  From a society-wide perspective, it involves major cultural change and a reorientation of what society values and prizes most highly. 

If properly guided, nothing can drive this transformation in cultural values quite like the unfolding climate disaster. It can and will shatter settled assumptions and habitual thinking and prompt a search for the societal flaws that have brought the climate crisis to our doorstep. From this base of people alerted to the need for deep change in our economic and political systems, a movement for transformational change can be built. 

Readers who have stuck with me through previous Essays from the Edge will know that those pieces are a source of information and ideas for moving these proposals forward. The Essays from the Edge can be found online at democracycollaborative.org/essaysfromtheedge.

For more on the author, see www.gusspeth.org.

The Essays from the Edge are being posted at https://www.democracycollaborative.org/blogs.