You'd think that collectively We humans By now We'd know what to do We have millennia of spiritual wisdom Centuries of science Is there any new art we need to master Any new insight we need to gain? Even now people have spotted we've been getting it wrong And have been rehearsing fresh ways to live So we know about regenerative farming How restored watershed habitats soak up flood water We know that harvesting elemental energy Is better than burning our fossilised kin We know conservation will be fruitless without systemic change We've come up with different economic systems to try Degrowth, Doughnut Economics or the Green New Deal But few are honest about the chasm between Our lifestyles now and the changes implied We'll have to accept vastly reduced life expectations Let our sense of entitlement go And make the space to grieve the loss But also we know this looks weird as a global solution In a world where our colonial past is ingrained We never really shook off the colonial habit We still inculcate Western ideals Bind others with our markets Use worldliness as a lure To infiltrate traditions And undermine self-sustaining ways of life In exchange for an income from our system People bulldoze rainforests To plant soya crop To feed beef To fill wealthy bellies Children mine lithium and rare earths For our phones and electric cars Becoming dependent on our consumption On scraps from our table But with degrowth We pull the plug on even those slim pickings Our commitments evaporating Leaving behind barren or toxic lands That may never revive All this should make us angrier than it does There's something similar close to home with Covid Where our self-employed and owners of small businesses Once vaunted as entrepreneurs Are now abandoned by the system that egged them on They were sold self-reliance and independence as virtues But this was just sugar coating for the risks they took A smokescreen for exploitation We know that systems of global capital call the shots That they have become a surrogate for mother earth Offering false comfort, false nurturing, false security And we can see where this is leading us We know about the fragility of closely coupled systems We know what happens when a herd overgrazes the pasture We know that civilisations come and go And we've a good idea how this happens They get top heavy and topple over So when - I mean if - We shift down through the gears We know we need to take everyone with us Everyone, of every nation or none And not cut those ensnared in our business Adrift in our wake
But we do know how to be kind We know love is expanding yourself to have room to nurture another We know that comparison makes us unhappy We know we are collectively diverse and individually precious We know that bodies of any size and shape have beauty We know how to sit with our feelings Rather than wrestle or subdue them Although this is something we're not often taught We know addiction stems from trauma and unmet need And while we know about healing We swallow the idea we should tough it out Conceal our vulnerability Or are put in a position where we have little choice This is because the system Recoils from the ugliness of pain Shies away from paying for care Avoids seeing us as fully human But we know that communities confer strength That democratic renewal is long overdue We know it needs to be radically inclusive Of everyone, not just who we think of first Or those with whom we identify Or feel comfortable with Everyone, those non-human persons who are our wild kin Everyone, even those tarnished and disgraced We know we need to reach out to those we see as strangers But mistrust and suspicion are rife We know how even progressive social movements Subtly tempt us To make power plays within our conversations And found new hierarchies on our liberal virtues We know we need to resist labelling people as selfish and stupid And be curious and compassionate instead We know not to run everything as if it were a business We know we need reason to act and spirituality to grow We know that art enriches us all We know there is value in stillness We know to encourage enterprise We know that creativity is fulfilling We know how to build trust and how it is easily lost We know we are part of the ecology we are casually unpicking We know that extinctions are accelerating Insects dying Corals bleaching And although we know how to rewild It makes us feel uncomfortable It has an unfamiliar look to it Messy, tangled, scarily untamed It feels passive too, as if we're being lazy We know we have to let go of stories that have us in control We know the world is heating faster than we imagined Because of this There are people dying and peoples displaced We know that climate change isn’t in the future It's playing out now in stop motion Fires one moment Thawing permafrost another Then heatwave Or flood Or glacial collapse We know there are tipping points Invisible thresholds Like event horizons That only allow you to pass one way We're in that uncertain liminal space In the fog on the mountain crag Unsure with our incautious steps If the moment of safety has already passed
Sometimes knowing just isn't enough
As this poem is about what we know, in many of the verses I’ve mostly been paraphrasing ideas that I’ve read about. This is most closely the case for the following writers: George Monbiot, Bell Hooks, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Charles Eisenstein, Jean-Paul Satre, Marshall Rosenberg, Timothy Morton, Isabella Tree, Karen Armstrong, Donna Harroway and Sandy Ibrahim.
The picture of Trinity College library in Dublin is by George Hodan. The glyph is (apparently) an ancient Egyptian symbol for wisdom. Both images are available for reuse under a public domain creative commons license: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/