Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on the Importance of Community

 

Climate Scientist 
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

(Image by Gilberto Tadday / TED )

Climate Scientist and Marine Biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (editor of the excellent collection of essays "All We Can Save") is publishing a new work, What if We Get it Right?  In a NY Times podcast, dated May 18, 2024, she discussed her concerns as well as her optimism.  What are motivations for us with regard to addressing climate change, and what are the obstacles to motivation?  She believes it boils down to community and a sense of responsibility that arises from that. I was struck by the following quote  (bold is my emphasis, of course):  

We all want to hold onto our comforts. I think the answer is community.  We have to be responsible to more than ourselves.  We have to feel an obligation to more than just our children. It can’t just be a selfish desire to hold on to what we currently have, which is - even that is illogical because the world is going to change around us and, the things we have, we won’t be able to hold onto - because we can’t actually control all of society and live in a bubble. And so, you can maybe hold really tightly onto your comforts in the short term, but the more we resist being part of a collective solution, the less likely that collective solution is to happen. 

I mean, in a sense, we’re echoing a bit of this bunker mentality where we have these wealthy people buying up land in New Zealand and wherever else, trying to just save themselves.  And to me that seems like such a sad way to see the world., right?  Like, do you want to live in a bunker for a year eating canned rations?  Like, is that the life we want to build, or do we just all try to make sure we have a world where there’s enough for everybody and no one takes too much, and we share what we have?  I’d rather share.

Obviously, if I blogged about it, I think it's worth a listen.  I've linked using my "gift" of 8 articles per month, so hopefully it's not behind a paywall. 

Marchese, D. (2024, May 18). This Scientist Has an Antidote to Our Climate Delusions. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/18/magazine/ayana-elizabeth-johnson-interview.html

The Imagining of Peace

[T]he moral imagination requires

the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that includes our enemies; 

the ability to sustain a paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity without reliance on dualistic polarity; 

the fundamental belief in and pursuit of the creative act; and 

the acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence. 

Or, to express this more poetically:  

Reach out to those you fear. 

Touch the heart of complexity. 

Imagine beyond what is seen. 

Risk vulnerability one step at a time

Original photograph by 

Alexandria Skinner, copyright preserved

John Paul Lederach, quoted in Creative Beginnings, from the Moral Imagination Program, United Religions Initiative.  

(http://www.catalystforpeace.org/faithintoaction/MIPCreativeBeginningsURI.pdf, accessed April 12, 2013)

Fambul Tok: Building Peace in Sierra Leone

Between 1991 and 2001, a brutal civil war in the central African nation of Sierra Leone resulted in the deaths of about 50,000 people. Rape and maiming were deliberately used by soldiers as weapons to spread intimidation and fear. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced from their homes and many became refugees in Guinea and Liberia. No one was unaffected. Neighbors were pitted against neighbors. Entire communities were disrupted.


Following overthrow of the military dictatorship, how could communities so damaged restore a sense of peace? To answer this question requires asking questions like, "What is justice?"