Re-Cognising Crisis
Melissa Yu unpacks our assumptions about the global economic and environmental crises.
In reading Plato’s famous ‘Allegory of the Cave’, we encounter a most interesting scenario. The people are born into a world of shadows, whereby their entire perception, understanding and knowledge of reality and of existence are based on shadows on the cave wall. When they are then forced to confront the physical objects that cast the shadows, they refuse to accept these foreign objects as the truer versions of the world. In a similar manner, the languages that we use to represent the world are but the shadows of its full complexity and dimension. Accordingly, an interesting question arises: whether or not the word ‘crisis’, which is used so obsessively and indiscriminately in everyday conversation and in the media, adequately captures the concepts it seeks to describe, such as the current state of the world economy and the environment. I am concerned with the distinction between the categorisation of ‘crisis’ and an actual appreciation of what ‘crisis’ embodies and entails.
An unfortunate characteristic of our use of language is that we often become detached from the actual meanings of the words we use. Consider the politician’s beloved expression ‘collateral damage’. How often do politicians use it as a meaningless label and how often do they truly appreciate its physical and emotional connotations?
Akin to the nature of a cliché, we are losing the experiential urgency that the word ‘crisis’ embodies. A sense of urgency that cannot be mathematically, or indeed rationally, quantified is the most important criterion for differentiating between a crisis and a serious problem. Examine the two phrases: ‘global economic crisis’ and ‘global warming’. Semantically, we use them in order to signify the presence of crises. Yet the use of the word ‘crisis’ in the former reflects the sentiment that the economic situation we currently face is far more urgent than the environmental one. Globally, an array of economic stimulus packages has been passed in just a few months, whereas policies to tackle ‘global warming’ – such as the Australian emissions trading scheme, first conceived 30 years ago – have stagnated.
“A sense of urgency that cannot be mathematically, or indeed rationally, quantified is the most important criterion for differentiating between a crisis and a serious problem.”
If urgency is essential in determining a crisis, we must examine how we grasp, and ought to grasp, the feeling of urgency. Our prioritisation of the global economic situation is certainly justified if urgency is based on the immediacy of consequence alone. The effects of unemployment are emotional and tangible. It is easy to visually capture and report on the misfortunes of the unemployed. Indeed, for individuals, the fear of losing a job is psychologically easier to conceptualise than the apocalypse. Yet the eventual consequences of climate change are surely no less significant than those of the current economic situation.
Our mistaken prioritisation of more immediate events is not solely based on psychological grounds. Ideologically, in the deepest recesses of the human mind, lies a belief in the unfeasibility of the complete destruction of humankind. This mentality assures us that we can survive climate catastrophes. Faced with the infinite physical vastness of our universe, a quantity incomprehensible to the human mind, our consciousness elects us to be the destined ones. However, as the emergency summit last month in Copenhagen suggested, societies will not be able to withstand an “abrupt or irreversible” shift in climate, which is already in motion. Similarly, when we consume all of our finite resources, we will be no different to Easter Island. This idea is not meant to promote nihilism, but to draw attention to the fact that human existence is not a given: we are not dissimilar to a man on a wire. Only after completely accepting this can we grasp the urgency associated with crisis. Thus, we cannot restrain ourselves from regressing to comforting platitudes such as “all will be fine in the end”, since if no action or no immediate responsibility is taken now, crisis will become catastrophe.
In light of this, a moment of crisis can be redefined as a moment of critical choice and change. If the economic recession is truly a crisis and if climate change is truly a crisis, we must be prepared to abolish our existing fossil fuel-based economies and make the transition to ones founded on renewable energy. Nicholas Stern, fronting this growing ideological movement, urges governments to invest a fifth of their economic recovery plans in the construction of a renewable energy industry. South Korea, amongst others, has already contributed two-thirds of its recovery package to this end. These are not options of convenience; rather, they are the inevitable paths that we must take as we stand in the moment of true crisis and at the brink of a necessary revolution in thinking.
