We are living Socratic times: drink a little bit of hemlock poison now, or pass the whole bottle to our children.
Our Climate Change dilemma is much easier than his
In 399 BC, imprisoned Socrates was asked to make a choice between two worlds:
A) He could denounce his critical views of Athenian Democracy, stop being a critic of the state, and apologise for what he believed in. If he did this, he would walk away from his cell a free man.
Or:
B) He could insist on his views, but would need to die by drinking the hemlock poison in his cell.
To Socrates, this was an easy choice: it was a choice between dying as himself, a truly free man, holding on to his beliefs on one hand, or continuing to live, but as a fake version of himself, having denounced his beliefs.
In a sober atmosphere, as his students visited his cell the night before to try and plead with him not to do it, he told them not to feel sad, and that he needed to uphold his values. He chose to drink the poison. To him, living as a fake was not worth living. It would be like living as a zombie.
The impact on his students of his extreme but heroic self-sacrifice was so significant, that the fallout from his death reverberated through Athens’ philosophy circles and gave rise to a golden renaissance in thought that championed the human spirit, individualism, and questioned what the role of humans should be within societies. Many of his students became great philosophers, leaving a legacy to the West that has left its mark on today’s activism.
We are living Socratic times
Many politicians today are in the place of Socrates. They know that climate change is happening, and that action is urgent. Yet they don’t do it because they may lose their job, a few voters, or a few industry lobbyists. They are selling themselves out, and selling their children who will suffer in the future, so that they don’t have to drink the hemlock themselves.
But all they are doing is passing the hemlock on to their children.
But our children will judge us one day. Like Socrates, our politicians should be questioning themselves right now whether they are really alive, or whether they are zombies if they have compromised big parts of themselves.
There are only two types of people who matter at this stage: those who are willing to do something, and those who are not. Today’s heroes are the Climate Scientists, Lawyers, Extinction Rebellion protesters who are prepared to be arrested in the hope that emissions targets are revised, so that future generations and the living planet can have a chance of continuing to exist.
We are living in a time when the amount of CO2 emissions we need to cut is nothing less than heroic. The level of change we would need to effect in order to shift our economies to carbon negative is nothing less than heroic. We need heroes, not zombie politicians.
We live in a time when we need people who do not compromise what they believe in. Who are willing to make sacrifices in order to defend their views.
#nomorezombies
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