“Most people don’t do what they believe in; they just do what’s most convenient, then they repent.”
— Bob Dylan
I am fortunate never to have had any children of my own — although I do have young nieces and nephews, and now grand-nieces and grand-nephews — whom I care about deeply. The grown children of my two siblings, along with all others raising young children or teenagers today, face an unprecedented dilemma: how to inform our children that the bright, affluent, technologically miraculous future that our parents struggled for, and in many cases lived on to see and pass on to us, and that we ourselves had always imagined, aspired to, and planned for our children — that future has been canceled; and all that is left is a slow but accelerating disintegration of all the infrastructures we have come to rely on and accept as normal. Our fossil fuel-based manufacturing infrastructure; our electric infrastructure, powered likewise by fossil fuels, as well as by (fossil fuel-built) hydro, nuclear, solar, and wind; our fossil-fuel-dependent, topsoil-depleting, and toxic agricultural infrastructures; and now, even our financial, socioeconomic, and political infrastructures — are all growing more fragile and vulnerable year by year, as the yawning gap between rich and poor becomes a chasm, as the middle class dwindles, as political tensions become more divisive and ugly, and as accelerating global heating from burning fossil fuels — CO2 and methane emissions — euphemistically called “climate change” — threatens to overwhelm the biggest infrastructure of all: our life-sustaining biosphere.
So what do we teach our children? Our schools and colleges, and most parents as well, continue to push the dominant narrative — that if children and youth strive, they will succeed, and our endless growth of capital for further innovation, investment, production, and consumption will enable them to realize their dreams in a suburban paradise with endless possibilities for entertainment and further enrichment, whether financial or experiential.
But this vision of “the American Dream” is a lie, because it presupposes an infinite planet, with infinite resources. In the past, we could always operate on this fallacious assumption, simply because our planet was so big and our human footprint so small, relative to the whole. But that is simply no longer true. Hence, there is no silver lining to the dark clouds on our children’s horizon. The future they face promises little more that hotter temperatures, more violent and erratic weather, fires and floods, increasing food shortages, resource wars, and a general breakdown of civil society into shrinking islands of fiercely defended wealth in a growing, tumultuous sea of poverty, rage, violence, destitution, and starvation.
So now what? There are no easy answers for parents of our time. Do they remain in a cocoon of denial, pretending that their children will have the same bright, affluent, and technologically advanced future that they themselves were promised by their own parents (and by the billboards, TV, and internet ads with which we all are inundated everywhere we look)? Or do they risk traumatizing their impressionable young ones by sitting them down for a new, more universal version of what African American parents have long known as “the talk”?
In general, we all have four choices in contemplating our grim and desperate future: denial, delusion, despair, or determination. Only the latter is adaptive.
Most of us, understandably, live in denial. This is perfectly normal; when unknown and unimaginable horrors threaten our long-term survival and well-being, and consolation eludes us, it is natural for us to look the other way, to pretend that life will simply go on as it is, and plan accordingly. Ironically, this is easier for old people than for young, since most of us over 70 will die, in all likelihood, before real catastrophe strikes. But for young adults, especially those who are fully aware of what scientists are telling us and what daily headlines confirm, denial is maladaptive: they, and their children, will have to live with the appalling consequences of what they and we (and our more recent ancestors) have wrought, however blindly, in our relentless pursuit of affluence and economic growth. So many of them embrace one of two similarly dysfunctional alternatives: delusion or despair.
Delusion takes many forms, even among highly intelligent people. For the financial and intellectual elite — the politicians, the economists, the statisticians, the diplomats, the senior professors — delusion takes the form of meaningless platitudes like “sustainable growth” or “net-zero emissions by 2050” or “digital innovation” even while annual oil extraction, suburban sprawl, plastic production, deforestation, and pesticide-intensive monocultural farming (with GM crops) continue their relentless expansion across the globe, all in pursuit of the sacred cow of a steadily rising GNP, even as our biological support system — the topsoil, fresh water, pollinating insects, genetic diversity of food crops, forests, wetlands, rivers, marine and other ecosystem services that make all of our lives possible continue to erode beneath our feet.
A related form of delusion is the pursuit of techno-fantasies like carbon-extraction machines, space shields or colonies on the moon and Mars, “or “cold fusion” or “clean coal,” or an all-electrified infrastructure — forgetting, of course, that electricity is an energy carrier, not an energy source, and that renewables like wind and solar and geothermal would require a massive infusion of readily available net energy — from dwindling supplies of carbon-emitting fossil fuels — for the resource extraction, manufacturing, and transportation needed to build out a global infrastructure of renewable energy. After all, you cannot build a solar panel with solar energy, nor a windmill with wind energy, nor even a dam with hydro power.
The other popular form of delusion, among us ordinary folk, is the delusion of agency. You find this in all those who begin sentences with phrases like “If we all…” As in “If we all went vegan, we would solve the climate crisis, and live healthier lives.” But who among us has the power or influence to force or persuade us “all” to do anything other than what we are doing? As long as people crave meat, there will be a meat industry; as long as people want newer, bigger houses, there will be suburban sprawl; as long as people want babies, the population will keep growing. As long as individual cars are more convenient than bicycles or mass transit systems, people will continue to want cars, and the automobile industry (and fossil fuel industry) will thrive. And — most lamentably — as long as manufacturers, merchants, and customers find plastics cheaper and more convenient than alternative, recyclable materials, plastics will continue to proliferate worldwide. Until, that is, rising global temperatures cause large parts of the tropics to become uninhabitable, the fisheries collapse from overfishing and plastic pollution, melting glaciers cause rising sea levels that inundate coastal cities, massive floods and droughts wipe out crops and arable land, vast swarms of environmental refugees flee north, and food crops no longer grow due to lack of water and topsoil, loss of pollinating insects, and heat stress — and until the resulting social chaos and rage overwhelm civil society.
It is no wonder, then, that despair has become epidemic among young people, manifesting as either suicidal depression or homicidal rage. But despair, however justified it might be, is self-validating. If we assume nothing can be done, nothing will be done.
So what’s left — what can we teach our children that will be useful to them as they face the real future?
For me, one word sums it up: determination. Rather than taking a “Santa Claus” approach (i.e. deluding them with fantasies of a happy and affluent future until one day you break the news to them that it was all a lie), or terrifying them with apocalyptic gloom every time there is yet another flood, fire, or shooting rampage all over the evening news, the approach I recommend would be, by both precept and example, to instill in them the following injunction:
Grow gardens, grow community, and grow awareness — by learning, teaching, healing, and creating.
Let’s take these one at a time:
GROW GARDENS:
Children, as a rule, love nature — love the outdoors, even if they have spent their lives indoors, glued to video games and Tik-Tok. I am astounded by how often I can walk down the streets in the middle-class suburb where I live, without seeing any children out playing in their yards — so thoroughly they have become addicted to the delusions of cyberspace. So one project that parents can get their children involved in right away is starting a vegetable garden — even a small one — in their own backyard or even on the balcony of their apartment. Schools, of course, can and should do likewise. Couple this activity with periodic walks — preferably guided by trained naturalists — along woodland trails, or along beaches — anywhere that stimulates children’s innate curiosity about the natural world. Then watch as their eyes widen with awe. Nature, however much diminished, is still a source of wonder and curiosity for all children, especially if encouraged by parents and teachers. Cultivate that wonder. In the process, they will become ever so slightly more empowered and resilient, capable of growing at least a little of the food they eat for dinner. Let them feel as if they are part of the solution, even if their contribution is infinitesimally small — as by taking out the compost, setting up a rain barrel, or planting a bed of native wildflowers and berry shrubs to attract pollinating insects. Keep their wonder alive…
GROW COMMUNITY:
The step from growing gardens to growing community is quite natural, as gardening gives us all one thing in common with many of our neighbors, even if we have otherwise different interests or political views. So model community by stopping and chatting with your neighbors who are out gardening, whenever you pass by. The next step from here is to form garden guilds, where neighbors with an interest in gardening can meet periodically for potluck dinners or reciprocal work parties to exchange produce or expertise with one another, gradually building up a local gift economy that is entirely independent of the money system, and instilling an ethos of collaboration and sharing throughout your neighborhood — excellent preparation for the hard times to come. But when children are young, you needn’t even mention “the hard times to come” — unless they ask.
GROW AWARENESS:
By starting with growing gardens and growing community, you best prepare your children, as they grow older, to become more aware of the increasingly dangerous future they face, for they are already preparing for it — by learning to grow their own food, and forging close bonds of cooperation and sharing with their immediate neighborhood. This in turn will give them the resilience and leadership skills they will need as their world becomes steadily more chaotic and frightening.
And through it all, you will instill in them a love of learning new knowledge and skills, teaching these skills to others, healing the damage inflicted on their backyards and communities by greed and ignorance, and creating new and better ways of living together — sowing the seeds of a relocalized, resilient Gaian future amidst the crumbling ruins of Glomart.
It may not work in the long run — we all may be doomed, as much of the dire evidence suggests. But in the meantime, the present is all there is; our future — especially today — is nothing but a churning fever dream of fading hopes, growing anxieties, and delusions. So I encourage all parents to teach their children to treasure the present moment — by growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness, and by learning, teaching, healing, and creating. No matter what.