Tag: climate change

Will the future be like the past? Making sense of experiences in and of the corona crisis

The world is a different place now. But what does that mean? In keeping with my previous posts, I want to think about the way we experience this situation. Binge-scrolling through expert advice, curves and numbers is important for assessing the situation and deliberating about forms of collective action. But at the same time, it is essential to understand one another and ourselves within this situation, to return from the third-person talk to the second and first person perspective. Thus, a crucial part of our thinking should be devoted to the various meanings of our experience. I speak of “meanings” in the plural for two reasons. On the one hand, I think our experiences of the situation vary quite a lot, such that the events we undergo mean different things for different people. So your social and economical situation, for instance, matters greatly in how you will feel and how your expectations take shape. Would I feel as balanced as I do, if I worked, say, in a bar? Or as a postdoc who is facing that my contract is running out soonish? Even if we’re likely facing an enormous global recession, the current stability still affects my being. On the other hand, and this is perhaps surprising, I have noticed that my very own experiences have different meanings even to me. Let me explain: I have now been staying mostly inside (with family) for a bit more than three weeks. Given that I often suffer from anxieties, I would have expected that the growing corona crisis would make me feel bad. But while I have clearly lost a sense of normality, this doesn’t exactly trouble me. I feel ok, perhaps even slightly more balanced than in the months before. For a while, I thought that’s quite surprising. But then I realised that this is true of a number of people. In fact, this morning I read an article according to which some psychologists report that a significant number of patients with depression or anxiety disorders find that their situation improved, paradoxically so. How can we make sense of such experiences? Is there a way of explaining the eerily positive attitude some of us have in this crisis? I’m no psychologist. But as a historian of philosophy I know something about the ways in which we relate to our histories and biographies. My hunch is that this kind of experience is partly determined by our beliefs about how much the future will resemble the past. While trying to explain this hunch a bit more, I’ll say how this might help in assessing conflicts between people with different ways of experiencing the crisis. Will the future resemble the past then? As we will see, this is not a question of (future) facts but of values.

Speaking to various people about the corona crisis, it seems that most conversation partners fall into one of two categories: (1) those who believe that we’ll be “going back to normal” at some point and (2) those who believe that the future will be fairly different from the past. Let’s call them continuists and discontinuists respectively. Continuists think that the future resembles the past, even after this crisis. Accordingly, they will try and prepare for the time after the crisis in much the same way they have pursued their goals before. By contrast, discontinuists assume that the future is not only uncertain but likely different from the status quo of the past. Accordingly, they cannot prepare by pursuing the same goals by the same means. They will expect having to adjust their means or even their goals.
The question whether historical events are continuous with past events or mean a disruptive change is hotly debated, because whether or not you see continuity or change depends what criteria you focus on. But for now I’m less interested in the theoretical issue. Rather, I’m wondering how our pertinent beliefs affect our experience. A wise friend of mine once said that our beliefs about the future shape the present, for instance, in that such beliefs guide our current actions. If that’s correct, then continuists and discontinuists will be preparing for different future scenarios. Of course, the question which future scenario is more likely is a rather pressing one. What (else) will this virus do to us? Will the economy break down completely? Will we have civil unrests, wars over resources? Like you, I’m interested in these things, but lacking relevant knowledge I have nothing to say about them. What I want to address here is how being a continuist or discontinuist relates to your experience of the current situation.

Now how does having one or the other attitude affect your experience? As a continuist who retains your goals you will likely want to stick to your strategies and go back to normal if possible. The current restrictions (contact restrictions or lockdowns) will probably feel rather disruptive. By contrast, a discontinuist might welcome the disruption as way of preparing for an uncertain future. So my guess is that there is a correlation between being a discontinuist and having a more positive attitude towards the disruptive measures. Let’s illustrate this idea with an example. A controversial issue that arises for many people around me is productivity. While some people readily give tips on how to successfully remain productive at the home office and quickly switch to things like online teaching, others see these outbursts of productivity as a problematic distraction from more pressing issues. They worry, for instance, that the switch to online teaching will worsen the standing of academic teaching or the exploitation on the job market.
My idea is that we can pair up the conflicting approaches towards productivity with attitudes about (dis)continuity. While a continuist will remain productive, a discontinuist will be suspicious of such productivity as it seems likely to be jeopardised by the changes ahead. This doesn’t mean that the discontinuist will stop being productive tout court. It just means that the discontinuist will likely want to prepare for adjusting the means or even the goals, rather than keep going as before.

As this example shows, there is not only a difference but also a conflict between continuists and discontinuists. If you currently google the keywords “coronavirus” and “productivity” and look at the headlines, you’re clearly listening in on a fierce dispute. Should you work on improving your productivity? Or should you redirect your focus on different priorities? Continuists often seem to experience the restrictions as if their lives have been put on hold. The crisis might be very disruptive, but by and large the goals remain intact. This might also be mirrored in different attitudes of students: If you are an ambitious student and a continuist, your priority might still be to pass your exams well and quickly. If your university cancels the regular classes and exams (rather than running them online), you will likely be annoyed or worried. By contrast, discontinuists seem to experience the restrictions as the onset or emergence of a new situation; they will likely try to adjust their goals in line with hopes or guesses about the outcome. If you are an ambitious student and a discontinuist, your priority might be to understand and prepare for the new situation. Your focus or interests might change and you might appreciate a pertinent adjustment of teaching rather than the pursuit of former goals.

As I see it, this kind of conflict is often misrepresented. It often seems to be presented as a quest for the right way of responding to the crisis. Thus, depending on the predominant attitude around you, you might see your own response as a failure. Surrounded by continuists, the discontinuist will feel like being not sufficiently productive. Surrounded by discontinuists, the continuist will feel like insufficiently adapting to the new situation that will arise. However, as I see it the conflict between these two stances is not about the facts of the crisis or the predictable future but about values. Let me explain.

As I see it, the question whether there is a continuity after the crisis is not one that could be established by looking at current or estimated future facts. It would be fallacious to think that there is a definite cut off point that distinguishes continuity from discontinuity. In other words, whether a crisis like this allows for going “back to normal” or is a pervasive disruption is not an empirical question. If the crisis has very dire consequences, you can still claim that we’re going back to a “very impoverished normal”. If the crisis is not too disruptive, you can still claim the world is altered, if mainly by the prospect of the crisis returning. So it is the other way round: First you claim that there is a continuity or discontinuity, and then you quote empirical facts for support.

If this is correct, what is it then that makes the difference between continuists and discontinuists? As I said it’s a question of values. If you largely accept the norms of the status quo before the crisis you will evaluate the predicted situation as a deviation from these norms and find points of impoverished continuity. However, the discontinuist will see the norms of the former status quo as undermined. In fact, this is what allows for seeing discontinuity. So the future scenarios discontinuists see are ones in which new norms are established. They will be what we often call a “new normal”, for better or worse. Such a new normal might include, for instance, the restrictions that we anticipated in view of anthropogenic climate change and the Paris Agreement. Seen in this light the current measures taken against the corona crisis might appear as being in line with new norms to be consolidated.

What does this mean for the eerily positive attitude that some of us experience? Once you recognise that the belief in discontinuity is a matter of value, it’s plausible to assume that what empowers (some) people is the necessitated change of norms during lockdown. So while it might be right that the positive attitude correlates with former states of anxiety or depression, it would be dangerous to confine this to a psychological question of individuals. We shouldn’t overlook the societal values going hand in hand with such empowerment. Seen in line with societal values, the disruption of the status quo is not merely destructive. It holds the possibility to establish norms more in line with what many of us might desire in light of the challenges we face, for instance, with regard to climate change. It doesn’t mean that this possibility will become true. But as long as we’re not hit by total disaster, there is hope.

“I have no idea what I’m going back to.” Travelling in times of the climate crisis

Last week a good friend from Sydney came to visit Groningen and give a paper at a small workshop on early modern philosophy. We met the evening before to do some catching up. Not having had a proper chat for about a year meant that there was quite a bit to talk about, but our conversation was dominated by the climate crisis. Although we enjoyed the meeting, we soon realised that it is hard if not impossible to pretend that all is well. Many people’s lives are more or less directly affected, the news are full of it. But here we sat in a cosy restaurant when my friend spoke the words that continue ringing in my head: “I have no idea what I’m going back to.” Just re-read that sentence, will you? In the meantime, I try to ponder on what it might mean.

Listening to my friend’s account of what had been going on over the last months was scary enough.* But that sentence made it sound like we’ve moved beyond a so-called tipping point. I guess no one needs a reminder of the bushfires that are destroying enormous parts of Australia, while the government is still in denial of the facts. (Here is a recent account by John Quiggin. And if you’re up for it, try the hashtag #AustraliaBurning on Twitter.) Of course, there is much talk about tipping points in relation to climate change, but there are also “personal tipping points” that one will confront. Imagine that you will soon return from a different continent but have no idea what your home will look like or whether it will still be there, whether your friends and family are ok, and what will become of your plans. Whatever might happen, whatever help will be available – there is a sense of reality altered. Something has already changed, but you don’t know exactly what it is and what it will involve. All you know is that it happened, and perhaps sooner than expected or hoped. Such moments are to some degree ubiquitous, while they can also be deeply personal. One might experience personal tipping points in relation to all sorts of things: encounters with others, diseases, loss, war, I don’t actually want to go through all the options. The effects of climate change might be experienced on an equally personal level, but they still feel different in that we know how much they will equally affect others: not only current animals, human and non-human, our ecosystems and cultures, but also, and in much worse ways, our children. Let alone further future generations.

And yet, here we were, getting ready for what has been a most common event, an academic meeting of the sort of which there have been many. One thought that eerily struck us was the idea that people would get on with their business as if nothing were happening. Of course, we do that, too. But how common will that be in a few years from now? My friend told me of recent academic talks in Australia, speaker and audience trying to supress coughing while the smoke is creeping in from under the door. No acknowledgement in the face of the obvious. But indeed, what can we do?

There are a number of things that can be done. Whilst there is much public debate and still a grotesque amount of denial, climate scientists and social scientists have designed concrete plans of action, policies that try to keep the social and economical costs at a minimum. (The PIK in Potsdam is one such institute studying the impact of climate change while working on plans of action. Listen to them in addition to other media outlets!) While I admire a lot of individual action, putting collective pressure on governments to act in accordance with such plans should have priority. In the news, measures to counter the climate crisis are still too often presented as either-or scenarios, while there are in fact many nuanced approaches available. In this sense, the credo of movements like Fridays for Future strikes me as just right: Listen to the science! And keep talking, not least to those who don’t listen or sit on the fence. I often hear the accusation that these movements make high-brow demands and nothing else. This is a lie. They are advised by scientists, and they are pointing to institutions that do have worked out policies. But discrediting climate activism and even climate science is currently rampant. While no surprise, I am struck by the increasing amount of unfounded accusations and hate directed at institutions and individuals.

Like many others, I have been wondering a lot what do. Whenever I listen to the news, my attempts at writing something (e.g. here, here, here and here) strike me as futile. So I guess overcoming the feeling of powerlessness and keeping up hope is vital. That will probably involve amplifying the voices of well-informed politicians and movements, countering denial and silence both as a citizen and philosopher, wherever possible. (My colleague Diego Castro has written an instructive piece about countering denial.)

It’s likely that our habits and ways of interaction (not least in academia) will (have to) change. Sooner than we think we might be travelling around the world for quite different reasons. But we have to be careful. At the moment, we see a lot of incentives to change our forms of travelling. Some people not only take the train rather than the plane, but also begin to refrain from travelling altogether. I’d worry if that should signal a tendency towards gradually cutting ourselves off from others, at locally distant places. Especially now we have to keep in touch.

____

* I can’t possibly give a recollection of even the most crucial things that my friend mentioned. But here is a quote from a different, enormously helpful and detailed personal account I found through a Twitter search today, which corroborates many of the facts my friend mentioned (and which you might want to read in full): “Even in our cities, where we are safe from the worst of the fires themselves, many days the acrid taste of smoke in the air has been so hazardous it’s risking your health to even go outside. Many days have been designated as total fire ban days. Even many of National Parks have been closed for fear of having to evacuate visitors. […] Since the bushfire season started in September 2019 we have had:

  • 28 lives lost – another fire fighter was lost on 12th January
  • Over 2000 homes lost, not including other buildings such as sheds, barns, and community halls
  • 17.9 Million hectares of land burnt out – already 46% more than the Brazilian Amazon fires
  • Over 1 billion animals lost – including much of Australia’s distinctive wildlife
  • Possible extinction of up to 20 threatened species in just one day of fires on Kangaroo Island (part of South Australia)
  • The largest peace time evacuation in Australia’s history to move thousands of Summer tourists trapped in coastal towns in NSW South Coast and Victoria

Much of this has only happened since New Year’s Eve. We are only 2 weeks into the start of the new year. There’s at least another 2 months of bushfire season to come.

Sydney is known for being the first major city for New Year’s Eve fireworks. This year it felt like we were the first major country for severe climate change impacts.”

Should you be ashamed of flying? Moral shortcuts in the call-out culture

Do you still travel by plane? Have you recently suggested going to a steak house? Are you perhaps an old white man? – Then you’ve probably found yourself being called out one of these days. Doing these things or having certain traits means that your actions are addressed as moral failures. If you are involved in some sort of ecological or social activism, you might think that you’re off the hook, or compensate a bit at least. But then you can still be called out as a hypocrite. Shame on you! – If you think I’m trying to ridicule calling out moral failures, I’ll have to disappoint you. On the whole, I think the fact that we publicly deliberate about moral problems is a good thing. Naming problems and calling out people for committing problematic actions is part of that process. That this process is fallible in itself does not discredit it. However, there is an element in that process I begin to worry about: it is what I’d like to call moral shortcuts. Using a moral shortcut means to take an action, the expression of a view or even a trait as an indicator of a morally relevant intention or attitude. What makes my acts morally dubious is not the act itself but certain intentions or their lack. It’s not my suggestion of going to a steak house as such, but my not caring about the well-being of animals or the climate crisis that you want to call out. You might assume that one indicates the other, but this indication relation is tenuous. After all, I might have suggested going there merely because it was raining, not to consume meat. In the following, I’d like to suggest that, while calling out moral failures is an important practice, ascribing moral failures on tenuous grounds is morally dubious in itself.

Let’s begin by looking at moral shortcuts again. So does someone’s flying indicate a morally relevant intention? Of course, we are prone to suppose a close connection between action and intention. Arguably, a behaviour or process only is an action in virtue of an intention. What makes my taking a flight that kind of action is that if I have some pertinent intention, say of going to a place, getting on the plane etc. Conversely, if a refugee is forced onto a plane to be returned to their country of origin, you don’t want say that they “took a flight to Albania”. Accordingly, you won’t call out refugees for not caring about the climate crisis. Moreover, the intention of taking a flight is not necessarily an indication of a general attitude about the climate or even flying. So even if my action can be correctly called indicative of a pertinent intention, this might not be morally significant, be it because I lack alternatives or whatever. After all, the reason for calling out such acts is not to shame or sanction a singular intention. What we’re after is a general attitude, allowing, for instance, for the prediction of certain future acts. That someone gets onto a flight is as such not morally significant. It’s the general attitude of not caring that we might find blameworthy. But while it might be correct to assume that certain actions can be indicative of intentions that, in turn, can be indicative of general attitudes, such inferences are fallible. Now the fallibility as such is not a problem. But there are two problematic issues I want to highlight. The first is about the nature of inferential shortcuts; the second is about moral status of relying on such shortcuts:

  • As pointed out in my last post, we’re not only making tenuous judgments. Rather we often use actions, expressions of views as proxies of moral failures: Instead of calling out the attitude, we call out the acts or traits as such. Short of further evidence, the acts of flying or of suggesting eating meat themselves are treated as moral failures. As Justin E. H. Smith pointed out, this is now following associative patterns of prediction. Making moral judgments is like shopping with Amazon: “People who like to eat meat also fail to care about the climate crisis.” In addition to their fallibility, the focus on actions also deprives us of room for deliberation. Unlike intentions, actions are often exclusive, inviting strong friend-enemy distinctions and thus polarisation: If I do A, I can’t do B, can I? – But it is simply wrong to identify an action with a general attitude, for an action can be exprissive of several and even disparate attitudes. Yet, especially in online communication we are prone to make such shortcuts and thus have our exchanges spiral into heated black and white accusations.
  • However, despite their fallibility, we often have to rely on quick inferences. Moral wrongdoings can put us in severe danger. So it is understandable that certain actions raise suspicions. Especially when we are in immediate danger, inferential shortcuts might be close to seeming hardwired: Someone is aggressively running after you? You probably won’t wait for further cues to estimate their intentions. But it’s one thing to seek protection from harm; it’s quite another thing to call out and shame a person as a moral suspect or perpetrator while not averting immediate danger. If you have no more evidence than the moral shortcut, then the act of shaming someone is itself a moral transgression. Calling someone bad names based on individual acts, beliefs or traits such as their skin colour is rightly seen as morally blameworthy. This is, amongst other things, why we oppose racism, sexism and other transgressions based on shortcuts. My point is that such quick and purely associative inferences are also at work when we shame others without further evidence.

Given our globalised online culture, we often don’t have much more to go on than our shortcuts. While it is important to discuss actions as possible outcomes of structural problems, sources of harm and danger, or as indicative of morally significant attitudes, it is equally important not to glide from such deliberation into unwarranted shaming. In the face of public deliberation, we can monitor, question and adjust our behaviour if need be. In the face of being public shaming, however, we will be more inclined to run into arguments about hypocrisy.

On the other hand, there is the equally problematic tendency to mistake public deliberation about the moral status of certain actions for being blamed. But if someone expresses the idea that flying is morally blameworthy, they are not automatically blaming individuals for such actions. The assumption that you are personally blamed because someone calls out bad attitudes as indicated by acertain kind of behaviour, is unfounded and based on an inverse shortcut. Likewise, whatever is called out by the ‘old white men’ or boomer meme does not automatically translate into shaming individuals. Such memes are indicative of structural problems. Put in a nutshell, public deliberation is not public shaming. However, the tricky thing is that such deliberation can glide into shaming if people help themselves to moral shortcuts.

That said, we will continue to rely on shortcuts. My point is not to rid ourselves of them, but to restrict them in their scope. At the same time, this reliance on shortcuts increases the significance of what is called, often pejoratively so, symbol politics, tokenism and virtue signalling. We might think that such symbol politics is merely a form of appeasement or white washing, pretence or covering up. I doubt it. In times of increasing reliance on moral shortcuts, we often have nothing but symbols, tokens or signals to go on. We need them, but we equally need to be aware that they come with fallible tacit inferences.

Might hope counter political polarisation, boomers? A delayed response to Titus Stahl

“What do you love in others? – My hopes.” Friedrich Nietzsche

 

“One day you should be better off than we were.” – My parents offered this line of reasoning often when I opposed their ideas of care and upbringing. More often than not it was meant to convince me of something that I didn’t like. But even back then, as a child or adolescent in stark opposition to my parents’ ways, I recognised that they meant it. They were sincere in their hope. Seeing someone speaking or acting out of hope is special. Even if you disagree with what they do or say, you will be inclined to forgive them if they fail or do wrong. It’s difficult to say how exactly this works, but my hunch is that joint hope can connect you even with those whose actions or views you disapprove of. Why might that be the case? Perhaps because hope creates commitment to a goal when the precise course of action is still not determined. We hope to improve our state. How? That we must find out. But we have a mutual trust that we’ll try in good faith. This matters greatly if we have conflicting views about a course of action. If you think I fail or do wrong, you might be able to forgive me because you see where I’m coming from. – Now look at a common political discussion, as represented in the media. What you notice is not only that such discussions are often emotionally charged or outright hateful, but also that hope for improvement is completely absent. I’ve been wondering about this for a long time. What exactly is missing? What exactly is lacking in our political exchanges? Now I begin to think it’s the absence of hope that makes such discussions so unforgiving. Let me explain.

Should we all become vegan to counter the climate crisis? Ask that kind of question and you’ll soon have a discussion spiralling out of control. The views quickly harden and seem to become more extreme. Why? There are many answers on various levels: we have bad manners, we are badly informed, people have bad motives, everyone is after their own advantage, we don’t listen, we’re not ready for the internet etc. But what do we actually disagree about? We disagree about courses of action. And actions are often mutually exclusive: If you turn left, you can’t turn right. This simple fact turns disagreements about actions into rather strong arguments. It’s either this or that. But this alone is not problematic. What is problematic is that our political discussions are often exhausted by considering a fixed set of possible actions. This, I submit, is because (views about) actions are often taken as a proxy for values or goals. This results in a proxy model of morality. If you tell me that you eat meat, you will assume that I will judge you by that fact. But actions cannot be meaningful units in themselves. They become what they are in virtue of our intentions. But the relation between intention and action is often less direct than the proxy model suggests. More importantly, we can make two kinds of mistakes about the relation between action and intention: (1) we can be wrong in assuming that a particular action fulfils a certain intention; (2) we can be wrong in assuming that a particular action expresses a certain intention. The proxy model disregards both these possibilities.

Many political actions are very tenuous in their relations to intentions. Whether or not a certain course of action or policy has the desired effects is often unclear and indeed contingent. This is precisely where hope should enter the scene. We can hope that promoting affirmative action leads to social justice, but there are factors that might jeopardise the desired effects. If we share social justice as a goal, we will probably deliberate about whether such factors outweigh the benefits. But on the proxy model, the common goal seems quickly forgotten. What we find instead is that affirmative action is taken as a proxy for a desired or undesired value. Are you for or against diversity? Let’s decide that quickly! In such cases, your view or action is not judged in the light of a (shared) goal that is hoped to be achieved. Rather, the action is itself judged as an instance of a value. And then it’s either for or against. In this sense, the absence of hope or common goals makes us unforgiving. Any failure is a moral failure tout court, not just a single failure in a larger and common project. By contrast, hope for a better state will be emphasising our commonalities across divides over a course of action. It is in this sense that I think the absence of hope leads to polarisation. Without hope we lack the common space that makes our disagreements meaningful disagreements between us.

If this is correct, hope is crucial for politics in that it provides the glue between people who might disagree. But it is also important to see the power of hope in guiding us in the absence of clear ideas about what to do. As I see it, hope is crucial when so-called realism has no grip. You might not think so, but realism can be pernicious because the reality of our future is undetermined. This is why the attitude often celebrated as political realism can be counterproductive in holding a society together, at least when the course of action still needs to be decided on. This becomes palpable whenever I think of family and friends. Growing up during WWII and making do with next to nothing, my parents had not much reason to expect that things would get significantly better. Going by what the situation had to offer (for them), they probably could have resigned to what they thought likely at the time (which was not much beyond surviving). But they didn’t. Which is expressed in that statement “One day you should be better off than we were.” This attitude of hope is perhaps best understood when compared to more sceptical attitudes: In the face of possible failure or misery, it seems reasonable to expect what is likely, certainly no better. By contrast, hope is not so much grounded in what is to be expected but what is desired. Trying to understand what my parents’ attitude meant, I’d say they didn’t act on what they thought was likely to work out but on the sheer hope for the better. In that sense, hope transcends the realm of the reasonable without leaving it behind entirely. Clearly then, hope is an enormously powerful attitude, sometimes carrying us across the worst we might expect. It allows us to move on without seeing a path (yet). At the same time, it’s hard to overestimate the emotional glue that hope provides in such moments: Even though my parents and I (often) did not agree on the intermediate goals or ways, their hope instilled hope in me. Their attitude carried over, resulting in a shared hope. If this is correct or aptly put, then hope can bind us together across divides. We might disagree about means, but our hope for similar ends can bind us together. Despite our disagreements, we can thus join forces and attempt to find a compromise or a distribution of disparate strategies. It was in trying to grapple with these issues that I was reminded of Titus Stahl’s excellent piece on hope. He writes:

Fortunately, we need not limit ourselves to what we can expect. Even though we are not justified in expecting more than limited agreement on justice, we can still collectively hope that, in the future, consensus on more demanding ideals of justice will emerge. When citizens collectively entertain this hope, this expresses a shared understanding that each member of society deserves to be included in an ambitious project of justice, even if we disagree about what that project should be. This knowledge can contribute to self-respect and is thus a desirable social good in its own right. In the absence of consensus, political hope is a necessary part of social justice itself. So it is rational, perhaps even necessary, to recruit the notion of hope for the purposes of justice.

I can’t possibly unpack this understanding of hope in a blog post. One consequence of this idea is that the absence of a consensus does not entail that the situation is hopeless (no pun intended). As I see it, political realism, in focusing on what is likely, limits our view on future commonalities and compromises that we are not yet able to see. Helmut Schmidt’s dictum “Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen”  sums up this brand of realism nicely. What I find particularly problematic in this kind of realism is that it expresses nothing more than a complacent attitude, defending the status quo in the face of challenges. Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can!” or Angela Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das!” were slogans attempting to instil political hope. As we know all too well, their impact was not sustained. Today, we find ourselves surrounded by the entirely hopeless complacency of the Trumps and Johnsons of this world. But what is perhaps (big ‘perhaps’) more worrying is that this attitude of hopelessness is carrying over to common discourse. The proxy model of morality, “brexit or not”, “wall or not”, is all over the place.

That said, I’m hopeful that hope will return to the political arena with the new movements* founded in the face of the climate crisis, be it Fridays for Future or Extinction Rebellion. It’s telling to see that these movements are often met with the complacent charge of not offering concrete policies of action. This is of course the proxy model of morality in place again. But refraining from concrete paths of action is exactly the factor that allows us to retain hope, hope for consensual deliberation rather than the either-or conduct suggested by the proxy model. Deliberation that takes into account all sides, but gives pride of place to experts and scientists whose work should be seen as the institutionalised outcome of collective hope. In this sense, I read the recent attack against the “boomers” not as one against a particular generation, but rather as a humorous reminder that complacency does not instil any hope or idea for a better future.

Yet, the distinction between political hope and a simplistic proxy morality is neither one of left and right nor one of optimism and pessimism. The opposite of hope is not despair; it’s complacency.

_____

* I should add that I think of new movements not only in terms of decidedly political movements. In fact, I’m most hopeful when it comes to progress in the arts (and, for personal reasons, not least in music). In this respect, I think that the music of people like Jacob Collier is deeply political, but at present I have no clear idea as to how to conceptualise this. – One observation might be in order though: Read the comments on youtube, for example, under Collier’s music videos and compare them with comments on other content, musical or not. What I find intriguing is the positive and indeed hopeful attitude in these comments. What this is a sign of I don’t know, but it strikes me as a hopeful sign.

How to respond to a global warming skeptic?

Have you ever discussed global warming with someone who’s skeptic about it? Is hard isn’t it? It doesn’t really matter how many studies, graphs or papers you show him/her, they will have no effect. So, what can we do when facts don’t seem to matter? Here’s a proposal.

Some people in the scientific community see this problem as a no-brainer. They just assume that it can be resolved by facts: “if there is a GW skeptic show him some graphs and figures. If he’s not convinced, then he’s just an idiot or he is lying to you.”. But that is not the case: more data won’t do anything, since many skeptics are acting as Greek Skeptics: they are not only dubious about the facts presented, they are dubious about the structure of knowledge itself[1].

Greek Skeptics developed many  arguments to prove that, since knowledge is not possible, we need to suspend judgement about everything we know. One of my favourite arguments is Agrippa’s Trilemma (rebranded later as Munchaussen Trilemma). This argument claims that we can’t know anything at all since everything we claim to know needs a justification. Therefore, if I claim P, the skeptic would ask: how do you know P? To which I must respond with Q. Then he will ask: how do you know Q? To which I must respond with R. Then the skeptic will keep going. Finally, I will have only three options:

  1. Justify ad infinitum: P because Q because R because S, and so on.
  2. Stop at an unjustified premise: P because Q because R.
  3. Reason in circles: P because Q because R because P. [2]

Now, this is exactly the kind of argument the GW skeptic uses. Imagine the following dialogue between a global warming believer (GWB) and a global warming skeptic (GWS)

GWB: C02 driven global warming is happening.

GWS: How do you know?

GWB: because I read it on the IPCC report.

GWS: How do you know that is true?

GWB: Because it shows a consensus of the leading scientists in the field.

GWS: How do you know that consensus is real and not fabricated?

GWB: Because there are many scientific practices, journals and institutions behind it.

GWS: Hou do you know those institutions aren’t corrupt.

Etc…

As we can see, the dialogue can keep on going forever. The skeptic can always ask for a new justification and the believer will fall into one of the three outcomes predicted by Agrippa. The GW skeptic will go home with the idea that he defeated the believer and will reinforce his skepticism.

 So, what can the believer do? The traditional epistemological answers to this problem have been two: foundationalism (option b of the trilemma) and coherentism (option c of the trilemma). I won’t try any of these solutions since I believe that this is not an epistemological but, rather, a practical and argumentative problem[3]. The right answer, then, is to use a presumption.

What is a presumption? That is indeed a good question. “Presumption” is a term borrowed from the legal field, so it is clear what they mean in that field, not so much outside of it. The Cambridge dictionary defines it as “the act of believing that something is true without having any proof”. In the legal field it is totally necessary to believe certain things without any proof. For instance: everyone is presumed to be innocent. That means that nobody needs to prove his/her innocence in any way, is the accuser the one who has to prove guilt.

Outside the legal field, argumentation theory has also used the concept of presumptions (see Walton 1996). The reason to do it is to resolve a fatal flaw in assertions. An assertion is any statement I present whose truth I believe. If I say: “the door is open”, “god exists” or “global warming is happening”, those are assertions as long as I believe them to be true.

The flaw of assertions is the following: whenever I use an assertion I have the burden of proof to prove it. Therefore, if I say, “global warming is happening”, I’m saying something like: “I’m justified in believing that global warming is happening.” Therefore, my interlocutor has the right to ask: “how do you know that?”. And the only way in which I can answer is by using a new assertion that will give me, again, the burden of proof. So, the interlocutor will ask again: “how do you know that”, and so on.

The conclusion is simple: if it is true that any party making an assertion takes the burden of proof, then the interlocutor can always ask: “how do you know that?”. We get Aggrippa’s trilemma all over again.  

But here comes a presumption to save the day. Presumptions shift the burden of proof. So, if a presumption is in place, the one who has to provide a proof is not the one who makes an assertion, but the one who doubts it. The relevant question here is the following: is there a presumption in favour of someone asserting that global warming is real? I say it is, at least in most cases: There’s an authority presumption in place.

People usually get confused over fallacies and legitimate ways of reasoning. One of these cases is the use of arguments from authority. Arguments from authority are perfectly valid, as long as the authority cited is actually an authority on the field. If not, it is a fallacy called “ad verecundiam”.

Compare these cases:

  • I believe in global warming because the IPCC says so.
  • I believe in global warming because my mother says so.

While (1) is a perfectly valid argument from authority, (2) is a fallacy ad verecundiam, since my mother is no authority on climate science[4].

In conclusion, my claim is the following: when I use an assertion like (1) I’m not only using a valid argument, but I’m also using a presumption: since the IPCC is an authority in climate science and I have no expertise to doubt its findings, we can presume that what they say is true.

That doesn’t mean that the conclusion is undoubtfully true, nor that (1) cannot be defeated. It only says that, as long as the interlocutor is not also an authority on the field, we need to believe what the authority says. Then, since the burden of proof has been shifted is not the one who makes assertion (1) the one who must prove it, is the counterpart the one who must provide grounds for criticism.

Given so, the dialogue between the skeptic and the believer would look like this:

GWB: C02 driven global warming is happening.

GWS: How do you know?

GWB: because I read it on the IPCC report.

GWS: How do you know that is true?

GWB: They are an authority on the field, what grounds do you have to doubt them? Are you a climate scientist?

 

REFERENCES

Klein, Peter (2008). Contemporary Responses to Agrippa’s Trilemma. In John Greco (ed.), “The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism”. Oxford University Press.

Walton, D. (1996) “Argumentation Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning” (Studies in Argumentation Theory). London: Routledge

[1] The SEP has a nice introduction to Greek scepticism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-ancient/

[2] See Klein 2008 for contemporary answers to this problem.

[3] The bigger picture is the following intuition: “you can’t defeat a skeptic with theoretical arguments, only with practical ones”.

[4] (1) could also be fallacious if the one asserting is a climate scientist. In that case she should read the original papers, not blindly trust a source.

Addiction. A note on the debate about the climate crisis

It’s about five years ago that I quit smoking. There were at least two things that helped greatly in kicking the habit. Firstly, the common view had changed: smoking was no longer seen as a personal choice but as an addiction. This had repercussions on my own view and made it seem less attractive, to put it mildly. Secondly, the infrastructure had changed increasingly: in most places smoking was no longer permitted by then. When I grew up, I wouldn’t have anticipated these changes. Smoking, it seemed, had become part of my identity: at parties and other events I was one of the people who smoked. That was fine. It no longer is. – I’d like to suggest that our discussion of the climate crisis might benefit from a comparison to smoking habits: Like smoking, the climate crisis is connected to a number of harmful practices. Many societies have successfully banned smoking. So perhaps such a comparison can help us in steering towards a state in which we successfully overcome at least some of these harmful practices. Let me focus on two points:

(1) Moral problems: Smoking can be seen in relation to a number of moral problems. It obviously harms others and the smoker. But there is another problem that was often ignored: In the public debate, smokers were often attacked for choosing to smoke. But if we consider smoking an addiction, something is wrong with that accusation. An addict doesn’t simply choose between two options. If things are really bad, the smoker is compelled to smoke. What is the moral problem in that? Well, holding someone responsible who has not that much of a choice might be the wrong way of addressing the issue. – It’s at this point that I see a crucial analogy to the habits related to the climate crisis. Many things we do are so deeply ingrained that it makes sense to see them as addictions: If we treat gambling, smart phone use, drugs etc. as addictive, it might make sense to treat driving cars, eating meat and dairy products and many other habits at least as quasi-addictive. They might be said to involve rewards and to be compulsive (to some degree) rather than plainly chosen. In any case, following the discussions on the climate crisis triggers many memories of the discussions about the smoking ban. In admitting to the addictive character of habits, the public discussion could move from the current practice of blaming each other (and looking for the greatest hypocrite) to ways of thinking about overcoming the addictions involved.

(2) Motivational problems: This brings me to my second issue. Wondering whether to quit smoking, I benefitted greatly from the amended infrastructure. It’s hard to see smoking as part of your identity if it’s banned everywhere. At the same time the changed moral perception helped. I couldn’t frame myself as a youthful outcast who gets morally antagonized by the mainstream for making bad choices. Rather I could view myself as someone who needs help. In this sense, the legal and social infrastructure were a great motivational factor: with many of the social rewards gone, it was much easier to realistically project a future self without a packet of cigarettes. – The same goes of course for climate crisis related habits. Once it becomes increasingly unacceptable and impractical to drive a car or eat meat, all the social rewards dwindle.

The upshot is that I think we should stop treating people who indulge in certain climate-related habits as if they were failing personally. So long as our society and infrastructure rewards such habits, it makes more sense to see them as quasi-addictions.

Currently, we often distinguish between personal and political failures in the climate crisis. I’m not convinced that this is a good distinction. So-called personal failures are often driven by our social, cultural and technological infrastructure. If we want change, we need to stop passing blame on individuals who will only feel encouraged to look for hypocrisies. What we need is help both to amend our addictions and infrastructure. In this regard, we might benefit from looking at the successful aspects of the smoking ban.

Naturalism as a bedfellow of capitalism? A note on the reception of early modern natural philosophy

Facing the consequences of anthropogenic climate change and pollution, the idea that a certain form of scientific naturalism goes hand in hand with an exploitative form of capitalism might (or might not) have an intuitive plausibility. But does the supposed relation between naturalism and capitalism have something like a historical origin? A set of conditions that tightened it? And that can be traced back to a set of sources? In what follows, I’d like to present a few musings on this kind of question.

What does it take to write or think about a history of certain ideas? Obviously, what you try to do is to combine certain events and think something like: “This was triggered by that or this thought relies on that assumption.” You might even be more daring and say: “Had it not been for X, Y would (probably) never have occurred.” Such claims are special in that they bind events or ideas together into a narrative, often designed to explain how it was possible that some event or an idea occurred. – The philosopher Akeel Bilgrami makes such a claim when he suggests that naturalism, taken as a certain way of treating nature scientifically and instrumentally, is tied to capitalism. In his “The wider significance of naturalism” (2010), Bilgrami writes:

“[D]issenters argued that it is only because one takes matter to be “brute” and “stupid,” to use Newton’s own term, that one would find it appropriate to conquer it with nothing but profit and material wealth as ends, and thereby destroy it both as a natural and a human environment for one’s habitation.
[…] Newton and Boyle’s metaphysical view of the new science won out over the freethinkers’ and became official only because it was sold to the Anglican establishment and, in an alliance with that establishment, to the powerful mercantile and incipient industrial interests of the period in thoroughly predatory terms that stressed that nature may now be transformed in our conception of it into the kind of thing that is indefinitely available for our economic gain…”

Bilgrami’s overall story is a genealogy of naturalism or rather scientism.* The paper makes itself some intriguing observations regarding narratives and historiography. But let’s look at his claim more closely. By appealing to Newton and the victory of his kind of naturalism, it is designed to explain why we got to scientism and a certain understanding of nature. In doing so, it binds a number of highly complex events and ideas together: There is a (1) debate between “dissenters” and what he calls “naturalists”, whose ideas (2) became official, (3) “only because” they were “sold” to the Anglicans and to industrial stakeholders. Although this kind of claim is problematic for several reasons, it is quite interesting. One could now discuss why ideas about necessary connections between facts (“only because”) presuppose a questionable understanding of history tout court or seem to ignore viable alternatives. But for the time being I would like to focus on what I find interesting. For me, two aspects stand out in particular.

Firstly, Bilgrami’s thesis, and especially (3), seems to suggest a counterfactual causal claim: Had the metaphysical view not been sold to the said stakeholders, it would not have become official. In other words, the scientific revolution or Newton’s success is owing to the rise of capitalism. Both cohere in that they seem to propagate a notion of nature that is value-free, allowing nature to be exploited and manipulated. Even if that notion of nature might not be Newton’s, it is an interesting because it seems to gain new ground today: The widespread indifference to climate change and pollution for capitalist reasons suggests such a conjunction. Thus, a genealogy that traces the origin of that notion seems to ask at least an interesting question: Which historical factors correlate to the rise of the currently fashionable notion of nature?

Secondly, the narrative Bilgrami appeals to has itself a history and is highly contested. But Bilgrami neither argues for the facts he binds together, nor does he appeal to any particular sources. This is striking, for although he is not alone with his thesis, people are not exactly buying into this narrative. If you read Steven Pinker, you’ll rather get a great success story about why science has liberated us. And even proper historians readily dismiss the relation between the rise of capitalism and science as “inadequate”. This raises another interesting question: Why do we accept certain narratives (rather than others)?

This latter question seems to suggest a simple answer: We do or should accept only those narratives that are correct. As I see it, this is problematic. Narratives are plausible or implausible. But the complexity of the tenets they bind together makes it impossible to prove or refute them on ordinary grounds of evidence. Just try to figure out what sort of evidence you need to show that the Newtonian view “won” or was “sold”! You might see who argued against whom; you might have evidence that some merchants expressed certain convictions, but the correlations suggested by these words can be pulled and evidenced in all sorts of ways. Believing a narrative means to believe that certain correlations (between facts) are more relevant than others. It means to believe, for instance, that capitalism was a driving force for scientists to favour certain projects over others. But unless you show that certain supposed events did not occur or certain beliefs were not asserted, it’s very hard to counter the supposed facts, let alone the belief in their correlation.

So I doubt that we simply chose to believe in certain narratives because we have grounds for believing they are true. My hunch is that they gain or lose plausibility along with larger ideologies or belief systems that we adhere to. In this regard it is striking that Bilgrami goes for his thesis without much argument. While he doesn’t give clear sources, Bilgrami’s assumption bears striking resemblance to the claims of Boris Hessen, who wrote (in 1931):

“The Royal Society brought together the leading and most eminent scientists in England, and in opposition to university scholasticism adopted as its motto ‘Nullius in verba’ (verify nothing on the basis of words). Robert Boyle, Brouncker, Brewster, Wren, Halley, and Robert Hooke played an active part in the society. One of its most outstanding members was Newton. We see that the rising bourgeoisie brought natural science into its service, into the service of developing productive forces. … And since … the basic problems were mechanical ones, this encyclopedic survey of the physical problems amounted to creating a consistent structure of theoretical mechanics which would supply general methods for solving the problems of celestial and terrestrial mechanics.”

The claim that “the the rising bourgeoisie brought natural science into its service” is indeed similar to what Bilgrami seems to have in mind. As a new special issue on Boris Hessen’s work makes clear, these claims were widely disseminated.** At the same time, an encyclopedia from 2001 characterises Hessen’s view as “crude and dogmatically Marxist”.

Thus, the reception of Hessen’s claim is itself tied to larger ideological convictions. This might not be surprising, but it puts pressure on the reasons we give for favouring one narrative over another. While believing in certain narratives means believing that certain correlations (between facts) are more relevant than others, our choice and rejection of narratives might be driven by wider ideologies or belief systems. If this is correct, then the dismissal of Hessen’s insights might not be owing to the dismissal of his scholarship but rather to the supposed Marxism. So the question is: are the cold-war convictions still alive, driving the choice of narratives? Or is the renewed interest in Marxism already a reason for a renewed interest in Hessen’s work? In any case, in the history of interpreting Newtonian naturalism Akeel Bilgrami’s paper is striking, because it bears witness to this reception without directly acknowledging it.*** Might this be because there are new reasons for being interested in the (history of the) relation between scientific naturalism and capitalism?

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* It’s important to note that Bilgrami uses the term naturalism in a resticted sense: “I am using the term “naturalism” in a rather restricted way, limiting the term to a scientistic form of the philosophical position. So, the naturalism of Wittgenstein or John McDowell or even P. F. Strawson falls outside of this usage. In fact all three of these philosophers are explicitly opposed to naturalism in the sense that I am using the term. Perhaps “scientism” would be the better word for the philosophical position that is the center of the dispute I want to discuss.” – This problematically restricted use of naturalism is probably owing to Margaret Jacob’s distinction between a “moderate” and “radical enlightenment”. The former movement is associated with writers like Newton and Boyle; the latter with the pantheist “dissenters” for whom nature is inseprable from the divine.

** I am very grateful to Sean Winkler, who not only edited the special issue on Hessen but kindly sent me a number of passages from his writings. I’m also grateful to all the kind people who patiently discussed some questions on Facebook (here with regard to Bilgrami; here with regard to Hessen).

*** The lines of reception are of course much more complex and, in Bilgrami’s case, perhaps more indirect than I have suggested. Bilgrami explicitly references Weber’s recourse to “disentchantment” and also acknowledges the importance of Marx for his view. Given these references, Bilgrami’s personal reception might be owing more to Weber than Hessen. That said, Merton (following Weber) clearly acknowledges his debt to Hessen. A further (unacknowledged but possible) source for this thesis is Edgar Zilsel. For more details on the intricate pathways of reception see Gerardo Ienna’s and Giulia Rispoli’s paper in the special issue referenced above.

An ethics of climate change?

Imagine that you watch someone putting down a substance on all the playgrounds in your neighbourhood. You are then reliably informed that the substance is poisonous and that it has been put down on all playgrounds.

What would you do? Would you keep quiet about it? – Perhaps you should. Even if you see some children die, you don’t know for sure whether it’s really the poison that is lethal, do you?*

 

_____

* Some comments:

— Faced with the question of anthropogenic climate change, most far-right parties I know endorse a variant of this argument. Are there any other options? Probably: (a) Some mainstream parties in Germany worry most about the issue that the guy putting down the poison might be out of a job if we cause a fuss. (b) Other parties campaign for building new playgrounds. (c) A further option is to ask the producers of poison for the best strategy. (d) Oh, and another commonly favoured move is to dismiss protests of children as ignorant. Did I miss something?

— If you’ve read this far, why not sign this petition by Martin Kusch (Vienna): “Philosophers for Future”?

— While I think that dismissing findings of climate sciences or other concerns about climate change is immoral, I also see that ‘spreading the word‘ is rather difficult. Meehan Crist writes: “On a rapidly warming planet, one function of climate writing is to get the word out—to spark and help shape public discourse in the midst of ongoing and accelerating catastrophe. We are already too late to prevent some degree of unprecedented change. We know it’s going to be bad, but human activity today could still make the future worse. So it’s true both that we are too late and that there is no time to be lost. Yet if we get the framing of this story wrong—if we see the issue as a matter of individual consumer choice, for example, or choose a purely emotional rather than an explicitly political framing—we risk missing the point altogether.”

Call for ideas: Why the humanities and sciences protect our values

As you all know, the sciences and humanities are targeted on many levels. We’ve all seen budget cuts happening, for more or less comprehensible reasons. By now we’re used to that, and the more cynical sides of our souls will quickly admit that at least many of the humanities are not much of an asset to the average tax payer. So far, this made for nasty ways of playing off the sciences and humanities against one another. But now the sciences are explicitly targeted, too, for example by people doubting climate sciences or the standards of vaccination. Over the last two weeks, I got a ‘live’ glimpse of the way in which right-wing politicians mobilise people against universities. Of course, we have seen this happening everywhere: prominently in the US and in Hungary for instance. Nevertheless, being exposed to the tactics in my academic home country, the Netherlands, made me realise just how powerful the narratives against us are. This phenomenon is not going to go away by itself. Thus, I think we – people working in the sciences and especially in the humanities – need a positive narrative about why academic work matters and a more concerted way of communicating this. By now, I’ve seen a number of petitions and open letters going … nowhere. Part of the problem is that we’re not only targeted from the outside, but also, mostly inadvertently, internally. In the light of the current threats and the way that universities are structured, the common ways of defending ourselves do not work. Therefore, I would like to launch this call for ideas.

Yes, it’s really bad. – We all know that academia is under threat in many ways. Up till recently, that is, perhaps up till ten years ago (perhaps shortly after the financial crisis), these threats have been generally justified with economic arguments: We need to shut down philosophy, languages and cultural studies because otherwise we can’t finance cancer research and the military – or some such line of reasoning that would convince at least some of us. But now the tune has changed. The narrative that I encountered in the Netherlands and elsewhere is running under the heading of cultural marxism (in the sense of a conspiracy theory): Whether you know it or not, if you are working in education or at a university you are willy-nilly part of a left-wing conspiracy that counters free speech and all sorts of other values. This accusation is of course nonsense. But the problem is that it is widely held and believed. Given that Mr Trump has already approved a policy targeting what are thought to be enemies of free speech, it won’t be long until we will see this in action as a more general means to “evaluate” studies and departments. These are the beginnings of a fairly new concerted set of actions against standards in (higher) education. But the new line of argument against academia is not that we’re just useless; it’s that we are inherently bad.

What might stop us. – In many alt-right narratives, universities are portrayed as bulwarks of leftist indoctrination. So far the the response has been defensive: “Science has no agenda” etc. But instead of defending ourselves against outrageous claims, we need a comprehensible narrative of how academia contributes to the protection of democratic values, and we need ways of implementing this narrative. As it stands, the academic communities are defenceless against such doubts for three reasons: firstly, we represent a form of institutionalised doubting, as it were, and will respond with more doubting rather than reassurance; secondly, we are very bad at collective action and solidarity because we are incentivised to compete against one another wherever possible. Therefore, the principles of our work and the structure of our career paths make it very hard to respond even to common threats. A third reason might be that the narratives against academia have already gained too much power: The current way of playing off academics as right-wing versus left-wing or free-speech versus de-platformers, for instance, has gained so much force that even some of your colleagues might go along with it and see you (or you them) as a mere instance of left or right-wing activism. Academics are of course not immune to the effects of ideologies.

What we need to do. – Given the incentive to compete, it’s difficult to start a conversation. But that’s what we need to do. When we see academia in Turkey or Hungary under threat, we follow the news and start petitions or some such measures. But when it hits home, it’s much harder to believe that it is happening in the first place. So the first thing we need is to break the silence. We need a clear-headed exchange about what is happening around us. If it turns out that I’m just alarmist and everything is fine, then all the better. In any case, it will help to have an open conversation across different status groups (from higher administrators to deans to professors to students). Secondly, we need clear ideas why we matter. Such ideas are hard to come by because we’re often used to make our case against other disciplines. These ideas should not be just defensive, like “no, we’re not against free speech!” Thirdly, we need ways of communicating these ideas at all levels. Many of us are good at talking to students or grant agencies, that’s by and large preaching to the choir. We need to reach those who currently believe that we are the enemies of society. So we need to talk to journalists and others who shape the discourses of the many intently.

How we should begin. – Of course, we don’t need to begin with the most difficult of interlocutors. Convincing your colleagues about the fact that we’re in trouble might be tricky enough already. What we need is an understanding of what is going on. So we should indeed begin by exchanging anecdotes and tentative ideas. Given that we’re all too busy already, the easiest would probably be to ask Greta Thunberg to do it on our behalf. – Joking, sorry! Of course you can begin by responding to this blog post or just by talking to a colleague. If you’re looking for ideas, you could ask a friend outside academia. They exist. Or why not devote some twenty minutes to some exchange at the end of the next department meeting or conference? Once we begin a conversation, ways of coordinating action will suggest themselves.

Whatever we do, we need to understand that we’re not defending ourselves (only) against claims about economic necessities; we’re up against people who claim that we undermine basic values. We shouldn’t let these people dictate the stories about who we are and what we do. Countering them doesn’t mean that we should be defensive; it’s enough if we begin to take control of our own stories and why they matter.