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Herb Rothschild Jr.: Think of the death of all living, and yet live By Herb Rothschild Jr. Dec 21, 2019 12:00 AM A A When poet Wendell Berry wrote “A Discipline,” the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and the USSR was threatening to extinguish humankind. “Turn toward the holocaust, it approaches/ on every side, there is no other place to turn.” So the poem begins. National governments have always controlled nuclear policy. Citizens can only seek to curb their leaders’ pursuit of a power that proffers nothing but self-annihilation. Over time grassroots activism has had its successes. By the skin of our teeth we’re still here. An alarming number of other species are not. Governments are part of this problem, mainly by refusing to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to solving it. But the culpability is universal. It’s true that about half the world’s people live in material circumstances so reduced that their impact on the carrying capacity of the planet is small. Yet it’s no stretch to assume that they’d welcome the chance to live as we do — the rising expectations and concomitant pollution in India and China confirm that assumption. And even the struggle of the poorest people to merely survive is taking its toll — encroachment on the rain forests, poaching of elephants. It’s the other half of the population, however, and especially the 4% of us who live in the U.S., who are most culpable. What is especially disheartening is that even if those of us who own the problem were to do everything we can as individuals to reduce our carbon footprints — stop driving, stop flying, turn the thermostat down to 50 degrees and wrap ourselves in blankets — the slowing of climate change would lag far behind what’s urgently required. Recently I began attending a support group for climate activists sponsored by Southern Oregon Climate Action Now (SOCAN). In that safe space, anger and grief find their expressions. None of the participants has been paralyzed by these emotions, although at the only session I’ve attended thus far we didn’t share what keeps us going. Speaking for myself, I continue to work for change because that’s what I’ve done for over 50 years; it’s a habit I’d have a hard time breaking. But now I work with no hope of lasting success. Can one act without hope? Not if all action must be goal-oriented and life is a striving for accomplishment. I’ve known that life; what middle-class Jewish boy hasn’t? And there is much to be said for it. In my old age I’m not tempted to disparage human achievement. Even understandings of reality that repudiate desire, even Siddhartha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, are human achievements. But if all our achievements face near-term extinction, doesn’t the ground of our continual striving shift under our feet? Is it not like trying to walk during an earthquake? Suppose there’s some way of living that is neither taking control nor letting be, neither goal-oriented action nor stillness (each in its moment meritorious). Suppose one acts out of love alone — love for everything that is perishing. Think of it as volunteer hospice work for the world. Pessimism isn’t synonymous with despair. We cannot know which grains in the seeds of time will grow and which will not. Perhaps we’ll survive again by the skin of our teeth, though surely with huge losses. Come what may, love outlasts the roughest day. Here’s how Berry concludes his poem: “It’s the time’s discipline to think/ of the death of all living, and yet live.” And yet live well. Herb Rothschild’s column appears in the Ashland Tidings every Saturday. RothschildHerb.jpg