Why climate justice needs both love and rage

Summary

The following text presents the concept of the “three modes of nature”, ie tamas (“passivity”), rajas (“activity”), and sattwa (“balance”),  from Indian philosophy. The basic idea states that these conflicting modes of human nature (prakriti)  creates a fundamental dilemma which does not allow humans to perform good, peaceful and powerful actions in the real world.

To overcome the described dilemma, the three modes of nature can be transformed by adopting a psychological perspective by which identification with one’s body, emotions,  and thoughts is gradually reduced and replaced by a wider idea of self which includes other living (past, present, and future) beings. As practical method, satyagraha (“insistence on truth”) in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and related to the European concept of “non-violent (civil) resistance” is proposed, which seeks conflict with an opponent, while avoiding violence, which serves a greater good.

These concepts are applied to the  environmental movement, especially the climate justice movement, and illustrated with historical and recent events.

1. The Three Modes of Nature

The following text has been written by Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo with references to other philosophical terms from Indian philosophy, which are not further explained here. The basic concept of the three modes of nature, ie tamas, rajas, and sattwa,  is sufficiently illustrated, while the other terms are not considered essential for the limited purpose of the current blog:

Every form of things, whether animate or inanimate, is a constantly maintained poise of natural forces in motion and is subject to an unending stream of helpful, disturbing or dis-integrating contacts from other combinations of forces that surround it. Our own nature of mind, life and body is nothing else than such a formative combination and poise. In the reception of the environing contacts and the reaction to them the three modes determine the temper of the recipient and the character of the response.

Inert and inapt, he may suffer them without any responsive reaction, any motion of self-defence or any capacity of assimilation and adjustment; this is the mode of tamas, the way of inertia. The stigmata of tamas are blindness and unconsciousness and incapacity and unintelligence, sloth and indolence and inactivity and mechanical routine and the mind’s torpor and the life’s sleep and the soul’s slumber. Its effect, if uncorrected by other elements, can be nothing but dis-integration of the form or the poise of the nature without any new creation or new equilibrium or force of kinetic progress. At the heart of this inert impotence is the principle of ignorance and an inability or slothful unwillingness to comprehend, seize and manage the stimulating or assailing contact, the suggestion of environing forces and their urge towards fresh experience.

On the other hand, the recipient of Nature’s contacts, touched and stimulated, solicited or assailed by her forces, may react to the pressure or against it. She allows, encourages, impels him to strive, to resist, to attempt, to dominate or engross his environment, to assert his will, to fight and create and conquer. This is the mode of rajas, the way of passion and action and the thirst of desire. Struggle and change and new creation, victory and defeat and joy and suffering and hope and disappointment are its children and build the many-coloured house of life in which it takes its pleasure. But its knowledge is an imperfect or a false knowledge and brings with it ignorant effort, error, a constant misadjustment, pain of attachment, disappointed desire, grief of loss and failure. The gift of rajas is kinetic force, energy, activity, the power that creates and acts and can overcome; but it moves in the wrong lights or the half-lights of the Ignorance and it is perverted by the touch of the Asura, Rakshasa and Pishacha. The arrogant ignorance of the human mind and its self-satisfied perversions and presumptuous errors, the pride and vanity and ambition, the cruelty and tyranny and beast wrath and violence, the selfishness and baseness and hypocrisy and treachery and vile meanness, the lust and greed and rapacity, the jealousy, envy and bottomless ingratitude that disfigure the earth-nature are the natural children of this indispensable but strong and dangerous turn of Nature.

But the embodied being is not limited to these two modes of Prakriti; there is a better and more enlightened way in which he can deal with surrounding impacts and the stream of the world-forces. There is possible a reception and reaction with clear comprehension, poise and balance. This way of natural being has the power that, because it understands, sympathises; it fathoms and controls and develops Nature’s urge and her ways: it has an intelligence that penetrates her processes and her significances and can assimilate and utilise; there is a lucid response that is not overpowered but adjusts, corrects, adapts, harmonises, elicits the best in all things. This is the mode of sattwa, the turn of Nature that is full of light and poise, directed to good, to knowledge, to delight and beauty, to happiness, right understanding, right equilibrium, right order: its temperament is the opulence of a bright clearness of knowledge and a lucent warmth of sympathy and closeness. A fineness and enlightenment, a governed energy, an accomplished harmony and poise of the whole being is the consummate achievement of the sattwic nature.

An exclusive resort to sattwa would seem to be the way of escape: but there is this difficulty that no one of the qualities can prevail by itself against its two companions and rivals. If, envisaging the quality of desire and passion as the cause of disturbance, suffering, sin and sorrow, we strain and labour to quell and subdue it, rajas sinks but tamas rises. For, the principle of activity dulled, inertia takes its place. A quiet peace, happiness,knowledge, love, right sentiment can be founded by the principle of light, but, if rajas is absent or completely suppressed, the quiet in the soul tends to become a tranquillity of inaction, not the firm ground of a dynamic change. Ineffectively right-thinking, right-doing, good, mild and even, the nature may become in its dynamic parts sattwa-tamasic, neutral, pale-tinted, uncreative or emptied of power. Mental and moral obscurity may be absent, but so are the intense springs of action, and this is a hampering limitation and another kind of incompetence. For tamas is a double principle; it contradicts rajas by inertia, it contradicts sattwa by narrowness, obscurity and ignorance and, if either is depressed, it pours in to occupy its place. If we call in rajas again to correct this error and bid it ally itself to sattwa and by their united agency endeavour to get rid of the dark principle, we find that we have elevated our action, but that there is again subjection to rajasic eagerness, passion, dis-appointment, suffering, anger. These movements may be more exalted in their scope and spirit and action than before, but they are not the peace, the freedom, the power, the self-mastery at which we long to arrive. Wherever desire and ego harbour, passion and disturbance harbour with them and share their life. And if we seek a compromise between the three modes, sattwa leading, the others subordinate, still we have only arrived at a more temperate action of the play of Nature. A new poise has been reached, but a spiritual freedom and mastery are not insight or else are still only a far-off prospect.

A radically different movement has to draw us back from the gunas and lift us above them. The error that accepts the action of the modes of Nature must cease; for as long as it is accepted, the soul is involved in their operations and subjected to their law. Sattwa must be transcended as well as rajas and tamas; the golden chain must be broken no less than the leaden fetters and the bond-ornaments of a mixed alloy. The Gita prescribes to this end a new method of self-discipline. It is to stand back in oneself from the action of the modes and observe this unsteady flux as the Witness seated above the surge of the forces of Nature. He is one who watches but is impartial and indifferent, aloof from them on their own level and in his native posture high above them. As they rise and fall in their waves, the Witness looks, observes, but neither accepts nor for the moment interferes with their course. First there must be the freedom of the impersonal Witness; afterwards there can be the control of the Master, the Ishwara.

[1, pp. 232, slightly reformatted]

2. Related Concepts in Psychology

To  illustrate the above text and overcome any negative prejudice resulting from the somewhat poetic language above,  I would like to draw some parallels to other psychological concepts:

Learned helplessness is behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. It was initially thought to be caused from the subject’s acceptance of their powerlessness: discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus, even when such alternatives are unambiguously presented. [3]

Self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner.[1] It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors.[2] When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more responsibility for their group’s work than they give to other members, they are protecting their ego from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self’s need for esteem. [4]

Depressive realism is the hypothesis that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals.[5] A meta-analytic review found that averaged across all studies, we found a small depressive realism effect. [5]

3. Historical Examples

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” – Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 22 October 1945 [12]

Human history provides examples for the “three modes of nature”, which can be best illustrated by the dominant philosophies of the 20. century, ie socialism and capitalism.

Socialism is based on fundamental values equality, cooperation, and solidarity in social and economic systems [12]. However, socialism is critized by its economic inefficiency, ie less innovation and productivity. Here, one could argue that the idea of balance  (sattwa) wealth and power in economy and society was compromised by lack of (self-centered) incentives for humans to use their resources to full capacity (tamas).

Capitalism is based on the fundamental value of accumulation of capital [14]. However, capitalism is critized because it leads to extreme inequality, including an accumulation of wealth and power (ie “multi-billionaires”), and extreme economic growth, which is damaging social (ie democracy, participation in society), economic (ie repeated economic crises), and ecological (ie climate, loss of biodiversity, destruction of nature, pollution) stability and, finally, the very basis of (human) civilisation and life [15]. Here, once could argue that the idea of balance (sattwa), ie providing well-being, prosperity, and innovation, was compromised by greed, competitive aggression, lies (“commercials”), and violent exploitation of animals, humans, or whole countries (rajas).

4. The Climate Justice Movement

At present, a dominant conflict exists between community-based progressive forces, which are striving towards social and ecological justice and cooperations and governments, whose wealth and power is based on the current fossil-fuel based economic model.

Community-based progressive forces, ie mostly “climate justice” grass-roots movements supported by scientists (eg “Fridays For Futures” initiated by Greta Thunberg with support from Prof Kevin Anderson) demand to “unite behind the science”  to achieve “climate justice” to limit global warming to safe levels, stop the destruction of ecological resources (biodiversity), and redistribute wealth and power. The demand for cooperation and to subordinate one’s self-interests to altruistic values and scientific knowledge can interpreted as showing the quality of sattwa (ie balance, understanding). Although it is difficult to summarize the diverse set of climate movements, my personal opinion the movement is dominated by young people, eg pupils or students, with hardly any financial resources or institutional political power. Furthermore, depending on the situation and cultural background, the organization of the movements seems inefficient and slow because a consensus-based decision-making process in a heterogenous group of people with equal rights, requires a lot of resources for discussion and organization. In addition, the forms of protests in public places with home-made, low-quality posters, which are hard to read or are easily destroyed by wind and rain, does not communicate their message effectively. Therefore, the climate justice movement shows aspects of the quality of tamas (ie, passivity, weakness).

Cooperations and governments, ie the fossil-fuel industry and right-wing, neoliberal governments, show great activity and success in collecting financial wealth and political power. They use sophisticated technologies (ie fracking technology, financial investments,  legal actions for tax avoidance, control of mass media, microtarget advertising) which can be interpreted as showing the quality of sattwa (ie balance, understanding, innovation). However, the activities are dominated by their self-interest for capital and power creating poverty, harm to democracy, harm to science, destruction of natural resources, which represent the quality of rajas (ie activity, greed). Interestingly, the balance and understanding of sattwa is compromised by rajas, leading to failure and loss because of by being blinded by short-term greed and self-interest.

  • The deregulation of the air travel industry in the USA with a strong focus on profit for investors, has lead the world’s largest aerospace company BOEING to developing the faulty Boeing 737-Max and Boeing 787 Dreamliner models, leading to huge economic losses, even affecting the US economy [6].
  • The management of the COVID-19 pandemic, prioritization of the (short-term) economic profit and the absence of social security for the unemployed in the USA, has lead to severe public health, social and economic problems [7, 8, 9].

However, some leaders of the climate movement have chosen elements of the “satyagraha” method including “non-violent (civil) resistance” to overcome the dilemma of acting in a good, peaceful, and powerful way. Examples are:

  • Greta Thunberg, as the initiator of the “Fridays for Future” protests, decided to start a “school strike”, which creates a conflict with existing laws while avoiding verbal or physical violence. She set an example, which was then also followed by millions of other protesters, although the form of protest overall can be considered a large scale protests, at which only a proportion of protests showed “civil dis-obedience” by striking from school or work.
  • Extinction Rebellion, a UK-based movement, called fo an “International Rebellion Week” and successfully blocked economic and social life in central parts of London with peaceful actions, such as road blocks in combination with other creative forms of protest (“Red Rebels”).

Although these forms of protest received considerable media attention and had some influence on political decisions, the effects do not seem to be strong enough to make a substantial step towards or even achieve “climate justice”. In my personal opinion, the applied principles of creating system change were basically sound to stimulate powerful and peaceful systemic change to achieve a morally good aim. However, to achieve the required societal power to stand up against the overwhelming financial and political power, the movement was much too weak. Here, the mobilization of a large part of the society is compromised by a lack of understanding (cf tamas), frustration, depresssion, and learned helplessness of the pending threat and inaction (cf tamas) or fear  to confront other peers or superiors (cf tamas) or self-interest in one’s own economic interest (eg career interests), personal interests in a convenient lifestyle (eg holidays in exotic places) or to increase one’s social status (eg expensive car) (rajas).

5. Conclusion

An understanding of the basic modes of nature and risks of tamas– or rajas-type of behaviour, will help to make the climate justice movement more successful to achieve system change. While the movement is very much aware of the risks of rajas, as exemplified by the opposing fossil-fuel industry and right-wing, conservative-nationalist governments, the movements overlooks the advantages of rajas and the disadvantages of tamas, resulting in a lack of powerful action.

To overcome the described dilemma, the three modes of nature can be transformed by adopting a psychological perspective by which identification with one’s body, emotions,  and thoughts is gradually reduced and replaced by a wider idea of self which includes other living (past, present, and future) beings. As practical method, satyagraha (“insistence on truth”) or “non-violent (civil) resistance” seems adequate, which seeks conflict with an opponent, while avoiding violence, however, currently fails to stimulate participation in a sufficiently large proportion of society to affect the overwhelming financial and political power of the current system.

References:

[1] Aurobindo, S. (1999). The Synthesis of Yoga. Vol. 23 and 24 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department. [English] [PDF]

[2] Aurobindo, S. (1991). Die Synthese des Yoga. 3. Auflage. Gladenbach. Hinder + Deelmann [German].

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias

[5] Moore, M. T., & Fresco, D. M. (2012). Depressive realism: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 32(6), 496–509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2012.05.004

[6] Cameron, D. & Sider, A. (2019-7-22). Boeing’s 737 MAX Grounding Spills Over Into Economy, Weighs on GDP.

[7]  The New York Times (2020-04-07) White House Projects Grim Toll From Coronavirus, The New York times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/world/coronavirus-live-news-updates.html

[8] Rushe, D. (2020-04-29). US economy shrinks 4.8% as coronavirus ends longest expansion in history. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/29/us-economy-shrinks-coronavirus-ends-longest-expansion

[9]  Rushe & Aratani (2020-05-07), US unemployment rises another 3m, bringing total to 33m since pandemic began, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/07/us-unemployment-jobless-coronavirus-economy

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha

[11] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/06/greta-thunberg-says-school-strikes-have-achieved-nothing

[12] https://richardlangworth.com/socialism

[13] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sozialismus

[14] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapitalismus

[15] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapitalismuskritik

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