That admonition was the urgent call at the end of the Russell-Einstein nuclear disarmament manifesto, 59 years ago this month. It was fine advice then; it’s even more important now.
“Forget the rest” is particularly good guidance in a society driven to self-destruction by the organized multiplication of wants – complications from which comprise a formidable barrier to the political activism we need.
Our converging economic, environmental, and political crises are bringing sweeping, revolutionary changes to the world and to our own society. We cannot go into all the details here, but we are on the very cusp of profound changes which threaten our civilization to its core. None of us can escape. We’re not exceptional. Neither the American imperium nor the American way of life – both so dependent on cheap oil, fragile supply chains, ever-growing mountains of unrepayable debt, and the forbearance of so many in so many places – are long for this world.
So we had better get busy. We can choose to act in conscious freedom, or we will be acted upon, in more-or-less bewildered victimhood. What’s different this time around is that there’s not much refuge anywhere. Our crises are global. But if you do want to try to hide – well, good luck, and goodbye.
Even though “[t]he American way of life is not negotiable,” as George H. W. Bush famously said, it is ending nonetheless, and quite fast in historical terms. A harsh politics of disposability for both human beings and the environment could replace it, nourished in the toxic soil of broken dreams.
Needless to say, the suicidal approach to defense embodied in our nuclear arsenals doesn’t foster a collective commitment to human values, or any reverence for life and the living landscape.
It is precisely these humane values that are the only possible basis for successful economic development in this state – particularly as desertification and the progressive loss of amenities threaten the charms we so long took for granted. “You must get your living by loving,” said Thoreau. That’s become shrewd policy advice – for society, the economy, the built environment, and for the living land and the species in it, more of which are endangered than we as yet understand.
New Mexico’s economy is limited by its human development failures. These are political failures. Despite decades of such failure, our political leadership keeps hoping that simple boosterism, loosely wrapped in an ever-changing set of slogans, can make up for inadequate investment in our children and families. Our state’s investments are elsewhere.
“Innovation” is the latest fad. Hopes that “innovation” will suddenly root and grow in a desert of societal neglect, thereby eliminating the need for addressing our increasing inequality and de-development, will fail.
We might caricature the possibilities for New Mexico’s future in three scenarios.
The first scenario, “Downward Drift,” sees a gradual exodus of non-military-related professionals and of young adults overall, continuing population declines in most rural counties, and a gradual loss of natural amenities, habitats, and species ensembles. The oil and gas fracking bubble bursts in this decade. Human development indices continue to fall; inequality continues to increase. Available skills and trust decline; corruption continues. The entrepreneurial model of business development (e.g. “Innovate ABQ”) goes nowhere; some current anchors (e.g. Intel) decline or disappear. Sprawl continues; home values decline. There is some improvement in health coverage but the quality of care is generally poor. There are new slums, abandoned buildings, and homeless encampments. Political disenfranchisement, fiscal crises, and lassitude characterize public life. Poor educational standards, low skills and work standards, and the slowly rising tide of inequality dissuade most businesses that require skills and higher education from locating here.
The “Collapse” scenario is much the same but adds a growing nuclear “wasteplex” and a “to-hell-with-the-environment” approach to fossil fuels and mineral resources. There is a growing military and homeland security focus in this scenario, as militarized police, border patrol, nuclear security and emergency response culturally blend. Nuclear and military contractor personnel and recent military retirees are frequently elected to public office. The reputation and identity of the state shift toward national and homeland security, which expands to include the privileged fossil fuel industry. Drug use is rampant and tolerated among the “surplus” population; life expectancy drops among the growing poor, who are increasingly considered “surplus.” Prisons thrive. Collapsing suburbs create blighted and lawless zones. Tourism declines precipitously, as does population and retail demand.
In the “Renewal” scenario, civil discontent and an honest appraisal of the deteriorating situation fuels a figurative (and at times literal) revolt. All ordinary political avenues had failed. A subsequent electoral sweep brings in new “green” leadership, the groundwork for which had been laid among opinion leaders, in part by failed reform efforts. New public investment and private incentives fuel a locally-owned renaissance in sustainability, with associated blue-collar creativity, often highly technical. The role of shareholder-owned utilities declines, and distributed local ownership of generation facilities grows along with local use and local control policies. Fossil-fuel generation falls, and is taxed. Construction employment rises tremendously. Local ownership of the new assets and increased political enfranchisement lead to new political as well as technical skills, confidence, and a welter of new democratic and economic structures, some of which are endure, in part because they serve otherwise unmet social and educational needs. New livelihoods in environmental education and in stewardship of threatened habitats and species take hold, attracting young people. There is a cultural renewal as consumerism falters and is replaced by simpler living and higher thinking. Tax changes turn empty commercial buildings into low-cost housing. The arts flourish.
Renewal — no quotes now — is impractical, you say? Consider the alternatives spelled out above, or anything close to them.
New Mexico in particular is in a downward spiral from which recovery could be difficult, or impossible. Creativity, industry, capital, and time are all largely being wasted, while negative synergies grow.
A much more trenchant, non-partisan political conversation is needed all across civil society – in churches, environmental groups, schools, businesses, and in our homes and families. What seems to be missing is any sense of urgency or scale. We drift. “Progressives” don’t progress — in fact the “progressive” agenda hasn’t been successful, overall, in decades. There have been no net environmental victories. So this is no time to take more of what Martin Luther King called “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” Revolutionary changes are at hand and will seem abrupt, however much we would like them not to be. That rough beast is on the move. We need to wake up. Now more than ever, for sanity’s sake if not for our children, we must “remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” In that forgetting there is freedom. Use it.