I’d like to think that was the first time Public Enemy and Carl Sagan shared a title.
No matter how much we try to deny it, we humans are social creatures. Money, status, fame, and many other minor and major vices do not make us happy. Human connections make us happy. Belonging to a group bigger than ourselves makes us happy. Having a purpose that ultimately connects us to others – makes us happy.
The punishment that prisoners around the world fear most is not beatings, ridicule or losing privileges. It is solitary confinement.
We don’t want human interaction, love, or acceptance. We need them, and desperately.
As I write this, 52 percent of Americans report feeling lonely while 47 percent report their relationships with others are not meaningful. Being chronically lonely is like the mortality impact of smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Chronic loneliness is also associated with a weakened immune system[1], cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes. More than 80 percent of people under the age of 18 in America report feeling lonely. Forty-three percent of people between the ages of 18 to 25 report feeling unloved. Seventy-three percent of Millennials say they are lonely.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
If it makes you feel better, you can blame social media, the decline of religion in America, economic inequality, political polarization, changing demographics, or changing cultural norms. You are somewhat right in each case. But no one thing has changed our culture over the decades to make us more disconnected and more alone.
We have done that to ourselves.
It happened slowly. Our culture and our way of dealing with others have changed for all the reasons I mentioned above and more. You can’t say any one of these things is the only cause of this problem and be smug about it. Well, you can … but you’d be wrong. And you would be no less alone.
We have become more isolated over the years, and we don’t talk to each other as much as we used to. We don’t participate as much in our community as we used to. It is easier to fall into our comfortable alternate reality where we are only exposed to a few people (if we are exposed to any real relationships at all) who confirm our suspicions, prejudices, ignorance, and fears.
A stronger community that talked to each other more, accepted the views of others more and hadn’t retreated into the safety of their tribe, would have tackled climate change a long time ago. We would have done so because we would have seen the threat to the community much sooner because we would have valued that community more.
I can’t prove that counterfactual fictitious world I just invented, but I’m comfortable with those assumptions.
These facts about American unhappiness are in equal measure depressing and hopeful. In the end, our own unhappiness and the climate crisis have the same cause and the same solution.
Each other.
We can be incredibly selfish creatures, but we are also social creatures. The reason we get out of bed every morning – even when we are depressed, the reasons we try to make a better life for our families, the reasons we look forward to almost anything at all … is always another person who is not us.
Those other people are the reason to get going and fight climate change. Those other people are the reasons to build the community, any community that will make ourselves and that community happier.
This isn’t some maudlin “come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody gets together and try to love one another right now” kind of moment. This is about survival. If we don’t find our way into a more cohesive and cooperative community that addresses climate change, we are done for. Yes, we will limp on for a few more centuries, but our world, our community, and our prospects for happiness will have been dashed, for centuries, if not forever.
There is a way out of this fog. It isn’t magic and it isn’t smiling on your brother. It is doing the hard work of working with people you don’t know and don’t love to get something done so that you can survive.
There is a word for it.
Solidarity.
We need to let the frames of class melt away and all subject ourselves to the same restrictions, because we have the same goal – survival. We are all equally responsible for our collective rescue. Solidarity isn’t the billionaire bestowing a gift of charity on someone less fortunate. Solidarity is the billionaire and the poor man marching shoulder to shoulder in the street demanding a just outcome for all. The former is a one-time gift from the upper class to the lower class. The latter is an acknowledgment that we are interdependent on each other.
Such solidarity isn’t the natural state of things. Think about when you have seen it and when you have heard that word used. It is a word used when different groups share a common struggle that can best be addressed if they work together.
Solidarity is what is needed to attack the problem of climate change. Solidarity is not some socialist ideal assuming that everyone is equal or the same. Solidarity can arise when there is a threat daunting enough for disparate groups to unite to fight for a common cause, despite their differences. In the end, if we are to achieve the solidarity we need to save ourselves, we need to come to the realization that we are all in this together and act accordingly.
Solidarity requires the powerful not to give their power to the less powerful, but to throw that power away because they see it isn’t useful for the society they want to help save.
A little history lesson.
Those of us old enough to be alive and fairly interested in world affairs in the 1980s likely remember Poland’s Solidarity movement. That is where I first heard the term and understood the concept of solidarity.
The Solidarity movement in Poland grew from a resistant movement against the pro-Soviet Union communist government in Poland. “Solidarity” grew over many years as the result of human connections across the country, primarily in trade unions. The Polish government gave in to the movement's demands in September 1980 to allow the formation of a trade union. The government soon regretted this decision as about 80 percent of government employees joined the Union. A little over a year later, the Polish military declared martial law to try to contain the power that Solidarity had gained. Eventually, by 1989, Solidarity won the right to free and fair elections in Poland. The country's first non-communist prime minister was elected in August 1989.
The Solidarity movement in Poland was a momentous achievement for Poland and Eastern Europe. I have not done it justice in the few paragraphs I have devoted to it here. Go and read more about it if you wish. I include it here to give context to my thought process. I knew a kind of “solidarity” could be needed to properly address climate change, but I had lost that word from my vocabulary. I hadn’t used it or thought about it in so long.
Luckily, others have been thinking about the problem of how to get a divided country and a divided world to address climate change together. In recent years I have begun to see that word again and again, and I realized that was the idea I had been searching for.
Rugged Individualism has its limitations.
Solidarity in the context of climate change can only work if enough of us acknowledge that climate change isn’t just coming for you, it is coming for us. You can’t solve climate change. But we can. It is only when we join the larger group with the attitude of “we are not leaving this room until this is solved,” that we can get where we need to be.
Solidarity doesn’t demand that you leave your tribe and join the solidarity tribe. It only demands that you acknowledge that the problem – climate change – takes precedence over your tribe because the threat isn’t to your tribe or your enemy's tribe. The threat is to everyone.
There comes a time in the course of human events when it becomes necessary for one people to create political bands which will connect them with another. Taking such a course is not a weakness, it is simply an acknowledgment of our humanity and our limitations. We can only claim the former once we admit to later. We need to understand how much we desperately need each other to win this fight. A modest regulation here, or a tepid corporate action there isn’t going to make a difference. The solidarity of people standing together to admit we need to tackle this problem and that we need the world’s help to do so – can be an earth-shattering development.
If it happens.
To address climate change, we as individuals and as a country have to create solidarity among ourselves in America and then with the rest of the world. This isn’t some “world government” or an abdication of American power to the UN or some other global body. It is an acknowledgment that we are staring over the cliff at a problem bigger than ourselves and that we need help, and others need our help to solve this problem.
Solidarity is a “break glass in case of emergency” solution. From what we have seen thus far in human history, such solidarity isn’t innate in human nature. It has to be created and cultivated.
We need to start today.
But why would this solidarity only be temporary?
It doesn’t have to be, but in history, that is what we have seen. Solidarity has not been the natural state of humankind throughout the ages. That doesn’t mean that at some future date, it couldn’t be. I think that would be preferable. But I don’t see that happening in the near term outside the climate crisis. Let’s use solidarity to address climate change and then we can talk about changing how society is organized.
Some say that you have to change society to address climate change and that solidarity can be built around global efforts to tackle climate change. This argument states that social justice and a just transition need to be part of a solution to climate change.
I agree. We need to fundamentally change the way we do business, the way we live, the way we eat, the way we travel, and the way we interact with each other. We need to change the way we see the world and our role in it. We need to shift from an individual-based mindset to a solidarity-based mindset. We need to understand that we are all in this together and that my neighbor will help me get through this and I will help my neighbor.
What I am saying is that solidarity is easier to hold as a mindset in an emergency than when times are good. I hope we get to the other side of this climate crisis in relatively good shape and then see how much solidarity helped us and that we adopt a solidarity mindset going forward after that.
I’m not saying that won’t or can’t happen. I’m saying I don’t know if that will happen. Anyone who says that will happen is lying to you or a time traveler. That would be a lovely problem to have – trying to keep global solidarity going after the climate crisis is solved. But can we please use solidarity as the default mindset to save ourselves and then worry about how we use it going forward?
So how do we do that?
I don’t know. I was kind of hoping that you had the answer to that question. It’s not that I have an answer that I’m keeping from you. I’m saying I don’t know what will work for you. For me, it is writing and targeting my other work to this problem. For you, it will be whatever your thing is. But it has to be something. Please do something. Find like-minded people and talk to them, organize with them, and talk to your friends and your family about these ideas. Good ideas don’t survive if they aren’t passed along.
Everyone is hungry for connection, purpose, and belonging. They will find it in the wrong places if they can’t find it in their community. We have to build our communities up to provide it.