Maintaining Self-Respect in an Age of Ecological Collapse

Reading Time: 10 Minutes

First in a series introducing Bewusstseinskultur – A Culture of Consciousness –
as described by Cognitive Scientist Thomas Metzinger.

Fouling the Nest

Earth had two kinds of people: those who could do the math and follow the science, and those who were happier with their own truths. But … whatever schools we went to, we all lived as if tomorrow would be a clone of now.

– Richard Powers

Homo Sapiens has done something that non-human animals typically don’t do: foul its own nest. Scientists commonly refer to our age as the “Anthropocene”, an era where homo sapiens has become a primary planetary force that kills off increasingly large parts of the biosphere. Most experts agree that human activities have accelerated the rate of species extinction from 100 to 1000 times the normal background rate, and that the survival of homo sapiens itself is threatened by this process.1 Many ecosystems have collapsed around the world because we have crossed limits beyond which they can be sustainably exploited. Climate change is currently responsible for 11% to 16% of biodiversity loss, but this figure is expected to rise significantly in the coming decades. If current trends continue, climate change will probably overtake deforestation as the leading cause of extinction. ²

Paradoxically, it is humanity itself that is creating conditions that will degrade the quality of life for future generations and that may compromise our capacity to survive.

For at least 97% of human history, home sapiens worked in small migrating groups that sustained themselves by hunting and foraging. Nest fouling tendencies – to the extent that they existed on a far smaller scale – didn’t threaten the survival of the entire species.³ During almost all of our history, it had been possible for human groups to simply move on to new, more bountiful territory when conditions demanded. As societies can no longer simply pick up stakes and move from despoiled regions to new, unmolested territory, and insofar as the impact of climate change cannot be contained to specific nations or regions, we live in an age of planetary crisis, where the entire biosphere has become a “fouled nest”.

Resounding Species Failure

“(If) we look at the psychological and

political facts now available to us without

prejudice, everything indicates that

humanity will fail in solving (climate

change) —while it continues to watch.”

– Thomas Metzinger

The resounding failure of homo sapiens to protect itself from its own behavior is implicitly reflected in the aims of public policy efforts. Those policies that acknowledge the presence of climate change treat biospheric destruction caused by climate change as a fait accompli, such that most focus now is on disaster management.

While technological advances seem to offer some promise, we must differentiate between a future that is conceivable based on physics and recent climate research with that which is realistically still possible. Based on our knowledge of our mind and its evolutionary history, the economic and political systems that now govern our planet, the recent history and current state of human societies and cultures, and the trajectory upon which we now find ourselves, catastrophically uncontrolled climate change can only be expected to continue.

Self-Correction

The presence of guilt, together with defeat, adds a psychological complication. Not only impotence but guilt must be accepted, and (transformation) … must grow from both.”

– Karl Jaspers

The human propensity to foul the nest co-exists with a capacity for self-correction that manifests in every human individual. As noted by Yuval Harari, self-correction is a ubiquitous biological process illustrated by the mechanism by which human individuals learn to walk: The child makes a wrong move, falls, learns from its mistake, and tries to do things a little differently.

This capacity for self-correction has been effectively used to organize human groups, and institutions and systems perform best when they embody self-correcting mechanisms. Democracy is a political system based on awareness of individual and collective fallibility: It accordingly establishes permanent self-correcting mechanisms to compensate for the inevitability of ignorance and mistakenness. Since human individuals are fallible, a government is necessary, but since government (i.e., humans acting as a group) is also fallible, it needs mechanisms to expose and correct its errors (such as elections, a free press, and separation of powers).

A successful culture that arises in the context of ecological collapse would build on this innate human capacity for self-correction. While a sense of self-respect is valuable mental state in its own right, its importance also resides in the emergent need to fend off the sense of despair and helplessness that interferes with course correction:

“Without (psychological and cultural) transformation, sensitivity (to our plight) would only increase in helpless impotence… (Awareness of our fallibility) makes us free. There remains uncertainty and the possibility of (doom), (and) no new happiness is guaranteed by the awareness of guilt and the resulting transformation of our (selves). (But it will allow us) to know about possible ruin and (yet) remain tirelessly active for all that is possible in the world.”

– Karl Jaspers

“What is true in the face of death, in extremity, turns into a dangerous temptation if fatigue, impatience, and despair drive humanity to plunge into it prematurely. Standing on the verge can only be borne by unswerving deliberation to always seize what remains possible while life endures.”

– Karl Jaspers

“It’s All About Respect”

“How do you maintain your self-respect in a historical period when humanity as a whole is losing its dignity?”

– Thomas Metzinger

The implications of the planetary crisis are not exclusively limited to a hypothetical “future”: thoughts of the future inevitably pervade our experience of the present. A collective sense of futurelessness cannot but profoundly degrade the quality of our lives right now.

Self-respect refers to an ability to remain aware of one’s choices – and the consequences of such choices. It entails assumption of responsibility in the face of important challenges and requires acknowledging that one has the potential to determine one’s own actions.

Self-respect is contrasted with attitudes and behavior that seek to evade authenticity and responsibility by hiding behind social norms, excuses, or beliefs that are not in contact with reality.

Respecting oneself requires honesty with oneself, facing one’s limits, failures, and one’s potential without self-deception.

Self-respect involves not fleeing from situations that induce a sense of collective guilt or shame. Self-respect entails confronting such situations courageously, thereby affirming one’s dignity as a human being. A self-respecting individual recognizes their freedom, assumes responsibility for whatever role they may have played in shaping their circumstances, and faces that reality without evasion and self-deception.

Certain situations – like sickness, aging, and death – impose limits upon what one can control, yet is the person’s way of responding to such situations that tends to define the quality of their lives. Climate change and biospheric destruction are similar processes that occur on a collective level: the way we collectively respond to these events will determine whether human dignity for the species at large is possible.

Sobering Up: Radical Honesty is the First Step

We must be honest. Humanity is in a planet-wide crisis… (almost everyone is) standing by, watching, and this has been the case for a long time. A problem needs to be solved that requires a somewhat more radical form of honesty…

– Thomas Metzinger

Truth . . . is a function of the preservation and extension of existence. Truth, when related to human existence, is seen as what helps us survive and thrive. It is not an abstract concept but is defined by its practical usefulness in our daily lives, ensuring that we continue to exist and grow. In this sense, truth is what supports and advances life, while falsity hinders it.

– Karl Jaspers

Any comprehensive solution to the planetary crisis demands that we think clearly and soberly about the conditions under which it might be not only unreasonable and unwise, but also ethically reprehensible, to continue to (blind ourselves to reality)…Anyone who wants to become “whole,” and thus a more upright person, must constantly grapple with this while gradually trying to resolve all conflicts between their actions and their values.

– Thomas Metzinger

While a scientific literature describes various processes that facilitate and perpetuate climate change and mass extinction, many of the most relevant psychological, social, and political mechanisms are predicated upon forms of denial, avoidance and deception.⁴

It is probably no accident that it was American president George W. Bush – whose fortune in part derived from oil ventures and who frequently alluded to his difficulties dicontinuing drinking at age 40 – who analogized his country’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuels to an “addiction”. The fact that American use of fossil fuel has only increased during the period since Bush articulated this analogy reinforces its salience. From an intrapsychic perspective, addiction’s intransigence resides in the degree to which it is linked with the formidable human capacity for self-deception. Accordingly, recovering addicts frequently refer to a resolution to live in truth – and deep personal transformation that results – as essential to their recovery. Addressing the planetary crisis will similarly require such “radical honesty”.

What is a Culture of Consciousness?

Very soon, it will no longer be possible to respect humankind’s behavior because this behavior does not change – even when human beings clearly see, at the level of their own conscious self-experience, that we have done and continue to (destroy the planet’s capacity to sustain human habitation) knowingly…We are causing an enormous amount of future suffering, and we are doing so knowingly. Very soon, therefore, it will no longer be possible to respect the behavior of large segments of humanity. We will no longer be able to take ourselves seriously, for our behavior does not change even we clearly recognize it must.

– Thomas Metzinger

The self-analysis of a people. . . and the personal self-analysis of the individual are two different things. But the first can happen only by way of the second. What individuals accomplish jointly in communication may, if true, become the spreading consciousness of many.

– Karl Jaspers

There is actually something that we can still respect in ourselves (and others). The capacity for conscious but non egoic self-knowledge is something that we can respect … even if humanity as a whole fails. It has worth, and it can valued – but first, it needs to be recognized. We have to rediscover it.

– Thomas Metzinger

There is a type of conscious experience that is antithetical to the mental states upon which planetary destruction in predicated. Such mental states have persisted for thousands of years, are quietly cultivated by very large numbers of people, and are accessible to nearly everyone. These mental states are not ideological, and hence do not conduce to blindness or divisiveness. There is now a well-respected and growing scientific literature that describes such mental states⁵. Their enduring presence – and their amenability to rigorous inter-disciplinary study and intentional implementation – point to the possibility of creating a culture that allows for the maintenance of self-respect and our capacity to “always seize what remains possible while life endures.”

The cultural innovations outlined by Metzinger (described in upcoming articles in this series) promise work that is consistent with the purposes for which the capacity for work evolved, i.e., individual and group survival. They entail “a continuous process by which ancient practical wisdom, new mind altering technologies, and all relevant scientific insights are incrementally embedded into societal practice. . . (that help) to construct a new cultural context that allows a continuous embedding on a global scale … Bewusstseinskultur (A Culture of Consciousness) refers to the proactive development of a shared sociocultural context that prioritizes the common good.”

---

Major Sources:

Metzinger, Thomas. (2023). Bewustzijnscultuur: Spiritualiteit, Intellectuele Integriteit, en de Planetaire Crisis. Translated from German to Dutch by Willem Visser. Ten Have. (Translations from Dutch contained in this article are this writer’s own.)

Metzinger, Thomas. (2024) The Elephant and the Blind. The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500 + Experiential Reports. MIT Press. See open-source material at:

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5725/The-Elephant-and-the-BlindThe-Experience-of-Pure

Other Sources:

Harari, Yuval. (2024) Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Random House.

Jaspers, Karl. The Question of German Guilt. (Originally Published in 1947 as Die Schuldfrage). Translated by EB Ashton. Fordham University Press.

Jaspers, Karl. The Philosophy of Existence. Translated by Richard Grabau.University of Pennsylvania Press. 1971.

Powers, Richard. (2021). Bewilderment. Norton & Company.

Notes:

1. https://www.ipbes.net/global-assessment. According to the Intergovernmental Science- Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the top drivers of biodiversity loss globally (as of 2019) were:

• Land-use change (e.g., deforestation, agriculture) (#1 driver)
• Direct exploitation (e.g., hunting, fishing)
• Climate change
• Pollution
• Invasive alien species

2. Ibid.

3. Approaches that employ indigenous people in efforts to stop deforestation can be
strikingly effective. See “Models that Work” on this website:

https://workosophy.org/2021/02/23/guardians-of-the-rainforest-protecting-the-planet-by-defending-work-for-the-rainforests-people/

4. Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. Tim Duggan Books

5. Metzinger, Thomas. (2024) The Elephant and the Blind. The Experience of PureConsciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500 + Experiential Reports. MIT Press.