It was still argued by some that the Super Depression of the previous decade had created the greatest part of the carbon drop observed. They were burning less because the global economy had tanked. But this would only explain the flattening, not the reduction; and besides, even with the depression, the world’s GWP, and even all the better measurements of human economic activity, showed activities worth nearly a hundred trillion US dollars a year. It was still big, but it didn’t run on carbon anymore. It was this and the drawdown efforts that explained the drop.
So this was the financial and the carbon situation, what Mary thought of as the two macro signals, the global indexes that mattered. And at the meso- and micro-levels, the good projects that were being undertaken were so numerous they couldn’t be assembled into a single list, although they tried. Regenerative ag, landscape restoration, wildlife stewardship, Mondragón-style co-ops, garden cities, universal basic income and services, job guarantees, refugee release and repatriation, climate justice and equity actions, first people support, all these tended to be regional or localized, but they were happening everywhere, and more than ever before. It was time to gather the world and let them see it.
Sick at heart, she was going to declare victory. Declare victory as if sticking a knife in the heart of her worst enemy, with a feeling not unlike posting a suicide note. And if the real truth was that in fact they had somehow lost, then she was going to try to see to it that the evil ones were winning a Pyrrhic victory. They were going to be the losers of a Pyrrhic victory; and the losing side of a Pyrrhic victory could be said to have won. They were therefore the winners of a Pyrrhic defeat. Because they were never going to give up, never never never. History was going to go like this: lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, win. And the evil ones in the world could go down under the weight of their damned Pyrrhic victory. They could go fuck themselves, murdering cowardly bastards that they were.
90
Today we’re here to discuss the question of whether technology drives history.
No.
I’m sorry, are you saying that technology doesn’t drive history, or that you don’t want to discuss it.
Both.
Well, let’s focus on the first no instead of the second, and see if we can get some clarification on just why you would say that.
It’s a ridiculous question.
And yet it has been the title of books, essays, seminars, conferences, and the like. We ourselves are poor forked radishes, to quote someone, unless we augment our poor powers with tools. We are Homo faber, man the maker, and our tools are the only thing that allow us to cope with the world. We even co-evolved with our tools; first stones were picked up and sharpened, then fires started on purpose, and these tools made us human, as it was our precursor species who invented them, and after that we evolved into ourselves, and then on from there. Clothes to keep warm. The moment we find bone needles in the archeological record, for instance, we see people moving twenty latitude lines farther north than before.
So what?
So what? Excuse me? The question is, where would we be without our tools?
We think of ways to do things. If one way doesn’t work, we find another way.
But these are the ways we’ve found!
Path of least resistance. Dealing with the laws of physics. Picking up a rock for instance. It’s just trial and error.
Well, say we call that technology then! Doesn’t it follow that technology has been the driving force in history?
We are the driving force in history. We make do, and on it goes.
All right then. Enough of philosophy, I’m afraid I’m getting confused.
Yes.
Let’s move on to some specific examples. Have you heard of those drones developed to shoot mangrove seeds into the mud flats, thus seeding hundreds of thousands of new trees in terrain difficult of human access?
Very nice, but that same drone could shoot a dart through your head as you walk out your door. So it illustrates my point, if you care to think about it. Our tools are expressions of our intentions, so what we want to do is the key driver.
I’ll save that for our next foray into philosophy, which we will certainly schedule soon. Meanwhile, what do you think of these new bioengineered amoebae that are now grown in vats to form our fuel, while also drawing carbon out of the atmosphere? Kind of a next-stage ethanol?
Useful.
And other amoebae grown in vats can be dried to make a very tasty flour, thus eliminating the need for lots of ag land while feeding us all.
Also useful.
What about this blockchain technology, identifying where all money is and where it’s been on its way there?
Good idea. Money only works when you trust it. Tracking it might help with that. Get all that right and you might find money itself becoming irrelevant and going away.
Very good! And what about all the other recent transformations in that area that we’ve been seeing, the carbon coin, the guaranteed jobs, and so on? What you might call the social engineering, or the systems architecture?
These are the areas that matter! Our systems are what drive history, not our tools.
But aren’t our systems just software, so to speak? And software is a technology. Without the software, the hardware is just lumps of stuff.
My point exactly. By that line of reasoning, you end up saying design is technology, law is technology, language is technology— even thinking is technology! At which point, QED— you’ve proved technology drives history, by defining everything we do as a technology.
But maybe it is! Maybe we need to remember that, and think about what technologies we want to develop and put to use.
Indeed.
So, but back to all the new innovations in our social systems we’ve been seeing recently. It really does seem like an unusual time. You were saying you think these changes are good things?
Yes. Strike while the iron is hot. Put the crisis to use. Change as much as you can as fast as you can.
Really?
Why not?
Won’t so many changes at once lead to chaos?
It was chaos before. This is coping with chaos.
It’s a bit of a case of inventing the parachute as you fall, isn’t it?
Beats landing without one.
But will we have time?
Best work fast.
There are some who think we’ve already run out of time, that the hard landing is upon us now, which is what we’re seeing in current events. Have you heard that the warming of the oceans means that the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in fish and thus available for human consumption may drop by as much as sixty percent? And that these fatty acids are crucial to signal transduction in the brain, so it’s possible that our collective intelligence is now rapidly dropping because of an ocean-warming-caused diminishment in brain power?
That would explain a lot.
91
Zurich’s Kongresshall had been built for meetings like this one, big as could be. And right down on the lakefront. Every day of this big conference, there would be speakers and display booths celebrating the emergent accomplishments. It was going to be hard to fit them all in, in fact there would have to be some compression, by nation or project type, to get a proper overview of the effort. Looking at the lists of people who were coming, Mary could begin to believe that they were actually gaining some traction, making some progress.
Then it was time to visit Frank.
He was there in his little apartment. He told her that the doctors had determined that he had a brain tumor, and had just recently identified it as a glioblastoma.
“That sounds bad,” Mary said.
“Yes,” he said. His mouth tightened. “I’m done for.”
“But they must have treatments?”
“Average survival time from diagnosis is eighteen months. But mine is already pretty big.”
“Why did it take so long to affect you?”
“It’s not hitting anything too cr
ucial yet.”
She stared at him. He met her gaze unflinchingly. Finally it was she who shook her head and looked away, as she sat down at his side. He was on his apartment’s little couch, looking slumped in an odd manner. She reached across the coffee table and put her hand on his knee. It was like the first moment they had met, when he had grabbed her arm and scared her, terrified her. Turnabout fair play.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s shitty luck. You— you’ve had some really bad luck.”
“Yes.”
“Do they know why it happens?”
“Not really. Genetic maybe. They don’t really know. Maybe it’s too many bad thoughts. That’s what I think.”
“That’s another bad thought.”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
“I guess not. What will you do?”
“I’ll take the treatments for as long as they tell me they’re helping. Why not? Something might work.”
She was encouraged to hear him say this. That must have showed, because he shook his head very slightly, as if to warn her to give up any hopes.
“Tell me about how your plans for this conference are coming,” he said.
And so she did.
After a while she could see he was tired. “I’ll come back later,” she said.
He shook his head.
“I will,” she insisted.
Actually that turned out to be hard to do. Not that she couldn’t clear the time, because she could. And the safe house she was still living in was relatively nearby. Everywhere in Zurich was pretty close to everywhere else, really; it was a compact city. Although if you had to stay off the trams and streets, moving around in cars with tinted windows, it got harder.
But it wasn’t the logistics. It was knowing what she would see when she got there. Frank May had never been an unguarded person, not since she had known him, anyway. The blaze in his eye, the set of his jaw, he had been easy to read, ever since that first night, when violent emotions had torn across his face like electric storms. Now he was closed. He had checked out. He was waiting for his time to come. And that was hard to watch. It was how she would be if she were in his situation, she guessed, but still. She kept finding reasons not to go.
But also she felt a duty to go. So eventually she would realize it had been ten days, two weeks, and she would send a message.
Can I drop by?
Sure.
She would be let in by his housemates, polite but distant people, and go in to see him. He looked bloated and unwell. He would look up at her, as if to say, See? Here I am, still fucked.
She told him about what was happening, talking away nervously to keep the silence at bay. Things were happening, as always. The big conference was looking good, coming soon. The Mondragón cooperative system was spreading through Europe, and it was reaching out to make connections elsewhere. Spain itself was slowest on the uptake, because in Madrid they didn’t like the Basques having that much influence. But elsewhere it was catching fire, it was the latest thing, the obvious thing. Turned out each European nation had a tradition of working communally around their old commons, which had lasted until suppressed by Napoleon or other powers, but still there, if only as an idea, now put back in play.
“Good,” Frank said.
Also, Mary went on a little nervously, the upcoming COP was going to propose a detailed refugee plan that used some of the principles of the Nansen passports of the 1920s. Some kind of global citizenship, given to all as a human right. Agreement had been signalled by all Paris signatory nations, which meant all the nations on Earth, to grant legal status to this global citizenship, and share the burden equally, with the historical disparities in carbon burn factored into the current assessments of the financial and human burden going forward. Some kind of climate justice, climate equity; a coming to terms at last with the imperial colonial period and its widespread exploitation and damage, never yet compensated, and still being lived by the refugees themselves.
“Good,” Frank said.
Mary regarded him. “You don’t seem very opinionated today.”
He almost smiled. “No.” He thought it over. “I’ve been losing my opinions,” he concluded. “They seem to be going away.”
“Ah.” She didn’t know what to say to that.
“It’s interesting to see what goes first,” he remarked, still looking inward. “I’m presuming it moves from less important to more.”
“Seems likely.”
Mary didn’t know what to say, how to respond. She felt foolish and helpless. She wanted to stick with him, no matter where his line of thought took him; but it was hard to know how to do that when moments like this one came. Ask questions? Speculate? Sit there silently, uncomfortably?
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Sick,” he said. “Weak. Fucked up.”
“You still sound like yourself though?”
“Yes. As far as I can tell.” He shook his head. “I can’t remember what I felt like before. I’m betting I wouldn’t score very high on any tests right now.” He thought it over. “I don’t know. I can still think. But I can’t think why I should.”
Mary shied away from understanding that, or tried to. But she couldn’t; it was too obvious. A black weight in her stomach began to pull her down. She stifled a sigh, she wanted to get out of there. It was depressing.
But of course it was. She hadn’t come there to get cheered up, but to do some cheering up. The difficulty of that was a given. That was why she avoided coming. But since she had come, it was a duty. But what could be said?
Nothing really. And he didn’t really look like he expected any answer from her, or any encouraging words of any kind. He looked calm; desolate; a little sleepy. If she stayed quiet for a while, it looked like he would drop off. After which she could slip away.
He stirred. “Hey,” he said, “I wanted to introduce you to someone who lives here. Let me see if he’s in.” He tapped at his phone, put it to his ear.
“Hey Art, can you drop by my room for a second? I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine. Okay good. Thanks.”
He put his phone down. “This guy is hardly ever here, but he’s one of the original co-op members, and they let him keep his room. I just met him a while ago, and I like him. He flies an airship all over the world, following wildlife corridors and wilderness areas, basically looking for animals. He takes people along with him.”
“What, like nature tours?”
“I think that’s right, but there are only a few passengers. They do some citizen science and the like. And he gives what he charges the passengers to the World Wildlife Fund and other groups like that.”
Mary tried to sound impressed.
A quiet tap came at Frank’s door. “Come in!”
The door opened and a slight man entered, nodded at them shyly. Balding, beaky nose, blinking pale blue eyes, looking back and forth between Frank and Mary, attending to them with a diffident gaze.
Frank said, “Art, this is my friend Mary Murphy, she runs the UN’s Ministry for the Future here in the city. Mary, Art here is the owner and pilot of The Clipper of the Clouds, a blimp— or is it a dirigible?”
“A dirigible,” Art said with a little smile, “but you can call it a blimp if you want. Many people do. Actually airship seems to be becoming the usual term, to avoid that confusion.”
“And you take people up to see wild animals.”
“I do.”
“Mary and I went up to the Alps a while ago and saw a little herd of chamois, and some marmots.”
“Very nice,” Art said. “That must have been lovely.”
“It was,” Mary said, trying to join in.
Art attended to her. “Do you go up to the Alps often?”
“Not really,” she said. Not in ways I like, she didn’t say. “I’d like to go more.” As long as it isn’t to hide from assassins, she didn’t say.
This man seemed to be hearing her unspoken sentences, perhaps, or notici
ng the spaces they left in the air. He cocked his head to the side, then exchanged a few more pleasantries with Frank, and pulled up Frank’s schedule for helpers that week, so he could add his name. Then he nodded to Mary and slipped out the door.
Frank and Mary sat there in silence.
“I like him,” Frank said. “He’s a good guy. He’s been helping me, and when he’s here he’s always pitching in around the place.”
“He seemed shy,” Mary said.
“Yes, I think he is.”
More silence.
Mary said, “Look, I have to go too. I’ll drop by again. Next time I’ll remember to bring you one of those orange slices dipped in chocolate.”
“Ah good.”
92
Word got around one morning that we were to be released. Did you hear? someone said, bursting into the dorm. They’re letting us go!
The Ministry for the Future Page 45