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I wrote this piece in response to the mass shooting in… (it doesn’t matter at this point, pick whichever shooting is in the news right now, I’m sure there are plenty to choose from).

Introduction:

         I think a question that people should ask themselves more often about the issues and conflicts of the present and their importance is: How will people in the far future view our actions or inactions? I was thinking about this question when it comes to the mass shootings and completely overlooked gun violence in America. When people in the future look back on America’s culture of guns in the early 21st century and our refusal to do anything about gun violence, how will they judge us? And if that judgment is harsh, do we deserve it? My answer is yes, we do deserve to be judged harshly by the future, and I’ll quickly try to explain why I think so. 

Part 1:

If you ask me, America’s attitude toward gun violence has evolved to the point where “ordinary” shootings are completely ignored and mass shootings are basically ignored. When we see news of the 4 thousandth mass shooting this year, we all say, “oh isn’t that sad,” and then we move on. Part of that is just the sheer quantity of shootings, their frequency has an exhausting and benumbing effect on all of us. But I think this numbness has let a dangerous attitude settle into all of our heads; we think that this is normal and that there is nothing that can be done. This is a question I asked in my book, and I will repeat it here. What would it take to shake Americans out of our apathetic stupor when it comes to gun violence? How many people need to die in a mass shooting for us to finally say enough is enough? How horrific does the frequency of violence need to become before we finally demand that sensible gun legislation be passed? When are we finally going to dispense with the national myths that we are still some frontier settlers that need a gun above the mantelpiece to guard ourselves and our loved ones? Every time there is another unnecessary and horrific mass shooting, I think to myself; “Okay this has to be the tipping point, something is finally going to change.” And I’ve been disappointed again and again by the constant cycle of people saying that something needs to change and then it doesn’t and then we rinse and repeat for the next shooting. 

When people in the future look at gun violence in America, especially the relatively unique phenomenon of mass shooters, I think they will have two big questions for us. 1. The solution to rampant gun violence is obvious, so why didn’t we implement it a long time ago? And 2. As a long-term solution, why didn’t America do anything to fix the broken society that churned out mass shooters with the reliability and efficiency of a factory assembly line? I will address question 1 in Part 2 of this post, so confusingly I am going to start with question 2.

I want to emphasize a point I made a moment ago that the phenomenon of mass shooters isn’t unheard of in the rest of the world, but it is far rarer. And certainly, part of the problem with mass shootings in the US is the copycat effect. So why isn’t the US more committed to adjusting our society that will help alleviate the conditions that lead to this mass violence in the first place? I think a short answer to that question is crass but accurate, and it can apply to many societies in the past and present: it’s easier to maintain the status quo, however horrific it may be, than to change it. Just imagine all the issues the US would need to solve in order to become a more just and equitable society. Entrenched and systemic poverty and racism, corruption, healthcare reform, mental illness, and a million other factors that all swirl together into a soup of discontentment. Not to mention that throughout human history there are always people actively and consciously working against progress, making meaningful change all the more of a Herculean labor. So, from that perspective it might make a perverse kind of sense as to why so many are so willing to accept gun violence as an unavoidable fact of life, rather than an issue that can be addressed. I’m not saying that I agree with this brand of despondent acceptance. But it does take a significant effort to overcome that despondency, and that effort has to come from individual conviction.

Part 2:

But these big systemic and societal issues take a lot of time and arguing over what the problem is, how to solve that problem, and how to implement that solution. All of that is a necessary process of living in a free society. However, the short-term solution to reducing the death toll from gun violence is patently obvious. Less guns. That’s it. So why hasn’t the US figured that one out? Are Americans stupid? Well, they are, but less guns is an idea that can’t be missed even by the most dull witted. So, what’s happening, why has the problem of gun violence been increasing, and why have we been regressing when it comes to gun safety (and we are currently regressing in a lot of other areas as well)?

Well remember how I said a second ago that there are always people working against progress? Anyone who makes money off of maintaining the status quo is going to fight like a cornered animal to make sure that their cash cow isn’t taken from them. But I think there is more to it than that. I think there is a flaw in people’s thinking on a societal level that creates a mental trap for people.

Something I read in a book described what I mean in a profound and succinct way, and ever since I read this book, I have remembered this concept and applied it many places. The book is called “When the War Was Over,” by Elizabeth Becker about the Cambodian genocide, the events leading up to it like the Japanese occupation of French Indochina (of which Cambodia was a part), the genocide itself, and the Vietnamese invasion which eventually put a stop to the Khmer Rouge regime. At one point Becker describing the Khmer Rouge used the phrase “that they were reaching the end of their logic.” A truly profound observation made in a few words. 

Just in case it isn’t clear what “reach the end of their logic,” means I’ll try and explain it quickly. As I understand it, this phrase describes when a group, individual, or whole society acts under certain false assumptions, and the longer they refuse to question or alter their assumptions, the more and more that those false assumptions lead them into making insane decisions. “Reaching the end of their logic” means that there is no one around to ask if there should be a course correction, or that there are people who can see that a course correction is necessary, but for whatever reason their advice goes unheeded.

I think the United States is in the latter of those two categories. We are reaching the end of our logic when it comes to sensible gun safety measures. But people have been literally begging for decades for course correction and they have been ignored every time. And as gun violence and mass shootings become worse our “solutions” are becoming increasingly insane. Look at what’s been happening in US schools in the past decade. Instead of doing the sensible thing and curtailing access to deadly weapons, we instead are expecting students and school employees to adopt a siege mentality when they walk into a school. More armed security, active shooter drills, proposals to arm teachers, development of things like bullet resistant backpacks or panic shields to deploy in classrooms. After the school shooting in Nashville (at the time of this writing there has only been one school shooting in Nashville that I’m aware of), you had Fox “News” pundits saying that the problem with schools is that they have too many doors. Just think about that for one goddamn second readers. How is it that we have reached the point where doors are the problem? And let’s not forget why public buildings have multiple exits labeled with signs in the first place, it’s in case of fires. If there is only one way in and out of a building, and there is a fire, a huge number of people will either be killed by the fire or be trampled in the stampede to get out. This still happens all the time in countries with no building safety regulations, or where those regulations are ignored.

  So, what’s next? Are we going to brick up every door and window and turn every school into a prison that no one can escape from in the event of an emergency? How far are we going to go before we finally reach the end of our logic and circle back to the obvious answer of “less guns?”

Conclusion:

       Some might be wondering why I titled this piece “A letter to Future Historians…” The reason is that historians try as hard as they can to remove their own cultural biases that they have when they view the past. As much as they can they try to jettison their own assumptions and try to understand the culture and assumptions of the time period they were writing about. They often caution their readers or students with statements like: “I know it seems strange what people did in the past. But you have to internalize the fact they were born and raised in a different society, with different values and judgements.” Basically, it means: “You had to be there to get it.”

         So, when people look back on the cultural history of America in the early 21^st century they might be completely baffled as to how we could let the problem of gun violence go on for so long and not only did we not do anything to stop it, at pretty much every point we made the problem worse. At this point a historian might step in and say: “You can’t judge these people too harshly; you don’t understand the context and mindset of the people living in that time period.”

         Well, to any future historian reading this, I am an American living in the early 21^st century, and I don’t understand our mindset. We do deserve to be judged harshly. Our behavior is inexcusable, both from our leadership and the general public. We should have solved this problem decades ago. We should have been able to prevent thousands of needless deaths.

         And to make a broader point, I think if you look carefully at any historical issue or time period you can find reasonable pulling their hair out in frustration trying to warn everyone what’s going wrong and how to fix it. Most of the time the advice of these people is completely ignored. So, I wonder if we shouldn’t be more critical of people in the past who failed to listen to reason. 

         To the people of the future, when you look at America’s response to gun violence I say, don’t hold back.

P.S. I really hope that one week after I write this it looks silly because some sweeping gun safety reform swept through Congress and changed the culture of guns in the U.S. forever. But I’ve been disappointed so many times now that I wouldn’t bet on it. In fact I’d bet on the opposite like conservatives passing some insane legislation like “Guns for babies” or “One police armored car for every school.” 

            Anyone who has read my book or previous blog posts have probably figured out that I’m interested in domestic and international politics, both current and past. For this piece, I wanted to discuss strategic dependency. What I mean by strategic dependency is that when a country or countries’ societies are dependent on a certain resource to function. This resource can be anything and it has changed for different places at different times. It could be tin and copper ore used to make bronze in the Bronze Age, or it could be the crude oil and natural gas that the world economy is still addicted to currently in the 21^st century. I wanted to discuss this topic in two parts 1. How strategic dependency constrains what politicians can and cannot do and 2. How it affects their rhetoric. As with a lot of the topics I discuss, both of these parts blur together in the real world but for the sake of clarity I’m splitting them apart.

Part 1:

            What inspired me to write about this topic was a fascinating discussion on the podcast The Rest is History. The hosts of the podcast were doing a series on FIFA’s world cup, and they arrived at the topic of the host nation of the 2022 games, Qatar. For years before the 2022 World Cup journalists and news publications had been publishing story after story telling the world about the horrible conditions that migrant workers were experiencing as they built the infrastructure for the games. Many of them had their passports stolen as they lived in appalling and unsanitary housing, and reportedly thousands died in atrociously unsafe working conditions. It was essentially modern chattel slavery with people being treated as disposable tools. So why don’t we hear about the United States or Western European governments demanding investigations or sanctions against Qatar for their barbaric practices? Luckily for Qatari government, they sit atop some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world. The demand for the resources that Qatar controls is constant, and governments who depend on Southeast Asian energy imports cannot afford to antagonize the people who provide their lifeblood. It would be as if energy dependent nations were a patient getting a constant blood transfusion from a volunteer, the patient cannot risk upsetting the volunteer and risk them cutting them off. The need for essential resources has always controlled the strategic calculus of states for all of human history. It’s almost ironic in a way, people in positions of political power often see themselves as masters of the world, and in many ways they are. But at the same time, they are also caged by the unchanging dynamics of politics and strategic dependency.

            Just a quick note, why didn’t we see more ordinary people demanding that their governments act against Qatar, or at the very least condemn the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar? I think the ancient Roman poet Juvenal said it best when he coined the phrase “bread and circuses.” For most people, as long as they get their appetite for spectacle satiated, they don’t much care who suffered to create that spectacle. Or to quote another intellectual powerhouse, the TV show SpongeBob SquarePants, “No one cares about the fate of labor so long as they get their instant gratification.”  

Part 2:

When one sovereign power is forced to import a strategically important resource from another sovereign power, the dependent power has to tread very carefully in order to keep their access. This includes political rhetoric; politicians cannot risk upsetting those that they depend on. But rhetoric can also be a tool that politicians wield in order to help them gain access to resources they need. Let’s see how both of these cases might play out in a short hypothetical.

 Imagine that the United States turns its glutenous eyes towards a relatively small but oil rich nation. The US wants access to this oil, but the local strongman who rules the country is a staunch nationalist who plays the great powers off of one another in order to stay independent. Using outright force would be too much of a provocation to be feasible. But there is an alternative. While the CIA finds people within the country with frustrated ambitions who would be amicable to a US alliance, politicians within the United States begin to denounce the dictator to all the world’s media outlets, and to the American public. These politicians earnestly and convincingly condemn the dictator’s extrajudicial executions, restriction of the press and other civil rights, and other aspects of the repressive police state. When the CIA funnels money into the right hands to help foment a revolution to overthrow the dictator, US politicians cheer on the revolution as a triumph for democracy and human rights. The clique that is swept into power also offers very generous terms to the US for their oil resources.

There is some initial optimism that the new regime will be more democratic and less authoritarian than the previous one. But those hopes are soon dashed. The new ruling elite didn’t have a principled objection to dictatorial power, they just wanted to be the ones wielding that power. So how does the United States respond to this new anti-democratic regime? Nothing. In fact, they do less than nothing. US politicians didn’t have a principled objection to dictatorship abroad either, their concern was getting someone friendly to US interests in power. Now the rhetoric of US politicians shifts from calling the oil rich country a repressive police state to a bringer of stability in a chaotic region.

Hopefully this quick scenario demonstrates how political rhetoric can be a tool to either gain or keep access to strategically important resources. The particulars of who, what, and when in this game have changed countless times over millennia. But the dynamics of the game have remained basically unchanged.

Conclusion:

            From a moral perspective this geopolitical game of always fighting for a steady supply of important resources is pretty revolting. This is a game where compassion and basic humanity almost always loses to the grim “necessities” of politics. At this level of national and international politics people’s lives are treated like a currency to be bought or traded if the value of what’s being traded is deemed worth it. I wanted to make that clear before I offer the slightest caveat in the next paragraph.

            This is something I discussed in my book, and I first heard the concept in an episode of the Hardcore History podcast about the first World War; that is the concept of leaders often being forced into a sort of prisoner’s dilemma when it comes to resources (another way in which politicians’ actions can be limited as I alluded to in Part 1). A world leader might make the case for their conduct as follows: “I didn’t like what we had to do to get our hands on those resources. But if we didn’t secure them our rivals would have, and that would have made us weaker while they became stronger.” The idea behind this statement is that potentially conscientious or principled leaders are forced into acting ruthlessly because they have to ensure that their state remains strong. They might not like the rules, but everyone is forced to play by them.

            I’m not sure I buy that argument, at least entirely. But I do think it helps explain why this process of resource dependency looks achingly similar no matter what time period you choose to look at in history. And it looks like this process will continue long into the future. What resource and where it can be found might change. But how the game is played to hold those resources will not change.

P.S. If you got the reference that I made with the title of this piece then I salute your knowledge of WWI history.

Quick Note: I finished writing this piece just before the massive derailment and subsequent chemical spill that happened in East Palestine, Ohio in early February 2023. Workers in the industry had been warning for decades that something like this was bound to happen as companies prioritized profits over safety for the environment and their workers. While it’s no consolation for any of us, in my small part I want to join the chorus of “I told you so.” It will be interesting to see if anyone reading this in the far future, or even the recent future, will remember what happened at East Palestine, or if it will be forgotten as just another small town destroyed by greed and shortsightedness.

                At the end of 2022 several unions of railway workers in the United States threatened to strike as a way to improve their working conditions, especially more paid sick days. Eventually after some tense negotiations a “compromise” was reached that all but quashed most of the union’s most important demands. While these negotiations were ongoing there was a lot of discussion both among news outlets and in the general public about the potential strikes. Mostly these discussions revolved around whether or not these unions were right in threatening to strike at all. Should these unions and the workers they represented have risked large-scale slow-downs or shutdowns of our nation’s railways as we were approaching the holidays?

                Many people in this discussion opined that it was selfish for these railway workers to potentially strike as the nation was still reeling from the pandemic, inflation, and a possible recession. What right did these workers have to disrupt a vital transportation artery?

                I disagree with this line of thinking, and it’s why I decided to talk about it in this post. Why do I disagree? Let me change the question I asked at the end of the last paragraph into a statement that I think reflects the subtext of the question. Instead of “What right do these workers have..”  I think what people are really saying is “I don’t care what those people’s working conditions are like, I’d prefer they do their jobs without complaint, so it won’t affect me negatively.” In my opinion, the attitude that animated people opposed to a potential strike was one of, “I’m not willing to make sacrifices or be inconvenienced so that others can try and better their lot in life.”

                Why do I think this? Mostly because I’m utterly pessimistic, and I think people can often be myopically selfish in their worldview. I know life is difficult for everyone, and we all have our own lives and worries that necessarily occupy our time. But I think this myopic selfishness goes beyond the mere fact that people are busy and caught up in their own lives. An easy example of this is the wealth inequality that has existed in practically every settled society for all of human history. Imagine some of the world’s wealthiest people today. They do not have nearly as many of the same struggles or worries that the vast dregs of us do. Yet do you see them committing their lives to charity and good deeds to help those less fortunate than themselves? And no, I do not consider the ultra-wealthy donating a pittance of their total fortunes to be charitable, mostly I suspect they do that so they can get a tax write off. There’s a school of thought in philosophy that posits that an action cannot be considered moral if there is an ulterior motive for that action. According to this school of thought, a wealthy person donating to charity to pay less taxes is not moral. The point of this digression is, even when people are not burdened with the daily struggles of life, how many of them think of someone other than themselves?

                To return to the topic of the recent strikes, a lot of Americans were unwilling to support the potential strikes because it would hurt them in some way financially. And there is no doubt that is true, at least in the short term. But where I think many Americans, and people in general, go awry is that they only think in the short term, without considering any long-term benefits or consequences. Sure, a strike in some key industry would hurt the economy in the short term. But wouldn’t people who are happier, better compensated, and more fulfilled in their occupations be a good thing for the global economy? Wouldn’t we live in a better society if we were all willing to sacrifice a little to improve the lives of others? Couldn’t we raise everyone’s conditions if we were willing to be a little selfless? Wouldn’t the rising tide raise all boats?

                If we adhere to the logic that no one is allowed to strike or protest for better conditions if it hurts us or the economy in some way, then no one is allowed to strike ever. If we want to live in a society that values people over profits, then we need to be willing to support people when they speak out about ill treatment. Someone might retort that we should only support protests or strikes for better conditions as long as they are reasonable and not selfish or outlandish. While in theory I would agree with that, I think that logic can be taken too far. After all, it isn’t selfish to demand to be treated fairly and with dignity. The values I thought we had as Americans is that we all have a finite amount of time on Earth, and that if we sacrifice some of that time at work, we should be fairly compensated and treated with respect. Those are the values that Americans should remember when they see people demanding respect and appreciation for their work. And they should also consider that if we refuse to help one another raise our standards of living, we might all be inadvertently helping keep one another down.

What We Owe the Future is a fantastic introduction into the philosophical concept of longtermism, the idea that we should invest more time and energy into the long-term future of humanity, and what we can do to ensure that the future is as positive as we can make it.

The issues facing the future are legion, some listed in the book include disasters such as new global pandemics or nuclear war, climate change (duh), or the most disconcerting concept in the book for me, authoritarians using carefully engineered artificial intelligence to cement their form of government and their values in perpetuity. Longtermism asserts that we all have the moral duty to try and predict the existential issues facing the future (as difficult as that may be) and to either mitigate these existential issues or give the future the tools to deal with them.

I absolutely loved What We Owe the Future. It manages both to explain some very complex concepts while at the same time being not only readable but engaging. Once I started reading this book, I didn’t want to put it down. Just as importantly I think MacAskill strikes a careful balance between optimism and pessimism towards the future. Often times discussions of humanity’s long-term future devolve into two camps either “All is folly” or “Everything will be splendid, and we have literally nothing to worry about,” (If I’m being honest, I gravitate more towards the former). I believe both attitudes are dangerous for different reasons. Pessimism can quickly turn to apathy, with a pessimist asking themselves why they should bother to help make the future better if everything is pointless anyway. Optimism on the other hand could engender complacency, an optimist could think to themselves “I don’t have to do anything because everything will work itself out in the long run.”

                The longtermist philosophy reminds me of the name of a political organization in France in the 1820s, it was called “Help Yourself, and Heaven will Help You Club.” I think that in a nutshell is what longtermism is about, if you want the future to be better, then you need to work to make is so.

                What We Owe the Future also reminds us how much our actions will impact the long-term future. People fail to grasp just how much events in the present will send aftershocks long into the future. And I’m not just talking about carbon dioxide emissions lingering in the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years. We are living in the present moment neck deep in the consequences of decisions made by people in the past. The book The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, & Politics had a great quote from a Guatemalan author that captures this idea in a cynical (but I think accurate) way, “The future is the past’s garbage.” If we follow the advice of What We Owe the Future, then we should work to make sure that the future isn’t garbage.

If You’re Interested in the book here are some links for it:

Home

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/59802037-what-we-owe-the-futurehttps://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-we-owe-the-future-william-macaskill/1140658116

Part 1:

            In one of the essays for my book, “Price of History,” I asked the question: What does it take for a society to change? How difficult is it to get an entire society to change their behavior, especially when those behaviors are deeply embedded into cultural norms and expectations?

            I have been thinking about these questions when it comes to America and the worsening climate crisis. Obviously, the United States is not the only contributor to the climate crisis, and the changing climate poses an existential threat to all of humanity. With that being said, however, I do believe that the US faces a unique challenge when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint. America has a culture built around conspicuous consumption, excess, and wastefulness. The stereotypical dream that the average person or family should live in a large house in the suburbs with 2 or 3 four-thousand-pound cars sitting in the driveway and spend their weekends constantly shopping for new things has been an image that has shaped the hopes, aspirations, and behavior of Americans for decades. But how sustainable is this dream? Can this level of consumption continue to be justified, even in the face of worsening climate change? How difficult is it for America to change our entire culture of wastefulness? In my opinion, there are 3 major obstacles to meaningful change. The first is what I call “the inertia of tradition,” the second is infrastructure, and the third is vested interest. I will explain all of these in a nutshell below.

Part 2:

            What do I mean by the phrase “inertia of tradition?” Basically, when a culture develops certain patterns of behavior, there is always conservative resistance to changing those patterns of behavior. There are many people who take solace and comfort in tradition. They think that if they stubbornly maintain tradition that they can bring some semblance of order to the random chaos of life. It’s a false hope, but it’s a hope that is desirable enough to many people that change will have to overcome the inertia of tradition.

            The second major obstacle I mentioned is an extension of the inertia of tradition, and that’s infrastructure. A perfect example of this challenge in America is exemplified by cars and car culture. I was listening to an interview on the Tides of History podcast with Professor Shane Miller, and he explained the problem in a fantastic way. Professor Miller studies pre-history and he used the example of a pre-historic culture that specialized in a certain crop as their main food source. When a culture focuses so much on one crop, they can become very good at growing it. But what happens if there is a drought, or an insect or fungal plague destroys the harvest? Now this cultural specialization and dependency is a liability rather than an asset. Cars are similar in the United States. Look at how much our lives revolve around cars. Our cities are massive and spread far apart to accommodate all the space needed for the roads and the parking needed to accommodate everyone having a car. Public transportation is virtually non-existent in many parts of the country, and car ownership is often a requirement for anyone wanting to hold down a job. When so much of our infrastructure and society is built around and for one thing, it puts blinders on us. We can’t even imagine an America in which cars do not dominate our lives and our landscape.

The third major obstacle I see to the US changing its casual wastefulness is anyone with a vested interest in the current status quo. This isn’t unique to climate change or to the United States, this behavior is as old as humanity. Anyone whose fortune, influence, or power are tied to the way things are will always be the most resistant to change. The best example of this right now is fossil fuel companies. When your entire business model is built around extracting and refining fossil fuels, how likely are you to embrace a zero-emission future? But how can you swim against the tide of necessity? Well, you could work to undermine people’s conviction that change is actually necessary. Or you could engineer a propaganda campaign telling ordinary people that it’s their responsibility to fix climate change and move the conversation away from the parochial and greedy practices of fossil fuel companies.

Part 3:

I want to address this issue of culpability and responsibility. It’s pretty clear that fossil fuel corporations have known about the effects of climate change for at least half a century, and their industry’s massive contribution to it. It’s also clear that fossil fuel corporations tried to shift the responsibility to ordinary people and campaigned hard for practices such as individual recycling, so that they could continue to pollute the planet. This is obviously incredibly short-sighted and greedy, but I also want to caution people against using this as an excuse. Yes, fossil fuel companies need to be held accountable for the damage they have done to the planet. But this does not absolve the rest of us of our responsibility to the environment. If the discussion of what should be done to avert climate disaster devolves to solely blaming fossil fuel companies, that could engender a dangerous apathy among people. People might start to think that there is nothing that they can do, or maybe even more dangerously, that there is nothing that they should be expected to do to change our culture of wastefulness.

This idea reminds me of a concept in moral philosophy put forward by Immanuel Kant called the Categorical Imperative. To make a very complex idea very simple, the Categorical Imperative says that if society would fall apart if everyone engaged in a behavior, that means that you shouldn’t engage in that behavior. To give an example, imagine you are in a small family-owned shop. There are several things that you want to buy, but you don’t have the money to afford them all. You decide to steal a few of the items that you want, and you justify the theft by saying to yourself, “What’s the big deal its just a few things, they can afford that.” But what if everyone who went to that store did the exact same thing? If everyone was stealing a few items at a time, then there is no way that shop could stay in business. The Categorical Imperative is a way for people to assess and then improve their behavior.

There are so many ways in which the Categorical Imperative could help Americans reshape our attitudes about the environment and our casual wastefulness. How many millions of people litter every day and justify it by saying that just one person littering isn’t a big deal. How many Americans buy yet another massive and wasteful car and say that it’s someone else’s responsibility to change. How much microplastic poisoning in all of our bloodstreams is finally enough for us to realize that we need to change our culture?

Some might think that the Categorical Imperative is not applicable to climate change, that it should only apply to moral issues. But I disagree, because I think our worsening climate and our contribution to it is a moral issue. Are we really so selfish and short-sighted that we would doom our descendants to a ruined planet? Don’t we have a moral duty to leave the planet not only habitable, but beautiful for the future?

Something I read recently in Duke University Press’ book Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, & Politics really resonated with me as I was planning out this blog post. The passage below was from an interview with Yolanda Colom, who fought as a revolutionary during the Guatemalan Civil War and post war became a groundskeeper at a school. In this passage she is answering a question about her first impressions of the school. Now obviously she is speaking about Guatemala, but as you will see I think the quote could apply just as well, maybe even better to the United States.

“Well, like any other, this educational institution does not escape the more general social situation. The school has been a microcosm of a system of thinking and of organization with roots in the history of our country, in a ton of factors. Like all others, this institution has personified consumerism, the production of waste, the tendency to never recycle, or repair or search for creative means of giving more life-or many lives-to material resources…It’s classic Western Civilization and Capitalist Production. [emphasis added]”