There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. G.K. Chesterton
It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast. Madeleine L’Engle
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Kurt Vonnegut
Children see magic because they look for it. Christopher Moore
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. William Blake
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains; Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend; More than cool reason ever comprehends. William Shakespeare
We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. Lynda Barry
It’s been a quiet few weeks from a writing standpoint, though a busy one in terms of fathoming what the next phase of our service is to be, service to causes larger than ourselves, service to those seeking more kind, inspirational and imaginative responses to our bevy of global threats than folks in my generation are currently able to generate.
I am also reminded on this International Day of Older Persons that I am one of those, and that the task for us generically (If not gerontologically) is to share rather than control, to coach rather than compete, and to remind younger folks that –wrinkles and brain fog notwithstanding – longer years do not have to mean shrinking options. Indeed, this has so far been a more productive and satisfying period of life than I had imagined it would be, than was the case for me in previous times, a season to invest in multiple issues and multiple actors at this moment of excess conspiracies and wanton policy foolishness.
We have continued to engage UN spaces during its High-Level segment, despite the fact that, for us at least, the UN is in danger of becoming, as metaphor, smaller-sized bait on an increasingly exposed hook. Despite all the pomp and circumstance, interventions by officials have largely lacked imagination, have largely deflected attention from the responsibility which in a state-driven system becoming more so, not less, is clearly theirs to assume. Despite some valuable events on capital punishment (we will contribute to an event organized for mid-October on this very topic by our longtime colleagues at FIACAT), on nuclear disarmament in the midst of fresh threats of use by Russia, and on “transforming education” which was an important discussion if too schools-focused for our taste, the High-Level segment largely tread familiar ground. It was left to officials such as Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados and the new President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, to remind the global community of our receding sustainable development promises and counter-productive policies such as those which seek to expand the “war on drugs” while neglecting the “first-world” loneliness, isolation and other mental health problems which generate the relentless demand for the narcotics which our “war” has utterly failed to extinguish.
We also did our own small event during the High-Level segment, a roundtable with Soka Gakkai International and the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy to launch the latest report by the Digital Economist, “Meeting the Climate Challenge” (https://docsend.com/view/d2d8aptxejxdiedy). The somewhat overused title did not obscure some important insights including what Senior Fellow Satya Das referred to as our “Duty of Care.” For us, this was a reassuring insight – that despite all of the attention on major international events which make more carbon than change, despite the “bait” of getting to hang out at Davos or UN “COP” events and discuss ideas (such as the DEs “global carbon levy”) with people who have the resources and access to implement them if not nearly sufficient will to do so, the planet is unlikely to pull back from the furnace to come without broader-based and more local commitments to care. Care for our soils, for our trees, for our water, certainly for our children’s future. We know, first-hand over many years, the limitations of policy to shift mindsets, to light a fire of change that can overcome the ashes of indifference. Indeed, it is our view that our policy bubbles have largely done more or less all that policy bubbles can do. It is past time to put our “duty to care” front and center in our climate response, and to do so in all the places where we matter.
Despite all the splashy events with effective branding to boot, there have been some cold winds blowing through the UN since the easing of the Covid-19 pandemic. As we have written before, some UN states have taken the opportunity to double down on their resistance to NGO participation beyond who the states might choose to invite themselves. Access to events has hardly been impossible but has been granted with increasing caprice and some attitudinal version of “if you don’t like it, don’t come.” One doesn’t know from one day to the next whether a sojourn to the UN will result in a seat at a meeting or a rebuff due to some unannounced access change, including shifting meetings from “open” to “not-so-open” without a whiff of explanation.
Given the current state of affairs in our world, I can well understand why some states would not want scrutiny-obsessed groups like ours in the room, reminding delegations of the promises yet to be fulfilled, of the conflicts yet to be resolved, of the financial pledges yet to be delivered. It can’t be comfortable for diplomats who work hard albeit “under orders” to have others constantly reminding them of hills yet to climb. And yet, a colleague from Cameroon stayed with me for two weeks during the High-Level segment, a man attempting to protect and feed his people amidst a conflict which has received little policy attention and which continues to result in death, displacement and the wholesale degradation of the environment. While with me, the news came that his family home was burned to the ground. In essence, this is why we show up in line at the UN, day after day, year after year, hoping for a chance to plead the causes of people in desperate need who deserve as much from us as they were led to expect might be the case, certainly more than they have often received.
The discouragement of all this UN business, the small pieces of bait extending from the end of long hooks, has led us more than a few times to seek inspiration and imagination elsewhere. This past month, the search took us to an all-September event led in part by our board chair, Christina Madden through her work with Criterion Institute, a “Convergence” of participants – most all women – in pursuit of a “feminist financial imagination.” Despite online limitations, the discussions were beautifully moderated, allowing the conversations to drift between investment essentials and the values which, if well-embodied, can help ensure a feminist strategy free from reinforcing the patriarchal excesses of the current investment system in the main, a system which channels billions into private accounts devoid of any and all social accountabilities.
It is hard in these “convergence” settings to find language forms which avoid the pitfalls of essentialist stereotyping, and which can effectively steer us away from the temptation to use money as dangling bait to attract status and power and not also to make change in societies now teetering on “brinks” of their own authoring. As such, we need reminders that our relationship to money remains largely uninterrogated, that we don’t actually represent many who we pretend to “speak for,” that the “faith” which drives many of us to search for inspiration and imagination beyond the usual suspects remains both largely “unhoused” and battered by circumstance; and is thus in need of reliable partnership including the provision of some of the reassurance we seek to “gift” to others. We often embrace the imagination we are comfortable with, not the imagination which the world now requires, those “six impossible things” before breakfast which will never become incarnate until we have the courage to imagine them into existence.
The many and diverse events around the UN largely remind me on a daily basis that the world we love, the world that sustains the best and worst of us, the world that will continue on long after we have irretrievably soiled its blessings, that human world is running out of time. The international day of older persons reminds me that I, too, am running out of time, time to discern and share with that shrinking number of folks who still care, at least a little bit, what I think, time to pursue the “magic” of inspiration and imagination wherever it can now be found, and then communicate it clearly and humbly to those many among us who, for one reason or another, are no longer inclined to take the bait.
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