Civilization is, by its very nature, a long-running Ponzi scheme. It lives by robbing nature and borrowing from the future, exploiting its hinterland until there is nothing left to exploit, after which it implodes. While it still lives, it generates a temporary and fictitious surplus that it uses to enrich and empower the few and to dispossess and dominate the many. Industrial civilization is the apotheosis and quintessence of this fatal course. A fortunate minority gains luxuries and freedoms galore, but only by slaughtering, poisoning, and exhausting creation. So we bequeath you a ruined planet that dooms you to a hardscrabble existence, or perhaps none at all.
Ophuls, William. Apologies to the Grandchldren: Reflections on Our Ecological Predicament, Its Deeper Causes, and Its Political Consequences (p. 1). Kindle Edition.
I first read this book in March 2019, as soon as I became aware of it. It only took me a couple of days to read it. This fast reading was the result of several factors: first, it's relatively short (140 pages); second, I'd read several other books by Ophuls, and this book is more a less a summary of his work; and third, it was compelling. I gave it five-star ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. However, because of some travel and other commitments, I didn't get around to reviewing it then. But now I've been prompted to return to it and do it full justice. This short book is indeed a summary of Ophuls's work in the field of politics, ecological scarcity, and their effects on human life and well-being. Also, another prompt was my recent reading of Thomas Homer-Dixon's most just-published book, Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril (link to my review). Indeed, I will consider Ophuls's book by comparing and contrasting his outlook and work with that of Homer-Dixon. Between the two of them, I believe we have two of the savviest and most worthwhile thinkers about the economic, social, and political consequences of our ecological predicament. (I.e., it's greater than "just" climate change.) I'll start with some brief biography of these two scholars.
The following is a brief biography of Ophuls taken from a book he wrote under his given name, Patrick Ophuls, Buddha Takes No Prisoners: A Meditator's Survival Guide (2012) (link to my review):
Patrick Ophuls graduated in 1955 from Princeton University with a degree in Near Eastern area studies and obtained a PhD from Yale in political science in 1973. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1959, was a political analyst on the Afghanistan desk at the State Department, and was also posted to American embassies in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and Tokyo, Japan, as a personal aide to two ambassadors. Leaving the Foreign Service in 1967, he became a professor of political science at Northwestern University. Patrick Ophuls has practiced insight meditation intensively for over 30 years. He began sitting with the Thai teacher Dhiravamsa in 1974, graduating from his teacher training program in 1977 and going on to assist him during several retreats in 1978. He began studying with Insight Meditation Society founders Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg in the late seventies, an association that continues to this day.
Ophuls (b. 1934) is a generation older than Homer-Dixon (b. 1956). Ophuls, after completing college in 1955 spent time in both the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Foreign Service before attending Yale to receive a Ph.D. in political science in 1973. But after this, Ophuls served only a brief stint in academia before becoming what he describes as an independent scholar. By the early 1970s, Ophuls was publishing works about environmental issues, and he's continued writing about this topic--and especially its implications for economic and political life--ever since then. Of course, there are a lot of questions that arise from this brief biography, such as the influences that his experiences in the Coast Guard and the Foreign Service had on his outlook about the environment, political life, and his interest in Buddhist meditation practice. Also, I wonder about the reasons for his relatively brief tenure in academia while nevertheless writing some very learned and provocative books aimed at readers with a high level of sophistication. And, does Ophuls have grandchildren?
Homer-Dixon's biography is a bit more conventional, at least in the field of academic life. But part of the charm of Homer-Dixon's works, which are aimed at a general but sophisticated audience, arises from his sharing bits of his personal biography along the way. Born and raised in British Columbia (western Canada), he had a lot of exposure to nature, as his father was a forester. Time in nature and knowledge about nature came early to Homer-Dixon. He traveled as a young man, and he worked in the Canadian oilfields for a while. Since completing his doctoral work at MIT in political science in 1989, he's held academic positions in Canada. He began his career focusing on issues of international conflict arising from environmental scarcity, and he then expanded his research into a variety of other areas concerned with environmental issues, complexity theory, and related topics. In reading Commanding Hope and Homer-Dixon's two prior works intended for the general public, I find Homer-Dixon relying a great deal on social scientific research to guide his thoughts about political and economic issues and--especially in Commanding Hope--thinking about how to persuade the general populace about the need for a new economic-political paradigm. Ophuls, on the other hand, while acknowledging social scientific research, chooses to base his arguments and perspectives on the classics of political thought (in addition to his emphasis on the basics of natural science that underlies ecological thinking). Plato, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Thoreau figure most prominently in Ophuls thinking, along with many others counted among the classics of political thought. He also acknowledges the importance to his outlook from 20th-century thinkers like Jung, Lippmann, Niebuhr, and Arendt, to name but a few of those he acknowledges in his excellent bibliographical essays. But now let me turn to what may be the most interesting contrast between these two thinkers about our future. And here I refer to the issue of "hope," which both thinkers address in the most recent books.
The second chapter of Ophuls's work is entitled "What Can Give Us Hope?" and it begins with this sentence: "Industrial civilization is in a hopeless position, an impasse from which there is no visible avenue of escape." Id., p.25. Not an encouraging thought, I must say. He goes on to argue that industrial civilization can't stand still (stop growing) because this would halt "progress," the religion upon which the last two-hundred-plus years have been based. Such a change would "crush morale" and destroy the "American dream" (and the Chinese Dream and all of the other variants of dreams of material wealth in the world today). Ophuls rejects both the hope that "renewable energy" will allow industrial civilization to continue on course, and he rejects technological miracles such as "the Singularity." Ophuls comes to this conclusion about any attempt to maintain the status quo:
We face a stark choice. We can expend our waning stocks of fossil fuels, our scarce capital, and our limited political will in a vain attempt to maintain industrial civilization as it exists, or we can use those same resources to effect a necessary transition to a radically different type of civilization. But we cannot do both, and we must choose reasonably soon. For if we follow the line of least political and societal resistance and wager everything on an attempt to preserve our energy-intensive, mass-consumptive way of life, we will go bankrupt energetically. Without the resources to make the transition, deep collapse will become inescapable. Id., p. 30.
Lest one believe that we can change course simply by sounding a clarion call to reason and rationality, Ophuls reminds us that
It is abundantly clear that scientific evidence and rational arguments, no matter how weighty or well formulated, are not enough to overcome sheer inertia, vested interests, ideological blinders, the shortcomings of the human mind, or the extent to which we are all increasingly entangled in the trappings of modern life. Thus industrial civilization seems destined to continue on its current trajectory until one or more of the limits bites so deeply as to precipitate collapse. Id., pp.30-31.
He continues:
As industrial civilization begins to implode, we will witness an upsurge of prophecy of all kinds—fantastic, salvational, millenarian, apocalyptic, and reactionary. Id., p. 31.
According to Ophuls, fantasies about "the Singularity" are simply a new variation on the more traditional reactions he lists above. Silicon Valley won't be our salvation. At this point, the reader is approaching the end of the chapter and is probably wondering, as I did, where is the hope? And in the closing lines of this chapter Ophuls provides us with this tantalizing observation:
But the prophetic madness attending the death throes of industrial civilization will also contain a small but significant ray of hope: out of the welter of false prophets there may arise one whose message will effect the metanoia that is the only real way out of the impasse. For only by transcending our obsession with material power and progress and recovering a deep empathic connection to the planet and the life it bears can we hope to reconstruct civilization to be sane, humane, and ecological. Id, p. 32.
"Metanoia." It's a term that I used in my review of Homer-Dixon's Commanding Hope, although Homer-Dixon didn't use this term. Ophuls refers to it as a "change of heart" as in a religious conversion, while I defined it in my review of Commanding Hope as a change of the "heart-mind," but this is a quibble. "Metanoia" is the term used in the New Testament about the effect of Jesus' teachings that has been translated also as "conversion," "finding salvation," and such. Later in this book, Ophuls suggests that this is his "hope":
Thus I would expect (or hope) that a future religion would transcend tribalism and take a more cosmic stance, expounding a universalist teaching that offers abundant spiritual succor and moral support without having recourse to the Grand Inquisitor’s miracle, mystery, and authority. An inkling of such a teaching is perhaps to be found in the Upanishads or the Tao Te Ching. All this is to take a very long view, but living sub specie aeternitatis is exactly what is needed now. Crises tend to rob us of everything except ego’s immediate fears and needs and to create a climate of desperation. That is why the shadow flourishes during a time of troubles. Only the long view will save us. For twenty years a Japanese Zen master tirelessly taught retreats, ordained priests, and established centers, not only in the U. S. but also in other parts of the world. Yet when asked how Buddhism was faring in the West, he replied, “Ask me in 500 years.” Id., p. 104.
If you've received the impression that Ophuls doesn't promote hope liberally, you'd be correct. The attitude of Ophuls seems to be "yeah, maybe," without much encouragement beyond that. Again, to compare Ophuls's take with that of Homer-Dixon, Homer-Dixon takes a great deal more time and effort in Commanding Hope to make hope both legitimate and yet grounded in the face of the same ecological perils that both writers identify. Perhaps some of the difference is that Homer-Dixon writes about (and for) his children (ages 15 and 12 at the time of his writing), while Ophuls, a generation older, is writing to "the grandchildren."
Another point to know about Ophuls is that his analysis spares no one perspective. He not only critiques contemporary industrial-consumer capitalism, but also democracy, liberalism, tribalism, the media, elites, libertarianism, and modernity. In short, he pulls no punches. Whether you're a liberal, conservative, reactionary, a leftist--whatever--you can find something that Ophuls has written that challenges your fundamental assumptions. Homer-Dixon, despite his "Dr. Doom" nickname, remains within academia and wants (I surmise) to remain restrained enough not to become totally foreclosed from the public (political) conversation. Thus, Homer-Dixon goes easy on the political particulars of policy prescriptions. Homer-Dixon argues in a more rhetorically restrained mode, while Ophuls uses a much blunter, more prophetic rhetoric. Both rhetorical voices are valid and useful, and I'd deploy one or the other depending on the audience and occasion, although at my point in life--just three years older than Homer-Dixon but with adult children and therefore grandparent-eligible, I tend to favor the more prophetic mode. But, again, given a particular audience, I might soften the blows.
Apologies to the Grandchildren provides a summary of the project that Ophuls has pursued since the 1970s. It's not the book that I'd recommend if one was just beginning to read Ophuls. I'd nominate Plato's Revenge (2011) (link to my review) for most readers. Nor is it his most comprehensive work (Requiem for Modern Politics: The Tragedy of the Enlightenment and the Challenge of the New Millennium (1997) (link to my review) would be my choice for a top-to-bottom view. But if you want to start with an executive summary (of sorts) that entails a minimum of any doubt or hesitation, you can begin with this work of prophecy. And note well, prophecy isn't about predicting the future, it's about the consequences of choices that we make that create our future. In my book, Ophuls is a true prophet. And I wouldn't mind at all if, in the passage of time and with luck, he's proven even just a bit wrong!
P.S. Here's the blurb that Thomas Homer-Dixon provided for Ophuls's Plato's Revenge:
For decades, William Ophuls has been among the world's most original thinkers about the implications of our global ecological crisis for freedom, democracy, and political order. In Plato's Revenge, he goes to the essence of this crisis: the deep, tacit, and widespread beliefs that nature and society are nothing more than machines, that the state should play no role in cultivating citizens' virtue, and that self-interested individuals should rely solely on reason to guide their lives. Ophuls weaves together the ideas of some of history's greatest thinkers to argue that humankind's future lies in small, simple republics that cultivate their citizens' virtue through natural law. In doing so, he shreds conventional wisdom and invigorates our conversation about the kind of world we intend our grandchildren to inherit.
Thomas Homer-Dixon
University of Waterloo, author of The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization
