The only thing I should be doing
I saw this tweet from the writer Rachel Syme this week:
I’m sure a good 95% of people who have ever lived have believed that their era was the most important time in history. Human beings are incredibly myopic and conceited like that. But…I sort of think now is the most important time in human history. Not just because we have 12 years (or is it 11 now?) to avert a climate apocalypse we have knowingly brought upon ourselves, though that would be a pretty good argument for significance by itself. The thing this, I don’t really think we’re going to avert it. I know as an Important (lol) Science Communicator I’m supposed to radiate Optimism and Hope because Despair Isn’t Motivating, but whatever. Do you really think we’re going to get our act together in time? I don’t. Honestly, my greatest hope about the whole thing is that I die before it gets too bad.
So I’m operating under the assumption that the world is going to change dramatically, and fast, and soon. We are the last witnesses to what will be The Way Things Were. And, uh, as someone who knows a little bit about the past, I’m pretty sure the future is going to want to know what we were thinking. Partly because they will be judging us very harshly. But partly because they will want to know where they come from, just like we all do. Between us and them, however, there will be a period of tremendous, inconceivable loss, which will make that knowledge more difficult to access and understand. There could very well come a time when the dry and thriving New York City Syme frets about documenting will be the stuff of actual myth.
What was it like to live in the world before the fall? Not to be too overdramatic about it (too late!, you’re thinking), but we’re the last people who will know. I admire the people—Greta Thunberg, Jane Fonda outside the Capitol, the Sunrise Movement—who feel like the only thing they should be doing is preventing the fall. But I’m writer. Like Syme, I feel a powerful draw to document this moment, in ways that I don’t feel fully capable of doing. Because while journalism is obviously a vital practice right now, it’s not really what I’m talking about. I want to make art.
Future historians are going to make incredible, insightful use of our archives of facts. But many more people are going to come back to our fiction, our poetry, our music, our plays, our paintings, our sculptures. That’s what’s going to tell them who we were and where they come from. Art is what lasts, every time. I’m not delusional enough to believe any art I personally make will be read in 100 or 500 or 1,000 years. I do think making it matters, though. Maybe more than ever.
Recommendations
“In London, Natural History Museums Confront Their Colonial Histories.” There’s a growing push for European and American museums to return stolen artifacts and ancestors to their homelands, which is great. But fully reckoning with how entwined science and colonialism are takes a lot more work, as this piece shows.
“Is Anyone Going to Get Rich off of Email Newsletters?” Not me, that’s for sure! But venture capitalists sure expect someone to. If you’re interested in the ever-changing and always-depressing business of media, don’t miss this history of the form.
“Cremation, burial, or composting? Calculating the environmental costs of the afterlife.” Speaking of climate change and dying in time, my friend Tien Nguyen made this completely charming video about the carbon costs of what you decide to do with your body, featuring stop motion gingerbread people! Personally, I feel a professional obligation to be buried to give future bioarchaeologists something to work with.