I've been searching for the answer to a question.
Perhaps we can find it.
I read "Sapiens" by Harari, who says the problem goes deeper than capitalism.
When we invented agriculture 12,000 years ago we began destroying ecosystems.
Yes.
What's the problem?
I think...
This will seem extremely...
cliche. It's open to discussion...
The problem is we're afraid of dying.
That's the problem.
We're so scared of dying, and we have such a need...
to explain to ourselves why we're on this planet...
And, knowing our existence must come to an end,
we use all kinds of strategies to protect ourselves.
Strategies that are simultaneously about domination
- of other individuals and other species -
and strategies for joy,
that is, diverting our attention from this horror.
The entertainment industry exists in part
to make us forget our basic fear.
[NEXT] 10 "collapse is already here" Cyril Dion
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Thank you.
Before starting the interview I asked the [NEXT] community
if they had any questions for Cyril Dion.
I got lots of good questions, especially this one:
who is Cyril Dion?
There you go.
Look, I'm...
a human being, almost 40, unfortunately...
I have 2 children, I've been married 20 years, and I've done a lot in my life.
Including...
I was an actor, I studied natural medicine,
I organized Israeli-Palestinian conferences,
bringing imams and rabbis together for peace.
More recently,
some people know me as a co-founder
of the "Colibris" movement with Pierre Rabhi and others.
And I produced a film called "Tomorrow," with Melanie Laurent.
I also write books.
Poetry, novels, essays and children's books.
I saw Melanie Laurent eating at McDonald's.
Really?
Just joking.
That would have been quite surprising.
[NEXT] viewers interested in collapsology who missed [NEXT] episode 8
may wonder why have Cyril Dion on a show about collapse?
The answer is in this excerpt.
"I became interested in collapsology
"after seeing a Facebook post from Cyril Dion
"saying that even if the subject was worrying,
"we should still be open to discussing it.
"I remember thinking: 'Cyril Dion is a positive and constructive environmental figure.'
"I brought my students to see his documentary 'Tomorrow' when it came out.
"If he was saying that,
"it meant the book was a reference.
"So even if the title was off-putting,
I ordered "Comment Tout Peut S'effondrer," and read it.
So it's my fault.
Poor woman. Saddened because of me.
You're often presented as an ambassador of positive, enthusiastic and feel-good ecology.
Does your interest in collapsology represent a change,
or did you wait to reveal this part of yourself?
Saying I'm Mr. Positive Ecology or...
or that I'm an optimist or whatever,
those are all labels, cliches.
We started filming "Tomorrow"
because I'd read a study in 2012,
"Approaching a State Shift in Earth's Biosphere."
That study's conclusions were catastrophic.
And catastrophist.
It supported collapsologists' assertions.
It stated that, taken together, all the data we have
on pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, climate change,
ocean acidification, species extinction...
We may reach what the researchers called a tipping point, a point of collapse,
which could cause part of humanity to disappear.
That's how "Tomorrow" begins.
We went to Stanford and met the two scientists, who told us this.
We were completely dumbfounded and wondered how we could respond.
I...
unlike some of my colleagues in the environmental movement,
I think our only response must be,
well, it's not the only response,
but we must have a constructive response.
Because, as I learned, mechanisms in our brains
lead us to respond to extraordinarily worrisome news with denial and flight.
So...
Our brains search for an adaptive response.
And an intellectual exit.
Sure. But brains need an answer.
If you're in danger, say you're in the street and a car is racing towards you,
your brain searches for a response
to activate your body, your adrenal glands,
to send you adrenaline and sugar so your muscles can react.
And often, the right response is to flee.
In this case, we face something relatively intangible.
If you don't offer an appropriate response, such as...
getting involved in an action or in building a new narrative, etc.,
well, the default response from the brain
is to set the danger aside, to protect itself from something that is crushing...
to...
to comfort us.
What do you think of collapsology, the interdisciplinary science of collapse
and the study of these internal, emotional storms?
What have you learned?
Any insights?
I read (Dmitry) Orlov's book, I read Pablo (Servigne) and Raphael (Stevens)'s book.
I watch your series. I read articles.
Because I think we must be clear-sighted about the trajectory we're on.
Which seems anything but certain.
I might criticize some proponents of collapsology
for somewhat romanticizing collapse.
Because it is a narrative.
A fascination with collapse.
Of course.
That's why we see so many films with collapse as a theme.
Since the dawn of time, humans have imagined the end of the world.
It's fascinating, it's...
dramatic and extremely powerful.
And since human beings are a fabulating species, as Nancy Huston says,
we spend our lives telling stories, building narratives,
well, obviously that story is extremely powerful.
Except it's not a story. For example, species extinction isn't the future, it's the present.
Absolutely. What I mean is...
These are facts.
Clearly. But by stories I mean... When I say we spend our lives telling each other stories I mean
we spend our time gathering facts, realities,
and using them to tell stories.
For example, if I tell you who I am, I'll tell you facts about my life,
but I put them together to tell a story.
Collapse is the same thing.
You take a certain number of facts in a certain order,
and some scientists will say "We don't know, there are too many variables,
so we can't be certain what will happen,"
while others will say "Taken together, it's undeniable, everything will collapse."
For me, it's a huge responsibility.
To say with certainty...
That's why I like the title of Pablo's book,
"How Everything COULD Collapse," not "How Everything WILL Collapse,"
the title of a book that just came out.
I think that crosses a line.
Again, having spoken with scientists around the world about this,
no one can be absolutely certain we're headed for collapse or how.
We can't know that.
However,
today...
I think it's interesting to move the conversation in this direction,
it's not about waiting for some hypothetical collapse and a somewhat romanticized end of the world,
but rather to see that collapse is already here.
In very many ways.
We've already lost 50% of vertebrates,
80% of flying insects in Europe,
and 30% of birds.
That's already collapse.
When you study humus levels in topsoil in Europe and the US,
soil fertility is already collapsing. It's already happening.
All biodiversity is already collapsing, including plant life.
So I think it's important to avoid being categorical and at the same time to avoid romanticizing it.
What's your position? Should we act now, as quickly as possible to avoid collapse?
Or, if collapse is inevitable, let's act to lessen the shock, suffering and number of dead?
Or do you have another position?
They imply fundamentally different kinds of civic engagement.
Well, yes and no. I mean...
The things I think we must do today both soften the impacts of collapse
- since collapse is already here -
and build resilience so we can better withstand collapse...
better.
I don't see two separate strategies.
Today, no matter what happens,
we need to transform agriculture so it regenerates ecosystems and
produces more food locally.
We need to generate some of our own electricity.
Whether collapse happens or not, that's useful.
Can we reasonably expect that accepting collapse
and communicating the information
can convince the most skeptical, who think ecology is a bourgeois concern.
By speaking of collapse, we feel it's a fact, whether it takes 200 years or 10,
that changes everything. We think the transition needs to happen in 10 years.
Unfortunately, without an urgent awareness of collapse,
it looks more like that transition will take 200 years.
I've been asking myself that for a while.
I obviously don't have a certain answer.
But I still feel like talking about collapse is...
a way to set psychological mechanisms in motion
that are very often counter-productive.
Unless you talk about collapse and simultaneously build a narrative about a post-collapse.
If we look at fields I'm familiar with, such as film, etc.,
if you look at most environmental films,
they always bring up collapse in one way or another.
"The 11th Hour,"  "An Inconvenient Truth," "Home,"
that's what they're about, basically.
They're not necessarily apocalyptic, but look...
It seems like for the people I film,
becoming aware of collapse stunned them at first,
but then it allowed them to act faster, better and in the right way.
That is, not necessarily by prioritizing sorting their trash,
but by not taking the plane anymore or not eating meat anymore.
I feel like it creates a hierarchy of impacts.
That's important because it helps us take ownership of the transition.
I think what you just said...
Collapse makes citizen actions more effective.
To you, collapse means becoming aware of what's happening.
Yes.
That is...
In the present. Not in some distant future.
That's where false oppositions are created between
people who say, for example, "Cyril Dion and Melanie Laurent are into 'positive ecology'
and others are into 'collapse.'"
Again, that's not the case.
Understandably, when speaking to a child we may filter information.
But, are we infantilizing people by saying if we discuss collapse they might be discouraged from taking action?
Are we infantilizing people by thinking they're not strong enough to recover from deep sadness or depression
after hearing this information?
I think we're all children.
I think we're behaving like children by not facing reality.
Certainly.
We're also behaving like children, like adolescents by...
How can I say this?
By wanting to test limits.
To see what we can do, how far we can go without worrying about consequences.
That's somewhat infantile behavior.
I don't think we shouldn't discuss collapse.
We must discuss it,
and simultaneously offer solutions.
I feel like Emmanuel Macron when I say that.
But, that's really it.
I think it's very important to look at things head-on,
not necessarily focus on them too long,
but to be aware, deeply aware of them and embrace the emotions they give rise to.
We always hear about future risks, 2050, 2100 or even 2030 from collapsologists.
But for ecosystems, species collapse has already taken place, and it's worsening.
Before we discuss the future or the past, shouldn't we mourn the present,
to experience sadness for what we've already lost?
In order to bring people back to the present.
Since action happens now, in the present.
Should we be having minutes of silence rather than long speeches?
Yes. I agree.
We need...
We need to feel it, that's clear.
We need to...
We need to feel it in our guts,
not just have a parade of information.
As you say, it would bring us back to the present.
Then we might stop believing collapse is for the future,
we'd be forced to see it's happening right now.
I enjoyed your recent take on optimism and pessimism.
You summarized that sterile debate well.
"What Pablo and others say makes sense.
"We all tend to have magical thinking along the lines of:
" 'We're going to make it! It's not that bad! We're capable.
" 'Great things are already happening, so I feel confident.'
"I've very often been asked that question:
" 'Are you optimistic about the future?'
"You have to be completely unthinking to be optimistic about the future.
"There's no reason to be optimistic about the future.
"However, we can be creative, determined and constructive.
"Just because the situation is catastrophic doesn't mean we should mope about
"and, I don't know, get drunk and blow all your money before dying in 10 years.
"We can also decide that everything we do from now on
"builds a scenario that will be more or less difficult to manage in the future."
What were you feeling when you said "You have to be completely unthinking to be optimistic?"
Lassitude? Anger?
Yes, a little. That...
Once again, the debate is a caricature.
"So? Are you an optimist?"
No!
How can I be optimistic?
Sure, I'm fairly optimistic. It's all good.
Once again, here we are, behaving as children.
How many times have I heard:
"So, think we're gonna make it?"
I don't know! How am I supposed to know? Really! I can't.
It's like asking daddy.
Exactly. As if I were a reference.
You've become daddy to a million Frenchmen.
"You, who knows, do you think we'll make it?"
I have no idea.
I'd like to make a distinction between optimist and constructive.
Constructive means when there's a problem, you don't give up.
You look for solutions, for opportunities;
you look within yourself for energy that isn't from fear or guilt.
Enthusiasm, desire, skills.
That's what interests me.
Even if, let's admit, with lots of caveats,
even if ecosystems collapse in 10 years,
and life on Earth becomes hell,
I'd still rather spend the next ten years doing something
I'm passionate about, that makes me want to wake up in the morning,
that's meaningful to me and makes me feel good.
Rather than...
flip out, take antidepressants or adopt an attitude of...
"Since we're dead tomorrow, let's do whatever we like today."
It's what I'd rather do anyways.
Parties?
Sure, why not?
Careful, thousands are watching.
It could get hard to manage. That's your problem.
We can still laugh.
Clearly.
It depends how we set up.
Now it's hard to segue into a topic that's not funny at all.
I'll come back to an excerpt from your book.
I'm quite familiar with it, don't worry.
"I have two voices inside me.
"One small voice says 'This is beautiful, great, altruistic, generous, humanistic.'
"And the other, small, mediocre, selfish voice inside me
"that watches your two films and thinks, 'How perfect, how beautiful,'
"San Francisco, Copenhagen, they're all on bicycles, they're all beautiful, they all eat organic!
"I can't stand it! It makes me want to get on a plane, run a hot bath and eat a thick steak...
That's ridiculous.
Obviously I'm exaggerating, but what I'm trying to say is,
how do you convince people like me, who are willing to hear you and to change their habits,
how do you convince us more completely than with...
I don't think we're going to.
...beautiful documentaries?
A great moment of television.
Unlike citizens, journalists are paid to be informed,
they're paid to know, with our taxes in this case.
Of course there are moments of lassitude.
I get exhausted having to always repeat the same thing,
and I get fed up when I see the people in front of me, sometimes journalists,
bring up the same old cliches about environmentalism,
"It's expensive. It's for hippies." Whatever.
But my experiences have taught me, with journalists or otherwise,
to try to understand what they're saying, to answer respectfully and...
...and to make the effort to explain, to have a dialogue.
It often works.
And regarding Lea Salame, see...
I was on the morning show on France Inter a few days ago,
and, on air, she apologized to me.
Saying her cynicism was too facile,
that she regretted that moment
and that she'd thought a lot on the matter.
So I think, it's not bad.
It's not a bad result, and...
it was elegant on her part to apologize publicly,
not many would have done that.
I also think that for listeners,
hearing that someone completely changed their mind on the subject,
that's meaningful, it tells a story.
Do we have time for journalists' ignorance of ecology?
We don't have time for anything.
But if we go down that road...
What can we do? You can't force anyone...
You say we can't do anything, but we could pressure journalists to be informed.
They could read books to be informed.
Sure. We can tell them off.
But when you're promoting a movie or book
and you face such questions,
what can you do? See?
You can't do anything but talk, explain, and try to create dialogue.
You can't be insulting or violent. You can't call them cretins who don't understand a thing.
If I'd called Lea Salame an imbecile and told her what she said was stupid,
she'd never have wanted to learn more.
I prefer my approach and getting the response it led to,
rather than the opposite.
But when we left the show, Yann was very upset.
Very upset.
He was disgusted. They were even worse with him.
Yann Moix was awful with him,
referring to another director as a "real director,"
as though he wasn't a  true director.
Who are you to say such a thing to a man whose film was seen by 800 million people worldwide?
It's ridiculous.
So, OK.
But what I liked about what we were just discussing:
we always wonder if we have time.
Do we have time to deal with journalists who don't understand the issues?
Do we have time to convince CEOs?
No, we don't have time.
We don't have time.
But...
we don't have a choice.
It's like when the character in "The Green Beauty" says,
"You can't pull a salad to make it grow." You just can't.
So, for me, as in the book I just published,
"Stories and Strategies for Transforming the World,"
that's what I think we need.
That is, I think what may work fastest
is either to face catastrophes,
or to construct stories that are powerful enough to get people involved.
Once we have stories, we need to get organized.
That's why I discuss strategies.
I don't think the environmental movement is organized at all.
We mentioned the Resistance earlier, and how it carried out sabotage and actions against Nazism.
Today I think there's no organization. None at all.
Today, great movements with a lot of energy,
it's good that they exist or have existed,
don't follow through due to a lack of organization.
Nuit Debout, Occupy Wall Street, Les Indignes...
They're all...
They're great, there's lots of good sentiments,
it's like NGOs, lots of great sentiments,
same with those who get involved in politics.
But at some point, I mean,
you have to be clever. You need to build strategies.
The movie came out in December 2015,
Are you able to quantify, even if some aspects are intangible,
are you able to quantify your film's impacts?
The impact is mostly cultural.
That is, it's become...
It's surely... I think what we succeeded in doing with the film...
It's become a cultural reference for some people.
They use it as a kind of marker.
A marker for their imaginations,
an ideological marker for some.
Some people tell me:
"Now, in our family, we say 'That's not very "Tomorrow" of you,' or
'That's really "Tomorrow" of you!'"
That's great.
Even political leaders and CEOs.
It's also helped start a lot of conversations.
In families,
in companies,
in the media.
It's inspired people to act.
We know of over 1000 projects begun after the film's release.
They're registered on our website.
And it made a lot of people want to make films like it.
We've seen a lot of films come out that use a lot of the language from "Tomorrow."
It's great!
I've always felt we needed to create stories, transform our imaginations and affect culture.
So I'm glad lots of people are doing that.
In France and abroad.
Now there's "Tomorrow Geneva."
They remade "Tomorrow," but in Geneva with all the initiatives there.
Preparations are being made for "Tomorrow Lebanon."
The director is Phillipe Aractingi, very famous in Lebanon, a Venice prizewinner.
And there's a "Tomorrow China."
They want to adapt "Tomorrow" using Chinese initiatives.
What's "tomorrow" in Chinese?
I don't know yet. I know it's "bukra" in Lebanese.
I'll be in China in September for the release of the book "Tomorrow"
and to meet those who want to make the movie.
And my film was released in 30 countries.
We were the New York Times' Critic's Pick when it came out in the US.
They basically said, "If Trump's policies depress you,
"he left the Paris accord, go see this movie.
"One of its main virtues is that it gives you hope again." Yes, hope.
And...
That's it. Then there's the impact that's not interesting to anyone else,
but it has changed my life.
You made the first environmental blockbuster.
My opinion of the film changed over time.
I've reached a final opinion for about a year, a positive opinion.
When I first saw it I thought it was great.
It was useful and popular .
I saw people stand and applaud, I was excited. It was a real accomplishment.
But soon after I...
I'm saying all this because I've read similar responses online, no one cares about my opinion.
I was unhappy with the solutions presented that weren't solutions at all,
and how you glossed over the observed collapse discussed at the start of the film.
And now, today, I realize
how well you succeeded in having an amazing impact.
The film is a bridge. It's an introduction.
People are free to inform themselves, to research details.
If they once thought windmills would save the world, great. At least now they're advancing.
In your latest book, "A Brief Manual For Contemporary Resistance,"
you address criticisms of "Tomorrow."
One of them accuses you of representing renewables like windmills as a solution,
when they're highly polluting.
What I want to know is, if you'd known about all this,
what's been said and done since "Tomorrow,"
if the movie didn't exist, what movie would you make today?
Maybe you'd make the same film?
I wouldn't do the same thing, no.
Indeed, we didn't focus much on the impacts of renewables.
We let people believe they were "clean,"
as the jargon describes them.
Despite the fact that we were...
I was somewhat aware of that.
That's why for the film's layout,
after the part on the circular economy, we had Pocheco, etc.,
we showed we need to have both.
We need to simultaneously use a lot less energy,
that's what we said in the film, with Thierry Salomon and Negawatt,
and we need to change how we produce objects.
We didn't really explain that.
We didn't...
We neither included that nuance,
nor did we completely take stock of certain negative impacts,
that are important.
I think I'd change that.
And I'd explore far more all...
all the possibilities.
I'm very interested in the symbiotic economy
as described by Isabelle Delannoy in her book.
The idea that we can completely transform our production methods.
By drastically reducing the amount of material we use;
by getting as much material from wastes,
rather than from natural resources as we do today;
and by using potentially renewable resources, especially plants.
It's clear from her research
and the studies she'll publish
on her work at Polytechnique Lausanne,
we could reduce by 80% the objects we use,
by sharing them
and by manufacturing them differently, etc.
We could enormously reduce the amount of material required to manufacture them.
And again, using materials that are renewable or sourced from waste.
This would require us to completely transform our production models.
I'd have gone deeper into that.
If I understand correctly, according to Isabelle Delannoy,
industry itself isn't a problem, but how we produce is.
It's not that industry isn't a problem...
It's true, she seems to think...
We could produce better.
We'll always have some form of industry. Of course.
I know the tenets of radical environmentalism hold
that industrial civilization is a mistake, that it must be dismantled,
that we need to go back to being hunter gatherers.
I don't think that's realistic.
There are two conversations.
Should we continue to have industry?
In other words, do we want to continue producing energy?
Electricity...
Do we want to keep moving around using machines?
Do we want to keep using tools that allow us to communicate with each other
all over the planet, or not?
That's the first conversation.
Depending on the answer to that question,
we can imagine leading society in a certain direction.
If we say "yes," we need ways to produce those tools.
Using a different industry.
If we say "no,"
that means creating a radically different civilization.
Who's going to say "no?"
We live in the woods...
Some are saying "no" in extremely radical ways.
Honestly, I don't think that's going to appeal to anyone.
That's why...
The question is...
Of course!
If the conversation is...
For example, tourism could be reduced.
Sure. That's why I say there are two choices:
either you come with a very radical answer to these questions,
we say that human beings are parasites
invading the whole planet
and destroying species
and thus all humans create in the way of civilization
equals destruction of the natural world,
which is what people like Derrick Jensen posit.
To wit: the supremacy of human beings is a misjudgment,
that we are no different from other species,
and that every form of civilization is a kind of imperialism
by human beings over other species.
Or you have a conversation about creating a civilization that could eventually
live in accord with nature, in harmony with nature as much as possible
while recognizing that human beings, in my opinion, will never renounce
their priority over other species.
We can hope for that, we can have philosophical discussions about it,
But today, in 2018,
with 20 years to react,
if that's the heart of the story we tell
to get millions of people involved, I don't think it will work.
I don't believe for one second
that millions of people will be motivated when you tell them:
"We shouldn't be the dominant species and we're all going to live in the woods."
That's not realistic.
I think we need to build stories that...
that rest on the idea that...
we need to understand our interdependence with nature,
to understand how nature works, to be inspired by that,
and to set up mechanisms in our social, economic and industrial organizations
with the least impacts possible, or even regenerative impacts.
Speaking of windmills, it's interesting
I'm working on a collection with Acte Sud,
we just released Paul Hawken's book, "Drawdown."
He worked with 70 researchers
to propose solutions to reverse climate change.
Global warming, rather.
They did extremely rigorous work,
looking at the possibilities
for reducing CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions
compared to services rendered.
And windmills come in as the 2nd best solution out of 80.
That's based on studies that include grey energy.
Today...
Accounting for energy used in manufacture, rare earth metals...
Extraction...
And number 1?
Number 1 is managing refrigerant gasses.
All the gasses used for air conditioning.
They trap up to 8,000 times more heat than CO2.
That's not ever something we account for.
Number 3 is fighting against food waste.
Crazy, right? Number 3 out of 80.
Number 4 is changing our diets.
Planetwide.
Logical.
Interestingly, numbers 6 and 7
are education of girls and family planning.
And if you combine them, that's the number one solution.
It means dealing with demography.
Because today, each human you add to the planet,
there's a huge disparity today,
Bangladesh consumes about 0.05 planet,
while the US consumes 7 planets,
so it's not just about births,
but since the trend is for every person born
to use more and more energy in their consumption habits,
more and more smartphones,
motorized transportation, etc...
You mention girls' education,
but in those unfortunate situations, the girls don't decide,
so why girls' education and not men's?
Because machismo and patriarchy are usually transmitted by mothers.
Not by fathers.
I discussed it with a South American activist. She said:
"When you educate a man you educate one person,
when you educate a woman, you educate the whole family."
Why is that?
Because women tend to think much more broadly about their surrounding environment.
They're less focused on individual concerns.
Obviously that's a generalization.
Of course there are exceptions.
But in many countries, women are in charge of educating the family.
Truly.
They cook, they raise the children, they make many choices in daily life.
They pass on the values?
Yes.
You were recently on France Inter, where you stressed this idea of storytelling.
That was your main point.
Why are stories important for a transition?
I was fascinated by several books.
"The Fabulating Species," by Nancy Huston,
a writer and essayist, as well as a friend.
In it she states, basically, that stories are how humans exist in the world.
Stories help us understand reality,
and stories are how we communicate reality.
She thinks we operate in this way because
we're conscious of our finite existence,
so we imagine our existence as a sort of continuum with a beginning, a development and an end.
And that's what we call story.
As I grew interested in the question, I realized
other authors, writers, philosophers and historians
had similar understandings of reality.
Notably Yuval Harari, who wrote "Sapiens."
In it he says...
He asked himself why humans surpassed all other species on the planet.
The answer we tend to give is:
"Because humans are more intelligent and created tools
that allow them to go faster, to be stronger..."
But when we look back attentively, we realize that 100,000 years ago,
human beings were already the smartest creatures on Earth,
according to our criteria,
they were already tool champions,
yet they hadn't surpassed every species or become a geological force.
So, why, since then,
have we been able to build everything we have.
Yuval Harari thinks it's because,
unlike other species, we have the ability
to engage millions of individuals in flexible cooperation.
He says, if you look at ants and bees that are very good at cooperation,
they can only involve a certain number of individuals.
Beyond that, they must separate
and create another bee colony or ant colony.
We humans can get a billion people engaged with the idea of Christianity,
or Islam,
or capitalism,
or communism.
How?
He says it's thanks to language, our ability to share subjectivity,
what he calls "intersubjectivity."
How do we do that? Through stories, narratives, fictions.
If you look at the world from this perspective,
you realize that indeed, religions are stories,
political ideologies are stories,
social constructs are stories.
Groups of people.
We discussed collapsology and the end of the world,
that's a story. Everything is story.
When I say "story," I don't mean "lie."
Collapsology isn't about the end of the world.
The end of a civilization. But it's a story.
Once again,
as Nancy Huston states, our way of being in the world
involves arranging a certain number of facts
to give them meaning. We need to create meaning
because we're conscious of our own deaths and must
make sense of our trajectory on Earth.
So giving meaning is our main activity.
We can certainly defend the idea that nothing has any intrinsic meaning,
but we spend our lives giving meaning to things.
Giving meaning is what we call narrative building and storytelling.
If we start from this perspective, that stories have always been our motivation,
that this is what allowed humans to build pyramids, to go to the moon
and do extraordinary things,
then there's a very strong probability that the main engine of motivation to help us transform society
will be to tell stories, to build narratives
that are powerful enough to replace, to counter, to challenge
the current dominant narrative that is consumerist, capitalist,
that's based on limitless economic growth and
that is causing all the phenomena we deplore.
How would you describe the story we're experiencing as culture right now?
I think the story says
human beings are superior to all other species collectively,
they exist only to serve humanity,
that was part of the Biblical narrative.
"You shall have dominion..."
Exactly, dominion over the land, its creatures are at your service, etc.
What will make us happy is economic growth, technological progress,
greater comfort...
And so we all have a responsibility, almost a duty you might say,
to make this system work,
so this wealth can...
be "distributed," trickle down to everyone,
so everyone has a job,
everyone gets paid, so everyone can consume
so everyone can be a part of this beautiful story,
the "Progress" story, in a way.
This story is deeply materialistic.
It founds the notion of joy, of meaning...
It correlates them powerfully
with material possessions and economic wealth.
This story of joy through consumption is falling apart.
A third of people in the US and France
use anti-anxiety drugs and suffer repeated burnouts and depression.
Harari and collapsologists state that
the collapse of a civilization is firstly the collapse of a story.
It seems to be what we're experiencing.
The generation of people called millennials,
those just ten years younger than me, in their 20s,
are in a quest for meaning, they feel lost,
they no longer follow the program planned for them.
It's in the air, it's happening.
What is the new story we can reasonably construct?
And who should do it?
I don't think there's only one story.
There's a kind of general narrative made up of many smaller narratives.
One of the basic elements in all this is:
that human beings and nature, what we call nature,
we can call it ecosystems,  there are many words for it,
are completely interdependent.
We are nature.
When we destroy our surrounding environment,
or when we cause the extinction of a great number of living species...
We're at the end of the food chain. We'll go extinct as well.
Today I see people building small stories
with that as a fundamental axiom.
For example,
films about permaculture like at the Bec Hellouin Farm.
Permaculture farmers believe that we need to understand how nature works
to duplicate certain mechanisms such as
natural soil fertility, plant associations, microclimates, and
replacing trees, since trees naturally draw minerals upwards.
Little by little, we need to participate in regenerating ecosystems,
so that humus can capture CO2,
so we have species of insects, birds and small animals present again:
ducks, hedgehogs and things.
So trees can capture CO2.
The sustainability of that ecosystem
will allow us to continue to be able to feed ourselves.
That is the reverse of the present narrative.
The present narrative says:
to feed the populace, we'll use technical  and technological means
that require us to raze forests and hedges;
to render soils that are completely denuded, as we see in monoculture;
to use synthetic products that must be sold,
such as synthetic fertilizers to replace the fertility soil naturally creates.
Since many of the plants that grow on such soil will be enfeebled because the soil itself is weak,
we use pesticides, fungicides, etc.
And the approach is hyper-technological, hyper-mechanistic
and focused on profit, since
this whole battery of products
are sold to farmers who are made dependent
and all to create economic growth.
So permaculture is an example of this new story?
Yes. I think it's the implementation of this new story to agriculture.
Bearing in mind that permaculture isn't a farming technique.
I'm talking about the application of permaculture to agriculture.
Yes. Clearly, the philosophy of permaculture,
which can be applied to agriculture, governance, or economic models,
is about creating resilient ecosystems
in which human beings and nature are in a kind of harmony,
in symbiosis, as Isabelle Delannoy would say.
I think the symbiotic economy is also
an attempt to be part of this new story.
Isabelle Delannoy says today we need to create symbiosis among
natural ecosystems,
human intelligence and the technosphere, that is, the tools we create.
For example, that's what our friends at "Bec Hellouin" are doing with permaculture.
They understand how ecosystems function,
so they can duplicate certain mechanisms, like those I mentioned earlier.
They create tools that help with that. Low-tech tools.
A seeder that plants 26 rows of vegetables where a tractor plants 3.
A small tool called a vole that lets you
just lift up the topmost layer of soil to soften it.
In 20 minutes they prepare beds several dozen meters long
that are very productive and regenerate ecosystems rather than destroy them
through their activity.
In your book,  "A Brief Manual for Resistance,"
you draw a parallel between our times and the Resistance.
The Resistance opposed Nazism and hate.
It had values, heroes and courage.
Are we facing such a historical event of such magnitude?
Is that what we need today?
I think so. Truly.
I drew that parallel because Nazism was an effort at mass destruction.
It was obviously more focused on genocide.
But today we're involved in an effort of mass destruction of life.
In a number of ways.
Animal and plant species,
oceans,
on the conditions that will allow humanity to continue living in the coming decades.
So I think our response and our actions should be on the same scale
as what we saw from the Resistance.
That is, to refuse this destructive paradigm.
So, sabotage?
Well, yes, including sabotage up to a certain point.
The "Faucheurs Volontaires" and
Jose Bove who dismantled a McDonald's.
That's necessary. We need that, to bring attention to...
Not systematic sabotage, we obviously don't want to put people's lives in danger.
But we need symbolic actions
that attract attention and also help us
organize a resistance around certain issues.
Honestly,  in France, if we didn't have the "Faucheurs Volontaires,"
I'm not sure we'd have had so public a debate on GMOs as we had.
That makes TV news headlines,
but when a Black Block vandalizes a McDonald's
and leaves a note to explain why,
that's a symbolic action, they've not attacked anyone.
Is such sabotage part of this Resistance?
It says "No. We don't want this imperialist American junk food."
Honestly, I prefer what Jose Bove does than the Black Block's actions.
He does it out in the open, publicly.
He's truly part of something pedagogic.
When you're masked, amid a brief fit of violence,
I think the effect is very counterproductive.
Everyone who disagrees is going to jump on that and say,
"Look! They're crazy! All they want is violence. They wear masks and frighten people."
That's pointless. On the other hand, when Vandana Shiva
occupied a Coca-Cola plant for years,
until the company was forced to move,
that's great. Bravo. It's courageous.
That's commitment.
Vandana Shiva, and all those who were with her of course.
When Jose Bove says he has no problem going to jail
for a few days or weeks.
He takes responsibility.
He uses it as a means of public discourse.
Again, I think that's what we need.
To review: the priority is creating new stories
that offer a new relationship to the world and to motivate people.
As I understand it, to create this transition, there's as much work required
of a Minister of Culture in creating these narratives
as of a Minister of the Environment.
Should there be a dialogue between the two ministries regarding the environment?
Yes, absolutely. And I know them both well.
But is it up to the Minister of Culture to create new narratives? It don't think so.
No, but to encourage artists.
Certainly. Of course.
It would be symbolically powerful to support artists, actors, dancers... musicians,
in writing new stories about that.
I'll talk to him about it.
The Minister of the Environment?
Absolutely.
Translation and subtitling: Stanislas Meyerhoff
 
 
