Crazy Cat Lad Makes Music Video

I have often talked about a ‘tyranny of positivity’ within contemporary environmentalism, whereby we are told that optimism is a moral and practical imperative. That typically comes with the ‘fake green fairytale’ of planetary salvation through electrification. That has been attractive to many environmental professionals (my past self included) as it offers possibility of feeling earnest and earning an income, despite it being a biophysical nonsense. When senior environmental leaders demonise more realistic assessments and associated despair, their ‘moodsplaining’ is promoting deference to power. Instead, for many people, feelings of despair have aided our radicalisation. That’s why an acceptance that modern societies are breaking down due to ecological degradation, amongst other factors, has been transforming people’s lives so we become more socially engaged, not less: becoming ‘doomsters’, as I term us in Breaking Together. More recently, I have wondered if there is a second tyranny in contemporary environmentalism, at least in the Western countries I have most experience of. It is a tyranny of piety.

Yes, I think an expectation that we all appear very deeply earnest has been hampering our freedom of expression and social contribution. It has helped morph environmentalism into a boring salesforce for ‘clean’ tech rather than a movement for global awakening and revolutionary change. Of course, the unnecessary destruction of the biosphere and associated suffering of people and other sentient life is appalling. And yes, I know that the hijacking of humanity’s response by corporations and elites is outrageous. Moreover, it’s quite obvious that the unfolding process of societal collapse will increasingly involve a vast amount of physical and psychological pain. Yet the piety that lurks within the environmental profession and movement doesn’t make any of that bad stuff disappear. It just adds a narcissistic desire to feel superior to the mess unfolding around us. Worse, such piety leads to more grumbling and misanthropic sentiment towards our fellow humans. That doesn’t inspire more social engagement. Instead, if we want people to join more revolutionary efforts then we’d better be living life more expressively than people involved in other political trends.

I mention this ‘tyranny of piety’ now because I am annoyed at myself for being part of this cultural phenomenon for too long. It’s in my mind when I receive grumbling comments about matters like a plastic bottle appearing in the background of a documentary on my YouTube channel, or why I would fly to Latin America to launch my book in Spanish, or whether my organic farm school where I live in Bali means that I’m too privileged to be relevant. Sometimes I reply, explaining things like my low ecological footprint, or why it’s more important than the specific emissions involved that some environmentalists fly at times, or how I’ve only rented land in Indonesia and am ploughing my savings into the project. But I notice a pious conversation crowds out other forms of emotion and communication, such as… “how can I help” or “that awesome, this is what I’m doing too.” I have a suspicion that piety arises from feelings of frustration, defeat and limitation. If so, then it’s ironic that people who believe that the collapse of modern societies has begun are often accused of being fatalist. Instead, because of an unfolding collapse we know there is a huge amount to play for. It also means we are in a highly turbulent era where we don’t know what is going to work. And we might all die a lot younger than we had assumed. So, with those three things in mind, we are released from the stubbornly optimistic and boringly pious forms of environmentalism. That achieved F-all anyway. Instead, we can choose to live our lives to the max according to our truth, values, talents and opportunities. We can follow our joy as we explore what path to take without the fake green fairytale. We can discover new ways to contribute after giving ourselves permission to ‘go wild’, as I wrote about earlier this year.

In my first ever public event on Deep Adaptation, my co-presenter Toni Spencer told the audience that gratitude can be a form of resistance, as it means we tune in to how we already feel complete and connected, so we don’t need what either consumer society or professional society offers us. I think playfulness can also be a form of resistance to the culture and systems of ‘imperial modernity’, if it involves ignoring what’s expected of us.

It is with this sense of freedom that I began dabbling in music production. It is also why I made a silly video for Mystical Cat, the second single from my new band, the Barefoot Stars. It debuts our singer Mia as the lead vocalist. The video fundraises for the Villa Kitty rescue centre in Bali, which rescues many hundreds of cats each year. They saved and rehoused Amy, the cat I wrote the song about on the day she died. Perhaps some pious environmentalists might be wondering about the carbon footprint from maintaining all the carnivorous cat rescue centres around the world. Or maybe that’s just my trauma talking after too long hanging around people with such habits of thought. Instead of that, I hope you can help Villa Kitty with a small donation, as they need all the help they can get.

Do you think that by escaping both the tyrannies of positivity and piety that pervade contemporary environmentalism, we can discover more honest, fun and (maybe) powerful ways of expressing ourselves and engaging others? Comment below.

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