Climate Change and the Human Bandwidth for Suffering
The struggle of selective sympathies
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” — Rabbi Tarfon
It’s difficult to deny that we live in precarious times. The ocean is rising, natural disasters are worsening, and our intricate web of biodiversity is beginning to show serious signs of weakness. We’re traveling through dire straits and don’t want to face the music. The notes are discordant.
Our bandwidth for the suffering out there is finite. Entire lifetimes could be devoted to even the smallest of issues that ail us. Among the great ills of the digital age, though, are the ways we can become systematically desensitized to all of them. Sometimes it feels as though to even be alive these days is to face an undying storm of pressing issues. To be informed is to know more than many can handle. To give our attention to each dilemma that deserves it is to spread ourselves thinner than our souls can bear.
Scientists have been sounding the alarm bells about the horrible fallout our climate could face if we didn’t change our ways since as far back as the 1960s. But even the largest bells of the highest towers can fade into the background with time. Six decades have passed and the fate of our planet is a can we’re still kicking down the road.
Climate change is the backdrop to many of our lives. As long as I’ve been alive, the very survival of our species has been an ever-present uncertainty. It’s part of the air we breathe. That our air is growing less breathable is an understanding deeply engrained enough for so many of us that we’ve grown bored with the reality. Smog-filled cities build flavored oxygen bars. We have a limited bandwidth for suffering, even when it’s our own.
When tragedies arise, we share posts of solidarity. Eventually, though, the “I Stand With Ukraine” flags are unceremoniously lowered. It’s not because we don’t support Ukraine, but simply because the suffering of Ukrainians has worked its way into our hardened routine alongside face masks, artificial intelligence, crippling digital addictions and biodiversity collapse. We live in a time of ever-shifting paradigms. It’s hard to look at the problems before us when the world turns at such dizzying speeds.
When school shootings happen, we recycle thoughts and prayers in predictable patterns. But through the impossibly wide angled lens of the modern age that we wear, our focus fades fast. School shootings and burning rainforests and the melting glaciers in rising seas are deafening cries, but we’re used to the shrieks of our ailing world. There’s no war or travesty that can’t slowly settle into the background when given time.
It’s human nature that remains our greatest threat when we consider the challenges ahead. We’re too numb to put our energy into each place that deserves it. Our attention has its limits. Maybe the destruction of the very ground on which we stand is simply too much for us to contend with. Maybe the realities are so hard to process that we’re desperate for any distraction we can find.
Maybe we’re blameless in our need to numb ourselves. It’s possible that TikTok and Instagram and Netflix keep us from sliding into despair. Maybe we’re all just becoming increasingly adept in the art of escape.
As things worsen, we’ll continue to create increasingly captivating distractions. As oceans continue to rise and the planet continues to warm, most of us will turn inward before we seek solutions. Because there’s nothing we can’t normalize, we might forever be destined to remain frogs in heating pots.
But hope isn’t lost completely. This growing sense of powerlessness we’re all experiencing doesn’t discount the innovations of our world’s greatest minds. As we lie here distracted, there’s simply no telling what world-saving innovations may still emerge tomorrow. Maybe from a heating sea of numbness will rise the inventions that change everything.