(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
For the past week, I have been so engrossed in this book that my boyfriend has pointed out that I seem completely in love. He's right. I am inspired by the author and philosopher, Roman Krznaric, with a doctorate in political sociology, now a researcher at Oxford University. And there are several good reasons for that.
Not since I studied the history of ideas in my twenties and practically ate, slept and showered with the books I got lost in, have I experienced such a strong effect from a non-fiction book. I would give a lot to be a (young) student again, travel to Oxford and attend lectures with Krznaric once a week. Because this is a person who wants something revolutionary and who inspires action
I have read about Krznaric before, in another of this year's books, anthropocene, where Thomas Hylland Eriksen (one of the editors) writes about Krznaric's previous book How to think long-term in a short-term world (2020). According to Hylland Eriksen is it the best book he has read about 'time' in a long time. In the book, Krznaric outlines six methods for how we can become good ancestors for unborn generations, and he introduces examples of 'time rebels', people with a new approach to democracy, culture and politics.
From our collective past
I History for the future, which was recently published in Norwegian, steadily translated by Rune R. Moen, Krznaric looks backwards. He stretches his gaze, puts on seven-mile boots and weaves past and present together. He does it with an angle mirror, with a telescope and a magnifying glass. But he is never lecturing. He investigates issues from our time and connects them to historical events – because he sees that it is necessary for the world to think anew and act now. That is why he takes us into ten chapters on topics ranging from water shortages to democracy, environmental challenges and economics. With the aim of finding out "what it is in our collective past that can inspire us to deal with the most pressing challenges facing humanity today". Nothing less.
"It is crucial to make use of everything we have found out about humans' remarkable capacity for cooperation, mutual assistance and collective action."
In the book, Krznaric seeks insight from "what went well, and tells cautionary tales about what went wrong". One of the positive examples he believes we can learn from today is from when Tokyo in the 1700th century was called Edo and was a city without waste. Everything was recycled, and the economy was circular, with a long-term policy that facilitated afforestation and logging regulations. In the chapter on Artificial Intelligence let's see how wrong things can go without regulations – the example is taken from when the Scottish financier John Law obtained a monopoly on trade in the French colony of Louisiana in 1716. "It was at that time that 'millionaire' was used for the first time", writes Krznaric. By 1720, the fun was over: "The result was the world's first economic crash, known as the Mississippi Bubble."
Social innovations and Extinction Rebellion
Especially environmentthe problem runs like a red thread through the book. Krznaric is aware of his Western gaze. Since he is a writer from the global north, he tries to compensate by finding relevant historical examples also from the global south – and not just from Europe and North America. He emphasizes "what role social movements, local organizations and ordinary people play in shaping the landscape of the past". And he is more concerned with social than technological innovations. In the preface, he writes: "If we are to have hope of being able to exploit currentlys wisdom, it is crucial to make use of everything we have found out about people's remarkable capacity for cooperation, mutual assistance and collective action. The time has come for a relational renaissance.”
Krznaric nuances existing concepts and historical contexts. Even when a topic is disturbing, or the ideas and possible solutions are complicated, utopian and at times may seem unorthodox, he conveys everything in a boundary-breaking way that makes me think of Tove Jansson's book Dangerous midsummer (1954/2004), which I recently read to my eight-year-old daughter. This lovely book, about the wonderful consequences of a flood in Moomin valley, doesn't look like anything else, but it does hold one loving anarchism, which I find in Krznaric.
To play a decisive role in real change regarding slavery, civil rights, women's liberation and gay rights.
Krzanaric himself has taken to the streets, not only in climate protests, but also in more intrusive 'direct action', including one of the first under the auspices of Extinction Rebellion (XR) in London in 2018. Not because he wanted to sit down to block traffic. But, as he writes in the book's chapter on breaking the addiction fossil brensel#: "[I]n common with many others, I had come to realize that the climate crisis will cause far greater disruption in the lives of future generations."
He therefore joined what he calls "the radical flank", a faction more extreme than the main movement. The radical flanks in such movements, according to Krznaric, have been shown to play a decisive role in real changes regarding slavery, civil rights, women's liberation and gay rights. But as he writes: "These examples lead the mind to an important and politically sensitive topic: Should today's climate movement utilize more of the power of the radical flank?" In his response, he criticizes a study that concludes that radical flanks are the wrong strategy, since the authors of the study looked at movements that attempted to achieve regime change, and not at movements that were aimed at specific political goals, such as environmental protection. The suffragettes and the American civil rights movement, "two of the most successful social movements of our time", were therefore not included in the study. Krznaric concludes that the global climate movement, which stays within the law, is actually helped by the disturbing presence of a radical wing that breaks the law.
He questions where we would have been without the illegal actions the civil rights movement. "Politicians can often dismiss groups on the radical flank as 'extremists' or 'criminals', but that's how progressive change happens," he believes, "and that's how democracy preserves meaning and vitality." He also writes: "The irony is that the walls of my children's school are covered with pictures of heroic criminals such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Emmeline Pankhurst. Should they really be torn down?”
Collective democracy
Krznaric, in addition to joining a radical flank, has established an itinerant empathy museum. And he readily admits his own mistakes. In the chapter on new faith in democracy, he talks about his own lack of knowledge about the concept of democracy when, in the 1990s, he was a teacher on a course on (just) the history of democracy at a well-known British university. Alternative forms such as 'collective democracy', with decisions made by consensus, as was for example practiced in the city of Djenné-Djeno in Mali in West Africa between 250 BC. and 1400 AD, was not on the agenda. There was nothing on the syllabus other than material on representative democracy, "– professional politicians who are elected by their voters in competition between several parties every few years". IN History for the future urges Krznaric to look precisely at Djenné-Djeno and other places where they have practiced innovative forms of democracy.
"The irony is that the walls of my children's school are covered with pictures of heroic criminals like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr."
Perhaps it is the loving but also impatient anarchism of Krznaric, and the ability to stretch a thought far, that makes me so awake and excited during the reading. But it is also this ability that in some places in the book makes me skeptical. A skepticism Krznaric himself expects to be met with, among other things when he tears down the mythology that surrounds democracy in the West, or in his own critical words: "The ideal of representative government was developed to prevent democratic politics, not to facilitate for that.” This is a claim that can be debated. But he nuances along the way and wonders if there are any realistic alternatives in our complex globalized world. And reminds, among other things, that ever since the Athenians first gathered for a public assembly on Pnyx, over the centuries, in various places in the world, there have been models that involve more participatory politics, more debate and direct decisions. “As soon as we begin to imagine another story, we can begin to imagine another future», he writes. But his examples, such as citizens' councils with real power, debate and direct decisions, are, as he himself emphasizes towards the end of the chapter, something he believes can happen within representative democracy. He is only against the monopoly of political power.
To call out inner thugs
In the chapter on avoiding civilizations breakdown, subtitled "How Nations and Empires Have Coped Through Crisis and Change", Krznaric highlights how an external enemy has historically proved important for creating cohesion. In the absence of an external enemy i the climate battle he wonders if inner thugs can unite us. These can be fossil fuel companies and billionaires. Or, as he writes: "[W]hat about the countries that produce a lot of fossil fuels, such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and even Norway, which is one of the world's largest oil and gas exporters despite its climate-friendly profile?" The use of the word "to call out inner thugs" is seen as problematic in our polarized contemporary times. It is also problematic in a historical light – these are precisely the aspects of the past that we have not should let us be 'inspired' by. Here I miss a little more nuance. Especially from such a humanistic writer and important contemporary philosopher. Nevertheless, I say: Read this book! With a loving critical eye.
See our other review.
See https://www.romankrznaric.com/about
