Panic

Greta Thunberg, who essentially amounts to the tribune for planetary youth to the world's so-called leaders, at least on the question of the climate emergency, calls for a sense of "panic". Panic generally has a uniformly negative connotation. Maybe she misspoke? Condescending adults will no doubt dismiss her remarks in favor of "panic" as an instance of youthful over-enthusiasm, or even mere inexperience, immaturity, or limited command of language.

Still, it would behoove us to think very carefully about the matter. There is a strong case to be made that she is precisely right. It hardly needs to be dwelled on that panic can lead to bad results, since we incessantly get no end of warnings and tut-tuts on that score, by the tribunes of the status quo. But impetuous action stemming from panic does not seem to be the greatest source of danger to our collective survival right now.

Consider: when your hand comes in contact with a hot stove, you do not first summon to mind a lecture you once heard from a serious and high-minded college professor about the dangers of precipitous actions, and first consider whether, by flinching, you might possibly dislocate your shoulder, or whether your hand might hit some other object and cause more harm, than if you were to remove your hand with all deliberate but careful speed from the surface in question. No: you flinch. It is a hardwired reaction.

Nor, I should hope, would you quickly succomb to any urgings from other serious, high-minded "authorities" who offered to somehow disable and anaesthetize your involuntary reactions in such circumstances -- whether in exchange for some monetary consideration, or even for free! -- in order to afford you greater deliberative powers.

And yet, the latter is essentially what we have collectively done: succomb to a form of planetary anaesthesis which appears to have deadened if not paralyzed our very ability to collectively "flinch" before the ever more ominous fate that unmistakeably looms before us.