The Plea
2nd of November 2021, the COP26 world leaders’ summit is opening. Hailed in the media as the last chance to reach a 1.5-degree global warming target and find a common ground for ambitious climate action. It brings together world leaders, scientists, policymakers and many more for two weeks of information and negotiations, loads of press moments and big promises to secure a sustainable future.
In her speech at the opening celebrations Elizabeth Wathuti, a climate activist from Kenya addressed the audience, stating that she has put a lot of thought into making the best of her four minutes on stage, but recognized it is not only up to her. She explains, “My truth will only fully land if you have the grace to listen”. She goes on and paints a picture of Kenya experiencing deadly droughts, with predictions saying that 50% of the world population will face water scarcity by 2025, urging people to open their hearts to help guide the decisions at COP26.
Elizabeth’s speech left me pondering, her plea to the audience to listen rang all too familiar. I have heard it before, Greta is known to say “You don’t listen” in almost any given address, but it’s not just young climate activists who have voiced a problem with listening before. For instance, we saw the US government ignore Dr. Fauci throughout the pandemic, leading him to the conclusion that senators are “not listening”. In short examples of non-listening are diverse and easily found.
After Elizabeth’s speech Boris Johnson, the English Prime Minister, nicely demonstrated how complicated and sometimes even simply unattainable listening can be. It seems that not just listening to climate activists or the global south is a lot to ask, even listening to oneself can be equally complex.
As host of COP26, the UK claimed to ensure that this COP will be an inclusive event, which will have very high corona safety standards, including but not limited to a set of rules that ensure safety during the conference. One such rule was the need for everyone to wear facemasks whilst in theater-style seating. Now somehow this, by his government set ruling must have slipped Johnson’s mind, as a picture of him next to David Attenborough (British national treasure, aged 95) without a face mask went viral. After a massive backlash on social media, he later tried to explain himself on CNN.
Takes an extra special kind of dickhead to not wear a mask to protect David fucking Attenborough pic.twitter.com/UwJFBxc3pz
— James Felton (@JimMFelton) November 1, 2021
The UK PM @BorisJohnson is in hot water after being pictured unmasked next to 95 year-old David Attenborough. I asked him for his response: pic.twitter.com/U7lGEZdgcc
— Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) November 2, 2021
Next to this, Johnson set out to hold a speech, mirroring Fridays for Futures rhetoric and declared “it one minute to midnight in regards to the climate emergency”. At a round table he also stated that “When it comes to tackling climate change, words without action, without deeds are absolutely pointless”. Now I couldn’t agree more with Johnson on this statement, as an earlier blog post outlined. Interestingly, however, he then proceeded to take a private plane from Glasgow to London – the train ride would have been a little over 4 hours. This got me thinking. If he is aware of the need to connect words to action – what else could be problematic? Is he not capable of listening, not even to himself?
Listening: A Skill
Whereas I stand by my former analysis that words seem to be used devoid of meaning and their disconnection to action leaves them as such, it seems that there is another side to the story. Listening seems to be a skill, not many master.
Listening is defined in the following way “to pay attention to sound; to hear something with thoughtful attention; and to give consideration.” which is in stark contrast to hearing, which is defined as a “process, function, or power of perceiving sound; specifically: the special sense by which noises and tones are received as stimuli.” For the sake of this blog post, I will assume that Elizabeth, like so many others, addressed people who have the capability to hear, hence the problematic part of receiving the message does not lie within a physical constraint.
Spivak in her much-acclaimed “Can the subaltern speak?” (Spivak, n.d.) explores notions of subjecthood of the subaltern and the ability of the subaltern to speak. Spivak uses the case of Sati, an Indian tradition according to which the widow takes her life after the death of her husband as a case study. It is important to note that Spivak in no way endorsed the practice of Sati, however, she noted that: Whereas the British saw Sati as a crime, in contrast, some nationalists saw it as a martyrdom, in both instances the subaltern – the women – could not speak for herself. The practice was talked about without the main subject to the practice as part of the conversation, fixating the women in a subaltern position. Therefore, Spivak concludes that the environment in which the subaltern has been cast renders the subaltern unable to speak for herself.
Following the idea of Spivak, that your environment marks you as a person and your ability to do certain things, in her case to speak, I want to suggest that in reversed conclusion a global northern worldview does influence our ability to listen. Whereas Spivak bases her suggestion that the given situation of the subaltern doesn’t lend itself to the ability to speak in the same way that others can, it seems that the environment we have created champions people with a profound disability to listen.
“The silence of the subaltern is “gesturing to the impossibility of speech to an audience that refuses to hear.” (Maggio, 2007)
So how could this be changed? Maggio warns of intellectual traps, which should be quoted in full: “It is not as simple as empowering the “native,” for the act of “empowerment” itself has a silencing effect. In other words, it might be impossible to enable the subaltern to speak. The two traps – speaking for or pretending that they can speak “on their own” – are always waiting for the well-intentioned intellectual. “ (Maggio, 2007)
Whereas there is a lot of academic literature available hoping to find a solution to the problem with subjecthood as championed in postcolonial thinkers, it seems that big parts of this quest are concerned with empowerment of the subaltern and around a change of their conditions that would enable them to speak.
It seems to me that this is connected to an idea that is fundamental to development: Change is something that is desirable in others. Others can constitute people, nations and most commonly broadly refers to the global south. But this is not just a political phenomenon, it applies to other discussions like the one on climate too. “Many of us would like the world to be a more sustainable place… we just don’t want to have to do too much of the work ourselves.” (Pappas, Pappas and Sweeney, 2015) We hereby assume that change is something that starts not within ourselves but somewhere else. Somewhere else marking a place at which change is of higher necessity. There are always people or nations who are not doing their job concerning the climate crisis, so why be ambitious ourselves if others don’t do their part? Sounds familiar? The argument has been made over and over by various leaders being asked about their own nationally determined contributions at COP26.
The High Horse
A suggested cause for this is that we have a framework and listening to things that are outside of this framework is hard. Whereas, “other” people have been forced to listen to our frameworks and adapt to them to a point where they can navigate such a framework next to their own. People of such kind are bilingual in terms of frameworks, something the global north is dramatically underdeveloped in.
We have become so comfortable sitting on a high horse, that assume our normative framework is the only one worth listening to, that we have lost the ability to listen. We have, to be precise, lost the ability to listen, to anyone whom we believe not to be a subject within our own framework. In the last year alone, we saw Americans storm their own capital, not listening to the election results and also not listening to their own constitution demanding a peaceful transfer of power. Next to this all across the global north people have become comfortable self-medicating, knowing better than any studied medicinal how to handle a pandemic, again suspending listening abilities to sources outside of their own framework. These tendencies have surely been aided by the use of social media, which champions people who have loads to say – over people who listen and add to increased bubbles through the use of algorithms. But to put all the blame on a medium would be to blame a tool rather its yielder.
But this disability to listen is reflected not just in big events, the big events are merely a collection of smaller acts of not listening. Without much hesitancy, I can call on examples from my personal and professional environment underlining such a mentality. I have had conversations with friends in which they have expressed the idea that a wish of me to travel to certain destinations to learn is pointless, as I would not find anything worthwhile in these underdeveloped places. Similarly, I have received comments from within the development community that it would be categorically impossible to learn from places that have a different ideological foundation. It seems that here, disagreeing with an ideology allows us to disregard all aspects of a certain area and makes it acceptable to not listen.
Whilst the global north was busy educating the world, we have forgotten to educate ourselves. Stemming from some kind of false superiority idea and knowledge snobbery that still exists. Again, this is not just a north vs south phenomenon, it seems that in recent times we have drawn lines of personal frameworks closer, creating bubbles and disengaging with the art of listening to the moment we step out of our given bubble. But isn’t that what makes us narrow-minded? I believe Humboldt’s worldview can be expanded to the idea of listening to the world:
“The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have never viewed the world.” – Humboldt (Wulf, 2015)
So, I would like to urge you to try and listen to people, especially when they are outside of your bubble.
Disclaimer:
If you feel offended by this post, take a moment to reflect on why it offends you. If the reason is that I am generalizing actions of a few individuals and you are nothing like them, you usually listen to people and can’t relate: Congratulations, you make a very rare specimen and I hope you could leave tips on how to listen in the comments. I for one could sure use some.
If this is putting you off because you feel like I am somewhat too harsh and there is really no need to learn from some places, let me ensure you, I criticize myself as much as I do you. I do morally disagree with a lot of things that are going on in the world and would not like to support these viewpoints in any type of matter. Do I think I am too good to listen to them? Yes, sometimes I do. Do I think it is beneficial for me to have this sentiment? No, I don’t’. I think in truth it is deeply damaging to have such a sentiment and try to remind myself of this on a regular. I still do not succeed and often pass judgment, before I have taken the time to actually listen to a different perspective. However, I do believe that a key to solving some of the more complex problems we as humans are facing would be to listen to all the voices instead of just a selected view.
Reflections on blogging
“This is the first time it’s not painful to read something you have written for your studies.” A lovely compliment by my boyfriend, who is nice enough to proofread most of my texts and had just read my first blog post: “blah, blah, blah, – words devoid of meaning.”
Writing in blog form has been a very good experience for me, as it is much more accessible than an academic text. The possibility to integrate different media and use Tweets as starting points to discussions – in my opinion – makes things livelier and more fun. Arguably a blog has a huge potential to reach a broader audience and open up a field of interest to people, it can almost function as a gateway. Furthermore, I have to say that the participatory aspect of blogging, both in the clubhouse session we organized and the comment section has been a very positive experience. I would even go as far as to say at points comments were more interesting than the article and discussions were truly enriching.
Working in a group on the blog also has been very positive, alone it would surely have been much more daunting to open up a blog. But next to this it was the group discussions that made up the base of this blog and I have been lucky to exchange various viewpoints with my fellow authors.
The only thing that I would like to remark as a downside to this exercise is that it’s not lasting longer, allowing the blogs to mature a little more.
However, personally, it changed my view on blogs. Whereas I would have never considered writing a blog previous to this exercise, I would consider it in the future.
References
BBC News. 2021. COP26: Did Boris Johnson and Sir David Attenborough break face mask rules?. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-59149998> [Accessed 7 November 2021].
BBC News. 2021. COP26: World at one minute to midnight over climate change – Boris Johnson. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59114871> [Accessed 7 November 2021].
In: Hearing. 2021. Merriam Webster. [online] Available at: <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hearing> [Accessed 7 November 2021].
In: Merriam Webster. 2021. Listen. [online] Available at: <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/listen> [Accessed 7 November 2021].
Maggio, J., 2007. “Can the Subaltern Be Heard?”: Political Theory, Translation, Representation, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 32(4), pp.419-443.
Nytimes.com. 2021. Video: ‘You Are Not Listening’: Fauci Slams Rand Paul. [online] Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000007357149/fauci-confronts-rand-paul-in-coronavirus-hearing.html> [Accessed 7 November 2021].
Pappas, E., Pappas, J. and Sweeney, D., 2015. Walking the walk: conceptual foundations of the Sustainable Personality. Journal of Cleaner Production, 86, pp.323-334.
Spivak, G., n.d. Can the subaltern speak?.
the Guardian. 2021. Boris Johnson will travel home from Cop26 by private plane. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/01/boris-johnson-will-travel-home-from-cop26-by-private-plane> [Accessed 7 November 2021].
Wathuti, E., 2021. Climate activist Elizabeth Wathuti’s full speech at COP26.
Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPZgAbryr8> [Accessed 7 November 2021].
Wulf, A., 2015. The invention of nature. London: Murray.
