Christening Žižek

An essay by Slavoj Žižek, entitled “Greening Hegel,” is one, surprisingly, that I find insightful, but perhaps not in the way the author intended—although I wouldn't be surprised if he did intend it. Whatever else he is, Žižek is no dummy. He may be egregiously mistaken but he's not stupid. Likewise, he may merely be subject to, and his consciousness occluded by, ideology, ideology that he and other Marxists see as producing the false or distorted perspectives that others insist upon. Could it be instead that Marxism represents the upside-down, inverted worldview that Marx ascribed to all but those who see as he does? 

In any case, if you read nothing else, and the earlier parts are dense, read the last five paragraphs. Here Žižek sets up an analogy between Christianity and environmentalism, particularly between believers in God and believers in global warming:

Even the big fires that were devastating south-eastern Australia in late 2019 and early 2020 should not be read in such a simplified way. In a recent comment in Spectator, Tim Blair opened up a new perspective on this catastrophe:

“Controlled burns of overgrown flora were once standard practice in rural Australia, but now a kind of ecological religious fundamentalism has taken the place of common sense. There are many examples of recent legal rulings that punished those who cleared land around their properties. ‘We’ve been burning less than 1 per cent of our bushfire-prone land for the past 20 years,’ says fire brigade captain Brian Williams, ‘that means every year the fuel load continues to build.’ Well-meaning but ignorant attempts to protect animals’ natural ecosystems are, in part, the reason those ecosystems are now nothing but cinders and ash.”

The bias of this comment is clear: it is directed against the presumption of global warming, which, the author implies, should be rejected. But what we should actually learn from his comment is the ambiguity of signs. Here, a turn to theology may be helpful, since ecologists are often accused of harboring quasi-religious zeal. Instead of rejecting this accusation, we should proudly accept it and qualify it at the same time.

The beginning of the gospel of John contains a whole theory of signs (or miracles). God produces miracles, or, as we would say today, shocking things happen that disturb our common sense of reality like the fires in Australia. But “if we see miracles without believing we will only be hardened in our sin.”[9] Signs are meant to convince the believers, but when they are given, they also strengthen the opposition to Jesus in those who do not believe in him. This opposition “grows harsher and more belligerent, more open in its attempt to silence him; and each time he feels a deeper threat from the powers that were arrayed against him.”

Blair’s comment should be read along these theological lines: although it was definitely meant to make us “be hardened in our sin” (of global warming denial), it should not be dismissed as a corrupt lie. Instead, it should be received as a welcome opportunity to analyse the complexity of the situation in order to make it clear how this complexity makes our ecological predicament all the more dangerous. In nature, this domain of contingency is one where the Idea exists in externality with regard to itself. There, we are, by definition, in the domain of ambiguous signs and of the “spurious infinity” of complex interactions, where each occurrence can be a sign of its opposite. It follows that every human intervention aimed at restoring some kind of natural balance can trigger an unexpected catastrophe, and every catastrophe can be a harbinger of good news.

In both scenarios, the true believer is the good person. The unbelievers are the damned. Signs given by God as evidence of His existence confirm belief in the believers but make the unbelievers even more recalcitrant in their denial. The same goes for global warming: deniers will take signs of global warming catastrophism, including those caused or indirectly resulting from human interventions to reverse global warming catastrophes, as further proof of the non-existence of global warming, just as unbelievers take God's signs and use them to extend their rejection of Him.

Paradoxically, perhaps like the Christian believer, believers in global warming shouldn't just reject the unbelievers' claims as denialism. Rather, they should see the truth in them. That is, believers in global warming should see the truth of the existence of global warming in the furious denialism, just as Christian believers should see the truth of God in the unbeliever's stubborn denial of God's existence.

In nature, where ideas are actually subject to real forces and become part of the complexity of causal factors themselves, the signs are no longer mere signs but also active agents. In the case of such complex concatenations of causality, even human interventions to reverse or mitigate global warming may exacerbate it or worsen the catastrophe. Even attempts to remedy the situation can add to the problem. Along the same lines, he suggests, and here is the paradox that I appreciate most, miracles can come from disasters! 

This is why I agree with Zizek here, although not with the explicit content of his argument. Yet here he comes closest to my view of such catastrophism as global warming catastrophism. As I do, Zizek actually leaves room for miracles, for interventions from without, for unexpected and unaccounted for remedies. Ironically, I consider this perspective to be the most "realistic."

As a believer in the Christian sense, I don't think that we are going to be destroyed by ourselves as such. Miracles are possible and happen, unlikely solutions present themselves, interventions that we cannot now imagine are possible. Because miracles are possible and continue to happen, the human race won't go down in a hell fire of its own making. The ultimate conflagration will be miraculous.