In a time when North American scientists and politicians are still debating the pros and cons of a carbon tax—when the current US President, within hours of his inauguration, orders the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement and promotes fossil fuels and mineral mining—theologian Sallie McFague contends that climate change poses a greater danger to the globe than Nazism prior to the Second World War (See my postscript at the bottom of this post).

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In another post, I described the debilitating psychological condition called solastalgia, a response to the loss felt in climate change-related impacts. McFague goes so far as to embrace a militant approach to the problem, urging citizens to dedicate themselves fully and be willing to sacrifice to save the planet’s eco-system. In her book, A New Climate for Theology, McFague espouses a spiritual attitude of gratitude and praise toward the natural world while adopting a radical war footing against global warming.

McFague widely defines “spiritual” to include the secular appreciation of nature. Rather than regarding God as a “being, McFague subscribes to the idea that God is the source of life, love and hope. A spiritual approach would provide the inner strength to tackle the worst effects of changing climate patterns, says Douglas Todd of The Vancouver Sun, who added, “I have been re-convinced of the necessity of a spiritual response to environmental problems.”

Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice & the Blade, writes of the ancient Bronze Age culture of Minoan (later Minoan-Mycenean) Crete (1,000 to 1,500 BCE), who still revered the Goddess. Citing Nicolas Platon, an archeologist who had excavated the island for over fifty years, Eisler writes of a society in which “the whole of life was pervaded by an ardent faith in the goddess Nature, the source of all creation and harmony”; this in a time when art extolled the symbols of nature—such as the serpent and butterfly, both symbols of transformation, rebirth and wisdom.

“In Crete,” writes Eisler, “for the last time in recorded history, a spirit of harmony between women and men as joyful and equal participants in life appears to pervade [in] a tradition that is unique in its ‘delight in beauty, grace, and movement’ and in its ‘enjoyment of life and closeness to nature.’ ” This way of life has been termed gylany*, a social sysem based on equality of all sexes. Despite the fact that they were surrounded by threats from an increasingly warlike and male-dominated (androcratic*) world, Cretans remained an “exceptionally peace-loving people” and their art did not idealize warfare. Cretans maintained “an ardent faith in the goddess Nature,” writes Platon. “This led to a love of peace, a horror of tyranny, and a respect for the law. Even among the ruling classes, personal ambition seems to have been unknown; nowhere do we find the name of an author attached to a work of art or a record of the deeds of a ruler.”

“The differences between the spirit of Crete and that of its neighbours,” writes Eisler, “are of more than academic interest.” The lack of Cretan military fortifications and signs of aggressive war—in sharp contrast to the walled cities and chronic warfare that were elsewhere already the norm—provides a confirmation from the past that peaceful human co-existence is not just a utopian dream.”

Eisler notes that a “recognition of our oneness with all of nature” lay at the heart of both the Neolithic and Cretan worship of the Goddess. She adds, “Increasingly, the work of modern ecologists indicate that this earlier quality of mind, in our time often associated with some types of Eastern spirituality, was far advanced beyond today’s environmentally destructive ideology. In fact, it foreshadows new scientific theories that all the living matter of earth, together with the atmosphere, oceans, and soil [and I would add the universe] forms one complex and inter-connected “life” system.” Quite fittingly, scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis called this the Gaia Hypothesis—Gaia being one of the ancient Greek names of the Goddess.

Eisler provides examples of sociobiologists who draw on nineteenth-century Darwinism by citing insect societies to support their androcratic (social and political rule by men) theories. If we are to truly rise victorious over the scourge of climate change—a function of our current lifestyle and paradigms—we will need to adopt a cultural evolution that embraces a partnership society heralded by new and renewed symbology, language and “myth”.

For a few years I co-taught an environmental education course for primary and secondary school teachers. The course was intended to help teachers introduce environmental precepts and general awareness in all aspects of the primary and secondary school curriculum, such as creative ways to infuse environmental stewardship in courses from math to art. As much as I liked the integrative approach to this program, it is my belief that the “soft” science of Ecology should be taught as a basic course throughout a student’s entire school career (from Grade 1 to 12), giving it the prominence it deserves as a life-lesson mandate not unlike the three Rs.

Ecology is considered a “soft” science, because it integrates all other sciences and, as such, is more the study of relationships, links and consequence. As the study of ecosystems and the environment, Ecology lets us look at ourselves and how we relate to all other things, living and non-living, on this planet and ultimately the universe: the approach is only limited by our own perceptions. Ecologists study natural systems, which include all the systems in our society such as our economic systems, our social systems, business and financial models, cultural interactions and technological use. It behooves us to look to Nature’s Wisdom, to Gaia (our “mother”) for Her timeless lessons in our evolution. 

Postscript:

Nazi Germany, contends Riane Eisler, demonstrated the most violent reaction to a gylanic concept (e.g., a society in which there is balance and equality between the sexes), proving to be the modern regression to the earliest and most brutal form of proto-androcracy and a foreshadower of a neo-androcratic future.

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Like the Kurgans before them, the Nazis killed, plundered and looted—particularly in their wholesale slaughter of Jews. Likewise, they ‘idealized’ women as the hausfrau, akin to an “often pleasant domestic animal” (Nietzsche) to be used by men for sexual enjoyment, personal service, entertainment, and procreation. It was, in fact, Hitler’s plan to reward decorated soldiers with the right to have more than one wife as a warrior’s booty. According to the Führer, not only women but “weak” and “effeminate” men like Jews were the natural inferiors to his new race of “supermen.” Sound familiar?…

Beware of comments that refer to “the enemy from within.” Or “they are poisoning the blood of our country.” Or the catch phrase “make America great again.” Or “you know, Hitler did some good things, too.” Or promises like: “this is a fork in the road of human civilization,” particularly just prior to a Nazi-style (Seig-Heil) salute from someone who will supposedly be responsible for a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

“The year is 2022. Our overpopulated planet is experiencing catastrophic climate change, mega-corporations have excessive power over the government, and clean living is a luxury only the 1 percent can afford. It may read like a scan of the front-page headlines, but these predictions were laid out half a century ago in the dystopian film Soylent Green,” writes George Bass of The Washington Post.

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The 1973 science fiction eco-thriller Soylent Green, directed by Richard Fleischer, was based on the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. The movie stars Charlton Heston as Robert Thorn, an illiterate rather wily NYC detective who must solve the murder of a Soylent executive with the help of his sidekick researcher and friend Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson). In one scene, Thorn notes that the city of over 40 million logs 137 homicides a day.

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The murder mystery unravels a hive of intrigue in a sweltering 90° New York City, over-crowded with a restive population of homeless and starving people. “Margarine spoils in the fridge, and a sickly fog … hangs in the air,” writes Bass. Thorn shares a small room with friend and helper Sol in a building where he must daily negotiate an obstacle course of occupants who crowd the stairs and hallways. These scenes contrast with those within the enclaves of the corporate elite, who enjoy a luxurious lifestyle of spacious homes equipped with ample water and food and the latest technology and games—a common trope of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in several dystopian works such as the Brazilian TV show 3%, and the movies Elysium, Advantageous, and Snowpiercer.

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Accustomed to living a scorched existence, Thorn becomes infatuated with a bar of soap he finds in the victim’s mansion and an air conditioner that can make a room “cold, like winter used to be.” I’m reminded of another crusty detective scrabbling for comfort items in a less than comfortable world: Detective Miller in the TV series The Expanse breaks into his subject’s apartment to use her shower.

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In this ‘future’ world of synthetic food, the public lives off the high-energy vegetable concentrates created by the Soylent Corporation. Their latest synthetic food product is Soylent Green, advertised as a “miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world,” and is so popular that it must be rationed to a single day availability per week—causing more of those riots I already mentioned. Of course, the wealthy elite still eat meat and semi-fresh vegetables, but even these are not to the standard that we in North America are accustomed to. The meat is old and the vegetables imperfect. Bass notes that “Each door in the luxury tower block is automated, the penthouse butler is dressed in garish hunting pink, and the height of decadence is a fresh shower.” Climate change even impacts the super-rich.

Most pressing on the public’s mind is hunger and food insecurity. Micheal Peck of The Break Through writes that corporations and governments commit murder and state-sanctioned mass cannibalism to protect their food supply. Soylent Corporation employs an assassin to dispatch its enemies and the killer doesn’t spend his pay on a car or a house; instead, he splurges on real strawberry jam (which goes for $150 a jar, marvels Roth).

In another scene Roth laments to Thorn, “When I was a kid food was food. Before our scientific magicians poisoned he water, polluted the soil. Decimated plant and animal life. Why, in my day you could buy meat anywhere. Eggs, they had. Real butter. Fresh lettuce in the store.” Thorn answers, “I know, Sol. You told me before. A heat wave all year long. A greenhouse effect. Everything is burning up.” When Thorn brings back a prize of meat and some old vegetables he’d scavenged from the murder victim’s apartment, Roth grows emotional and shares, “I haven’t eaten like this in years.” Thorn responds, “I never ate like this.”

Thorn’s investigation ultimately leads him to a discovery that goes way beyond the murder, which he discovers is really an assassination, one that will reveal the ultimate corporate conspiracy: Soylent Green is people.

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Lebow adds that Soylent Green did not receive the critical acclaim it deserved on its release (though it has since become somewhat of a classic with an eclectic audience). “What none of the critics writing in 1973 could have foreseen … is the near prophetic view of the absolute callousness of late capitalism wherein profit and the enrichment of the few reign supreme.” According to Lebow, while Soylent Green has been largely forgotten, more recent films such as The Day After Tomorrow have been received with great fanfare and have been credited with helping change perceptions about climate change, especially in the US. Lebow argues that The Day After Tomorrow pales in comparison to Soylent Green in terms of urgency and clarity of message and “that the focus on climate as the driver of change is more forthrightly posited in this film than in any popular genre film on the topic that I have seen.”

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The Opening Title of the Film

Alisa Lebow, Professor of Screen Media at University of Sussex ascribes the opening title of the film as nothing less than brilliant and worthy of study:

“Charles Braverman’s two and a half minute documentary montage that opens the film is a revelation in and of itself and worthy of sustained analysis. Beginning with sepia images of early American settlers, the montage unwittingly apportions blame correctly to the white settler colonists for the maddening pace of industrialization and the demise of any balanced and respectful relationship with the lived environment. The montage quickly accelerates from its proto-Ken Burns Effect zooms and pulls to a frenzied barrage of cuts and dissolves with some nifty split screen effects that could not have been simple to produce at the time. Comprised exclusively of stills, it manages to convey the dizzying pace of development and its often unnoticed effects. Highways are choked with cars, factory chimneys belch black smoke, people crowd the streets in all reaches of the globe, as mountains of junked cars threaten to overtake the frame and garbage piles up in every corner.”

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Decades-Old Cautionary Tale Highly Relevant Today

The 1960s was a time of great activism and environmental awareness, igniting an environmental movement led by Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring and Paul R. Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb, among other calls for action. Maurice Mitchell of the Geektwins shares that many important scientific works warning of the future devastation of climate change came to us in the 1960s. “By the 1960s, aerosol pollution had become a serious local problem and scientists began to consider the cooling effect of particulate pollution on global temperatures. Paul R. Ehrlich wrote that the greenhouse effect is being enhanced by carbon dioxide and is being countered by low-level clouds generated by contrails, dust, and other contaminants. In 1963, J. Murray Mitchell presented one of the first up-to-date temperature reconstructions, which showed that global temperatures increased steadily until 1940. In 1965, the Science Advisory Committee warned of the harmful effects of fossil fuel emissions.”

Elisa Guimarães of Collider writes: “At the height of the 21st century, Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green can make for a somewhat weird watch. Originally released in 1973, the film first produces a sense of disconnect in modern viewers with its initial card, which dates its plot as taking place in the far-off year of 2022. The film’s extremely 1970s brand of sexism and neo-Malthusian approach to overpopulation can also feel uncomfortable for contemporary eyes. And, yet, Soylent Green’s social and environmental concerns feel all the more urgent in a world in which climate change has become undeniable.”

In her article entitled “The Greatest Horror of ‘Soylent Green’ Isn’t Soylent Green—It’s This”, Guimarães notes that “there’s something in Soylent Green that feels even more wrong than the realization that humanity has been engaging in involuntary cannibalism.” Guimarães argues that the scene with the assisted suicide clinic helps viewers comprehend “just how devoid of value human life has become in such a scarcity-ridden world.” The film shows only too clearly how people are treated: as homo sacer commodities in a Foucault biopolitical world of disposable humans. Guimarães argues that the euthanasia facility “is the one place in which the poor and weak of the Soylent Green society may find some semblance of dignity; but it is also the place to which you go to be turned from an unproductive individual into a product.”

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Something parents often say to get their kids to behave and not run wild and create chaos is: curiosity killed the cat. It’s a clear warning of the dangers of unnecessary investigation or experimenting without reason. It implies that being curious could sometimes lead to misfortune or danger. Better safe than sorry, eh?…

I think it’s the opposite: curiosity saves lives. Curiosity keeps us alive.

Sammy, author’s cat takes a stroll (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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Let me tell you a story about my mother first:

One of seven siblings of a cattle farmer in Germany, my mom was not formally educated past Grade 7. This did not mean that she wasn’t educated. Curiosity led her to learn an entire language (English) by first reading comic books. She mastered elements of several sciences including botany, genetics, horticulture, and geology. Whatever caught her interest, my mother dove into finding out more with research. We weren’t rich and this was well before the internet and personal laptop computers, so this meant applying herself by visiting the library and borrowing books from friends to acquire information. Her research was impeccable.

Doing research is both an art and a science that opens up a world of both answers and more questions. It always starts with curiosity and leads to more curiosity by not only answering specific questions but by creating new ones. And so the process goes. My mom’s inquisitive mind led her to amazing discoveries of how the world worked, what grew where and why and all the strange and wonderful things on planet Earth. She was a naturalist with a keen mind for finding out more.

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When I was the only kid left at home and began to travel in my late teens, it became a kind of running joke that whenever I left for an adventure, say to Europe, she didn’t get lonely or bored; she dove right into a new world in some scientific quest. When I returned from my adventure, we both had discoveries to share. While I’d experienced a new country and its culture and food, she’d explored a whole new scientific discipline.

My mother’s indefatigable curiosity for the natural world was inspiring. It kept her motivated and interested in life in general. She was never satisfied with answering just “what”, or even “how;” what caught her interest was “why”: the question of context and meaning. She kept herself young, connected, motivated well into her nineties through her curiosity.

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Nurturing Mental Health with Curiosity

Curiosity helps motivate learning, encourages creative problem-solving and plays a crucial role in healthy human development. In a nutshell, curiosity is a sign of mental health.

Researchers have shown that curiosity improves memory, creativity, and higher life satisfaction, and—contrary to the poor curious cat—aging well. Others have shown that curiosity can even protect against anxiety and depression. In fact, contrary to what scientists thought decades ago, the older human brain continues to have a great capacity for learning and developing. The study of neuroplasticity shows that pathways in your brain can develop and strengthen, even when you’re older—like my mom, and me now… The brain functions like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it gets. If you don’t exercise it, it will get weaker.

So, having a curious mind and being naturally inquisitive seems like a pretty good thing.

Anand Tamboli at Medium.com notes that “one of the benefits of being curious is that you will end up making fewer errors … When we are curious, it is easier to avoid confirmation bias. With a curious mind, we tend to look at more alternatives, and the chances of stereotyping someone [or something] are quite low.” Tamboli adds that “we don’t get defensive when we stay curious. That is because instead of making any assumptions, we ask more questions, which in turn makes us more empathetic. When we’re curious, we listen better.” All together, this makes us more creative and innovative—and, ultimately successful.

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What You See Is What You Get

In a four minute read in the Daily Good, Annie Dillard writes in an excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek about how when she was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, she used to take a precious penny of hers and hide it for someone else to find. I’ll let you read the excerpt because she writes it best, but the upshot is to cultivate a natural curiosity borne of humility and simplicity: what you see is what you get. And the best gifts are surprises. You just need to see… “The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.”

When I go for my daily walks in Nature, I am an explorer aiming for discovery. I tell myself that I must come back with three gifts. They could be anything: things I found, new observations or surprising experiences. I don’t actively look for them; I let them present themselves to me through simple exploration. Ultimately, these gifts always come when and where I least expect. A profusion of mushrooms presenting themselves where I’d sat on a log to eat my lunch; a sudden flurry of winter diving ducks I’d aroused from their quietude by the river; a lone fox loping carefree along the icy shore of the river before suddenly noticing me and scampering away. I seem to have no problem acquiring these gifts. The idea makes me smile and I think of Annie Dillard and her copper pennies.

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Navigating a Changing World with Curiosity

So much of humanity operates on a purpose-driven model of “progress” delivered to us by a stable Holocene world. But that world was never ‘delivered’ to us; and it’s changing. A lot.

With the onset of climate change, environmental degradation, and associated political strife and confusion in the world, everything is becoming more precarious. For some, it seems like the world is falling apart. “A precarious world is a world without teleology,” writes Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World. She adds that precarity is the condition of being vulnerable. “Unpredictable encounters transform us; we are not in control, even of ourselves. Unable to rely on a stable structure of community, we are thrown into shifting assemblages, which remake us as well as others…Everything is in flux, including our ability to survive.”

“What do you do when your world starts to fall apart?” Tsing asks. “I go for a walk,” she says, “and if I’m lucky, I find mushrooms. Mushrooms pull me back into my senses, not just—like flowers—through their riotous colours and smells, but because they pop up unexpectedly, reminding me of the good fortune of just happening to be there. Then I know that there are still pleasures amidst the terrors of indeterminacy … indeterminacy also makes life possible.”

Changing with circumstances is the stuff of survival. Tsing describes something she calls collaborative survival, which requires working across differences, crossing into ecotones of change and flux and opening to ‘contaminating’ encounters that lead to collaboration. Messy? Darn right; but also exciting and full of wonderful promise.

Using the matsutake mushroom as her example, Tsing declares that, “If we open ourselves to their … attractions, matsutake [or any natural phenomenon] can catapult us into the curiosity that seems to me the first requirement of collaborative survival in precarious times.”

Remaining curious is tantamount to our survival.

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Staying Curious…

Tamboli gives five tips on keeping your mind alive with curiosity.

1. Explore, observe, and listen: Look at things like mysteries and explore possibilities. “They say that instead of looking at things like puzzles, look at them as mysteries. Because puzzles have definitive answers. Once you find the missing information, it’s done. But mysteries are more nuanced. They pose questions that cannot be answered definitively. The answers are complex, interrelated, and can involve both known and unknown factors.”

2. Diversify your interests: Activate your mind. “When you diversify your interests, you get new experiences. These new experiences can help in activating your mind in many ways other things cannot.”

3. Teach others: It’s one of the best ways to learn new things. “The next time you’re feeling bored, talk to someone. Think about your skills or facts that you know. Offer to teach them. Teaching, as they say, is one of the best ways to learn new things. Plus, it can be a highly rewarding activity.” This is similar to “going into service” to help a community or group in need. Thinking beyond myself but to the needs of others, often directs me to something wonderfully new.

4. Mingle with non-likeminded people: “This practice will help you see the world with more empathy. It will also help you make a better case for your own beliefs. And that is because you will understand various arguments and counter-arguments much better than you would otherwise.” What this means to me is: seek out discussion with people who have a different view of things, where you can argue your points; this often leads to new, more full-bodied understandings of issues. This keeps your mind sharp and active, and so alive!

5. Stop relying on Google or the internet: stay curious and become more creative by learning the facts for yourself. “If you stop committing information to your memory, you are essentially damaging your neuroplasticity. When we learn new things, our brain goes through many long-lasting functional changes. It is what we call neuroplasticity. Over-reliance on the internet and the thinking that ‘I can always Google it’ means you are not learning. You are not curious.”

This is akin to learning to do your own research, to seek the truth through cross referencing (and not relying on one simple answer), poring over books, asking questions. It comes down to figuring out context and why things are, not just what they are.

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The Proverb

The expression “Curiosity killed the cat” is actually a recent version of an older saying from the as early as 1598: “Care killed the Cat. It is said that a cat has nine lives, but care would wear them all out.” Either saying is appropriate for cats, in that they are by nature curious creatures (one of the reasons I so adore them!) and this can indeed lead them into odd circumstances.

The trait of curiosity, it seems, has not fared well in the eyes of some philosophers.

Phrases.org shares that in AD 397, Saint Augustine wrote that God “fashioned hell for the inquisitive.” In 1639, John Clarke suggested that “He that pryeth into every cloud may be struck with a thunderbolt.” Clearly these men didn’t care for scientists! And let’s not forget that the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” has a rejoinder: “but the truth brought it back.”

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p.s. Anthony K. on Bluesky made this insightful comment: “What a profound take on the proverb! Curiosity can lead us into uncharted territory, but it’s the pursuit of truth that brings us back stronger and wiser. Sometimes, seeking answers is the only way forward.”

References:

Dillard, Annie. 1974. “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” Harper’s Magazine Press. 271pp.

Gruber, M. J., & Ranganath, C. (2019). How curiosity enhances hippocampus-dependent memory: The prediction, appraisal, curiosity, and exploration (PACE) framework. Trends in cognitive sciences, 23(12), 1014-1025.

Proctor, C., Maltby, J., & Linley, P. A. (2011). Strengths use as a predictor of well-being and health-related quality of life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12, 153-169.

Sakaki, M., Yagi, A., & Murayama, K. (2018). Curiosity in old age: A possible key to achieving adaptive aging. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 88, 106-116.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. “The Mushroom at the End of the World.” Princeton University Press, Princeton. 331pp.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.