Yvon Chouinard is as close as
one can get to being an invisible icon. Rock climber, surfer, falconer, writer,
angler, entrepreneur, environmentalist, visionary, would all be appropriate
descriptions for the founder of the company that makes patagonia®
outdoor clothing who is adulated by many but completely unknown to many more.
Chouinard is credited with inventing the
“slow company”. In various interviews he shrugs off the notion and
explains that all he really did was to keep his company’s focus on what it did
instead of how much profit it made – an unintended consequence has been that
his profits have easily outstripped the opposition (for whom profit was all
that mattered)!
His company is at the cutting edge of
environmental accountability, he has probably done more than any other
individual to nudge corporate America in the direction of a gentler approach to
the environment and he celebrates the outdoors.
Which is why we should take notice when, in
an interview carried in the July issue of Maverick Magazine
Chouinard bemoans the fact that as far as he is concerned:
“It’s completely hopeless.
Civilisation is out of control, growing way beyond its resources and it will
destroy itself. Anyone who really thinks we’re in charge, that we can honestly
change the course we’re on, well, they’re mistaken”.
Does this depress him? Not a chance.
Chouinard, you see, is a positive pessimist. As Andy Davis who wrote the article puts
it:
“He literally oozes
happiness and vitality – even when decrying how deeply screwed we are”.
Over the next few days I’m going to explore
this notion of “positive pessimism” because it points to perhaps the most
inconvenient truth of all:
Nothing that human beings
can do will ever threaten the existence of our planet.
No, that is not a typo, I mean it when I say:
Nothing that human beings
can do will ever threaten the existence of our planet.
Evolution doesn’t make mistakes. Where we are
right now is where we are supposed to be right now.
Whether human beings
survive as a species on this planet is entirely irrelevant to everybody but
human beings.
The planet, cockroaches, crocodiles and
various other planetary contemporaries were here long before we came along and
there is no reason to believe that they won’t be here long after we are laughed
off the existential stage.
How many species we take down with us matters
more to us than it does to the planet. Whatever we do, on how great or small a
scale we continue to screw up and whether we are here or not, the universe will
maintain the evolutionary equilibrium we are vain enough to think we can
influence.
What we are trying to save
is not the planet, but our own collective butt!
And we’re not doing well at all …. Despite
all the noise we are still spending and consuming ourselves into oblivion at an
ever faster clip.
What to do? Nothing we can do. As Chouinard
points out, we are well and properly screwed. So, as they say in the classics,
we may as well lie back and enjoy it.
But that’s also not entirely true. What
Chouinard is saying, as I understand him, is that whether human beings will
survive as a species or not is not in our hands – never has been and never
will be.
All we can do is to trust the universe and there's no reason, no reason at all, why that can't be fun.
Positive pessimism means:
- understanding that
if our future depends on people we don’t have one; and
- knowing that just as the
universe conspired to get us here in a moment of inspired craziness, it is
still crazy enough to keep us here.
All the universe needs is for us to say we
want to stay and to behave as if we want to be here, as if we enjoy being here
... which is what Chouinard (and Swimming Easy in the Deep) is all about in the
first place.
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