Yesterday’s keynote Guardian article “Terror, hope, anger, kindness: the complexity of life as we face the new normal” is a vivid exploration of what James Bradley calls the “new normal” arising from the bushfires (which, of course, are ongoing and will continue to be so for the best part of the next three months). His journey is the existential and emotional journey we all need to undertake in wrestling with the Anthropocene, the galloping emergence of a new geologic era, the only such juncture point we’ll ever face. You’ll note that I use the word “wrestle.” You don’t “master” the Anthropocene. The scale of the coming changes is too great. Your mind and heart lurch in loops similar to Bradley’s “terror, hope, anger, and kindness.”
Bradley is one of Australia’s finest authors and and this article is compulsory reading. Honest, nuanced, and wise. “We should be angry, of course. Incandescently angry. Because where we are is not an accident. … Faced with this reality we can sink into depression and despair. Or we can go further, admit the old world has gone, and begin to fight to make things better. … if we are to find a way forward we will need kindness as well as anger, empathy as well as rage, humility as well as righteousness.” I believe Extinction Rebellion hears this message. United, we non-violently disrupt our failing political order. One of our most potent messages, a greeting really, is “with love and rage,” exactly what Bradley seeks.