When I was a young lad my father would occasionally take me to “the tip” – the local refuse facility. There, we would sift through the rubble and ruined stuff discarded by local residents. (Trying to do this these days is not possible, because “tips” have been closed off due, presumably, to hygiene “science” – something Dougald Hine would possibly appreciate.)
Amongst those ruins I would search for, and often
find, treasures and useful bits ’n pieces that could be transformed into a
trolley. A trolley was a cart made of old planks of wood, discarded pram
wheels, axles, and hinges. By way of a hand-held rope the trolley could be
steered, usually down a hill, the steeper the better. I’m sure my mother
despaired when I arrived home with scrapes and bruises after an afternoon of
trolleying.
Something similar, although on a grander, global
scale, is what Dougald Hine is writing about in At Work In The Ruins:
Finding our place in the time of climate crises and other emergencies.1
Hine searches for treasures amongst the discarded (or soon to be discarded)
ruins of modernity.
Hine does this cleverly by posing a number of
questions without fully answering any of them. And, nor should he. We cannot
know the answers until we stumble upon them amongst the ruins.
But one thing is clear, and Hine states this on just
the 3rd page; ‘The way we talk about the trouble is making it
worse.’ Pithy and crisp. The following 197 pages are Hine’s attempts at clarifying
why this is so and some ideas for a different way of talking. One of the languages
we have been using is that of science. Hine is clear that we need to use this
language differently, not discard science will-nilly, but to recognise that ‘science
can know many things; yet it cannot say, because it does not know, when enough
is enough.’
The point of departure for a new way of talking,
according to Hine, is to admit that we are already amongst the ruins.
Furthermore, he claims that ‘If hope exists, it lies on the far side of the
admission of failure.’
Failure!!? Yes – failure. Writing about failure, and
admitting to it, may turn off some readers. After all, one of the messages of
modernity is failure is not an option, you cannot fail, you must not fail.
But, read on. There are many indications of this
failure, two of which Hine points to; climate crises and covid. If I have any
disappointment with this book, it is that Hine lingers too much on the covid
pandemic as one of the indicators, spends a little time on climate crises, and
hardly any time on the other emergencies, as promised in the subtitle of
the book. To my understanding, it is the entanglement of all these emergencies
that has brought us to the predicament we are in.
This disappointment aside, Hine’s book is an important
read as it does provide us with a new vocabulary with which to talk about the
troubles, predicament, and ruins we are in.
An example, and one well covered by Hine, of this new
way of talking (and listening) is the way we talk about death. Hine addresses
this in a lucid and useful manner. He quotes a critical care nurse working with
those on the ’brink of death.’ The families of the dying tended to react
in one of two ways: to become obsessed with vital signs and lab data, or to
deny and avoid. There was a third, less common, path open to families that the
nurse termed ‘the path of engaged surrender’ – a term reminiscent of Tara
Brach’s radical acceptance.
Engaged surrender is the path Dougald Hine advocates
as we are faced with the death of the ‘world as we know it, but not of the
world.’ To help with this approach, Hine refers often to a colleague – Vanessa
Machado de Oliviera, who’s incisive book Hospicing Modernity (see myreview here) can easily be read as a companion piece to At Work In The
Ruins. To need to hospice modernity is one of the clear answers Hine gives
to his questions.
Modernity, says Hine, has been on the Big Path for
many years. This path leads only to a futile future. There is another path
however, and Hine visualises this as ‘unpaved, hardly a path at all, and it
will be made by those who walk it.’ Hine is under no illusion that this
path will be chosen by many. Nor does he envisage that this path will be easy
and pleasant for those who do walk it. He warns us: ‘Do not underestimate
what such a choice may cost you.’
Getting hold of and reading At Work In The Ruins will
be one of the lesser costs you may pay. I recommend it as one worth the price.
Notes:
1. Dougald Hine, At Work In The Ruins: Finding our
place in the time of climate crises and other emergencies, Chelsea Green
Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont, and London, UK, 2023