DROP by DROP

by Robert Golden and Lisa Glybchenko

After my last film was released, I was asked to speak about it and its issues at a number of live and Zoom meetings. The film, THIS GOOD EARTH, is about soil and climate change, landscape and species extinction, farming, food production, diet and disease.

http://this-good-earth.com

In those meetings there were a few common aspects: that a large part of the live audience was composed mostly of middle-aged, middleclass women, and that many of them were upset, even depressed about the fate of the earth and perhaps for the wellbeing of their children and grandchildren. One of the most urgent questions was couched in the defence of “I do what I can, buying local organic food, using only local food sources and accessing only local shops; I drive as little as possible and share as much as I can, I am careful about energy consumption, plastics and our waste, but I know it is insufficient, not enough to make a difference, so what can we do?”

LOSS
My film also addresses the existence and meaning of ‘solastalgia’, an existential distress caused by changes or threats of changes to one’s home in the face of irreversible damage to their environment caused by the climate crisis and/or by corporate overlordship (mining, deforestation, dam construction, huge housing or industrial developments and etc.).

Of course, the women’s distress described a form of solastalgia.

A few nights ago, the Royal Society of Arts in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute, London, hosted a talk and an interview with the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Oleksandra Matviichuk which reflected her work as head of the Centre for Civil Liberties in Ukraine.

With her beautifully spoken English emerging from a body shaken by tragedy, horror and the sheer madness she has seen, she stripped away all the illusions one might harbour about how justice may be brought down upon the pure evil of Putin and his supporters. She spoke of the difficulty of bringing justice to people in countries which are not a part of the international systems of law, and how slow the processes are. But she also addressed the question about what people can do now to actively side with and contribute to the struggle in Ukraine against an aggressor wishing not only to steal the land but also to deny and liquidate the differences between the culture of Ukraine and that of Russia.

THE LINK
I showed this text to Lisa Glybchenko, a friend and Ukrainian PHD student as well as a dedicated worker for a just peace. She responded thus:
“I very much appreciate the ways in which you relate your past and current work to the struggle of Ukrainians (and, as you rightfully refer to the words of Matviichuk, the struggle of everyone, since joining it is a matter of humanity and not a matter of just Ukrainianness). I have myself been thinking (and writing some research) about specifically the effect of the war on the environment of Ukraine and of Europe. There is a quite well-developed discussion about and following actions on the fact that Russians are committing planned ecocides in Ukraine (burning wheat fields, torturing/burning animals alive, destroying zoos and national parks, and many other horribly horrible... So I was wondering if it would make sense to you as the writer to make a more straight-forward link between the ideas you have put into THIS GOOD EARTH (and the responses you got) to Ukrainians' struggle to preserve the nature of Ukraine in addition to saving the lives of the people. And in many ways, I think, supporting Ukraine is supporting this good earth, not least because of Ukraine's role as one of the world's main food security guarantors.”

Oleksandra Matviichuk chose a simple metaphor: that every gesture, no matter how small, makes a contribution to the struggle and the wellbeing of the Ukrainian people, and it places donors on the right side of history. She pointed out that although one  may only offer a drop, drop by drop, many drops make a sea. In these small but unrelenting gestures we together will show the autocrats, the 0.05%, the dictators, the generals and tyrants and totalitarians, the murderers, rapists, bullies and psychopaths that they cannot have their way, that they cannot win because we are all, as one, against them.

When you demand more of yourself to be more effective regarding climate change but also regarding the terrible evils of this world, as the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are two things to consider. First, think of what you have: time, books, clothes, a few pounds, a skill, knowledge? There are many ways to contribute if you recognise the depth of despair and the breadth of material attrition that the people of Ukraine and their animals are suffering.

Second: As Oleksandra Matviichuk implied, separately, as drops, we may do little, but if we join with others, whether they are from our family, our school, our community, our whole country or indeed with others globally, it is then that we have the power of a swelling ocean.

And as for those with cameras, they may understand that most people, and in particular policy makers, have no idea how most women, men and children exist in this world. One of the ways for photographers to be useful is to tell those stories – giving those standing outside of history or brutalized by it, a place in the great human drama. Show how people here are helping, contributing, and learning why the struggle in Ukraine is a struggle for all of our freedoms, for justice and for a better, kinder world.

The neoliberal capitalist West is neither innocent in the climate crisis nor in Ukraine’s plight, but even though it is now beyond the neoliberal’s greed and capriciousness, it has become a just war.

Putin, and his fellow totalitarians (Trump and Johnson etc.) need to be driven out of Ukraine and out of contemporary political power. This would leave us to imagine our corrupted democracies could be replaced by a form devoted to the wellbeing of humanity rather than the wealth of investors, then the aftermath of this horrible invasion and the carnage of the climate crisis could bring some solace to our species which seems hellbent on destroying its own young in wars or floods. Drop by drop.

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We are crowdfunding for two more weeks to make a beautifully printed version of my new book TRANSIENT LIGHT, FLEETING TIME. Below is one of the 50 spreads from it.