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What can a bunch of circles and squares from a 19th century novella tell us about Climate
Change?
Its metaphor time!
That’s Mike Rugnetta - an essayist and cultural critic - and he’s here today to help us
think about thinking about climate change.
In Edwin Abbott Abbott’s satirical, sorta-fantasy-but-also-math novella Flatland, social and belief structures
are determined by the geometry of the universe’s two dimensional inhabitants: the people aren’t
“people”, per se… they’re shapes.
And in Flatland the more angles a shape has, the higher in status they are.
Triangles are laborers and soldiers, circles are a kind of Holy Class.
Interpersonal interaction is based upon the ability to recognize the number of angles
possessed by – and therefore class of – others.
Flatlander’s social hierarchy and a strict moral order is derived from all this.
Now!
Once a millenia, a Sphere visits Flatland to spread the truth of higher dimensions - of
Spaceland.
The sphere descends before one potential “apostle” – this time it’s Flatland’s protagonist:
a humble square, to whom the sphere appears as circle which miraculously grows and shrinks
in size as it passes through Flatland in a third dimension.
From its (literally) elevated perspective in Spaceland, the Sphere can see the leaders
of Flatland resist knowledge of higher dimensions, and attempt to silence those who would spread
the truth.
And of course they do this: all relations in Flatland are shaped by … shapes: based
upon the supposedly unshakable truth, and comfort, of 2 Dimensionality.
So - ok.
We don’t have time for the whole story but by now you’re probably wondering… uhhh…
is Flatland… about climate change?
This is ... a climate show, isn’t it?
And.
Well, no: Flatland isn’t about climate change.
At least not directly.
Though it’s premise can be a useful model for thinking and talking about some of the
challenges surrounding climate change.
Flatland is “about” Climate Change in the same way Game of Thrones is “about”
climate change…
[Winter is coming audio] it gives us something approachable, or fun
and familiar to consider the climate crisis.
I think about Flatland a lot because, among other things, it’s about perspective: how
you view the world – literally, like your actual immediate perception of it – determines
how you view it in other, more figurative ways.
Your perspective is determined by the possibilities of your environment, and that guides what
you think of as being possible.
There are things the flatlanders can’t see in their totality – the sphere, and other
Spaceland objects – because their environment, and their perceptions, can’t fully accommodate
those things.
They provide a challenge to their comprehension, and so in turn: the very structure of their
moral, and social order.
And similarly, there are things we have trouble seeing, and understanding because they exist
entirely beyond our perception.
In a lot of ways … Climate Change is the sphere, and Earth … is flatland.
Climate change is difficult for your Standard Human Square to apprehend all by their lonesome.
Like the lone quadrilateral visited upon by sphere slices in Flatland, we only see bits
and pieces of Climate Change directly, and we must work conceptually, logically, to assemble
and comprehend the wildly complex whole.
In that process, bits of the social, moral and material order are threatened, and we’re
finding that those in various positions of power are skeptical, or resistant to our reality.
And, uh, just be clear … when we say Climate Change is
a sphere, and Earth … is flatland we’re NOT saying the earth is flat.
This is a metaphor.
The world government is not trying to keep you from seeing beyond the ridge of ice which
rings our disc-shaped-world thus suppressing access to and knowledge of, like…
I don’t know… dragons?
The Earth is, in actuality, spheroidal.
Glad we clarified that!
Climate change is so vast – it, and it’s impacts,found in nearly all of the world ecology
– that it provides a challenge to human subjectivity.
Climate change, despite being definitively caused BY humans, is so profoundly non-human,
so expansive, that our understanding is continually outpaced by its total seepage into our environment.
Climate change is both a thing, and much, much more significant than a mere “thing”
could ever be.
It is, as eco-philosopher Timothy Morton puts it, a “Hyperobject”.
Hyperobjects - in the simplest sense - are objects which exist across a vast span of
time, and space.
In fact, the spatio-temporal range they occupy is so big, they kind of … transcend… to
a different plane of objecthood.
They’re not just objects… they’re over and above objects.
Thus: hyperobjects.
There are a bunch of different hyperobjects: climate change, styrofoam - like, all of it
together, American nationalism, and all vinyl records ever produced… have been referred
to as “hyperobjects”.
According to Morton, hyperobjects have 5 characteristics.
They are: Viscous: “which means that they “stick”
to beings that are involved with them.”
Hyperobjects smear across regular objects; they’re messy, and aherent - leaving their
trace on other things.
For climate change that may be oceans, landfills, stock markets, personal technology, coffee
chains.
Hyperobjects are like a vast toddler with chocolately fingers: they leave signs of their
presence.
But they’re also: Non-local: “any “local manifestation”
of a hyperobject is not directly the hyperobject.”
Morton writes.
There is no tip to the hyperobject iceberg … and symptoms of its presence shouldn’t
be confused with their cause.
You can’t point at something like the rising sea levels and say “that’s climate change”.
Like the sphere passing through Flatland, no one slice of the hyperobject “IS” the
hyperobject.
Gaussian, or Molten: Morton says that hyperobjects are so massive, and so distributed in time
and space that they’re baffling to think about, and can become invisible to human perception
because of their sheer magnitude.
“Hyperobjects are time-stretched to such a vast extent,” Morton writes, “that they
become almost impossible to hold in mind.”
Being the in the presence of a hyperobject is like swimming in a pool - it buoys us and
we create ripples in it, but it’s impossible for us to cognize the body of water as a totality
… even though we are fully IN IT.
Interobjective: “The hyperobject is not a function of our knowledge: it’s hyper
relative to worms, lemons, and ultraviolet rays, as well as humans.”
Morton, writes.
Hyperobjects arise in the interaction between things but they don’t come into being because
humans notice them.
The hyperobject exists regardless of what you want, or if you notice it.
Phasing: “Hyperobjects … occupy a high-dimensional phase space that makes them impossible to
see as a whole on a regular three-dimensional human-scale basis.”
Like the sphere in Flatland, the hyperobject of climate change has an elevated perspective
on the dealings of humankind - it exists within and between objects that we deal with every
day, but is not simply those objects.
Chevy Camaros, the daily temperature, BP Gas Stations and turtles; plastic bags from the
corner bodega, the Brazilian rainforest and cyclone season are not climate change, but
may be local manifestations of, or be intertwined with, climate change.
Really, Climate Change only exists, for us, in the evidence of interaction between countless
things and us human’s remarkable ability for synthesis and pattern recognition.
But … even evidence is met with skepticism.
Direct human apprehension is the most trustworthy input we have for judging the world, and the
hyperobject not only defeats, but is hostile towards it.
“Convincing some people of existence,” Morton writes, “is like convincing some
two-dimensional Flatland people of the existence of apples, based on the appearance of a morphing
circular shape in their world.”
So - how or why is any of this useful?
Well … I think it provides a way to appreciate the complexity in grokking climate change
- not just comprehending it through evidence, scholarship and consensus.
which are important… but not the whole story.
The hyperobject challenges, and maybe even defeats immediacy, intuition, and in some
ways – thanks to its level of abstraction – sense.
And so all downstream considerations can become moot: climate refugees, mass extinctions and
tanking biodiversity are less dire if the thing supposedly causing them is nothing more
than “a morphing circular shape”?
I like Flatland, particularly, as a metaphor for Climate Change and the hyperobject, because
it’s a good reminder of an important trifecta:
1.
Our environment both determines, and is impacted by, what we are able to perceive and what
we see as meaningful 2.
Our perception and sense of meaningfulness guide cultural norms and
3.
Individual subjectivity can guide, but also become stuck in those norms.
While seeing beyond the restrictions of one’s environment is possible, it can require immense
creativity and even bravery.
Philosopher Felix Guattari named these things – the environment, our shared culture, and
individual subjectivity – the “three ecologies”, in a book by the same name.
He argues that in order to have meaningful impacts on the Environmental ecology, we need
also to reshape the Mental, and Social ecologies, too - which have been flattened,like mined
out mountains, by processes of mass production, and profit.
So much so … it’s sorta hard to imagine how things could be different.
Guattari wasn’t writing about climate.
He was writing about the environment in general, with its myriad challenges, but his suggestions
still feel relevant,
I’ll end with one last quote: “now, more than ever, nature cannot be separated from
Culture.
In order to comprehend the interactions between ecosystems [...] we must learn to think ‘transversally.’”
We have to think across dimensions, beyond Flat- and even Spaceland, to a kind of Hyperland,
occupied by hyperobjects which … though distant … have great bearing on us.
By at least trying to conceptualize the whole that is climate change, thinking outside of
ourselves and what we alone can see, is potentially a solution for dealing with this mess.
We’d like to thank Audible for supporting PBS.
Audible's selection of audiobooks includes Audible Originals, audio titles created by
storytellers from around the literary world.
If you want to use audible to conceptualize some of the hyperobject-sphere that is climate
change and weather, check out "The Coming Storm" by Michael Lewis.
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