On Pleasure and Purpose in the Anthropocene
Plus: Hot dates with climate action
Last week I threw a special, long-awaited party. I carried the kitchen chairs down to the backyard, set an elaborate table surrounded on three sides by the garden in all its late-season exuberance: cosmos bobbing in the breeze, tomatoes shooting skywards, goldenrod freckled with buzzing pollinators. I’d invited three of my favourite people, ones who also had a connection to this place, for a harvest meal, made by me, with the garden in every course. I set a formal table, made a massive centrepiece of blooms in rich autumnal tones set between taper candles.
It was the evening after the blue moon, and as we ate and drank and laughed and told stories and talked about our lives, our table was a candlelit island bobbing in a dark sea.
It was, dear friends, perfect.
Why, you may ask, when the world is literally on fire, are you writing about a dinner party? Stay with me.
I had big goals for this little party: to celebrate my upcoming milestone birthday, yes; to focus on special people and a special place; to make new memories with old friends. But I also wanted to unshackle beauty from consumption by making a tablescape from things I owned, thrifted, or borrowed. (Because I didn’t have matching wine glasses, I asked one of the attendees to bring hers — and why not?) I wanted to take the time to celebrate the things I had grown or made by hand, the abundance that is all around us and meant to be shared. And to have a delicious, multi-course meal without meat (although not without cheese). It was to be a celebration but also a statement: luxury can be so simple.
I’m so pleased with that night because it was aesthetics and ethics, pleasure and purpose, and sometimes that balance can be tricky to achieve. In a podcast interview my high priestess, Rebecca Solnit, spoke to this eloquently:
I think beauty also comes from meaning, from moral beauty, the opposite of moral injury and moral ugliness. I think joy comes from a meaningful life, from deep connection. I think beauty, joy, and abundance can also be imagined in these ways that are quite banal and superficial. Beauty becomes “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the prettiest of them all?” Joy becomes just the kind of disconnected lightheartedness that’s not paying attention to the state of the world. Abundance becomes greed or materialism. But there are other versions that I think are spiritual or ethical or engaged.
There is deep pleasure in an evening like that, and in so many other low-impact things — cute thrifted outfits, hugging an animal, swimming and dancing and bike rides and long walks and snuggling and reading late into the night — that are often inexpensive and accessible and are undimmed by guilt or dissonance. Joy beams through at full strength.
Our activist rhetoric — including my own — so often fails when we emphasize what we can’t have rather than what we can. Give up meat and flying, stop buying all the shiny new things the algorithm dangles in front of you. We’re all to be the Paper Bag Princess, stomping around with a dirty face while we deal with dragons and spineless princes.
But for most of human history, we didn’t have all these high-carbon goodies (and many people around the world still don’t). And people still had pleasure and connection and joy. They ate and drank and made music and danced and told stories. They watched birds and picked flowers and swam in oceans and made art. They laughed and played and held each other close. A lower-carbon future will still have all those things (in a world that also has great modern perks like vaccines and washing machines and indoor plumbing). In that same interview, Solnit said, “I think it’s also understanding the economy of the immaterial, which is a generosity economy, a gift economy, an economy in which the more you give, the more you get.” This points towards Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work, including “The Serviceberry,” which is both pleasurable and profound.
So: I’m not coming for your joy; in fact, I’m inviting you to a party of your own. Find the real, nourishing, lasting delights that are so often eco-friendly and at your doorstep. Sometimes you’ll still get on a flight (I will in less than a month) or buy something new you don’t need, but let’s all try to make these choices the desserts rather than the main course of our pleasure.
In this dark summer with more forest burned in this country than ever before, with heat waves and terrifying storms and all the usual bad news, climate-wise and otherwise, I’ve also been thinking about pleasure as fortification. From a practical perspective, joy helps our stress responses reset (heart rate, blood pressure, elevated cortisol all recover more quickly); it can also make us more productive, more cognitively flexible and creative, give us stronger relationships. We need this power to write the emails, go to the protests, do the mutual aid, deal with the annoying logistics of changing our bank or getting a heat pump. Batteries that are not recharged cannot power the transformation we need.
“Meaning and joy are quintessential in keeping us tethered in an unraveling world,” writes LaUra Schmidt in How to Live in a Chaotic Climate. And we can supercharge that when meaning and joy are intertwined.
In Inciting Joy, writer and joy aficionado Ross Gay also sees pleasure as route to solidarity:
My hunch is that joy is an ember for or a precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and on. . . . Noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive. It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.
Joy as a practice of survival. Not something that comes when the work is done, but a vital part of the work itself, of connecting to our deeper selves, to each other, and to the rest of the natural world.
This is a time of year most can agree is pretty lovely. The heat of summer has mellowed to warm days and cool nights. There are still sun-warmed tomatoes and peaches so juicy you have to eat them over the sink. The gardens are bursting with colour and food, vibrating with pollinators. The summer people can still go swimming and the fall acolytes can get their pumpkin spice lattes and cozy into a sweater in the evenings.
But we all know winter is coming, when pleasure doesn’t dangle from every branch like crisp fall apples. So the marching orders: go forth and enjoy the little things, the abundance all around you. Store it like nuts for the winter. And notice the things that refuel you at little cost to the planet and other humans. Those might just be the things that are the most joyful of all, and the things that make this world worth fighting for.
While I have you, some places I’d love to see you IRL:
Global March to End Fossil Fuels
Do you remember in 2019 when four million people took to the streets around the world to demand climate action? I was walking the heart of Toronto with about 20,000 others, and while protests aren’t often portrayed as joyful, they can be, and for me this one was. I felt like maybe we were turning a corner, that people actually cared. Marches are such a practical manifestation of how individuals have so much more impact when we come together.
COVID was a setback to most demonstrations and to a lot of environmental action, but the time has come for another global march to remind leaders that we need ambitious action to phase out fossil fuels.
In Toronto, we’re at Queen’s Park on Saturday, September 16. Rally at 11, march at 12. I’ll be there with a sign. Find your local march here.
And if you’re still a march/protest skeptic, maybe check out this op-ed by the wonderful climate journalist Arno Kopecky. Here’s a highlight:
I’ve never been big on slogans. I distrust the righteous certainty that so often accompanies activism. I tend toward doubt, which is fine for journalism but wreaks havoc on conviction — a vital prerequisite for blocking traffic at a protest. But this summer, after 20 years of writing about climate change and seven years of being a father, the magnitude of events finally caught up to me.
I felt myself succumbing to a strange type of manic depression. The urgency and the despair took on the quality of a terrible dream, like I’d been handcuffed and forced to watch as villains suffocated my daughter. This can’t be how it ends, I thought. There has to be something more I can do.
Fall session of the Climate Feelings Retreat!
My Climate Feelings Retreat is back, and for me it’s a deep source of purpose and pleasure. You’d think publicly airing your anger or ambivalence would feel terrible, but in the company of other fine people on a beautiful day, I find it generative and life-affirming. I feel seen, supported, and in solidarity.
I’m hosting the retreat again on Saturday, September 23. In addition to lots of discussion and reflection, there are lovely snacks, a forest walk, and yoga with the wonderful Tamara Grossutti, a climate activist, facilitator, and certified yoga teacher. I’ve taken Tamara’s climate-focused yoga classes, and they are really grounding and nourishing (and suitable for total beginners). Similarly, you don’t have to be a die-hard activist in the throes of burnout to attend the workshop; you just have to be someone who feels like they have some feelings about the climate crisis they’d like to explore.
I know it’s a big commitment in a busy month, but I assure you it’s worth it. Here’s what Jessica has to say about it:
I have attended multiple climate emotion retreats with Jen Knoch and have taken new things from the experience every time. Being in a group of like-minded people who echo your thoughts and anxieties was refreshing and relaxing in a way I did not expect. Even better is hearing about all the amazing ways people are doing their part to make our planet and communities a better place, from small acts of kindness (or rebellion!) to large-scale collective action. Anyone who worries about climate change, eco-politics, and the future of our planet would benefit from this retreat.
Tamara and I are both donating our time so this can be accessibly priced: a suggested donation of $25 for the whole day’s programming. After the minimal costs are deducted, all remaining funds will be donated to Indigenous Climate Action.
You can read more about the workshop and register over at Eventbrite. Spaces are limited!
If you can’t make this retreat but would like to be notified about future ones, pop your name on the mailing list here.
Parting wisdom
“I think it’s like this — through love of the present, and of ourselves in it — that we actually win the future.” — Jenny Odell
That’s it for me right now, but don’t be a stranger. Come to a march, come to a retreat, or write to me about something that resonates or an eco issue you’re working through. The thing I miss most about writing this newsletter is hearing from all of you.
Wishing you many joyful and meaningful moments this fall,
Jen
Five Minutes for Planet is written by me, Jen Knoch, and edited by the incredible Crissy Calhoun.