The Daily: 20 July 2023

This is a short, but irate, outburst. Apologies for the language…

For a very long time I have been irritated at the word sacrifice used to describe what we have to stop doing in order to survive. It is an utterly appalling misuse of language and ideas. What is a sacrifice? What does that mean? It means to set aside something dear as sacred, to make something sacred by putting it outside all utility. In the case of life, this usually means killing. In the case of things, it means giving objects to the gods. This can be done by giving these things to a center of worship, to be used only in the service of that adulation. But more commonly, it is breaking the thing, making it useless, and offering it to fire or water or earth.

What are we talking about when we talk about the sacrifices necessary to stabilizing our biosphere? Are we making anything sacred, offering ourselves or our creations to our deities or ideals? No. We’re talking about the giving up the wants we will no longer be able to pursue if we are to rein in the destruction we cause. There is no offering, no sanctity, no gift. This is no sacrifice.

To those who believe in such things, the use of this word to describe giving up our infantile greed is blasphemy. But beyond the heresy in word choice, the thing we are describing is simply not a thing. We are told that we will have to make sacrifices, meaning we will have to give up things. So many things. We are not merely setting these things aside, we are ending them. There is hardship implied, as well as reluctance, perhaps even force. We must sacrifice; we don’t want to do that at all. We are giving up what we want, so this is patently unwelcome.

But is any of this true?

I reached my limit with this word in reading some article somewhere this week. The argument was that we can’t fix things at any scale because, to do so, we have to sacrifice too much, and we are unwilling to do that for the sake of anything, least of all the future. I looked out my window at the brown skies and the tired clean-up volunteers, trudging home. I envisioned the floodwaters rushing north, turning all roads into rivers within minutes, so that many of us barely made it to safety and many formerly safe places were reduced to scoured mud and perhaps a few right angles to show where a foundation once stood. I felt the fear as I tried to keep the waters from filling my basement. And I wondered what the fuck are we supposed to be giving up!

I’m sorry… but I realized that this is a term is a dog whistle. It is aimed at a we that does not include most people, certainly not me. But it signals to those who have privilege that here are the paths to losing that privilege, the ways of living that must be avoided. And it’s not the privileged who must be kept off these paths, it’s those with nothing who must be restrained, who must never know what those ways are like or where they are found. The changes that might be made can not be revealed to the poor because those changes will benefit them. They will gladly embrace these changes. Every creature on this planet except for the few who currently hold privilege in this system would merrily give up the privileged to gain a life. There isn’t anything else to lose.

No, for me there is no giving up. There is only gain. I would make a true sacrifice of my life, setting it beyond the utility of laboring for others, becoming sacred, as is the birthright of all life.

It seems to me that the only thing given up is status-mongering, and we all know how limited a demographic engages in that sport…

Using this term is a mark of bias and blindness. It is racialized and sexist. It is deeply insulting to those who daily give up their lives so that the privileged are sustained. I am insulted. I’m done sacrificing my life so that this destructive system is perpetuated. I am insulted that these people who use this word believe that their petty wants are more important than the lives of billions of humans, never mind the rest of the Earth. I am insulted that they think themselves worthy of that word, and that they wield it as a cudgel against all those they would keep in submission.

Again, I’m sorry, but I am so angry. To read about how ‘we’ won’t sacrifice our endless, all-consuming want for the sake of survival — at this particular time of such overwhelming global devastation — is enraging. Who is this ‘we’ to judge the will of billions? Who is this ‘we’ to decide what needs remain unfulfilled? Who is giving up anything? And what! I would gladly give up the smoke and the mud and the flames and the flood and the plagues and the heat and the drought and the grief, loss, isolation, death. I would give up anything of this damned culture in order to see the end of its consequences in my life. The question is more who would choose to sustain this misery. Only that ‘we’ that believes it is not immiserated.

The larger ‘we’ in this world only stands to gain. There is no giving up what you do not have. And so we must be kept from seeing the alternatives, the ways out, the changes that will relieve some of these ills. We must be taught to believe that we face greater hardship if we step off this path and stop supporting the privileged. But it is so laughably pathetic. We must sacrifice? That is the best argument they can muster against abandoning them and making our own lives? So, OK… let’s start with sacrificing Exxon… Anyone want to go next?

We have so much to gain. Not only a passing chance at living on a human-friendly planet, but we gain each other. We gain our own dignity. We gain the love that a whole system spreads throughout its being. We will live freely in community and care rather than imprisoned in competition and isolation. We will live knowing what it is to have enough. We will live satiated with the abundance of a healthy biosphere. We will live as good people, unburdened by greed and envy and mean want, knowing our place and our worth. We will live with everything we need and the sheer astonishment that this world provides. We will live to see our wishes granted, while we hold hands with our loved ones and gaze at stars in smoke-free skies. Again, what exactly do we have to lose!

We are making the sacrifice now. Or rather we are giving up ourselves for nothing, certainly not sanctity. Because there is nothing made sacred. Nothing can be sacred in a world of hierarchy and wealth extraction. We are giving up our lives for this nothing.

Well, I’m done. I’m choosing sanctity. And I think this might start with giving up on reading quite a bit of what passes for ‘important’ or ‘smart’. I don’t want to hear the whining from the privileged any more. They don’t know the meaning of the words they abuse. They don’t know sacrifice from waste. They’re not even wise enough to recognize that in giving up their idiotic power games, they, too, only stand to gain a real life and all the real worth in real living. I’m not going to listen to idiots prattling inanely on about sacrifice. Instead, I’m going to give up this culture they’ve created… and go find me some life.

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©Elizabeth Anker 2023