Playing as the ship goes down

At the start of every semester, I ask my students to share a surprising fact about themselves. Two years ago, I learned that my theory class included the great-great-nephew of one of the cellists on the Titanic. Like approximately everyone, I’d always been struck by the story of the band playing to the very end. Impressive as it was, though, it had the soft blur of legend. The presence of this descendant in my classroom gave that existential fable a reality it hadn’t had before.

A few days ago, for the first time in at least 125,000 years, the average temperature of the planet was 2C above the pre-industrial baseline. Of course, this was a transitory high, not the sustained, possibly civilization-ending +2C that we’re supposedly still trying to avoid; still, until recently, the sustained +2C was not expected before the 2060s, and now we seem likely to get there decades ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, based on what we’re already experiencing at +1.2C, many climatologists now consider +2C too high for the maintenance of organized society. 

As all this befell with next to no coverage in the major media, it occurred to me—not for the first time—that not only is my little project is not going to Save The World, the world may well not be saved. And even though the project has confirmed the claim of climate activists and psychologists alike that activism is the best cure for despair, paradoxically, committing to a cause can also make you more vulnerable to feelings of futility. It’s hard not to be frustrated by the at best miniscule effect of your efforts when they’re taking up a big part of your life energy. If instead you do nothing…then nothing you do is in vain. Nihilism keeps you from playing the fool.

Anyway, my starting thought here was that at my concerts, even those who share my dim view on the odds for a decent future express to me their enjoyment and their positive feelings about what I’m doing, and about being there. It's a feeling somewhere between playing as you go down and not going down without a fight.