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Nani Jansen Reventlow: How To Actually Change The World
00:41:51
How do you start a revolution? One small step at a time.
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A
Welcome to Simplify. I'm Caitlin Schiller.
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I'm Ben Schuman Soler.
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A
Hello.
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B
What's up? You know, we've been running this relaunch independent now for a few months, mostly thanks to your hard work.
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Thank you. Thank you for the recognition.
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B
Yeah. And we've gotten a lot of the numbers back up to where they used to be, which is incredible. And thank you to everybody listening, by the way, for coming along.
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Yeah. Thank you so much.
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We would love to keep going because this really, this is now our project. So we're going to try a couple things maybe in the spring and summer. And we would love to hear from everybody. We'd love to hear what you're looking for, why you listen to Simplify. Yeah. And because it's independent now, and because it's ours, we're looking into ways to really make this sustainable. We want Simplify, like we said when we relaunched, we want it to go now forever at this pace and eventually even double it and go weekly. So we would really appreciate to hear from everybody. Leave us comments in Spotify and Apple, Apple podcasts, or send us a note. You can find us on Instagram now. Implified pod. We would just love to get in touch with everybody again. It's been. It's been a little bit now since we relaunched, and we get some notes from people, we've gotten some voice messages, but we would love to hear from people what you're enjoying, what you wish more for, more of who's been your favorite guest so far. And we're going to keep building this out and expanding, and so we're really looking forward to hearing from you.
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Yeah, great. Thank you, Ben.
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B
Yeah. All right, let's go into the episode
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A
that small programming note. All right, Today's guest is Nani Jansen Ravenlo. And I know that it sounds cheesy when I come on here and I say this guest was so inspirational, but she really, really was. She is an international human rights lawyer. She's also the founder of two nonprofits, Systemic justice, which advocates for marginalized communities through strategic litigation. And she's also the founder of the Digital Freedom Fund. She is pretty amazing. And she wrote a book about revolution. It's called Radical Justice. Maybe it doesn't seem like revolution exactly when you look at the chapter breakdown, but that's the whole point. This is about slow revolution. It's about systemic revolution. It's about changes made over time in collaboration that really, really add up. And much is being made of community right now and how we need it. And I think that respect for one another's knowledge and lived experiences is a way that we can meaningfully be in community with each other. And Nani's whole approach very much underscores that. Talking with her showed me how we might live more like that. And I think what was really interesting for me in here, there are a couple of things, but one is that the model of success is really different. Maybe we'll talk about that in the bookend a little bit more. But success doesn't always look like a big win. In fact, sometimes it looks like a bunch of losses that add up to something really meaningful at the end.
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B
Sorry. That's cool that you picked that out. That's also what I want to talk about on the bookend.
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C
Yeah, great.
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B
So people should already listen out to that. Is there anything else for that? Is there anything else that people should pay special attention for in the interview?
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A
No, just that. Hope you enjoy the interview. Hi, Nonni. Thanks so much for joining me today.
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C
Thanks so much for having me, Kaitlyn.
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A
Pleasure. Okay, everyone listening. This is Nani Jansen Ravendloh. She wrote the book Radical justice, which we'll talk about today. And Nani, you are a human rights lawyer specialized in strategic litigation at the intersection of human rights, social justice, and technology. Does that sound right, or how do you like to be introduced?
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C
No, I think that that sounds right. Yeah. I guess I think of myself as a human rights lawyer first and foremost. And in a way, I've been kind of like, moving across different thematic issues for the time that I've been a human rights lawyer. So, yeah, abroad scope is fine.
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A
Okay. Nani and you founded two nonprofits, the Digital Freedom Fund and Systemic Justice. And as far as I understand it, this means that your day job is building strategic court cases with community partners on things like air pollution, living conditions, exclusion of bipoc, and disabled kids from schooling. And this is a very unique kind of lawyering, which I would love for you to talk about. But can you tell me a little bit about your nonprofits to begin with?
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C
Absolutely, with pleasure. So the first organization I founded is called the Digital Freedom Fund, which supports strategic litigation, so court cases that can bring about bigger change on digital rights. So human rights in a digital context. Across Europe, the Digital Freedom Fund is a re granter, to use a technical term. So they provide financial. Financial support, but also a convener. So it brings together organizations and initiatives that work to protect our human rights in a digital context. And the organization that I'm currently running, or I'm in the process of leaving actually, but have built is called systemic justice. And systemic justice partners with communities across Europe to advance racial, social and economic justice. So in a way, we provide legal support for movement movements and collectives, specifically on climate justice and on social protection. And we work with a special model which is called community driven litigation, because we really want to make sure that the communities are really the ones who are in charge of the court cases that concern them.
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A
That is so cool. And I have to admit that this is the first time that I've ever heard of community driven litigation. Could you just speak a little bit more about what that that looks like in, in the day to day? Because it might be kind of abstract for some people listening.
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C
Absolutely. I think it's always helpful to just start with what strategic litigation is in the first place, because that is the type of litigation that we engage with with community partners. Strategic litigation is working with court procedures or other types of bodies that can make decisions that really seeks to bring about systemic change. So you try to bring about a change in policy or in practice. And you do that by not just looking at the legal arguments that you're making. So you look at how the legal argument works together with other tactics that you can use in a campaign for change. For example, policy work, advocacy work, raising public awareness, kind of like getting people to pay attention to an issue. All sorts of things that you can do together with a legal strategy in the courtroom. That's strategic litigation. What you usually see at the moment is that when an organization, a movement or a collective wants to go to court, they find either a lawyer or a group of lawyers, or they find a non profit organization that provides legal support. And they say, like, listen, we want to bring this case or we have this issue, can you help us? And then quite often actually, the lawyers or the nonprofit organization kind of take over the leadership in the work. So even though there is a lawyer client relationship, the actual decisions and the actual strategy setting isn't always firmly with the affected communities that are actually trying to seek justice. And this is something that we're building to change. So working with a model of community driven litigation really means moving away from just what is this court case that we can bring and that we can maybe win, to talking to the community partner about what their bigger vision for change is. What would things look like if things worked for their community? What is that blue sky vision? And then you start unpacking what are the legal strategies that can help in tandem with the things that you're already doing that could be your campaigning work, your public awareness raising work, your policy work, et cetera, to actually get to that goal in a better way or more quickly or anything like that. That. And then you also look at the capacity that a community partner has. What are ways in which you can make the process safe for them. And based on all those different factors and a lot of conversation and a lot of exchange and a lot of mapping and planning and so on, you come to a legal strategy. And then we are the ones that help make the legal side of things work. And we also try to piece together with the community partner what other elements should be part of that broader strategy for change. But in the end, it really all comes down to making sure that the full ownership, the full direction, the full decision making power is with the community partner and not with us just because we happen to have a law degree
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A
that's so beautiful and so different from what I'm accustomed to seeing and hearing about. It sounds messy. It sounds like it might be slow, and it sounds really, really rewarding. It also sounds radically different from what's out there now. What, what did you base this model on? Where did it come from?
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C
So all of those things are true. It's messy and it's beautiful and it's slow and it's worth it. Right.
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A
And there are really fascinating examples in your book of why and how this process can work. And I was struck by the fact that in this process, success might not mean what the legal partner, for example, thinks success might actually look like legal setback or legal failure at first. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah.
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C
There are many different ways in which litigation can contribute to. Well, I guess if we're going to use a win frame for a win for the community partner in the end, or maybe put a little bit better in achieving the change that people are envisioning. Right. And it's that it's, it's, it's very rare that that is the result of just one case. This is a little bit the image that we get, right? If you, if you watch Hollywood films and if you follow the news, those are the cases that are put in the spotlight, that are made into exciting movie scripts and things like that. But quite often those, those landmark cases that everyone will remember actually build on a long, long, long trajectory of, of losses and sometimes also just kind of like really small wins. So there's many different ways in which you can look at a litigation strategy over time. I think one of the things that you, that is really important to acknowledge upfront is that systemic change just takes time. Generally we tend to only see that final push, but there's a lot of groundwork that comes before it. Right. And when you look at it in the terms of court cases, there's many different ways in which you can get there. You can get there by chipping away at the block. Right. The fight for the acknowledgment of same sex marriage is a really great example example of a strategy that took multiple decades where people in the beginning outright tried to get the Supreme Court to acknowledge that prohibiting same sex marriage was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court wouldn't even consider that request. And then indeed started again. Smaller cases, smaller cases then trying to get marriages that were concluded abroad, acknowledged in the US etc. And this way just kind of like working away. But really, really very importantly at the same time, also super active campaigning to kind of keep on putting this idea that if you love each other, you're supposed to be able to marry each other whether or not it's a same sex marriage or not. And yeah, just really kind of trying to change public perception awareness and also acceptance of, of a broader concept of love. And they used a beautiful slogan like love is love, which of course, like very much appeals to people's sentiments and so on. And you combine that with a very clever legal strategy and then in the end you get the Supreme Court ruling that we got a number of years ago.
- [12:58]
A
And I think it's so important that you point this out, that this, that change, that success, that, that getting closer to the desired goal is incremental. A lot of times it feels very hopeless, especially in, in recent times, it feels hopeless. When you think about, well, how do I bring about revolution? What does revolution look like? But if you, if you respect the fact that revolution and that change looks like lots of small chippings away, then it feels much more possible.
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C
Yeah, I think, well, Audre Lorde put it beautifully right when she said revolution is not a one time event. Again, those are framings that are very appealing for storytelling and Hollywood biopics, but it's not really how it works. And it's one of the things that I try to balance two things in the book. One is making sure that we don't shy away from looking at the root causes of the injustice that we're seeing in the world right now. That the systems of oppression, that the power structures that we're fighting against are really deeply rooted, they're really complex. And it's really important to understand that, to put your energy in trying to change the right things. And not just cosmetic stuff. Right. Not just superficial things. You really want to kind of like, get to the root causes. And this is also why change takes a longer period of time. But at the same time, understanding that a lot of these systems are complex, they're intertwined, they're going to take a while to actually dismantle. Doesn't mean that we can't do anything right now. On the contrary. So I also try to break things down at the end of each chapter to kind of give people entry points to learn more about a certain topic, to reflect more deeply on things, and also kind of give really concrete openings for steps that they can take right now in order to bring about change. Because I think that one of the things that really kind of like, disarms us, right, as people, as community members, as citizens, whichever label you want to put on it, is this idea that, you know, oh, it's just me. I'm powerless. But we are many, right? And all those small changes that we can make, they add up together. And all of those small steps together can help us shift bigger power structures. And I think it's so important to two things. One, to just realize that you as an individual actually do have a lot of power. And the other thing is to be okay with the fact that the contribution that you are making to change right now might not be something of which you are going to be able to see the result, unfortunately. But you have to be okay with that. You have to be very mindful of the fact that the things that you are able to do right now are things that you're able to do because of the work that others have done who've come before you. So your ancestors resisted. Now it's your time to resist. You are the ancestor of the next generation, and we need to kind of really be able to look at change in that continuum and just really try our best to do what we can in the here and now and trust that those efforts will pay off eventually.
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A
Yeah, yeah. Speaking of complexity, one thing that became very, very clear to me and I think might be the most important thing that I took from reading your book, is that all the freedoms, all of our rights are inexorably intertwined. Could you talk a little bit about climate justice and how climate justice and racial justice are intertwined? Because I don't think it's something that people think about a lot, and I found it really refreshing to have you make that explicit link in the book.
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C
Yeah. So climate justice, to me, and also the organization that I work with right now is really the intersection of the fallout of the climate crisis and racial, social and economic justice. It's acknowledging that the negative impacts that we're seeing right now in the world due to the climate crisis disproportionately harm black people, indigenous people, people of color, people who live in poverty, etc. Etc. So the marginal that we have in our societies, it's about acknowledging that air pollution, even though you always have this narrative right, we all breathe the same air, doesn't actually affect us equally. If you look, there's a number of really beautiful studies that have been done that really clearly put this on the map. The areas where people suffer from the highest levels of air pollution overlap with those areas where you have a higher percentage of bipoc folk living and where you have people generally with households with a lower income. The mainstream conversation that we're having right now is one about climate and not one about climate justice. So it takes, yeah, a quote, unquote neutral approach to what is happening to the planet without really properly taking into account how marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by it. And that also means that we are quite often talking about solutions that actually are not helpful to a good number of these groups and in some circumstances even particularly harmful. I think here about some of the measures that have been taken to allegedly reduce plastic and kind of disposable products, the straw ban that you have in a number of countries, which has a disproportionately negative impact on disabled people. There are choices that are being made in public planning to make more space for electrical bikes and charging stations and things like that which actually reduce the possibilities for people in a wheelchair to navigate public spaces. Anyway, I could list endless examples of this, but it really shows that the focus of our debate right now, of our debates, of policy discussions, and also a lot of the lawmaking and policy making right now very much reflects the priorities of the white middle class climate activist field that is dominating Europe right now. And that actually the people who are at the front lines of experiencing the harms from the climate crisis are being left out of those conversations. And therefore we're also pursuing the wrong solutions
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A
when climate comes up. What you mostly hear about, or what I mostly hear about, I think is, you know, polar bears, straws, melting, ice caps, not, you know, island nations being tossed and torn apart, not the Roma community and what they have to deal with. And yeah, how do we change that?
- [21:04]
C
Yeah, I can't profess that. I have all the answers but, well, let me put it this way. One of the things that we've been trying to do is actually find those entry points with people who care about climate to kind of broaden the conversation to climate justice. So some of these things are very relatable, right? Rising sea levels is relatable. Lack of clean air is relatable. Whether or not green solutions are actually solutions is also relatable. So we use these three topics actually as an entry point to get climate activists to share their stories, not only of their activism. So how were they resisting these injustices? So, for example, you just mentioned island nations. We had an activist from Bonaire, one of the former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, to speak about the failure basically, of the Netherlands to help reduce the heating of our planet. Because the planet is heating up, sea levels are rising. Bonheira runs the risk of being overrun by water and thereby actually not only destroying livelihood for people, for farmers, etcetera, but also cultural heritage. So Bonera has, on one side of the island, it has what I refer to as old, like, slave huts, which will be completely immersed if nothing changes with emission targets. So that is one of the stories that was shared there. But for a country like the Netherlands, which to a large extent exists below sea level, this concept of actually being swallowed by the water should be very relatable. So it's a conversation that we're not having with the right level of urgency as is required for Bonaire, which is a small island which is about to be basically swallowed by the ocean, because still sitting relatively dry in the Netherlands at the moment. So by kind of like talking about these different topics and bringing them closer to people who have concerns about the direction that our planet is heading in about climate, and kind of broadening that to climate justice to show that a lot of those things that people see as future scenarios are actually current scenarios for a lot of people. Yeah, we hope to kind of make it more relatable and get people to shift their focus.
- [23:51]
A
I also have to say I'd never heard of Bonera until I read your book and until I listened to the podcast, which I hope everyone listening to this podcast will check out after this, because it's great. Yeah, so I said before that these. These different kinds of freedoms are intertwined the climate and the media. You also talk about freedom of the media in your book, and I'm almost wondering if I even want to get into it, because it feels like such a big topic. You have been involved in, in so many cases, defending journalists and bloggers, freedom of Expression, I think in at least 50 countries around the world. So your lens is really, really wide and, and right. Is it 50 or is it more?
- [24:35]
C
No, it's correct. It's a little bit more, but yes.
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A
Yeah. And I love how you outline in the book very explicitly the relationship between power and freedom of expression, which. And it strikes me that this is especially true if we look at what's happening in the US now. People are afraid of how curtailed our freedoms of the press are becoming. But it's easy to overlook the myriad restrictions that have always been at play behind the scenes. You note things like who can afford licensing, who has the money and time to have that room of their own in which to create, who has enough social capital and looks enough like an ideal plaintiff to warrant not being edited out. Could you just speak a little bit about the interplay between freedom of expression and other rights and maybe dig in a bit to what we often miss?
- [25:24]
C
Yeah, the thing that I love most about freedom of expression, that is one of our enabling rights and it facilitates us communicating with each other, obviously, but that also therefore enables us organizing with each other. So the right to protest is very deeply connected with the right to freedom of expression because we need to communicate with each other, we want to express our views for, you know, the kind of world that we do want to live in. It is also deeply connected to a lot of parts of our self actualization as individuals, but also as groups, as communities. And yeah, it kind of like binds a lot of different, a different, a lot of different rights together. One of the things that I think was, well, interesting but also a little bit annoying. When it became much more obvious what was happening in the US And I think it was about a year ago and you just couldn't open any social media platform without stumbling over 1,000 hot takes about what was happening to restrictions to freedom of expression, what was happening to restrictions, social media like etc. Etc. And you know, for those of us who've been working on these issues for a long time, nothing new is happening right now. It's just happening to a different group of people. And I think in that sense it's a beautiful illustration of how power operates in these contexts and also how. How things only start getting attention and start, you know, becoming part of people's awareness when it's happening to them. Because a lot of the platforms that people were, you know, seeing deteriorating before their eyes hadn't been remotely safe spaces for, for people with a marginalized identity for as long as those platforms existed. More or less. And that is just something that wasn't really prioritized to address by those platforms. It wasn't something that people really paid attention to because it wasn't happening to them. And yeah, now we're seeing that eventually it will all come to all of us. Right. So all of a sudden there's, there's this kind of like uproar and, and panic around it.
- [28:25]
A
Oh, I have so many different areas of interest that I wanted to get into with you. But I do recognize that we are, we're running low on time. This book Radical justice is, is kind of about revolution or at least a revolution injustice. What do you imagine the path to revolution will look like?
- [28:48]
C
Oh, wonderful. Yeah. I think again, coming back to what we were talking about, that it won't be a one time event and also we won't be able to make it work unless we know what we want to do the day after the revolution. What do we want it to look like? So there's something there that is both, it both sounds deceptively like simple and at the same time it's really hard to do. And that's imagining the alternative that we're striving for. And quite often you then get like, oh, okay, you know, like the rainbows and the unicorns and all the things and like, you know, as if this is some sort of frivolous thing to be imagining. But it's actually quite hard when you're living in the times that we're living in, described by someone's late stage capitalism and just things feeling really heavy and oppressive and masks are off. Right. It's really visible what work there still is to do right now. And that makes it really difficult to kind of put yourself, pull yourself away from that and then actually freely imagine what an alternative could look like. Because the one thing that is really important there is that the power of our imagination should really take us to something that's not just a tweak on our current failing reality. Right.
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A
Like yeah, we need creativity, not just imagination.
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C
Exactly. And the creativity is the thing that kind of. Well, I think the two kind of like go hand in hand. Right. Because we need to be able to, we need to be able to imagine alternatives like true alternatives, and then we need the creativity to actually create them. Right. This is why I always look at the word creativity literally bringing into being. And yeah, that is going to be the big question, like are we able to do that? And also to add another layer to that, are we able to operate in strategic unity which is needed to get there. There's a lot of terrible things that we should absolutely, like, not learn from the conservative powers that are oppressing us right now. But one thing that we can take away is their ability to set aside differences in order to achieve an overall end vision together. And I know that sounds uncomfortable, but I feel sometimes that we're prioritizing being right over actually being pragmatic and trying to make steps forward. Some of that. I sometimes wonder if that's rooted in our reluctance to actually hold power, which comes with a lot of complications and a lot of complexities and so on. But I think that is something that we need to get better at becoming more comfortable with and also being better at distinguishing what are actual deal breakers and what are things that we should really get over in order to. Yeah. You know, disrupt the structures that we currently are encountering.
- [32:27]
A
Yeah. That strikes me as actually a really nice place to leave this. If there were one thing that you wish everyone who picked up your book or listened to this conversation would take away from what you have to share about your field, what's the thing that you really wish people would understand?
- [32:46]
C
I think the main thing I would want people to take away is that they can take action now. There's no need to wait. It doesn't have to be perfect. By all means, if it's something that you enjoy, all the better for it because you'll stick with it longer. But just get going. It doesn't have to be perfect.
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A
Nanjansen, Rivendloh, thank you so much for taking the time to talk today. It's been such a pleasure.
- [33:10]
C
Thank you for a lovely conversation.
- [33:17]
B
Welcome to the bookend where we end with books. Here we are.
- [33:21]
A
Here we are.
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B
I want to say one thing about Nani.
- [33:24]
A
Please do.
- [33:25]
B
So she came into the shop a couple weeks ago. She was in Berlin. So I met her. Yeah. In the bookshop here in Berlin, in Chapters Bookshop, where the studio is. And she came in and we had a coffee and we chatted for a bit. She was at a workshop for the ICC International Criminal Court.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And you know, that's the Inter Governmental International Tribunal in the Hague that does, like, war crimes.
- [33:49]
A
Wow.
- [33:50]
B
And that kind of stuff. So she was here for a workshop where they were lawyers and legal experts were talking about how to use intersectional arguments to make legal cases. So, for example, you know, maybe someone is somehow disproportionately persecuted, affected by climate crimes, but also in a wheelchair. And that. That's actually allowed in the ICC kind of frameworks and makes A stronger case. Right. This kind of intersect, whatever. And not every legal argument is sort of ready for that or trained for that yet. So she's really at the forefront of. She really is, yeah. And also it was a really nice chat. I mean, she also told me she's been writing fiction on the side.
- [34:33]
A
That's cool.
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B
And just was an incredible person. And she's actually doing an event here in April.
- [34:40]
A
April. The end of April. Yeah.
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B
So if people want to come meet her, they can come by Berlin to Chapters Bookshop at the end of April. But, yeah, I just wanted to add that because I was so impressed by her. But let's talk about some of the ideas in the interview. You want to talk about different success of different definitions of success?
- [35:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that I have a lot more to add, now that I think about it. Just different definitions of success. And she gives. One of the examples that she gives in the book is how marriage equality was not one big stunning success. It looked like lots of different little cases where small changes were. Small changes were made and small wins, even though they didn't look like the sweeping success everyone was hoping for, actually ended up making a bigger win possible with time and accrued effort.
- [35:30]
B
That's right. Even a loss can be a win.
- [35:32]
A
Even a loss can be a win
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B
in that it can raise attention or it can show what kind of arguments have what kind of impact. Or maybe in that it creates a new coalition between people who otherwise hadn't worked together, and then they do work together, and then maybe they lose this case, but then maybe they keep working together and win some other case down the road. I mean, there's so many different ways, Right, in which this kind of like. I mean, my notes say something like radical imagination and pragmatism. Yeah, right. Having this kind of imagination, is there a different way to do this? Is there a radical way that we're not thinking to change what we want to change? But also the kind of pragmatism of people who are actually there at the front line and aren't living in the clouds, but really doing the work day after day, which we know that Nani is. And I find that really cool.
- [36:19]
A
Me, too. I'll say one other thing that I took away from this book is how all the different kinds of justice are pretty much irrevocably intertwined, how climate justice is tied to racial justice. And actually, shortly after I talked to Nani, maybe just a couple days, Trump revoked the ruling that greenhouse gases endanger public health and I started thinking about everything that Nani and I had talked about, and the first thing that came to mind was, wow, this is. This is another face of racism.
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B
Sure. Absolutely.
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A
Anyway, just the connections are endless and it really takes such a strong thinker and a person with strong ethics to write a book like this. And I was just so impressed by it. By the way, just in case you stop listening now, which I hope you don't, we have a copy of Nani's book to give away for free.
- [37:16]
B
Oh, that's cool.
- [37:17]
A
I would prefer to send it in the European Union, but if you would like a copy of Nani's book, I'm flying to America. That's true.
- [37:26]
B
We can mail it from there.
- [37:28]
A
Then the first person to email infoolomedia.com and to tell us that you want the book, you get it. She generously donated it to us, which is lovely. And there'll be a discount code for her book that we will put in the show notes.
- [37:41]
B
Amazing.
- [37:42]
A
Yeah.
- [37:42]
B
Oh, that's cool.
- [37:43]
A
So generous.
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B
Have we ever done that before?
- [37:45]
A
No, never.
- [37:46]
B
That's awesome. Okay.
- [37:46]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:47]
B
Direct sales.
- [37:48]
A
Indeed.
- [37:50]
B
So should we do books?
- [37:51]
A
Yeah, let's do it.
- [37:52]
B
Do you want to start or should I?
- [37:53]
C
You start.
- [37:53]
B
Okay. So the book that I brought is a sort of climate fight new classic called how to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm. It's a very short book. I actually listened to the audiobook. I think it's like four hours long.
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A
Wow.
- [38:10]
B
And it's basically like an argument. And the argument is that because of the nature of climate crimes and the damage that it will have and is having, it is okay to use violence against property.
- [38:24]
A
Wow.
- [38:25]
B
Right. Which is illegal.
- [38:26]
A
Yeah.
- [38:27]
B
So that's why it's called How To Blow Up a Pipeline. And again, he's not advocating hurting anybody, but he makes arguments about, like, what is the action that's okay to take? And we can talk about those arguments all day long. But my favorite part of the book is the last chapter, which is the. About doomerism and fatalism and this idea that, like, it's too late and so it doesn't matter.
- [38:50]
C
Yeah.
- [38:51]
B
And he provides. And not only that it's too late and doesn't matter, but also, like, life doesn't matter. It's all over. Screw it. And he provides a lot of arguments that I think are really cool that remind me of Nani in that, for example, even if we don't Keep warming under 2 degrees Celsius, every little bit still matters. Like, every bit that we can keep warming down does actually lead to less suffering. So in the same kind of like, yes, we have this dream, but the dream, like success and failure of that dream is not the be all, end all in itself. There's also ways along the way. There's also. It reminds me of Nani in that there's this big goal, big ideal, but the success or failure of that success or failure of that goal is not everything. There's also all the little goals along the way that do make a difference in real people's lives. And so we shouldn't just be like, okay, it's over, therefore, we can do whatever we want. And, in fact, we should be really careful when people do say to talk about fatalism, like, it's too late, because it's not true.
- [40:01]
A
Awesome.
- [40:02]
B
Yeah. How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
- [40:03]
A
That sounds radical and hopeful. I want to read that now.
- [40:05]
B
Yeah.
- [40:05]
A
Cool.
- [40:06]
B
What did you bring?
- [40:07]
A
All right. I brought Serge Latouche. This is an older book, Farewell to growth. It's from 2010. It's a classic. Basically, most of us know that we consume too much, we buy too much, we eat too much, we overindulge in all kinds of things. And the heart of the problem is the fact that Western society is based on this premise that growth is always good, we always have to have more. And Serge Lachuch argues that we need to rethink from the foundations, basically, the idea that societies should be based on growth. In fact, we should be thinking about not just degrowth, but a growth. This connected to Nani's book for me, because growth and this imperative toward growth is at the very basis of what ends up being, well, is the source of a lot of these different kinds of injustices that we experience in the Western world and the globe, or at least the Western world imposes upon the rest of the globe. So, yeah, Serge Latouche, Farewell to Growth.
- [41:09]
B
Very cool.
- [41:09]
A
Yeah.
- [41:10]
B
And if I'm not mistaken, the next episode also mentioned Serge Latouche indeed gave us a little hook for the next episode.
- [41:16]
A
So meet us there.
- [41:17]
B
Very cool.
- [41:17]
A
Yeah.
- [41:18]
B
All right. Thanks so much. That was a cool episode.
- [41:19]
C
All right.
- [41:20]
A
Yeah. Thank you, Nani. Okay. Simplify was produced by me, Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman Stoller, and engineered by Joao Lucas for Colo Media. We are here in the Back of the Chapters bookshop in Berlin, Germany. Until next time, checking out, Checking out.