This is not a review of 'The Bone Clocks' by David Mitchell

Because other writers, experienced reviewers and interested parties, like Ursula K Le Guin in the Guardian (here), will do a decent job of it; though I found the New Yorker's extended piece somewhat over the top, with too much in the way of spoiler, and possibly missing the point, though that's probably just me.

This is a blog about climate change, philosophy, and whatever I say it is about, so why the sudden urge to discuss literature? Like my previous discussion of the writing of James Morrow, the urge is because I think it is pertinent and useful to read David Mitchell (the author, not the comedian, though the comedian is my kind of amusing, too).

If you are reading this because you share my interest in the near future of humanity, read the book, with a focus on the last seventy or so pages, which paints a picture which is both credible and frightening; it contains what is for me the best description to date of what we might expect (included the fascinating but flawed vision offered by Kim Stanley Robinson in the recent '2312' (also worth a read).

The Bone Clocks is connected in a casual but conscious manner to some of Mitchell's previous writings, most notably for me, Cloud Atlas, but also Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. In both novels he plays with time and narrative, and incorporates two themes dear to my heart - the Future in a world changed by a changing climate, social order and politics, and Human Nature, in particular, the struggle to do good in a difficult world.

A part of Mitchell's appeal is that he is covering these subjects in ways which match mine to a large degree, so that, on these matters we share a vision of the future and our role in leading to it. There are times during reading when I stop and find myself thinking 'I could have written this' (which is not a presumption of talent on my part, but a recognition of material). The last time I had similar, regular experience of this was in the 1980's and early 90's, when I read a considerable amount of Michael Moorcock's work, and kept finding myself uncovering a narrative which I had just finished writing in my head a few weeks before - so frequent was this occurrence that it was almost spooky. When I told Moorcock about this, I think it freaked him out slightly, too.

It is interesting to note that the two authors share other features, most particularly, the persistence across time and narrative of certain core characters - metacharacters, consciously so, like Moorcock's Eternal Champion or Jerry Cornelius, or Mitchell's Dr Marinus - and the idea of the persistence of narrative patterns (in this, both are post-modern, post-deconstructionist writers).

Most significant, for this blog, is Mitchell's fairly consistent imagining, glimpsed in the background in Song Mi's story in Cloud Atlas, more fully rounded here in the Bone Clocks, in the later two chapters, set in 2025 and 2042 respectively. It is clear to me that I share something with David Mitchell here - our research, understanding, interpretation of the near future is very closely paralleled. We both imagine a future of bleaker weather, vastly divided social groups, and a strong distinction between life in the remnants of 'civilisation' (drawn out in Mitchell's more distant Shanghai, more proximate Iceland), and the residue of the 'uncontrolled' world, a place of violence and lawlessness. Much of the detail is inferred, hinted at, slightly nebulous - this isn't the epic prose of a vast sci-fi style future vision, but a more subtle, more open-ended imagining.

The other area of interest, and what lift's Mitchell's work into the traditional concept of the literary, is his concern with human nature, and the nature of good and evil. There are touches of this in his earlier work, but in The Thousand Autumns and here, the Bone Clocks, this is a pretty transparent theme. We know this from the presence of the narratives of the Horologists and the Anchorites. We can see it in the moral choices made by all of the characters, to whom (without presuming the author's intention) we can attribute certain internal dynamics which shape our empathy and their moral compass. Holly could said to stand for love, in particular, the love of the family, Hugo for the Ego - he could so easily have stepped out of 'Atlas Shrugg'd' - Crispin as the somewhat detached, ivory-tower self-isolator; they all have moral ambiguities, but there is no question about who the good guys and the bad guys are.

Reviewers (apart from Le Guin) seem to have struggled with the 'fantasy' element of the novel, but few have observed that this is a core metaphor - and Mitchell's decision to spell it out as narrative rather than leave it embedded in the text for the reader to puzzle out, is also a very post-modern approach to the concept of meaning in Narrative, something also featuring in Moorcock's writing. The reader is presented with at least three (I'll be honest, I can't really fathom out Ed's moral position, yet) different human ways of being - the loving, the distant, the selfish - seen in the context of a battle between the non-authoritarian, laissez-faire little acts of salvation undertaken by the Horologists, and the Murderous, self-perpetuating selfishness of the vampiric Anchorites.

There are other interesting sub-metaphors in play here, too ; science/reason vs mysticism, the other vs the self, lives lived conscious of meaning and its absence, engaged in the being lived. There is anough content and suggestion in the story, as there is in Mitchell's other work, to justify (and more or less, in my case, guarantee) a second or third reading.

So, if you want to know where much of my posting is directing itself towards over the past several years, read the book, and get a better, more engaging description than I could ever manage for myself. Just don't expect a happy ending.

What next for Humanity and the World?

This entry is really going to be mostly a note - a work-in-progress, reflecting my recent research and interests, and responding to stimuli from various sources online. It may be necessary to follow this up with more detail, but I'm thinking of the content as a starting-point for discussion rather than a fixed view. So, please feel free to discuss...

Two related matters have come up recently which are related. The first is the shape of our future. This is a subject I have been informally researching for many years, and studying in more detail for the last eight years, off and on. Having spent much of this time exploring avenues of possibility focussed around climate change and global warming, more recently I have extended my study to include social, political, economic and ethical considerations.

Which leads neatly in to the second matter - the question of values, which has come up directly at Tobis's place, and is an ongoing personal fascination. I still maintain that unless we have a clear sense of the ethical foundations for action - what we want, or what we think is good for the future, then we cannot properly determine the optimal course of action. This is not to say that some actions are not already, in principle and in practical terms, evidently necessary, such as emissions reductions and environmental protection.

Back to the future (sic.): what do we expect the future to look like? A number of Futures Research groups have been exploring this question, some since the 1960's, more since the Club of Rome report in 1972. In addition, the themes and consequences of some of the possibilities have been extensively explored in literature, specifically in Science-Fiction, or speculative fiction writing, but also in recent literary fiction, such as David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas or more directly, John Brunner's 'Club of Rome Quartet'.

One such group, the Tellus Institute (With the Stockholm Environment Institute), has helpfully categorized future scenarios into three broad divisions, which I reference here simply because they resemble vaguely my own imagined scenarios; these are depicted below:

The group's emphasis is on the contrasts between the 'Conventional Worlds' (which elsewhere might be equated to 'BAU' scenarios for climate, for example) and the 'Great Transitions', which is characterised by: "...new socioeconomic arrangements and fundamental changes in values. They depict a transition to a society that preserves natural systems, provides high levels of welfare through material sufficiency and equitable distribution, and enjoys a strong sense of social solidarity. Population levels are stabilized at moderate levels and material flows through the economy are radically reduced through lower consumerism and massive use of green technologies..."

It may be worth noting here that the 'eco-communalism' pathway vaguely resembles the 'degrowth' meme which is currently fashionable.

The problem I have with these is that they are filled with good intentions but may be unrealisable - just a bit too idealistic and vague. The other problem with them, as with many other scenarios, is that they are strong on 'what we want', but weak on 'how we get there'. They also make presumptions about the values which lead us to see them as preferable objectives.

A third problem I have with the scenarios is that they deal more in what is possible (hypothetically) and desirable, than with what is likely.

During my study, I came across several pieces of speculative work from within the UK government framework, under the auspices of the Foresight projects. These are useful in that they are based as much as possible on evidence, they avoid exaggeration, and they are broadly pragmatic - in other words, they make sense to me.

<One such report, headed by the Government's Chief Scientist, from 2011, is about global migration in relation to climate change. In the contect of their work, the group produced a scenarios outline which covers the major drivers of migration and their relative significance, as well as outlining plausible world-views out to 2060. Why do I say plausible? Because they are, where available, derived from other, important, credible and well-researched sources, such as the IPCC, WHO and UNEP, and because they avoid both pre-evaluation (there's no discusion of 'better' or 'worse' futures) and they are not unduly alarmist (which is not to say they are not alarming in some ways).

I also present them here as a backdrop, because I think they find a useful balance between several factors which are consistently discussed on the blogs I frequent, and in the Guardian, for example.  The scenarios are described in detail here, the report itself is here.

In our extended discussion on Natural Capital (is it a good idea?), here, in relation to how we place a value on Nature, or move beyond concepts such as Sustainability, which appears to have been completely redefined by Corporate and Political interests to mean almost the opposite of what it  was originally supposed to mean, MT expresses the wish: "..

My wild hope is to join or nucleate some conversation that would come to some well-thought-out alternative...(to a Natural Capital  agenda)"

Some time ago, I suggested that 'Resourcefulness' might function as a better criterion, but I now believe that this is too close conceptually to the problem that 'Natural Capital' raises, the evaluation of the natural world in terms of its pure utility to humans (though it might avoid the purely econometric issue of putting a price on nature).

In response to the various scenarios of possible world futures and the problem of balancing the relative values placed on the drivers of change, I am currently suggesting that the world we are heading closer to is somewhat closer to the Tellus Institute's 'Fortress Worlds' scenario, though with significant differences. Broadly, I see a world more divided, not more integrated, with greater inequities, but with distinctive geophysical boundaries defining the disconnects between the largely Urbanised and progressive 'modern civilization', the largely agrarian  and protected 'supply zones', rural environments with connections to the urban, and the 'lost places', wastelands where social, political, environmental and ecological damage has resulted in insufficiently productive, isolated and borderline uninhabitable zones, occupied by a sub-underclass of humanity fighting for survival; in other words, a world a bit like ours, but more so, with the differences exaggerated rather than ameliorated. One such imagined world is described in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series of books, though climate change is not incorporated as a factor. Though it diverges from my own vision, it contains some useful speculations and themes in the early volumes which make it worth exploring.

One main reason for imagining this kind of future scenario is a concept which undoubtedly exists in the literature but which I have not yet seen described, which is that of the inherent inertia of the Global Society, generated by the presence and influence of institutions (governments), corporations, economy and markets, habits, apathy, caution, and history. In other words, I think that, in spite of our best intentions, it is most likely that change are going to come relatively slowly (unless there is a Force Majeure which intervenes), too slowly for some people and parts of the world, and that a complete breakdown into a Fortress World scenario is improbable (though not impossible).

Furthermore, I fear that we have already passed the stage (in relation to development over then next 50 years) where we can hope for anything much better than this; the same inertia which is likely to mean avoiding total annihilation is also likely to result in irreversible changes, desertification, drought, regional famine, political instability, local wars, etc., which will leave a residue of inequity and damage for the generations beyond to address.

This then has already gone beyond an idea of what sort of world we want, to a speculation about what sort of world we are likely to end up in. Which is where the challenges, questions and arguments might begin. Is this a vision you believe is plausible, or do you see things differently? Is this the kind of inheritance we would wish for? Is there anything we can do to reduce the inequities, damage and risks? Can we do better, realistically, given the timeframe and the problem of inertia? Is my vision too conservative in your eyes, or too radical? 

I'd really enjoy feedback if this has stimulated your imagination. As for Michael's wish for a new pathway to get us beyond sustainability - well, if we can work out what we want and what we expect, we can start to defines a value (or set of values) which will help get us somewhere a little better...