Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Global Discourse on 18/04/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/23269995.2017.1300442
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - On letting go
AU - Foster, John Michael
PY - 2017/5
Y1 - 2017/5
N2 - Massively disruptive climate change, now inevitable, is the worst tragedy which human beings have yet brought on themselves. It is tragic in the full classical sense – a disaster entailed on theprotagonist (here, humanity) by destructive weaknesses inherent in crucial strengths and virtues. There is thus no way of avoiding it by picking and choosing among our values, and its effects canneither be compensated for nor mitigated by prospective gains to offset against anticipated losses. But once we have discarded a strained and wilful last-ditch optimism, and recognised that we arenot in control, we will still need to find genuine hope if we are to have any chance of coming through. This requires us to embrace the transformative power of tragic experience, letting go of values which we may hitherto have regarded as sacrosanct and welcoming the creative destruction of current assumptions and expectations as an affirmation of life.
AB - Massively disruptive climate change, now inevitable, is the worst tragedy which human beings have yet brought on themselves. It is tragic in the full classical sense – a disaster entailed on theprotagonist (here, humanity) by destructive weaknesses inherent in crucial strengths and virtues. There is thus no way of avoiding it by picking and choosing among our values, and its effects canneither be compensated for nor mitigated by prospective gains to offset against anticipated losses. But once we have discarded a strained and wilful last-ditch optimism, and recognised that we arenot in control, we will still need to find genuine hope if we are to have any chance of coming through. This requires us to embrace the transformative power of tragic experience, letting go of values which we may hitherto have regarded as sacrosanct and welcoming the creative destruction of current assumptions and expectations as an affirmation of life.
KW - Climate change
KW - enlightenment
KW - hope
KW - optimism
KW - sustainability
KW - tragedy
KW - values
U2 - 10.1080/23269995.2017.1300442
DO - 10.1080/23269995.2017.1300442
M3 - Journal article
VL - 7
SP - 171
EP - 187
JO - Global Discourse
JF - Global Discourse
SN - 2326-9995
IS - 1
ER -