Climate Movement Cliff Notes — Part Five
An Annotated Table of Contents of my posts on The Climate Movement
This post is the fifth and final one in a 5-part Series designed to provide something akin to a photo album of my 40 posts on The Climate Movement thus far, a narrative of snapshots. Or, switching metaphors, Climate Movement Cliff Notes or Spark Notes, if you will. In this Series I summarize each post in the order in which they were published, an annotated Table of Contents. (Check out the previous posts: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.)
17. Climate Action & The Arts
Something that can help us with all three senses of being together enough — unity around shared goals, a constant supply of action events, and meeting together regularly — are the Arts. And when we are together in these ways, the Arts can evoke passion and tap into the deep places and inspire creativity as it helps unite us in our commitment to the actions in which we are engaged. They help make real our Movement Value of beauty, help us see the beauty all around us and within us.
The Arts can inspire us to keep putting one foot in front of the other like few things can, helping us be together long enough to make our contribution.
Stories, Narratives
Stories and narratives are found in all the Arts, but most explicitly in storytelling forms like novels, short stories, graphic novels (e.g., here and here), poems, parables, fables, lyrics, plays, operas, musicals, songs, films, and photography.
Stories and narratives are chief ways individuals can be knit together into small groups, communities, ethnicities, faith traditions, nations, and humanity in toto.
As such, we must tap into their power to bring and keep us together moving forward. Our vision, purpose, and Major Goal as I have articulated them is in fact our story of how the future can be; as we achieve them we make hope happen; in this way our hope is part of this story, our story, which becomes a new reality for the Earth and every living thing upon it.
Music
Music, its melodies, harmony, and rhythm, separately or in combination — can move us to our very depths and communicate in ways that are wonderous, mysterious, and beyond words. When we are physically together its pulsating rhythms can literally keep us moving forward.
Movements have long benefited from music, especially music with accompanying lyrics we can sing together, such as protest songs and movement songs, anthems, hymns, and adapted popular songs.
Visual Arts
The Visual Arts can be powerful expressions of the passion, depth, and creativity of their creators, and can stir strong cognitive and emotional experiences that can unite and empower us along our climate action journey’s.
o Films, or visual stories, can address problems and solutions directly, such as documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth. But they can also do so indirectly through plot and character development and cinematography.
o Icons, old and new; visual symbols; memes; posters; and other graphic designs — these can unite and inspire us like few other things can, especially those that are connected to stories and are multivalent.
o Videos designed for certain Social Media channels can combine the powerful qualities of films and icons to inspire and inform.
o Paintings, sculptures, mobiles, and other art forms found in museums, galleries, businesses, and homes can do for us all that visual arts are capable of.
o Photographs, especially ones we take, like selfies, can be powerful testaments to our climate actions, to our being together. They can rekindle such experiences again and again. Like all of the other Arts, they evoke and tell stories; but these are our stories, stories we are in, stories we can share through Social Media channels and presentations and informally when we are together.
Dance
When we come together we should be quite intentional about incorporating dance into our being together as a way of experiencing and strengthening the bonds we have with each other and having fun together and enjoying one another.
18. Joy, a Hallmark of The Climate Movement
When we come together — united by our goals, during our continual stream of action events, and by meeting regularly — our passion, our depth, our creativity, our love, can bring about something that must be a hallmark of the Climate Movement: joy.
There is joy in answering the call, knowing that for a time such as this you were faithful, we were faithful together.
When we are together enough, there is joy. And when we have such joy, it is impossible not to have hope.
19. Climate Action & Staying Power: Together Long Enough
For those of you who are Climate Movement Artist-Athletes and have made The Climate Movement Promise, you have made a sustained commitment to collective action over time to overcome climate change by achieving a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.
We must be together enough for as long as it takes. 2050 and thereafter, throughout this Century and beyond — that’s our timeframe. We cannot be like vernal pools that spring up and briefly burst with life and activity and then disappear. Many movements are like this, but we cannot be.
More than anything else, it is our love that must keep us moving forward long enough. It is the dynamic nexus of finitude, kairos, and love that continues to lift us to our feet to make our stand, to strive towards our vision. Every precious second of your life is an opportunity to choose love.
And that’s how we will have staying power, our third source of power, to join together with our moral power and our people power to change the world.
20. The Climate Movement’s Purpose, Goals, & Strategic Significance
I will simply reiterate the Climate Movement’s strategic significance:
To continually push the other three of The Catalytic-4 and society at large to achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal.
So that’s our job: to push, push, push Climate Action Supporters, strategic ARTC (the accelerating rate of tech change), and Governments-and-Markets. Our job is to make our future come faster. We are justice-achievers, hope-makers, and beauty-creators.
Conclusion
Everyone who has decided to be a part of The Climate Movement, and hopefully has made The Climate Movement Promise, is a Climate Movement Artist-Athlete striving for team Gold on our Olympian Fields of Action. Our talents and abilities make us fit for our particular roles, the types of Artist-Athletes we will be, creating beauty as we strive to achieve our best and make our contribution, helping our team to victory after victory. And the wonderful thing is we are not competing against other teams and other countries, because we’re all a part of one big Olympian team striving for Gold. Our victories are theirs, and theirs are ours as together we overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.
All of us around the world are making the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our world more just as we make our future come faster. We have our shared Vision, embodied through our actions. And together that gives us our two forms of hope: Vision-Hope & Action-Hope.
We are the hope we’ve been waiting for. Join us!
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in the Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.