JOAN SUTHERLAND 97
Here at the End
of the World
Joan Sutherland, Roshi
THE UNITED NATIONS SAYS that a million species could go
extinct in the coming decades. What will that look like coming
across our news feed? Imagine that the extinctions are announced
one by one as they occur: how many alerts per day will that be?
We’re entering a time of unimaginable losses, including the pos-
sible end of human life on Earth. If we hope to change this, we have
to reckon with the fact that whatever we’re doing now isn’t working,
since we’re still headed for the cliff, and something is preventing
most people from engaging with the emergency, despite all the warn-
ings. It’s possible that an important part of that something is a fear,
conscious or unconscious, of the sorrow to come. How will we bear
this grief? And won’t grieving make it harder for us to act? But I’m
wondering if it is not grief that weakens us, but all we do to avoid it.
Perhaps we need, instead, to include it. Grieving won’t keep us from
acting, but it will change how we do so, in ways that make a great
difference.
Grief has strengths that are different from anger’s, as water is dif-
ferent from fire. Many contemporary cultures tend to valorize what
some consider masculine traits over what some consider feminine
ones, which means fiery virtues over watery: outrage over sorrow,Lunar Attractions from the series White Nights, 2013ART BY SOPHIE LECUYER