Do Actions Matter?

Hello and welcome to human-ing - a weekly column about what it means to be human well in a more-than-human world.

I have been writing all week on a different piece, only to have it all crumble last night when I noticed a fundamental conceptual error in my thinking. I got so excited about it that I ended up sleeping less than three hours, and my attempt to put it into words this morning - 48 hours before it’s supposed to be published - turns out to be impossible. My brain just can’t fathom that complexity today.

So I wondered whether to publish the original piece I’d been working on last week and improve it the week after. I damned myself for not having those new ideas three days later - after I’d published. Having them before that and still publishing the other piece feels dishonest. So here we are.

I was asked this week how I manage to write so much. It’s pretty straightforward. I read a lot. A lot. I try to have many interesting experiences. I pay attention to the world. Many people say the same. What I then also do is sit down five to seven mornings a week for two to three hours to write.

Because of that, luckily, I have a repertoire of half-finished to nearly finished essays in my archive, and this one today is one that is much less complex than my usual writing, but also dear to my heart - something my tired brain can wrap its head around. It’s short, on point and - I find - super useful. It’s a bit like an elevator pitch. I hope, for a change, you appreciate the shortness.

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created by author, no AI.

I’ve found that there are three types of people when it comes to climate action:

Type 1: My actions don’t matter. It’s the rich and powerful who cause most harm.

Type 2: My actions don’t matter. It’s the system.

Type 3: My actions do matter. But they’re not enough on their own.

This is what I say to each one.

To type 1, I say: yes, the richest 0,1% have caused 8% of all emissions since 1990. AND: the richest 10% cause 65% of all emissions on earth. And with the average income in countries like Germany - you belong to those 10%.

To type 2 - which usually, after I say the first thing, now also includes the type 1 people - I say: yes, it’s the system. AND: by staying complicit in the system, we are also keeping it alive.

Then (at the latest) the type 1 and 2 people become type 3.

So to type 3, I say: yes, your individual actions alone don’t make much of a difference. AND: nothing you do is ever individual. You are the system. You are not a separate being who acts upon the world from somewhere outside it. You are a node in a web of relationships - social norms, infrastructure, pricing signals, the people who watch you, the people who watch them. When you change how you move through the world you shift the field of possibility for everyone entangled with you.

Your choices don’t add up the way numbers add up. They ripple. They reshape what counts as normal. They change what’s thinkable for the person standing next to you.

As Nora Bateson would say, it might influence change on the “n-th order,” in ways that escape your awareness, with consequences you can never fully foresee or know.

Your pattern is part of the pattern.

And patterns — unlike footprints — are contagious.

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