interviews
Pain Is The Price of Consciousness
by Max Moinian
September 17, 2019
This interview with Max Moinian was conducted and condensed by frank news. Max was the co-editor of our May 2018 issue on Urban Planning.
frank: Hi! Tell us about yourself and Future Earth.
Max: I am Max Moinian, I have a Master's in Urban Design from MIT, and Future Earth is a climate change education platform, right now just on Instagram. It’s a newborn baby I had with Steph Shepherd, who is a total social media and marketing genius. We think our combined brains are good parenting. Good information that is enticing and digestible.
This all happened because mutual friends told us we were both climate change crazy ladies. We met and finished each other’s sentences. She convinced me that more celebrities would engage in environmentalism if the cause was packaged for them. So we tried a rebranding exercise. Make it cool and sexy. Do for the treehugger what Gloria Steinem did for feminism, if you will. But also survey what’s out there and fill in the gaps.
Plastics have suddenly become the environmental villain on social media.
I’m not mad at that, plastics are a gateway drug to environmentalism, but let’s take it a step further and talk about petrochemicals and how the same shit making those bottles is in your activewear and household products, and powering your car and house.
Basically what we're doing is trying to visually represent information we're reading, and make it enticing and clear for Instagram. I'll do the heavy lifting and read through the dense reports, make three-step guides, and report back on Instagram. Everything from science lessons, to consumer and lifestyle tips, ways you can get involved, and movies to watch. It’s imperative to me that we reflect on the psychological, personal aspect about learning about climate change. My own journey was so emotional and I found it hard to find a shoulder to lean on and people to have those conversations with.
Facts aren’t everything. Feelings are facts too.
How did you end up focusing on climate issues?
It's crazy to think that years of Ivy League education, undergrad at Barnard, Master's at MIT, and you know, private school before that – all of it – never touched on the very rudimentary and basic information about climate change that everyone needs to know. It was never presented to us, I read headlines but they never stuck, and somehow I got away with ignoring it all of those years.
via Max Moinian thesis presentation deck
Then there I was at MIT – the grand narrative is how do we design and protect cities from the coming environmental perils? So, sea level rise, temperature rise, extreme weather, pollution, deforestation…. All of it from a policy and design standpoint. I focused on design, so, seawalls and engineering systems to address the consequences of global warming. But what about the causes? Why can’t we start there? Why aren’t we talking about it?
In design studios, we were tasked to protect cities by building things.
We had projection data for the year 2100 without fully understanding what's causing sea level rise in the first place.
It really bothered me. I felt like this world of mobilized urban designers and architects are at the end of a line that starts with the science, goes through technology and policy, and leaves us with a very limited, pathetic toolkit. Real innovation doesn’t happen at the end of the line, you know?
We're still that client-based discipline where you just have to do whatever the client says and not necessarily what you stand for. I busted my ass to get an internship at BIG because I wanted to work on the BIG U. I got disenchanted in three seconds. I remember one night I called my advisor and told him I was morally conflicted.
We were using taxpayer money to protect people, but mostly to protect valuable assets.
To be fair, the opportunities the firm had were completely restricted by policy and bureaucratic nonsense. But I wanted no part in it. He told me I had to make the choice of working within the system to change it, or go full radical. And I guess I’ve been testing the outlaw territory ever since.
via Max Moinian thesis presentation deck
What's the best way to a) begin your personal education in climate change, and b) retain information without feeling constantly overwhelmed and emotionally drained?
I know better than anyone how hard it is to commit time in your life to this topic. I didn’t do it until I had six months to research and write a thesis. I thought, I'm going to devote to learning about climate change now because when else can I do this? I wasn’t worried that climate science had no clear place in urban design. I knew I’d figure out a way to get away with it.
I spent most of those days making a matcha latte, getting back in bed, and reading a book for the morning. Then writing and drawing in the afternoon. It was a glorious time of ultimate brain activation. I loved being isolated in my little academic bubble. Not everyone can do that, not everyone wants to do that, no one has the time. So here’s a cheat sheet:
Step one: start with the basic facts. How does climate change and what does that mean for the future? But also, how do we get data and make projections? What are the main causes? What are our options? Your resource is the IPCC. Don't listen to what anyone else has to say except the IPCC and climate scientists. And don’t be ashamed if you need a refresh on middle school science. There's a textbook version of IPCC reports for young adults that I reference constantly.
Step two: a brief history of how climate science has been politicized. Seeing how the proof and solutions have been muzzled by Big Oil and politics is mindblowing.
It showed me that we are not as dependent on the systems we rely on today as we may think.
It also made me hyper-skeptical but in a good way. I love Naomi Oreskes and Naomi Klein, two badass women who write clearly but also have documentaries and interviews you can watch.
Step three: take care of yourself. It took a few breakdowns for me to admit that I wasn’t invincible and this was seriously heavy shit. It’s emotional, and most people connect emotionally. I've read the facts, I know the projections. But it never registered for me. You know, but at the same time you don’t know.
Because my capacity to imagine what two degrees of warming looks like is low. Because this is the most daunting, helpless topic possible.
This is the equivalent of the atom bomb. This is the environmental narrative of our time, and it's really hard to do anything when you know that the problem is so far beyond your little self, your community, your country. It's the entire world, with no silver-bullet solution, and no end in sight, and that's fucking scary.
Yes, it really is.
One time, when I was in the depths of knowing too much, like borderline depression, I was sitting with a professor who will probably never know how much she means to me. As I was talking I think she could just tell something was not right, and she put her arm on my shoulder and said, "Honey, you need to read some Rebecca Solnit." So I bought this book Hope in the Dark and I've gone back to it maybe five times already. It was the hug that I needed. I needed to know that there are people that know more than me and they are still fighting. And I needed to see that they had happy normal lives, or at least appeared to.
Another game-changing book is Living In Denial by Kari Norgaard. The psychology of inaction. She says,
"Pain is the price of consciousness. To be conscious in the world today is to be aware of vast suffering and unprecedented peril."
No one wants to feel like that. Everyone has a threshold, a cap to how much of those kind of feelings you can harbor. And we're all maxing out on our personal issues, our family, our life. You know, millennial burnout or whatever.
Who wants towillingly experience that much pain?
Right.
To exist is painful enough.
Sometimes I get pissed off watching people go about their day, nonchalant, like parked with the engine running, A/C blasting with the windows down, watching TV on their iPhone. And I feel like this person doesn't care. And I’m almost jealous at how simple life seems to be in their mind, so guilt free and chill. But to Norgaard that's actually really difficult to do: “Apathy is the mask of suffering.” It's really hard to suppress all those existential thoughts and feelings, but because it's so much harder to actually deal with them, we lean towards denial.
Being hyper-aware is a massive burden. I've never sought out therapy in my life – I just started seeing a psychologist who specializes in climate anxiety. Being an activist and educator means I’m committing to VIP care for my mental health. Because that is my MVP!
As Solnit says, “Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism.”
interviews
Evaluating Debates From Experience
by David Vincent Kimel
March 13, 2019
This interview with David Vincent Kimel was conducted and condensed by frank news.
Mr. Kimel is a Yale Graduate Student in Roman History, Debate Coach Emeritus of the Yale Debate Association, two-time winner of Harvard's Coolidge Debating Prize, and Founder of the Transhumanist Society.
How has your history as an experienced debater informed your opinion on the subject?
I was privileged to be a member of the top ranked debate team in the country as an undergraduate at Harvard and the coach of the Yale Debate Association for six years. I also did some interviews with CNN and the Washington Post concerning political debates and served as an advisor for several campaigns. Insofar as this is true, I perhaps tend to watch and evaluate debates differently than many others do; for example, I am sensitive to tactics like dropping points, pivoting away from the questions at hand, delivering talking points instead of clear answers, etc. Unfortunately these all tend to be hallmarks of public political debates.
Why is debate as a medium so important?
Debate as a medium is important because at its best, it compels participants to see the world through the eyes of those who feel differently about the world than they do; at least this is true in competitive debate, where you can find yourself arguing any side of an issue in spite of your personal beliefs. In the realm of politics, debates compel candidates to try to articulate answers to difficult questions and to defend their perspectives using hard evidence, which is one indicator of what kind of a leader they might be if elected. Academically, the ability to debate respectfully is essential to progress in the arts and sciences, since debates can poke holes in existing theories and force advocates to diligently defend their beliefs and intuitions.
Do you think public debate should have a larger role in our national discourse?
I certainly believe that debate should have a larger role in our national discourse; when I turn on the news, depending on the channel I choose, I often feel like the priest is preaching to the choir; when I surf online, I can find “evidence” to support any cockamamie theory out there; when I visit Facebook, I see an avalanche of posts affirming my intuitions, and I disagree with my friends at the risk of losing them.
Debate fosters tolerance for difference of opinion, and this is too often sorely lacking in our current political climate. Of course, however, certain issues should not be debatable, and there are limits to the usefulness of arguments divorced from consensus building.
Do you believe debate is crucial to democracy?
At its best, debate is crucial to democracy because it empowers voters to make up their minds after hearing the most articulate arguments for and against various positions rather than going to the ballot box inspired by one sided narratives and propaganda for your favorite candidate. People treat politics like team sports when they should really approach it more like a jury-trial.
How would you adjust or change the current political debate format?
Insofar as this is true, certain steps can be taken to improve the quality of discourse. For example, I see no need for rowdy television audiences distracting viewers from the candidates’ ideas. There should be written debates instead of just oral ones, allowing for deeper levels of analysis. Moderators should be able to stop candidates when they veer into talking points. At the same time, politicians should be challenged more thoroughly on where they disagree with their party’s common platform. There should be more specific situational debates (what would you do if...) rather than just generalizing queries. Candidates should sometimes be asked to judge debates and evaluate expert opinions rather than just arguing among themselves. In some debates, candidates should engage with experts in the field rather than bickering with their opponents. There should be topical debates on issues like climate change and tax policy, and with great frequency too; this would be better than lumping every issue together in three or four events. Finally, perhaps there should be impartial judges who grade the candidates according to various metrics (poise, truthfulness, originality, etc), at least sometimes. Otherwise there’s no accountability for what’s said.
Who is the ideal moderator and what is the moderators role?
The ideal moderator should be a respected and impartial figure. However, much depends on the format. For example, in a debate about specialized topics, I’d like to see experts weigh in with their opinions and even debate the candidates. I’d also like to see more panels of moderators representing not only centrist positions, but a range of political intuitions. The problem now is that our formats for debates are not diverse enough. Sometimes, for example, the candidates themselves should be the moderators and be asked to synthesize and evaluate the opinions of others; we might learn more from how they judge debates than how they participate in them.
You coach collegiate debate – what makes for an effective debater?
There are great qualities which both effective collegiate and political debaters share in common: poise, eloquence, confidence, warmth, and truthfulness. Unfortunately, good college debaters are also experts at flattering judges into voting for them by playing up to their intuitions and exaggerating the flaws of the other side, and effective political debaters can preach to their base and drum up support by avoiding controversy instead of seeking truth.
There also needs to be more questions about compromise and consensus building and how candidates differ from cookie cutter stereotypes of their party’s common platforms.
How can we move beyond argument and bickering towards more effective debate?
For debate to be more than bickering, there needs to be a process after the debate takes place for a judge or jury to weigh arguments instead of pitting them against each other. This is one reason why I think candidates should sometimes be asked to judge debates instead of only participating in them. To democratize debate, there can be formats in which viewers from home can tell their stories and participate, etc.