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Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It w/ Dr. GInie Servant-Miklos
1 Playsin 14 hours
On Friday, July 31st, we hosted Dr. Ginie Servant-Miklos for a Q&A about her book Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It. This was the conclusion of our Pedagogies of Collapse book club, where we met biweekly to discuss the book and its implication for education. Here is the full unedited Q&A. I wanted to give you a heads up that this conversation gets heavy pretty quickly, includes explicit language, and remind you that HRP is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3), and the views expressed by our guests are their own and do not constitute an endorsement.
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Transcript
Introduction and Q&A Session with Dr. Ginny Servet-Miklos
00:00:12
Speaker
Hey there, editing Nick here at the corner of a busy airport. On Friday, July 31st, we hosted Dr. Ginny Servet-Miklos for a Q&A about her book, Pedagogies of Collapse, A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It.
00:00:26
Speaker
This was the conclusion of our Pedagogies of Collapse book club, where we met bi-weekly to discuss the book and its implications for education. I wanted to give you a heads up that this conversation gets heavy pretty quickly, includes explicit language, and remind you that HRP is a nonpartisan five a one c three and the views expressed by our guests are their own and do not constitute an endorsement.
00:00:49
Speaker
And if that doesn't pique your interest, I don't know what will. Enjoy the episode.
Emotional Reactions to 'Pedagogies of Collapse'
00:00:56
Speaker
Thinking back at where we've come from and what we've discussed, you know, I don't think anybody who signed up was ever in denial, but I do think that over the course of our three meetups this summer, the Pedagogies of Collapse book club has gone through the stages of grief. We started the conversation in June feeling overwhelmed, angry, heartbroken, combative, and even curious.
Approaching Climate Crisis with Youth: Hope and Imagination
00:01:18
Speaker
You all express the need for a new language, for talking about the climate crisis with young folks so that there is room for hope, imagination and joy. You wondered what your role is in all of this, and you share the struggles in your own context.
Education's Role in Societal Collapse
00:01:32
Speaker
Districts putting NAEP scores over the impact of lead in the water or air quality concerns from wildfire smoke or the start of the school year delayed for schools that have never really needed air conditioning before.
00:01:46
Speaker
We felt deeply schools' relationship to collapse not just as a casualty of collapse, but as reproducers of it.
Hopeful Actions Amidst Global Collapse
00:01:54
Speaker
The lack of imagination around what schools can be is so frustrating.
00:01:59
Speaker
Why don't students know the plants and animals in their own neighborhoods? What does it teach us that the trash can just be dropped anywhere and someone unseen whisks it away? And we weighed the cost of being the person to act first.
00:02:13
Speaker
I'm not sure anyone in this room needs to be convinced, even if some of the talking points might help our colleagues move towards the cause. But when I asked on day one what we wanted to build over the course of our conversations, you said, real concrete ideas, not the ones corporations make us believe are our responsibility.
00:02:31
Speaker
Because even if collapse is global, that hopeful action will be local. And I'm grateful for those of you who are able to join
Climate Change: European Weather Impacts
00:02:38
Speaker
us this summer. And I'm so grateful to be joined today by the author of Pedagogies of Collapse, A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It, Dr. Ginny Servit-Miklos. Thank you so much for joining us today. Hi, greetings from the Netherlands.
00:02:53
Speaker
Lovely. I can see the sun shining in through the window. It must be a great day over there. ah Yeah, but we haven't had rain since... up At least two months.
00:03:04
Speaker
Two months? Yeah. So, like, everything is parched golden brown, um which is not normal for Holland. no Like, it was 36 degrees centigrade on Wednesday for the third time this year.
00:03:24
Speaker
i i was One of the things I was just reading about as I was, I don't know, information gathering for some of the climate events connected you know to our book talks is that this is on record like the hottest June, the hottest summer ah Europe has apparently ever in recorded history experienced. um And i was reading about those wildfires in Spain and France. I posted some links in our Discord about that.
00:03:49
Speaker
And I understand, Jenny, that you have family in France. I hope they're doing OK. Have they been impacted by the wildfires at all? Yeah. So I'm French and my family lives in Fontainebleau.
00:03:59
Speaker
My parents, actually, their house is in the forest and 10 percent of the forest burned down two weeks ago. Oh, no, are For the first time ever. Yeah, I mean, they're okay, but it's only a matter of time before. The trees are all sick from the droughts year year after year after year, so they're not very resilient.
00:04:16
Speaker
It's only a matter of time. Oh, my goodness. um Yeah, well, I mean, I hope they're doing okay now and into
Writing 'Pedagogies of Collapse' During Climate Crisis
00:04:24
Speaker
the future. One of the things, you know, think moving into our conversation about the book was the context of you writing it. You know, the summer of 2024, I recall, is being particularly vicious in Europe as well. And Pedagogies of Collapse was released, I think, in November later that Yeah, but I wrote it 22 and 23 because it takes while. a while for me to get things published but already 23 was like unprecedented drought and we're at the start of the El Nino so next year is guaranteed be warmer than this year guaranteed it's like almost 100% certain
00:05:05
Speaker
Well, that I mean, i don't even know how to respond to, you know, at at this point, just like ah an at acceptance. um One of the things I did want to talk about and maybe help situate um the conversation is like those changes since whatever you submitted the draft to the publisher there, like how has the book and its provocations been
Geopolitical Collapse and China's Rise
00:05:26
Speaker
received? What directions has the book taken you since its publication?
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, oh gosh, I've been very, very, very busy since the book came out. ah Well, I guess globally I had underestimated the ah speed at which geopolitical collapse could occur. So I didn't mention geopolitical collapse in the book, but I think I i underestimated how virulently America would...
00:05:57
Speaker
pour its energy into dismantling the very system they built after 1945. My prediction currently is that within 30 years, there will be one large superpower left, China, um which is the going to be the only country capable of having a large centralized system.
00:06:16
Speaker
um government. It will, it's already, I mean, I've been through my work in Africa, I've seen this for myself. um They are building like giant octopus tentacles all the way to the key resources they need to power their future. So lithium mines, all the rare earths and minerals and all the resources they need there. And they're doing it ah through these kinds of shake hands with the devil deals with African elites. um
00:06:47
Speaker
You know, they're building just enough roads and just enough internet and just enough airports for the local population to be okay with it. But it comes with terms and conditions and like the Zamians are never going to be able to repay some of those loans. It's just, yeah.
Upcoming Book on AI and Inequality
00:07:04
Speaker
um But China will be the last country standing in terms of like superpowers and the rest, I mean,
00:07:11
Speaker
The book I'm working on now, which I have to finish writing before the end of the year, is called The Left We Need, Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll and Climate Justice for All. So that's my new book. um And I've been like really...
00:07:24
Speaker
ah looking at two things that I hadn't looked at in pedagogies of collapse. One is the um a i and I've got like a whole section called will AI kill us all? and My answer is yes, but not for the reasons you think. It's not a your Terminator thing.
00:07:41
Speaker
um And inequality is the second one that I hadn't looked at enough as a vector of collapse. Okay. Really an emphasis on those geopolitical factors at play.
00:07:52
Speaker
um Can I ask, what is your take on the the way that AI will kill us? I just want to get a sneak peek of it can it coming, you know? There's two main reasons AI will kill us. The first is that all the... I had this conversation with my friend, Zach Stein, and we were like talking back forth and... and I was like Zach, you know, like, I think if it comes to feeding people or feeding the robots, they'll definitely starve the people and feed the robots. And he was like, yeah, totally. Like, totally. They're totally going to starve people. And if it comes to choosing between cooling people or cooling the robots, they're totally going to cool the robots and let the people die. um You know, in these mass heat death events. And so...
Europe's Electrical Grid and AI Resource Demands
00:08:31
Speaker
It's one, going to be a resource problem because ai and people have this, like, as I wrote in the book, you know, like phallic techno magic, this like techno magic thinking, but ai is silicon based stuff and, and chips and lots and lots of water and electricity galore and all things that are very, very material. um,
00:08:58
Speaker
and but I mean, here in Europe, I don't know how it is in the US, but here in Europe, the grid is already completely buggered. Like, you cannot add any more, plug anything more into the grid. It's not a question of generating more electricity. It's literally, there's not enough cables to carry it around. And so people are massively actually buying like solar batteries. My solar battery is arriving in like a couple weeks because...
00:09:21
Speaker
like the grid cannot handle the amount of electricity that's going through it. And so these, these like data centers are literally building up, firing up coal power plants, gas power plants. um But the thing is, so so that's like the resource side of things is going to create more droughts. It's going to create more demand for electricity at a time where we desperately need to electrify everything. It's going to, um,
00:09:47
Speaker
have all these, it has all these like bottlenecks built in and China is sitting pretty on, I read like, I literally read through the entire International Energy Agency report on AI and China is sitting on like 80% of the materials that you need to build AI.
China's Global Dominance Predictions
00:10:04
Speaker
They have a monopoly on that. So what I foresee is that in the future, China will be the only state standing and then you're going to have ah like these, the American billionaire's plan is to secede from the US and to create these like Prospera type corporate city Randian fever dream. um
00:10:24
Speaker
And they will be vassal states to China because they don't have any of their own materials or things to build the AI with. So they're going to be like vassal states to China. So like China will invade Taiwan. That will happen.
00:10:36
Speaker
They're just waiting for the US to like disappear, which the US will do. I mean, I don't even know if the US will make it to the end of the second Trump presidency. um But... like China's just, China's got time.
00:10:47
Speaker
They don't have other elections coming up. So they've got time. They can, they can like afford to wait out the U S collapsing on its own, just like the U S waited out the Soviet union collapsing on its own. um And ah these like Zuckerberg and Musk and some Altman and Peter Thiel, their, their planet is to have like their own, they're planning to basically not need people.
00:11:14
Speaker
So the problem with AI, of course, is if you replace all the workers with robots, who's going to buy the stuff that you're producing?
AI's Role in Wealth and Economic Collapse
00:11:22
Speaker
So in terms of economics, it it's like it doesn't make sense. So it's like a hyper concentration of wealth. And I'm so tired of hearing these tech bros going like, oh, an age of abundance for all. And I'm like, yeah, because you guys are so keen to share all your wealth, you know, like all that wealth hoarding. You guys are going to vote yourselves for being taxed into a universal basic income? I don't think so. um
00:11:46
Speaker
And so the inequality being the second problem. But they know this, like the billionaires know this. But basically, I wrote, at the time that I finished the book, think the richest person was still Jeff Bezos, and his fortune was about...
00:12:05
Speaker
and there' something like 150 billion or 200 billion or something like that. And now Elon Musk at one trillion, like we cannot even fathom how much money it's just, your brain cannot compute. I think Gary Stevenson said it best. um Or like 1 million seconds is a week and a half.
00:12:24
Speaker
um 1 billion
Resource Control Plans by Billionaires
00:12:27
Speaker
seconds is something like two years or something or three years. And a trillion seconds is 33,000 years. So that gives you an idea of the order of magnitude. So basically, the billionaires will have everything.
00:12:42
Speaker
Everyone else will have nothing. The resources we need to survive, like food, water, land, etc., will be burned to a crisp. ah China will have everything that's left.
00:12:54
Speaker
We'll be left to fight over the scraps while the billionaires build their ah fortress AI-powered basically will only let in people. if You could read Octavia Butler if you want to see what that looks like. But...
Influence of Drugs on Elite Decision-Making
00:13:07
Speaker
um It's like they'll let their masseuse and their yoga Pilates teacher and whatever, but all the rest, their food production, they intend to fully automate that um in like controlled conditions by gathering all the energy to themselves. ah They fully intend to leave us all to die.
00:13:28
Speaker
And I don't think that that's like, they're delusional, of course. And I think the reason that they are able to abide such delusions is that they're high as fuck on drugs. I'm sorry, I'm like, but I think that ketamine is a big part of how we got here.
00:13:46
Speaker
That should be the real title of the book right there. I think ketamine is a big part of how we got here.
Balancing Awareness and Optimism
00:13:51
Speaker
um Well, I got to say, like that that doesn't ah ah um fill me with a lot of confidence, just being ah being that nobody in this room, as far as I'm aware, um lives in China currently, which means that your prediction, you know, is is like of a dramatically degraded um future you know, both materially, politically, socially, you know, for the rest of, yeah, for for for the rest of us. um I'm wondering, one of the questions I i wanted to to ask you in here is, and I think this is a great time to do it, is like,
00:14:24
Speaker
I think there's a core of people who sort of are on board with raising this alarm, right? And just being like, hey, here are the facts and the data. And if the trends proceed as they are, this is this is one of those potential futures, right?
00:14:39
Speaker
How do we balance, this was something we wrestled with in the book club, how do we balance truthfulness, right? Like just laying it out there, like Octavia Butler in, you know, the Earthseed books. How do we take those trends, extrapolate them with the truthfulness without, on the other hand, perpetuating some kind of doomerism?
00:14:56
Speaker
Like, what is, where where is the line here? Like, are we all screwed and we don't have a say? Or is it like, you know, close our laptops and go sit in the corner and cry? Like, how do we how do we navigate from here towards that potential future?
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, so that's always a very difficult one. And um I don't want to pedophiles hope so you have to start from where things are at and meet people where they're at and go what's still possible from here because like if you're just
Preparing for Future Hardships
00:15:30
Speaker
gonna ask oh yeah we don't want to be too negative so let's imagine a future that's actually not possible i mean france will burn to a crisp that's my home country and like all the forests will be gone when i see what's happening now like it's the whole
00:15:45
Speaker
The harvests are failing. The forests are burning. People are cooking inside their homes. We have no access to natural resources anymore in Europe. We use them all up. So we have no steel, no coal, no... Like, we don't have anything left. We don't have, ah you know, all... We don't have our own nuclear fuels. we don't We don't have anything... So the day that the powers that be choose to no longer let us import stuff, which will happen, um Europe will be, like i honestly think that Spain, Italy, the southern part of France, Greece will all be Mad Max hype deserts within 30, 40 years. How fast it's going. It's like, it seems unthinkable. But then did you foresee COVID? Did you think that would be possible that we'd shut down the whole world? I mean, people are are staring at these fires and thinking, oh, how is this possible? And then, you know, there's like prominent in French scientists like Jean-Marc Jancovici is like, of told you so.
00:16:45
Speaker
told you this would happen. ah You could have prepared. You chose not to um So, mean, Holland will be underwater. ah no matter how much hubris the Dutch have about how good they are with water, we're going to have to move up north for sure, like us
Parallels Between WWII Hardships and Future Challenges
00:17:03
Speaker
us Europeans. But also you Americans, like half of the US will be uninhabitable. So ah you guys will have to to move up north as well. ah Let's see how Canada feels about you guys then. But um
00:17:17
Speaker
yeah, it's it's not a joyful message to share, but that's why, like That's what we have to live with, right?
00:17:27
Speaker
like didn't didn't Did my grandmother want to live through World War II and have Germans literally living in her house and ah have rationing for 15 years or however long it was? Because the rationing lasted way longer after the war, by the way, for those who are not from Europe. like We had famines after the war, like 45, 46
00:17:48
Speaker
20,000 people died in the Netherlands from starvation after the Second World War, after the end of the hostilities because there was no food. and So, you know, are we in for some rough times? Yes.
00:18:02
Speaker
And we can prepare for it or not. And what I dedicate myself to now, what I've done since I wrote the book is, of course, I founded the Bildung Climate School.
00:18:14
Speaker
um in the Netherlands, which is the first school in the Netherlands to combine vocational applied and university education. So I guess you guys would maybe call that community college and university combined.
00:18:25
Speaker
okay ah like It's like a trade school. So, you know, we've got students who are like tailor students. So they learn literally work with fabrics and sewing. We've got... um event management students, doctor's assistant students, ah like sport teacher training students. Those are the vocational students. We have like supply chain management students. We have ah security studies students and not university security studies, but like literally learning to be security and health and safety inspectors. And then we have the university students from psychology, economics, the the usual, business, ah liberal arts, um and we mix them all together. And we work with a bunch of local circular companies um with whom we've built these relationships.
00:19:16
Speaker
ah like they're all companies that do really interesting stuff. Like we've got a company that transforms used up coffee grounds from cafes in Rotterdam into mushrooms. So like um Lion's Mane and... um So officially they produce lion's mane and oyster mushrooms. That's the ones. Of course, in the Netherlands, you can also grow other kinds of mushrooms, but we won't get into that. um There's a company that recycles fire hoses and turns them into like leather pieces, bags, bags.
00:19:51
Speaker
like belts type stuff. We've got a company that ah is like a diving center ah for ocean protection. we've got then We've got like a dozen of these companies and the students go in mixed groups and work on like a real challenge and then they have to turn that into a community education program. and a fashion piece for a show. And we just had our fashion show two weeks ago. It was absolutely wonderful. 500 people came. It was, it was like incredible. um Because like the core message that I have for the left right now and for progressives who are in despair is like, if your message is everything is screwed and you should also feel terribly guilty about being white and about like your role and complicity in in the system. Yeah, well,
00:20:37
Speaker
Good luck. What are you going do with that? ah And that was my problem with like sort of the Extinction Rebellion type tactics. like Why are you stopping commuters from going to work? These are the wrong target. The class war is between us and the billionaires. You should be sending drones to destroy data centers, not... stopping commuters who were taking co2 free form of transport from getting to work you know what i mean like i come from a ah working class family and that's really what i've tried to tap into i'm the only environmental program as far as i know that is able to attract you know like muslim kids from the suburbs of rotterdam girls in hijabs come to my school alongside people with queer flags and um
00:21:22
Speaker
you know, like we are able to build these imperfect solidarities and just say everybody get along ah because we're doing something and not just sitting around navel gazing and saying who has the best words to describe decoloniality, intersectionality and God knows what. Like my working class students, if you mention decoloniality, they'll just like roll their eyes at you and take their phone out. And I love that because it keeps us real. It's like, you know,
00:21:48
Speaker
Get off your PhD high horse people, like seriously, learn to talk like normal people. I mean, I give workshops to dock workers here in in the harbour in Rotterdam. So I was asked by a company to give a workshop on power. And i I did it with the blue collars and with the white collars. And I had way more fun with the blue collar dock workers than I did with the... ah I'm so smart. I have a master's degree, ah you know, white collars up at the headquarters because there were blue collar workers who were all, you know, from Turkish background, Eastern European background, Moroccan backgrounds, a lot of our blue collar class years from like those kinds of backgrounds. And I myself married ah Eastern European working class class. And so I know a lot about those, you know, like that kind of background.
00:22:31
Speaker
And they were really like when you don't talk down at them, when you really sit down and have like a a real conflict, like, yeah, what, what is actually power? Like, what is this thing? And one guy was like, does my wife have power over me? was just like a really funny conversation. and And that's really what I try to do um to really not,
00:22:54
Speaker
talk down at people, but really ah also with realness, just like with with realness about my own struggles and me and this guy from this this organization that we work with. So we're located in a community center in Feyenoord, which is the poorest district of the whole of Rotterdam, Rotterdam being the most socioeconomically unequal district like city in the whole of the Netherlands. You've got the rich north and the poor south, basically, and it's literally divided by a river.
00:23:23
Speaker
And the Kleiman School is in the South. um And that's where it's heavily immigrant sort of Moroccan Turkish neighborhoods. um It's really 20 year like life expectancy difference between the north and the south. um And we are in this community building that is completely not climate proof that we are going to try and figure out ways to like strap fabric to it so the sun reflects off the roof or something like that because it's unlivable ah from like mid June until September.
00:23:53
Speaker
But we share this building with ah lovely community organizations. And you know there's like Turkish flute lessons after we finish class there. There's also a ah a special, Stichting is like a nonprofit for people with a special needs education.
00:24:10
Speaker
And they have a whole program for boys, especially for kids from the street in Rotterdam to get them in to like learn a profession, to learn to do something, to not hang out and do drugs. and There's a huge, I mean, the Netherlands is narco state. We have a huge cocaine problem. We have a huge like heroin. It's mainly cocaine and MDMA. And I think I'm like i'm not not an expert on this, but...
00:24:31
Speaker
I mean, through the port of Rotterdam, it just they use the shady. So the Netherlands had the worst way of legalizing weed ever that still allowed these shady cartels to come from Morocco and they use the same channels to import cocaine. And so it's just like a really easy way out for the kids from Rotterdam South.
00:24:51
Speaker
um just like me sitting down with the director of this organization and he did time for dealing drugs and for like organizing and cocaine traffic through Rotterdam. So he was out of jail and he um is now working to prevent youth from following in his footsteps. And he and I are just like having ah a drink, obviously not a beer because they're Muslim, but her having a drink in the sunshine, you know, just talking about our lives and talk about some of the the things I've done in my life and some of the things I'm less proud of. And, you know, I also had my own issues with drugs. um And so just on like on a real human to human level. And then one of my companies like bailed on us. Like the guy was like, yeah, sorry, you guys are bad for business. I need to bail on you and like dump my students in it. And then I just pick up the phone. I'm like, call this guy up. I'm like, hey, can you take my students? And he was just like, yes.
00:25:47
Speaker
um And just kind of rescued our project. because of these human relationships that we've been building. And for me, that's just so important that even if I fail, even if the school doesn't make any kind of difference, even if we, you know, lose and Rotterdam's underwater, that at least throughout this whole time, we've had a lot of fun.
00:26:08
Speaker
That was a long-winded way of answering, but... You know what? It was it was such a good ah response, so thorough response. I kind of forgot what what even had provoked it. um But it got me thinking, like, you're you're referring to those imperfect solidarities. That was ah a big thing that we had talked about in the course of our book club. But I think I...
00:26:27
Speaker
kind of answered a question in my head that I wanted to ask you, which was like, how do we, given, you know, if there's going to be this this breaking point, right, this this point of collapse, maybe it's um kind of slow and then all at once, or maybe there is another just kind of global event like ah COVID pandemic or something that, impacts everybody everywhere. um There are going to be groups because they're already there. The nationalists, fascists um that are going to take advantage of this, like we might call them eco fascists, right, who are going to use that collapse as a way to crack down um on immigration even greater than they have before, or even just argue for some kind of eugenic depopulation, right? Climate disaster and all these things as a way you know to weed out the survival of the fittest sort of mindset. um But what I'm hearing you saying is that this is a way that maybe we can rescue, um you know, some people who might otherwise be in that eco-fascist coalition into, um um I don't know, a different group um without, I don't know.
00:27:29
Speaker
sort of ah both ecocidal and ah suicidal societal ideas, but like that need for large, diverse and interdisciplinary groups um who were going to um not necessarily be the savior of everyone, but like, we're going to at least ah make this thing that we're in, whatever you want to call it we're going to make this enjoyable and livable and survivable. Is that sort of what you're you're pointing to there?
00:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that there's a very clear pipeline from the despair of working classes that having been abandoned by the left to Donald Trump and to fascism. And like fascism has always fed into working class despair, always. um There's just so in preparing my book, you know, I spent a lot of time reading on the history of the left and looked at how the left completely abandoned the working classes in the 19, late 80s, 90s, Clinton, Tony Blair,
00:28:25
Speaker
ah you know, Schroeder, Mitterrand, like all those people were professional politicians, career politicians, none of them hailing from the working class, who basically sold their parties to big business and to ah billionaire donors.
00:28:42
Speaker
And there was no rescuing the left from that afterwards. And and that's when the left split into three. You had the economic left, the working class people who were completely abandoned um and they were hoovered up by these like simplistic narratives about why their living standards are falling and why their identity was pulled apart.
00:29:04
Speaker
Then you have the political left or parliamentary left, which became this, you know, like professional class, not so different from the right wing.
00:29:16
Speaker
political parties, actually, they're taking money from the same people. They're not moving the leadle needle much one way or another. ah Don't expect anything from the parliamentary left. Like, ah as I said, don't expect anything from the Democrats, honestly. ah
00:29:35
Speaker
it's it's It's just flabbergasting to me to see how it's been like, what, a year and a half? And so still have almost two years. The midterms are coming up It's like, what's your plan, guys?
00:29:45
Speaker
Oh, you don't have one. Okay, great. Of all of the things that I don't need to be reminded of, that's it. That's the thing in the immediate future that makes me most depressed, I guess. And it's like Keir Starmer won a landslide election in the UK and managed to fuck it up so thoroughly in under a year.
00:30:03
Speaker
It's like, dude, you had one job. You don't fuck it up. You managed to fuck it up. Like how? And yet, yeah, and yet. ah Oh, well, that's that's wonderful. um yeah And the intellectual left, which is us, and we fucked it up.
00:30:21
Speaker
And until we admit that we became... prissy little intellectuals who didn't care about communicating beyond the walls of the university, who thought it was cool to speak in tongues, um and who got like a sadomasochistic enjoyment out of who's the most guilty and the most complicit.
00:30:41
Speaker
then And I know because like I'm doing a lot of research into BDSM for my new book. So I i see y'all. I recognize these patterns. This is BDSM stuff 101. I mean, I said it was in Pedagogy the Collapse. I said it was like religious cult type behavior. But I think it appeals to... um the need for sadomasochism, the more I ah do research on BDSM communities, the more I see that it's a fundamental human thing.
00:31:06
Speaker
ah But like we took this really far with the whole, you know, um all white people are complicit and everyone's a racist. Because if everyone's a racist, then it doesn't matter whether you're Donald Trump or whether you're a professor who used the wrong word.
00:31:20
Speaker
It's all the same. And then nothing makes sense anymore. And if everyone's a fascist, then you can't call out fascism anymore. And your words don't mean anything anymore. And I just got so fed up of this like pissing contest for who was able to use the more complicated words to express their solidarity with Palestine and there and trans rights. And it's like, OK, well, I sat literally in an Extinction Rebellion meetup.
00:31:48
Speaker
that a working class bar owner had kindly offered to host for free because he believed in, you know, like climate justice. And they're all doing their introduction and they're all doing like, let's do all our pronouns now. And this guy's completely confused. He's like, we do what?
00:32:03
Speaker
would it would a What? And everyone's like, I'm she, her. and they're all going around. This guy's like, he's getting more beetroot red by the second because he has no idea what's going on. And by the time it gets to him, he's like, and the woman next is like, hopefully,
00:32:17
Speaker
And you are? he him? And he's like, what? And yeah, when you shame someone and there was this massive, like, sadistic...
00:32:29
Speaker
Urged to shame and cancel anyone who wasn't buying into our agenda. They turn. It's like a visceral human reaction. it like shame is the worst human emotion. and it turns on a dime into hate. And then you lose those people and they will follow. Like I saw this with all my Jewish friends. It's really.
00:32:51
Speaker
There could have been ways to handle this that could have supported. The only way to solve this was to get Netanyahu out of power. And the only people who can do that are the people who can vote there.
00:33:01
Speaker
And what we did instead was alienate every progressive Jew that I could see in Europe, at least, um by making them feel like the whole world hated them.
00:33:14
Speaker
and making them paranoid. And like, I literally had to explain to a Jewish friend of mine, like, Trump is not your friend. Elon Musk is not your friend. alo a broken clock is right twice a day. That doesn't mean it's not broken. Like, go and read. Yeah, but he's supporting Israel.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, he's still not your friend. Like, seriously, go and read what's on some of these far-right forums in in America, and it's not friendly to the Jews, trust me. And it's just like, if we could have gotten out of what I call this splitting of people are either all good or all bad, this performative allyship, this performance of perfection...
00:33:54
Speaker
then I think we would have lost a lot fewer people. i think a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump were not fascists at heart, were not people who deeply support. I just read a book, um American Journalist on the American far right.
00:34:06
Speaker
And I think most people who voted for Donald Trump don't like they don't support that level of crazy. It is ban basically a bunch of neurodivergent guys in a basement ah on Reddit, on 4chan, on 8chan.
00:34:20
Speaker
And she did some really thorough reporting on this. Like, that's what kickstarted the MAGA movement. And and then it kind of, like, escaped the lab. But, ah of course, you can always trigger people's animal instincts in a mob-type situation. We've had this here as well.
00:34:35
Speaker
You know, like, violent right-wing mobs burning stuff. You've had your own violent mob at the Capitol. But most people who supported Hitler, who support Trump, etc., just wanted...
00:34:50
Speaker
recognition of their financial struggles, just wanted recognition of their, ah like being allowed to participate as full humans, not being looked down on.
00:35:01
Speaker
And we need to recognize the role that we, the intellectual left, played in making them feel that way, and the role of the parliamentary left in completely abandoning them to the billionaire class.
00:35:13
Speaker
can Can we fold in? um like i'm I'm so curious then about that interdisciplinary approach um and referring it back to Bildung and then the experimental pedagogics. um It made me think I had two completely independent different conversations this week with two different people in different education contexts that told me like PBL is not enough. um And yet I feel like pedagogically, maybe in the United States, like we're sort of um and not trapped, but like it's a I don't know, it's a it's a closed room, you know, of of project based learning or design thinking and things like that. And us feeling the need to break out of that, the building model that you've built, they're kind of blending in what we might traditionally think of like career or technical education or vocational training like in a
00:36:04
Speaker
broader, i don I don't know, intellectual context, too. um I don't know. I just I want to kind of get your sense of like, where have the last two years since that book, Thinking Ahead to the Future, like taken the direction of building and, you know, the the pedagogies that you've used to um help prepare those students for this future?
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I've been ah kind of, I did talk about Bildung and critical pedagogy and pedagogies of collapse. And and I mean, i went to I went to one of the last summer schools of Schumacher College in the UK, which is this really famous eco-college.
00:36:44
Speaker
I enjoyed it, but then I realized this is so elitist. Like when you talk about plant phenomenology, there's no way that I'm doing that with a a working class student from Rajanam South. um But what appealed to me in the Bildung...
00:36:59
Speaker
I went to visit Christian Kold's old, like it's now a ruin, but the the old farm where he started the first folk high school. and I don't know what happened there, but I got like some wind of inspiration blowing through the old thatched roof from that farm. And it's about two hours out of Copenhagen.
00:37:16
Speaker
And I realized, but this was a place for farmers. Not for like rich kids. And what did they learn here? About farming first and foremost.
00:37:27
Speaker
And of course, of course, like if you wanted farmhands to come and study there, they had to learn about farming. If you want working class kids to come to do liberal arts, they've got to learn about working class things like working with your hands, ah producing things, ah you know how to earn money. they've got it They've got to support their families somehow.
00:37:52
Speaker
So of course, we had to develop a program that wasn't another, you know, gap year experiential, that wasn't another micro college to speak an American language. Micro colleges are great if you're rich and you can afford to take six months or a year out.
00:38:09
Speaker
Our students can't afford that. There's no way that some, you know, girl who's, you know, struggling working at a supermarket because their mom's a drug addict and and and dad is like a, you know, strict, yeah you know, father from an immigrant background and and will barely let her out the house. Like, there's no way that she would be ever allowed, even if she could afford it, to take six months or a year to do a find yourself program.
00:38:37
Speaker
So I was like, hey, you know what? Working class kids deserve a chance to find themselves too. And we've got to do that in a context where they also get essential skills for their future profession. And like they all get a certificate from the university when they finish the climate school, which is super important because that means they can put a certificate from the university on their CVs when they go looking for a job.
00:39:03
Speaker
um And they are working with companies. So they're actually getting internship company experience. It's counting out of their internship hours, which has cost me...
00:39:14
Speaker
The levels of headaches with the administration, bureaucracy, and like the system, you cannot imagine the level of just Kafkaesque bullshit I have had to put up with to get this program up and running as we speak. I still have three students that do not have a place in September because the government denied our request to accredit one of our partners. And the excuse they gave was, yeah, but your partner, they don't have a fixed office. I'm like, yeah, they're a diving school.
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah, no, an internship means you have to be at at your desk 32 hours a week. I'm like, which companies work like that these days? He's like, yeah, no, sorry. And I said, so what's your ideal of internship? And he basically said the Dutch equivalent of Walmart.
00:40:02
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, okay, okay. We'll find another solution. fine I give up. ah Sometimes you got to know when to give up.
00:40:12
Speaker
And like, it's a principle of martial arts, right? I'm a martial artist. And I think that came through the the whole book. It's like, at some point you stop pushing and you find another, like another way into the body.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah, if you can't, I guess, attack your opponent from the front or the bureaucracy in this case, you've got to find that point of leverage and, I guess, sort of, ah you know, ah hip toss them out of the way. um I'm going to – I'll defer to Bill, who who must have been sitting on these questions for 45 minutes because these are these are really awesome. um A lot of the people in the chat are working with – you know, I know the the the college students that you're working with may be – ah as young as maybe 17 or 18 or older, sort of that early um adulthood.
00:40:56
Speaker
A lot of people that we were going through the book club with are, you know, um elementary, middle through high school in the US context, um you know, making that transition into um college or, you know, call it the world of work or like whatever that that future for them is going to look like. um And yeah, this is really interesting from Bill asking, would you have any ideas on how to apply that experimental pedagogics framework to small groups of high school students in the context of literature studies? Most of them are working class from migrant backgrounds. um He's looking for maybe um films, documentaries, or books that you'd recommend for kids kind of on that cusp and that transition. Like I'm trying to think, Ginny, about...
00:41:39
Speaker
like what would be like the pre-building work that kids could do to get their attitudes and mindsets ready so that way, you know, if they were going to walk into, you know, your school in Rotterdam, um what would they what would they experience there? How can students in like the secondary school level work to have some kind of impact here? that's I think that's ah an interesting focus from Bill.
00:42:02
Speaker
Yeah, like high school is a range age. So like the essence of the... I've had to to, you know, you develop models and it helps to structure your thinking and everything. And then the reality, you let me reality. And I've had to apply my model. My students are also 17 from the the the coming to the climate school. So the ones that come from the vocational college are 17.
00:42:27
Speaker
And I've had to like really... check myself every time also like a my teaching staff is also spread between the vocational teachers applied and university teachers and to be like okay so what is actually the essence of the experimental pedagogics model and the essence is we want to start with ourselves and to like understand ourselves enough and who we are and how to regulate ourselves and our nervous systems before we take on really stressful, really overwhelming questions.
00:42:59
Speaker
It's like, it's really about self-regulation and who am I and what are my values and um what moves me as a human And then finding my place in a group where I belong, it like having that community as a shield before I'm thrust into these massive, overwhelming, um you know tragic questions of fascism and climate change and and the dismantling of civilization as we know it.
00:43:30
Speaker
And that's why we build up with, we have this wonderful boxing therapist who does the reflection track in the client school. And through every level, or she processes it through the body with boxing, with ah so journaling and boxing, basically, is how they they process it. But it's um And we have this wonderful guy also who runs the Bildung track and and he's doing art with them and painting and constructing things and first for themselves. And then in a small group, we have a lot of singing in the group and cooking together, etc.
00:44:02
Speaker
And then we go, it's towards the last, towards the end of the climate school, we tackle the big, big issues. And then we have like... one of our um case, Gomp, he's a quite famous collapse economist in the Netherlands, comes in and and gives a talk. and we basically, the principle is don't overwhelm them with, it's this is where we went wrong, right? Where we said, okay, so there's structural racism and there's, ah you know, um transphobia and all these intersectional things. And you have to deal with all of that. And if you don't deal with all of it perfectly, you're a bad person.
00:44:37
Speaker
ah And instead, we're like, okay, where where do your values come from? And we have to accept sometimes we don't like what we hear. I've got conservative Muslims in my class.
00:44:49
Speaker
And I've done a lot of work also with conservative Christian African communities. And this is like a real subject of sometimes productive, sometimes less productive tensions. Yeah. I am very critical towards Christianity because I was subjected to it as a child and I didn't like what I saw or experienced as a queer person. It was not fun. ah But, you know, those are real productive tensions that we have to not ignore and and say, you know, it's okay to be you.
00:45:20
Speaker
You don't have to be threatened by somebody else not being on board with you 100%. And like, Let's start here. with nobody What do you feel in your body when somebody tells you that? Like when somebody attacks you for for being ah trans or gay or when somebody is not torn towards, like where do you feel that in your system? And and we start that, you know, with breathing, boxing, breathing. dancing and then we learned to navigate in a group we had a girl this year who had like really intense anxiety and she was asked to lead a singing like for her voice to be the leading voice in the s singing and everybody had to adjust to her basically so she was too anxious to make more than a peep then we all had to be just below a peep and by the end she was one of the models that walked on our catwalk
00:46:07
Speaker
This girl who was so socially anxious that she couldn't be separated from her friend. Her friend was sick on that day and she was walking the catlu the catwalk alone. And that like that's the essence of the experimental pedagogics model. And I think you can apply that really. i think at any age, really, to start with regulating yourself and then finding your place in a group and then tackle the overwhelming stuff.
00:46:33
Speaker
sort of the idea, you know, um what's what's the what's the idiom? You know, put on your oxygen mask before helping your neighbor. You know, you need to be ah prepared, situated physically and emotionally to grapple with the issues before you can, you know, engage in the kind of building community, that interdisciplinary, you know, perspective um that we've been talking about here.
00:46:57
Speaker
um I mean, I know this for myself, right? um i i I really struggle sometimes with anxiety, with ah just being overwhelmed. I get i have terrible ADHD, so I get really flustered by stuff. You know, my attention, especially when I'm under stress, my attention can be all over the place.
00:47:17
Speaker
And I'm super, super honest with my students about that. I'll be like, sorry, I'm having an ADHD moment. Or like, I'll be like, you know, I'm really anxious today. And just by being open and vulnerable, they're like, oh, so it's okay for me to also work through that. And then I'll be like, just give me a second. I need like a moment to ground myself and to role model that myself, um you know, through my own body. It's something I've had to learn also to regulate myself and also find I'm super open. And that's also, you know, in my writing, but also my new book and also in the school, I'm super open with students that I am trying to find ways to live with this stuff myself.
00:47:58
Speaker
And it's not like you figure it out and then, oh, you know, all is well. No, when I see my country on fire, of course, I feel grief, I feel depression, I feel anxiety, I feel overwhelmed. And so I need a moment to like put myself back together. It's an ongoing process. And I keep telling that to students, you know, you're not going to be out of this ever.
00:48:19
Speaker
For the rest of your life, you're going to have to learn. And some pain just cannot be regulated away.
00:48:28
Speaker
Yeah, that that at least is a clear takeaway in pedagogies of collapse is like grappling with that is really the first, I guess, the first step um you know towards being able to do it as. um the the the grief that we might feel about the loss of ah of a future, right, is going to be something that we're going to be experiencing as, you know, each subsequent event in that chain sort of occurs, um you know, just just like it did with with the pandemic. I think that's a really um that's a really great point. um I want to maybe come come back to Bill real quick here, too. I think what is so...
00:49:05
Speaker
I guess important about what you're saying is that those things don't necessarily require like a curriculum, right? They don't require radically restructuring um the school day. A lot of our conversations in the book club were like, hey, you know, I'm the the low person here. I don't have a lot of leverage in my context, but maybe someone like Bill is like, how can I help get kids emotionally regulated? Well, here might be some steps to do that and then begin to open those conversations. You know, it's not going to require any additional spending or restructuring the school day. um now So let me be perfectly honest with you. I think the schools as we have them are next to pointless, even worse because they're teaching kids that it'll be okay when it won't. So there is definitely, i i would incite you to riot and leave your schools and go and build your own building climate schools and go and build something relevant, like, you know, teach kids to sow, teach kids to grow food, teach kids to cook, which is what we're doing. um
00:50:04
Speaker
If I couldn't do the climb school, I would leave my university job. Honestly, i have zero interest in going to teach statistics and qualitative research. Like, no, fuck you guys. The world is on fire. Why would I do that? if If you make me do that, I will leave and I will go and grow food and like learn how to grow food when there's no water. Because because that's the end game, right? that We're in the end game now. And if you're not, like you've...
00:50:29
Speaker
You will kill yourself as a teacher. Like speaking to all of you you will kill yourself if you keep teaching something that is irrelevant for the future. So it might sound, but I know also the US is like a fascist state with no social security net. So it's not like can just, you know, in Europe, we have very generous unemployment benefits. So you can go and figure out your life. yeah rub it in.
00:50:49
Speaker
But um like quit. If you cannot, if you feel like you're what you're teaching is actually lulling students into a false sense that somehow the future will be okay, then like you're, if you're here, then you already get it.
00:51:10
Speaker
And we need the people who get it to be on the forefront of the revolution. And yeah, it's been such a struggle to build this school that puts, you know, survival skills first that, um,
00:51:26
Speaker
has the building component that, but the thing that I managed to do somehow is to get the collaboration of three existing schools, the vocational college of Rotterdam, the ah university of applied sciences of Rotterdam and the university of Rotterdam to give me money to do this. I've received almost a million euros in funding for the climate school.
00:51:47
Speaker
ah Including 500,000 from the government, 60,000 from the municipality, and the rest from my private money, and like alumni and stuff.
00:51:59
Speaker
And I think the reason I managed to get funding for it and why you could get funding for this is by pitching it as a non-left-wing-aligned project.
00:52:10
Speaker
But like, really, like, this is about the future of the working class. And I got money from a guy who runs the development program for Rotterdam South, who is from the basically the Dutch MAGA.
00:52:23
Speaker
He's like from the BVV, which is the the party of heart builders, you know, the blonde, our own blonde. Yeah. So he's from that county. And he gave me 60,000 euros to build a climate school.
00:52:36
Speaker
Because I had a conversation with him. like I talk to people. I will talk to anyone. i mean, there are limits, but I will talk to pay-to-pay politicians.
00:52:48
Speaker
And that is something that my left-wing colleagues at the university will not do because they don't want to get their hands dirty. But, you know, I worked in NGO backgrounds for a long time, and I know it from NGO background that if you don't get your hands dirty, you don't get anything done. So I sat down with this guy and we had a very lucid conversation about what the transition economy could mean for the south of Rotterdam and the harbour economy and the port and like our dependency on fossil fuels, ah you know, which we're seeing now with the Strait of Hormuz, how that played out.
00:53:20
Speaker
And we had like a very reasonable conversation focused on on work opportunities for people in the south of Rotterdam, his constituents, basically. And then he gave me 60,000 euros.
00:53:33
Speaker
And that's like, you can do that. I promise you, you can. You can go and talk. like there is money out there it's just being hoarded by the wrong people um and in the us s you guys are way more like screwed than we are in a way but
00:53:54
Speaker
i didn't need that much money to get the climate school started i think the first program maybe cost what like fifty thousand dollars yeah and we could have done it with less We could have done it with less.
00:54:06
Speaker
But yeah, maybe $50,000 for the first edition. And then you've got something to show for it. And I got some of my former students who like run a film studio to make the Bill and Clyde School documentary, which you can watch on YouTube if you want.
00:54:19
Speaker
You start to produce stuff and then people can't ignore you. And then we won the Sustainable Teacher of the Year Award. And, you know, like then then things start to snowball. and um and But it takes that moment of saying like, you know what?
00:54:34
Speaker
I'm all in. Go. Yeah. I think that is a wonderful place to wrap it up. I just want to say a huge thank you to ah the participants here. Thank you so much for um for Bill for getting us teed up for that question in the chat. I did put a link in the chat to that documentary. I was able to find it real quick. But if you just type in the Build-On Climate School into YouTube, um you can find it. We'll we'll be sure to share the the chat out too in the in the Discord. But again, I want to just thank you all for spending the time with us here. I know i had also talked last time about scheduling some kind of work session um for us to just kind of process all of this together. I'll i'll do that here um in the next week um and send some things back out so then we can begin to bring this back and process what that might look like in our context. And of course, a huge thank you um Dr. Jeannie Servant-Miglos both for for the book to prompt this discussion and this important work, the work that you obviously do on the ground for your students, globally for the communities that you work with, and for joining us today.
00:55:40
Speaker
Great. It's been my pleasure. Thank you. And and like, I know it's hard, but you got to keep up a realistic hope that it's still worth the fight. Good luck to you guys in America, especially.
00:55:54
Speaker
I appreciate that. Thanks, Ginny. Thank you all so much. um Have a good ah rest of your day. um Have a good evening, um Dr. Servant Miklos. Thank you. um Yeah, have a good weekend, everybody.
00:56:05
Speaker
Bye. Take care.
00:56:12
Speaker
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00:56:24
Speaker
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