The Future Of Fire Is Democratic

What happens when people power meets ember shower inferno tower power?

Sitting on my bedside table are three books I picked up from the Bailieu Library. Living Democracy by Tim Hollo, After Democracy by Zizi Papacharissi and Democracy In A Hotter Time, a collection edited by David W Orr. I can’t remember what brought me to that particular aisle of the library, but it’s a big section, stretching over multiple shelves. I’ve never thought too deeply about democracy, other than feeling that - as Ghandi is reputed to have said about Western Civilisation - it would be a good idea.

AI image generated by prompt “election voting fire anime style” (Source: Dall-E2)

Papacharissi’s book is slim, bright green and subtitled “Imagining our political future”. So far I’ve only dipped into the preface, where I discovered to my disappointment that technology features prominently. “Democracy is not the final stop on our civic journey. Technology can push us further… For this project, I was asking people to imagine something that does not exist. People were to think about a future state of democracy and how to get there through technology.” Ugh. I don’t mean to come across as a luddite, anti-technologist or, God forbid, anti-scientific (not that there’s anything wrong with those three groups). I’m just - as you will surely recall from previous posts of mine, Dear Reader - a bit tired, and part of my tiredness is from spending too much time at my computer, on my phone and in my emails trying to get along with the giant academic machine.

My mood right now is Eff Technology. What’s the point in beavering away, when whatever gets invented will only end up being used to further concentrate existing inequalities, further detach us from nature (more about that in a moment) and will surely result in a bunch of unintended but entirely foreseeable side effects which someone else will have to clean up, but not the inventors or deployers of technology because meanwhile they’ll be beavering away at the next invention?

I know, right, a bit bitter aren’t I?

I’m sure there’s good stuff in After Democracy, but I’ve yet to discover it. The author is an academic from the University if Illinois-Chicago. Seeing academics publish books gives me hope that the project of democratising science, of sharing knowledge with the people who fund science and bear the brunt of its fruits, is not dead. But the fact that I had to fish this book out of the deepest, darkest depths of an academic library is perhaps not quite the win for open, accessible science that I initially hoped. Let’s move on.

The subtitle of Orr’s collection is Climate Change And Democratic Transformation. It carries a blurb by Shoshana Zuboff of The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism fame, a foreword by famed environmentalist Bill McKibben, and an afterword by Kim Stanley Robinson who I had to Duck Duck Go to find out is a science fiction writer best known for his Mars trilogy. I’m interested in checking out the final education-themed section, which includes the spicily titled Academic Culture, Democracy, And Climate Change (their oxford comma, not mine).

Hollo’s is the one that I’ve started and it features cover blurbs from environmentalist David Ritter, Bill McKibben again, former Federal Greens leader Christine Milne (Hollo worked for her at one point) and Indigenous writer and academic Tyson Yunkaporta. Yunkaporta’s blurb is best: “A great vision for a bloodless coup of mutual aid and rule-governed anarchy.”

Hollo describes our current system and plight as deeply anti-ecological. He calls out the current prevalence of exclusion, adversarialism, extraction, coercion and disconnection, arguing for participation, deliberation, cultivation, coexistence and interdependence. All sounds reasonable enough. I’m not entirely convinced by his call to model existence on ecology. Yes I think life in all its diversity, the natural world and indeed the whole universe are pretty marvellous, but there’s something about aligning one’s political project with nature that makes me a bit uneasy. I’m open to being wrong, or learning more and being convinced, but it also seems to me a savvy marketing ploy - you can’t not like natural approaches, because they’re natural baby! And nature’s good! But which bits of nature? What about the ones that give us ouchies, or make us extinct? I’m probably being a bit unfair and there are undoubtedly reams written on the topic that undermine my caricature.

There is another problem talking about nature as if we are not part of it. Here I agree with Hollo and many Indigenous cultures in saying that we are not actually separate from nature. “We are the environment, and whatever we do to it, we do to ourselves,” David Suzuki said. I can know that but I’m not sure I feel it, and I find it very hard to see how this sentiment is reflected in our systems of education, government, healthcare and so on. Maybe technology can help us see and feel and grow this connection. I could get behind that.

But then you can get stuck the other way too - come on, people, we need to get back to nature, to our connection with nature! As if we could ever be separated from nature. We have built things that differ from the old nature, to be sure, but if we are irrevocably part of nature, then that also holds in the city, in an office, glued to a screen, wherever. Maybe we should forget nature and just hang out a bit more with animals, plants, fresh air and fresh (or salt) water, wherever we can find them.

There is another, darker side to the term ‘natural’ and that is its use, along with the term ‘wilderness’, as cover for erasing Indigenous people from Country. My colleague Tom Fairman passed on a great little paper yesterday, an article written last year by a group of Indigenous academics, scientists, writers and cultural burning practitioners, called Lighting a pathway: Our obligation to culture and Country. In it, the authors refer to the ideas behind the term “ecosystem specific natural fire regimes” as wandering perilously close to perpetuating the ‘wilderness’ myth: that the most pristine, ‘high value’ landscapes are those untouched by people.

First Peoples interact with all their Country, sometimes using fire and at other times excluding it, but it was all part of a biocultural landscape and the complex lore that dictated how it was to be managed renders ‘natural’ an irrelevant concept when considering the appropriateness of cultural fire.

The article makes reference to “the incredible complexity in First Peoples cultures and the multitude of uses for cultural burning employed by fire practitioners from each group”, in reference to the creeping tendency to lump all cultural burning into the same basket. Rounding back to nature and humans’ place in it, they say

our relationship with Country cannot be reduced or simplified to ‘use’. We do not ‘use’ Country as though it is a commodity, which is a Western concept for which we blame the deplorable state of our environment. Our relationship with Country is one of obligation, reciprocation, habitation and affection. We do not ‘use’ Country, we live in it. We depend on it. We care for it. We love it. It is part of the very fabric of who we are… as First Peoples our first responsibility is to care for Country like our flesh and blood kin.

Coming back to Hollo’s Living Democracy, I can humbly claim that I’ve, like, totally already thought of this. To wit, my astonishing program logic for fire management, which includes the sub-outcome “We are democractic” and the low level outcome “We embody democracy, equity and inclusion in our governance and activities”. Can’t say I fleshed out the ideas any more than that, but I have wondered idly over the years about what science for the people might look like.

Of course there’s Science at the Local, celebrating its 10th year this year, which I’ve possibly still not actually written about yet here. Humble little format that brings scientists and community members together half a dozen times a year in the comfy confines of a local, accessible club.

What about a Neighbourhood Science Centre? Friendly venue for people to come together, have a cuppa and chat about science and science-adjacent things? I’d person that desk.

What about community participation in science, not just as labour (not that there’s anything wrong with citizen science) but through regular conversations with scientists and administrators about what gets studied, where, how and what it all means? Good participation rips organisations wide open and lets the people back in. Or “de-siloes” them, if you prefer a gentler, buzzier word.

The glossy, magaziny, rah rah, PR, science-is-great! approach to communication has never sit comfortably with me. I’ll grant the people who do it are great and probably reach way more people that way than humbler approaches might. But that’s ok, this is my blog. Let’s have some plain, direct, unmediated conversations. We probably can’t stop scientists themselves from talking in PR-speak if they’re determined to, but the more conversations we have beyond our groups and labs, the harder it will be to keep that up.

What about a research gun for hire, but for free? It’s been incredibly satisfying chipping in a few hours of pro bono research for the Tax Justice Network in Australia, supporting them to make submissions on various arcane aspects of our taxation system. My ultra-boring skill of being able to trawl journal databases for relevant literature, transformed into something useful and valuable for the public interest / common good [insert your your favourite term for collective joy here]. I had a similar conversation yesterday in a meeting with some researchers and health practitioners interested in climate change effects on mental health in Indonesia. It was no thing for me to dig up a few papers on that topic, but to them it was really useful. Maybe this is a service that more scientists can offer.

A related service is popularising and demystifying scientific research. Lots of people do this really well and I’d like to do more of it. Very important. That brings up Dr Karl, who it would be cool to be the next. Independent, accessible, informal, funny and helpful. Gets to go on the radio, in books, on TV, out to festivals and such. Great model.

What about a Science Commons? Some place that belongs to all of us, where people come together, make connections, learn and cultivate stuff? I dunno, maybe it’s enough to have a park, no need to sciencify everything.

In opposition to these thoughts, is the feeling that no one would actually come to any of these things. Everyone’s busy, they can get stuff quicker by just googling… We’d need to find a way to connect the community science initiative to other things that are already in people’s lives, rather than forcing them to hunt us down.

You could start small and build over time, I suppose, like we did with Science at the Local. Maybe that’s how most things everywhere have started. Hang on, I need to make a cuppa, grab a table and head outside…

Future Fire sitting in the park inviting you to talk about science (Source: Imgflip Meme Generator)