Checking Collective Egoism to Solve the Climate Crisis

Reinhold Neibuhr’s foundational premise in his book “Moral Man and Immoral Society” that “individual men may be moral in the sense that they are able to consider interests other than their own in determining problems of conduct, and are capable, on occasion, of preferring the advantages of others to their own. . . . . But all these achievements are more difficult, if not impossible, for human societies and social groups. In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.” This collective egoism has had the greatest leverage on the arc of human history. Now, human civilization–the largest human group – is now on the precipice of climate catastrophe–arguably the most epic manifestation of the leverage of this collective egoism. We cannot pretend to solve the climate crisis or envision a thriving human future if we operate under the premise that collectives are freely and blatantly allowed to violate the Greatest Commandment. We of the faith traditions, universally bound by the Golden Rule, Jesus’ Greatest Commandment, are ideally suited to exploring new ways of applying this ancient wisdom of love, upon the thinking and being of collectives. Reinhold Neibuhr and human history do not provide clear answers. Today, we as people of faith, in the Anthropocene Era on the precipice of climate collapse, carrying forth in our lives with love of God and love of neighbor as our guiding light, are called to find them.