How to Avoid The End of The World, Redux.

7 min readAug 11, 2021

By Robert Hanna

“The Great Day of His Wrath,” by John Martin (1851–1853)

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This is a revised-&-updated version of an essay that was originally published on Against Professional Philosophy, and also irror-posted on Medium, in July 2021, hence it’s “redux.“

You can download and read or share a .pdf of the complete revised-&-updated version HERE.

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How to Avoid The End of The World

Recently, I read an interesting and indeed important essay by Slavoj Žižek on the impending ecological apocalypse that’s caused by climate change and by humanly-created natural environmental damage and exploitation more generally, “Last Exit to Socialism.”[i]

This was followed a few weeks later by the release of a U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report,[ii] prominently highlighted in the New York Times,[iii] which nailed down the factual grounds for Žižek’s claims.

Leaving aside Žižek’s patented edgy, ironic, and mordant prose style, he’s cogently arguing for (i) a robustly anthropocentric approach to ecophilosophy and (ii) immediate worldwide activism, both of which I strongly endorse too.

What I’d also want to add to those, however, is a broadly and radically Kantian thesis that I call cosmic dignitarianism, which says:

(iii) the all-inclusive natural or physical universe, i.e., the cosmos, together with what I’ll call its proto-dignity, is the metaphysical ground of all rational human animals, especially including our consciousness, our free agency, and our dignity; and, insofar as we’re unconditionally morally obligated to treat all people with sufficient respect for their human dignity, so too we’re unconditionally morally obligated to treat the cosmos, and especially our natural or physical environment here on Earth, with sufficient respect for its proto-dignity.[iv]

Thinking more about this three-part package — i.e., a robustly anthropocentric approach to ecophilosophy, immediate worldwide activism, and cosmic dignitarianism — it then occurred to me that immediate worldwide action could be taken as follows: all participating governments anywhere on the Earth could collectively create and implement a program I call Pro-Dignity Days (PDD).

PDD would have two parts.

Part 1 would consist in people 18 years of age and over, whether they currently have a wage-paying job or not, voluntarily agreeing (1) to their not working anywhere but at home[v] for four days a week, Thursday through Sunday (aka the Pro-Dignity Days), (2) their also staying very close to home, say, 2–3 miles, and their traveling locally by car/gas-powered transit only for essential purposes (grocery shopping or hospital visits, etc.) for those four days, every single week, and (3) more generally, to the extent that it’s humanly possible, to their not engaging in any industrial production or any non-trivially environmentally damaging or exploitative activities at all for those four days, every single week.

So in a three-word phrase, PDD would mean green four-day weekends.

Part 2 would consist in governments agreeing, in return for people’s participation in PDD and for as long as they continued to participate, (4) to pay PDD participants $200.00 per day (tax free) for those four days = $3, 200.00 (tax free) per month, (5) to give PDD participants and their dependents free adequate health care, (6) to give PDD participants and their dependents free college/higher education tuition, and also (7) to give the PDD participants a $50.00 supplement (tax free) per day for any care-needing dependent, for example, children or elderly infirm parents, etc., they were looking after, for each of the four days they’re participating in PDD per week, and above all, (8) to make it illegal for employers to lay off or cut the existing salaries of working people who choose to engage in PDD and would thereby be working somewhere other than at home for only three days per week, Monday through Wednesday.

Furthermore, there would be two further dignitarian necessary conditions that must be satisfied in order for people to participate in PDD: (9) all PDD participants providing proof that they neither own, nor carry, nor use guns and/or have engaged in a government-funded and government-administered buy-back of any guns/ammunition that they currently own, and finally (10) for any area (town, city, area, region, etc.) that reaches a majority of its residents participating in PDD, then the police in those areas would be specifically and strictly required not to carry or use guns or engage in any bully-boy, “broken-windows”-sweeps-style, up-against-the-wall-motherfucker-style policing in those areas, 24–7.

So, now in a four-word phrase, PDD would mean gentle green four-day weekends.

Obviously, actual people, actual morality, and actual sociopolitics all being what they actually are, not everyone would choose to participate in PDD; but I do think that a great many people would choose to participate.

And I also think that of those who do choose to participate, a great many would also quit their current wage-paying jobs, precisely because those jobs are boring, pointless, oppressive, or all three, then get together with some other people doing the same thing, set up housekeeping, pool their PDD money, engage in doing various creative or otherwise productive, proto-dignity-respecting, dignity-respecting, non-wage-paying activities that they actually enjoy doing, or at least find it meaningful and valuable to do, and live much better lives.

Now, all things considered, I’m thinking that, when PDD is taken together with at least some of the other worldwide immediate actions recommended by scientists,[vi] it would simultaneously (a) significantly reduce environmental degradation and the rate of climate change to the tipping-point of indefinitely avoiding the impending ecological apocalypse, (b) significantly slow down and reduce neoliberal capitalist production and its oppressions, (c)provide truly generous universal basic income, healthcare, and higher education for any adult who chooses to participate in PDD, and thereby effectively end poverty and other morally scandalous sociopolitical inequalities, (d) significantly reduce the further moral scandal and tragedy, particularly in the USA, of gun violence, and above all, (e) significantly improve a great many people’s well-being, especially including the dependents, children, aged infirm parents, etc., of the people who participate in PDD.

Again, people participating in PDD could still work elsewhere than at home in industrial production jobs or in any other kind of wage-paying jobs, and could still freely travel, etc., if they wanted to, but only from Monday to Wednesday.

But even if PDD participants don’t work in wage-paying jobs, then they would still be working for their own sake and that of their families, and for the sake of the rest of humanity, at least four days a week, by sufficiently respecting the proto-dignity of the Earth’s natural environment, and by sufficiently respecting everyone’s human dignity.

Now, PDD could be paid for by vigorously taxing the wealthiest 1%, their property, and their corporations, by progressive ordinary taxes on the less-wealthy 99%, and by vigorously reducing military spending.

In view of the fairness of this system of raising money for PDD, and because participating in PDD would be strictly voluntary and fully non-coercive, and also because the necessary conditions for participating in PDD jointly express sufficient respect for human dignity, no one could justifiably complain that they’re being discriminated against or unfairly treated, if they don’t choose to participate in PDD.

No one has a moral right to choose or do what’s not sufficiently human-dignity-respecting, for example, owning, carrying, or using a gun,[vii] or systematically carrying out brutal, oppressive activities on behalf of coercive authoritarian social institutions.[viii]

Now, for the bottom line.

According to the Bible, God created the world in seven days.

But, providing that what I’ve written above is cogent, and provided that humanity acts immediately and worldwide by implementing PDD, and whether God or any god exists or doesn’t exist, then we really and truly can avoid the (self-inflicted) end of the world[ix] in only four days.

— Per week, that is; and we can do it simply by making it really possible for people everywhere to engage in gentle green four-day weekends.

NOTES

[i] S. Žižek, “Last Exit to Socialism,” Jacobin (21 July 2021), available online at URL = <https://jacobinmag.com/2021/07/slavoj-zizek-climate-change-global-warming-nature-ecological-crises-socialism-final-exit>.

[ii] IPCC, “AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis,” IPCC (9 August 2021), available online at URL = <https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/>.

[iii] B. Plumer and H. Fountain, “A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. But How Hot Is Up to Us,” The New York Times (10 August 2021), available online at URL = <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/climate/climate-change-report-ipcc-un.html>.

[iv] See R. Hanna, “The Incredible Shrinking Thinking Man, Or, Cosmic Dignitarianism” (Unpublished MS, 2021), available online at URL = <https://www.academia.edu/49340070/The_Incredible_Shrinking_Thinking_Man_Or_Cosmic_Dignitarianism_June_2021_version_>.

[v] For the purposes of this essay, I’m using “at home” in the broad sense that means “wherever someone is permanently or temporarily living.” In that sense, even an otherwise homeless person can be “at home” just by living somewhere. Moreover, if PDD were implemented, no one would ever have to be homeless in any sense.

[vi] See, e.g., IPCC, “AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis”; and Plumer and Fountain, “A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. But How Hot Is Up to Us.”

[vii] See, e.g., R. Hanna, “A Theory of Human Dignity,” (Unpublished MS, 2021), available online HERE; and R. Hanna, “Gun Crazy: A Moral Argument For Gun Abolitionism,” (Unpublished MS, 2021), available online HERE.

[viii] See, e.g., R. Hanna, “Why You Should Never Sleep On The Public Sidewalks,” (Unpublished MS, 2021), available online HERE.

[ix] See R. Hanna and O. Paans, ““This is the Way the World Ends: A Philosophy of Civilization Since 1900, and A Philosophy of the Future,” Cosmos & History 16, 2 (2020): 1–53, available online at URL = <http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/865/1510>.