A glass of crémant d’Alsace at the halibut, why not? It’s Monday, almost weekend when you look back. And the sun shines outside. Let’s forget that it is worryingly warm for the time of the year. David van Reybrouck (Bruges, 1971) has something to celebrate. The writer of Congo (2010) and Revolusi (2020), van Plea for populism (2008) and Against elections (2013), from poetry, theater pieces and novels, from the dissertation From Primitives to Primates With which he gained the degree of Doctor in Archeology in 2000, the board of the Month of Philosophy was declared the new thinker of the Netherlands. From April 4, the Katheder from where he can make his voice will be heard higher than it was. His pleas for renewing democracy and against the destruction of the earth will sound louder for two years than they already did. At a lunch in an Amsterdam brasserie we talk about his ideas.
You want to go to think, you write in your essay on the occasion of your appointment.
“Looking at the present from the distant future, I mean by that. I was inspired by the Japanese economist Tatsuyoshi Saijo, who designed a method for it, Future Design. With important choices, he says, you have to move in the future and from there reasoning. In his best -known experiment he had a gel of people a gel, a gel about politics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel aboutpolitics, a gel about politics and a gel about politics and a gel of a gel about politics and a gel about politics, and a gel. They represented the year 2060. Fascinating to see that the groups had other discussions than the groups in which people were in yellow kimonos.
You are also talking about drifting in your essay.
“By which I mean suspicion of your own opinion, suspicious of yourself. How do you know for sure what you think you know for sure?”
You already knew before Trump was re -elected that you would become the new thinker.
“And since then we have come into unprecedented waters. The themes that are dear to me are democratizing, decolonating and decarbonizing, and they remain relevant, but I want to keep a fundamental openness for what is still presenting. My essay is called The world and the earth And this morning, when the final text went to the printer, I came up with the subtitle: How do we keep it safe? Safety is a notion that I have not written much about and that is getting more crucial.
“I just got back from a journey of eight weeks on a cargo ship to Congo – I was there again for the first time in nine years – and before departure I had to Safety training to follow. It has been mandatory for everyone in the maritime sector for a few years. Extinguishing burning containers, jumping in swirling water from a tower, to get on a life raft that is upside down. We are very concerned with safety, in the nightlife, during public events – especially after the attacks in Germany – and in Europe, now that Trump is in power. All understandable, but the greatest safety issue of our time gets less and less our attention. “
You mean climate change?
“Climate change is only one dimension of the crisis that threatens the earth. I am very impressed by the work of the Swedish earth scientist Johan Rockström, who and his team have identified nine critical limits for the earth system within which we can safely operate. And then it is about changes in Land- and fresh water, or the fresh water, or the fresh water, or the fresh water, or the fresh water, or the freshwater, the use of fresh water, or the use of fresh water, or the use of fresh water, Microplastics that are found on the highest mountain tops.
Can you handle it?
“I must honestly say that the boat trip to Congo was shocking in this regard. At the height of Angola, I saw twelve torch flames of oil refineries around me at night, within a radius of one or two nautical miles. Work is done there with much less precaution than in Europe. On the North Sea and in Norway, we are getting turfed, we look much, look, look much, look, look a lot, look, look much, look and tumbled, look much, look and tumbled, look and tumbled, look and tumbled.2and it doesn’t work out, literally nothing. We shift the problem. That together with the demolition of the post -war world order, the ease with which it happens, yes, that means that I occasionally close my laptop hard and think: I am done with it. ”
What do you keep going?
“That I don’t hope too much. Hope is the best way to become desperate. I saw that Tommy” – Tommy Wieringa – “has written an essay for the month of philosophy: Optimism without hope. Beautiful. Totally agree. Continue to work for a full democracy, in which voting rights is also right to speak. Continue to work for a resilient nature and a planet that does not completely derail. I have great need for moments of silence, of emptiness, of peace, and since two and a half years I have had Eva “-the researcher and writer Eva Rovers, his girlfriend-” a house in northern France, where we can withdraw, read, to walk. But it is always temporary. I am always fighting, resilient and uncomfortable. “
You can now roar back for two years now.
“The” Bubruller of the Netherlands! “He shakes no. “I don’t roar my nature. But I don’t give up either. I agree with what the poet Henriëtte Roland Holst wrote:” The soft forces will certainly win / in the end. ” She could have been the first thinker. “
Read also
The new David van Reybrouck punctures the Dutch fairy tale over India
When she wrote that, the First World War was not even over.
“And did the Second World War still have to come, yes. I said that I have little hope, the tribalization of Western societies is taking place, parts of nature are irrevocably lost, species are dying out. It is no longer about avoiding damage, it is about harming damage. In that regard, I am surprised by the Navo that we have to get over us. Enthusiasm with which the war is stirred today reminds me of the cheerfulness with which the trains started to ride to the front at the end of July 1914. ”
Whether or less than 800 billion to European defense?
He points around and says: “Most people who are eating here have closed the door of their house well when they left. Unfortunately it is necessary to invest in antivirus software for your computer. We have to protect ourselves. The choice is not: whether or not defense. But let’s keep the proportions of the European Europeans and more than 140 million. VK are many times higher than that in the 1950s. At least many tens of thousands of Europeans will die from heat waves, floods, forest fires and air pollution, while it has to be apparent whether the Russians are coming. ”
From 2060 we see that certainly tens of thousands of Europeans will die from heat waves, floods, forest fires and air pollution, while it has only been to be seen whether the Russians are coming
Do you think?
„Maar natuurlijk. Hoe lang hebben de Russen erover gedaan om dat modderige stukje land rond Koersk te heroveren? Ze hebben er zelfs duizenden Noord-Koreanen voor moeten invliegen. En dan zullen wij doen alsof ze al klaarstaan om Polen te annexeren? Ja, we moeten onze defensie op orde hebben, zeker als we de Amerikaanse steun verliezen. Hopelijk is er nog genoeg tijd. Maar op het grootste gevaar dat ons bedreigt anticiperen we steeds minder, terwijl we daarvan met grote wetmatigheid Knowing that a few small disasters would be waking up for a long time.
Not in you?
“I am tightened sensitive to by my father, who died early during the Hittegolf of 2006, at the age of seven. He was kidney patient. Only in 2022 during the climate shop against Belgian authorities” – brought by citizens who demand that international climate promises are being fought about civilians’ having been bent for more than 2000. Due to heat waves and air pollution, it is about thousands of people. “
Why can’t we keep our attention there?
“Because we are powerless. The daughter of a good friend said: climate is so passé. She is seventeen. She said: how we as students also make us, it does not produce anything. That feeling of this committed young woman is recognizable to an incredible number of people. The only choices you have about lifestyle. Redicated to hyper -individual shopping choices if people are annoyed when the finger is waved to each other?
So what now?
“We have to solve the collective. But with the current political instruments we are no longer good at making collective decisions for the longer term. After the Second World War, our governments decided to a pension system. We could do it at the time, hey. Large changes often come after major conflicts. The question is now: can we change before the crash?”
What do you expect?
“If I did not believe that action could still be taken on time, I would never have spent so endless time in democratic renewal, a condition for a good climate policy. So no, I don’t believe the system has to crash before we improve it.”
It doesn’t get along very much.
“On the last pages of Against electionsfrom 2013, I describe what would happen if we did not know how to democratize our democracy: a furious mass that storms the building of democracy to hit everything short and small and the chandeliers storms. What do you think, would a retired American construction worker storm the Capitol a few winters ago if he felt heard? If in his adult life he had the chance to sit at the table with his fellow citizens and be able to pronounce himself? Would he have felt so strong that something had been taken away from him? Would it be the case that voting rights without speaking rights in times of growing inequality inevitably leads to the growth of resentment and resentment?
“Anyone who only has a keyhole to talk through every four years, get through it. In Plea for populismfrom 2008, I worry about the white proletariat. I found that few political parties attracted their fate. The progressives shifted their compassion to the colored precariat and with that they have driven the white proletariat in the arms of the populists. Right -wing populists. They are historical mistakes. Those voters are not fascists, not yet. But they are treated as they are treated for longer. “