The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Wade Davis: Understanding Our Cultural Condition

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Renowned anthropologist, and former Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, Wade Davis discusses his latest collection of essays, "Beneath the Surface of Things."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. In his new book, anthropologist Wade Davis offers a unique cultural perspective on topics as varied as climate change, gun violence in America, and the demonization of coca, the sacred plant of the Inca.

It's called Beneath the Surface of Things, New and Selected Essays. He is also the former explorer in residence at the National Geographic Society and currently professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. And we are delighted that you are back here in our studio where you belong. Thank you. It's great to talk to you again. I want to start with the essay that captured so much attention. It's called The Unraveling of America. You first published it in Rolling Stone a few years ago and it went viral. And here's a quote from that. And Sheldon, if you'd put this up, I will read it for those listening on podcast and then we'll chat. Odious as he may be, you're right, Trump is less

the cause of America's decline than a product of its dissent. As they stare into the mirror and perceive only the myth of their exceptionalism, Americans remain almost bizarrely incapable of seeing what has actually become of their country. OK, lots to pick apart here. What is the actually has become of their country that you are referring to? Well, let's remember that essay, Steve, was written at the low point of COVID when the American performance was not just scandalous. It was leading people to say for the first time the world had pity for America. You know, I've been asked by a lot of editors to write about COVID. I didn't think I had anything new to say until one night I was paddling my kayak around a little island off of Vancouver.

And I thought, you know, COVID is not just about medicine and public health. It's also about culture and history. And what I was seeing is that the fundamental collapse of the infrastructure and the solidarity of the American society, which had been a process, had been going on since the Second World War. And at the time, Canada seemed to be performing much, much better. And although it did suffer in time from COVID, there were three elements in the Canadian society that seemed to be holding us together. And I use a metaphor of going to get your groceries at the Safeway. In the States, there seems to be a chasm between you and the checkout person. And in Canada, that doesn't exist because you know the clerk is getting a decent wage because

of the unions. You know that your kids probably go to the same public schools. You know above all that if her kids get sick or his kids get sick, they'll get the same medical care. And those three strands woven together become the fabric of Canadian social democracy. And I think one of the things the Americans don't understand is that health care, for example, is not about health. It's about solidarity. It's about fairness. So that essay was written very much in the heat of the moment.

Got some things right, some things wrong. Who could have guessed, for example, that RNA vaccines would be developed in a matter of months when previously the fastest had been four years? As if to affirm the very American exceptionalism the essay calls into question. But I think it hit a nerve. I mean, it went incredibly viral.

362 million social media impressions. There was media interest in 23 countries. Five million people read it on site. And I think it just had that attention not because it was a diatribe, not because it was ideological, not because it was a polemic, not because it was an indictment of America. It was an intervention. And when you do an intervention, you hold the mirror to show your loved one how far they've fallen. And as Cory Booker says, if America hasn't broken your heart,

you don't love her enough. The senator from New Jersey. This is a country, though, that has been obsessed with individualism and individual rights for 250 years. Is it reasonable to expect it to be different? Well, individualism, yes, but equity and fairness has changed. If you look at the 1950s, for example, the marginal tax rate on the wealthy was 90 percent. The social contract that came out of the great American victory in World War II, and I say victory not just militarily, but the industrial surge that literally saved civilization. 1946, America made 95% of the world's automobiles, 5% of the world's population, half the global economy.

And that wealth allowed for a truce between capital and labor that gave us a middle class, gave us the weekend, whereby a working man could support a family, have a house, buy a car. Well, that social contract. Annual vacation. Annual vacation. Maybe even a cottage in the woods. But that social contract has been eroded and eroded. And that's really, I think, accounts for a good part of the Trump phenomena, a sense of unfairness and a sense of having been left behind. What is the myth of American exceptionalism you refer to? What it really was, in a way. You know, this is a country that took the ideas of the Enlightenment, liberty and happiness. Happiness wasn't contentment.

Happiness by the founding fathers was seeking actively a life of virtue, of doing good. And of course, all of that was stumbled over each other in a bunch of contradictions, which is what the first essay in this book is about. How do you have individual freedom in a land that endorses slavery? So this is the constant struggle in the history of America. But it was a shining city on the hill. It set the example for the world. It was the great revolution.

And it gave us a possibility that, as Jefferson wrote, I've sworn upon the altar of Almighty God to fight against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man. That was a pretty powerful idea when written in the 18th century. As he owned slaves himself. As he owned slaves himself. This is the great contradiction, isn't it? There's something about, I mean, America still seems to be the best and worst of everything in the world today in many respects.

And yet, and you put the numbers in the book here, the numbers of people killed by gun violence, random gun violence every year in the States, is starting to dwarf the numbers of people who they lost in actual world wars. On Normandy, on Normandy beaches. I mean, part of what has come to define this American individualism is the right of the individual to own a personal arsenal of weaponry You know we we see the statistics on obesity we see you know we see the you know the the the notion that Total dedication to workplace at the expense of family.

And the result is sort of self-evident. You know, it's a society that isn't what it once was. But as you look at it, why does it appear that the political system seems completely unwilling to do anything about gun violence? Well, I think it's a symptom of the American political system in general. You know, my father-in-law was a Republican senator, almost president. Who? Charles Percy of Illinois. Oh, okay. He's the one who sort of brought in the Watergate thing. He also was the one who went with Barry Goldwater to see Nixon and said, just tell them the truth. You just won the biggest election. But the point is, I grew up in that world where these politicians met each night at dinner parties.

They were great friends across the aisle. They didn't hate each other. They didn't hate each other. My father-in-law was incapable of hate. What is it about the American political system today that seems unwilling to want to do anything about the notion that the richest three Americans make as much as the bottom 150 million Americans? 160 million. 160 million. All these contradictions, right? And I think that one of the subtexts of this essay was empires are born to fall, and no king anticipates his abdication. You know, the 15th century belonged to the Portuguese, 16th to the Spanish, 17th to the

Dutch, 18th to the French, 19th to the British. The British Empire reached its greatest physical extent in 1935, but we know it was bled white by the Great War and was in decline even before the war. So empires don't see their fall. They don't anticipate their fall. Although lots of people who've been on America to fall have lost money on that bet. That's right. And so, you know, and that essay in particular is never calling for the fall of America. In fact, it laments the possibility of the fall of America, because if America does fall and the hinge of history shifts towards China or won't shift to Russia, Russia's economy is the size of Texas. But if we did move to an Asian century with China at the helm, we'd be nostalgic

for the American century. Let's shift our focus to climate change. Michael Ignatieff, who I emailed yesterday, actually, to ask him about this, he says this is the best thing he's ever read about climate change. Your essay in the book about it. So let's see what he's talking about here. Sheldon, if you would, the graphic at the bottom of page two. Climate science is a rarefied discipline based on mathematical and statistical models of bewildering complexity. But one need not be a climate expert to be haunted by the disconnect between the severity of the threat as proclaimed every day in the media

and the global community's actual response as measured not in words, but in action and deed. There is a chasm between those who derive purpose and identity from the climate crisis and those for whom the crisis appears to have neither relevance nor meaning. Something is not working. What's the something that's not working? Well, you know, the theme of that essay really is that realism is not apathy and rhetoric no substitute for results. In no way is the essay calling into question the severity of the threat. It's just calling into question our response to that threat, and in doing so, our obsession with getting to net zero, which probably isn't going to happen in our lifetimes if you actually look at the data. And you do.

And you look at the degree to which China and India remain completely dependent on fossil fuels, coal in particular. The essay is really saying the way we're going about this isn't working. Let's look at some alternatives. And those who say we cannot look for those other solutions to other human problems until we get to net zero, forget that it's only by looking to those other problems that we have a chance of getting to net zero. The single most important thing we could possibly do for climate is liberate women and give them control of their bodies and economic opportunities, because every time that happens, population collapses, right? And the figure that is constantly on the minds of people concerned about climate

is 1.5 degrees centigrade. But there's another 1.5 figure that is even more important, and that is the point at which the reproductive rate of a population drops to. If it drops to 1.5 and remains there or below for two generations, by definition, the population of a nation cuts in half. Korea right now is 0.8. Ukraine is 1.01. Virtually every country in the Western world, China, even India is 2.08. So in other words, we're moving rapidly to a point where the global population will be cut in half. Your great-grandchildren will probably be living through the greatest demographic collapse in the history of humanity. So that's the most important thing we can do for climate. And there's other things we can do as

well. Food waste, for example. The Americans throw away $408 billion of the food every year, just the Americans. That's 108 billion meals. Well, that creates 8% of carbon emissions. So some of these things that we think will help, not getting on jet planes, for example. Well, the truth of the matter is 80% of the world has never flown. And who are we to keep them from that mobility? The airline industry by 2040 is expected to order up

from Airbus and Boeing 42,000 new planes. Air India and Indigo Air last year alone ordered 1,000 planes at the Paris Air Show. We're not going to stop flying. It may be a good personal choice, and all these personal choices are important. But the question is to ask, what is actually going to work? And that's really what the essay is trying to lay. And in that sense, it's very, very optimistic. You know, it's a little bit like in the early days of climate, mitigation and adaptation were seen as cop-outs, as if Al Gore even described them as another form of climate

denial. But the truth of the matter is, geologically, the oceans are rising about a foot every century. Well, we're going to have to mitigate whether we like it or not, you know. And you can go through any of these things we think are going to solve the problem. It may be nice personal gestures, but they're not going to make the difference. Electric cars, for example. I mean, you know, 70% of a car's carbon footprint is in the manufacturing. It's a lot more carbon intensive to make an electric car, not to mention the toxicity of the heavy metals. 20% of an electric car is made of plastic. So over the course of a lifetime, you're really only talking about 25% difference in terms of carbon footprint.

And if the electricity comes from carbon, as it will for the foreseeable future in India and China, wonderful to have an electric car, it's not going to create the results we may hope or the climate may need. So this is what the book, the essay, kind of tries to unravel. You want to weigh in on the situation in the province of Ontario where we get most of our

electricity from nuclear and where we have made a multi-billion dollar bet on EVs. Do you think we're contributing to the end of climate change by doing that? Well, one of the things that I first sort of introduced, Steve, to climate was at COP, I forget the number, COP, it was in Copenhagen, 2009. I was sent over there by the big ad agency in New York that was promoting the Leaf car, Nissan's entry into the marketplace. And I was sent over with film crews, 24 hours a day, huge list of deliverables, with the one stipulation I was not to mention the car, because the advertising campaign called for the need stipulation I was not to mention the car because the advertising campaign called for the need for the car, not the vehicle itself.

And it introduced me to this sort of this culture of climate action. And it was inspiring. But as it came to an end, I had a few questions, not the least of which. Why was the one fuel that could get us from where we are to where we want to be literally expunged from the conversation? And that, of course, was nuclear, which had accounted since 1974 for 70 percent of France's electricity needs, even while generating $3 billion of export revenues for France. There was not a single mention of nuclear at Copenhagen as if it was a toxic artifice of the past. But when California, for example, shut down

a nuclear plant in Southern California, it was the equivalent of putting two million cars back on the road. So... It's ideology. It's ideology. And one of the things this book and all the essays does is stay away from ideology to me ideology is is kind of toxic well you know should we do another example here because uh there's no more well i shouldn't say there's no more one of the biggest ideological fights over the last 50 years has been the so-called war on drugs, which you point out has been a massive failure. So your essay, The Divine Life of Immortality. Leaf of Immortality. Leaf, excuse me. The attempt to eradicate coca in the war on drugs, you write, essentially amounts to cultural genocide. Yeah. Explain. Well, you know, coca is to cocaine what potatoes are to vodka. And when, you know, officials arrest people for the possession of coca, it's rather like Elliot Ness seizing a truckload of potatoes in violation of the Volstead Act.

Coca is a plant that's been used with no evidence of toxicity, let alone addiction, for 8,000 years throughout the Americas, mainly in the Andes and northwest Amazon. The efforts to eradicate the fields began 50 years before there was a cocaine problem. It began in the 1920s as physicians in Lima looked up into the mountains and saw all kinds of social pathologies and had to find a cause. Because economics and land distribution challenged the foundations of their lives, they settled on coca.

And for 50 years, the plant was condemned and no one did a nutritional study until we did it at the Harvard Botanical Museum in 1974. Five. Five. And what we found horrified our backers at the U.S. government. Yes, coca had a small amount of a precursor to

cocaine hydrochloride in it, a mild stimulant like caffeine in a coffee bean, but it also was chock full of vitamins. It had full of protein. It had more calcium than any plant ever studied by science, perfect for a diet in the Andes that lacked a dairy product. It had enzymes that allowed the body to digest carbohydrate at high elevation. Not only was this plant part of the nutritional regime, it was fundamental to the cultural regime. Every single action and interaction in the Andes in particular is based on reciprocity, and the leaves play a quintessential role. And as Catherine Allen, the great anthropologist at Smithsonian,

wrote in her book, you cannot be of those mountains if you do not partake in the ceremony. And that's what I said in the book, that it's not like taking beer from the British or coffee from the Turks or a betel nut from the Indonesians. To take coca from the people becomes, in a sense, an act of cultural genocide. And I don't use that word genocide.

I say cultural genocide. It's very different than genocide. I think we should, in our remaining moments here, finish up on one of the most personal essays that you have in the book, and that is called A Message to a Daughter. Yeah, you know, Steve, it's interesting. One of the things we didn't talk about climate, one of the things I find most reprehensible about the well-intentioned mission to address that issue is the way we have terrified our children.

The data is unbelievable. 57% of young North Americans fearful to have children because they're convinced the world is going to come to an end. What is more cruel than an elder saying to a youth, it used to be great, it's ruined now, good luck? It's so unacceptable to me as a father. And the essay, A Message to a Daughter, was just trying to say to young people, it's okay. It's going to be fine.

You know, and again, you know, fear never generates change. And the atmosphere of doom and gloom and almost biblical sense of the coming apocalypse will never encourage people to action. Only hope does and the promise of a better world. And I say in that essay, you know, pessimism is an indulgence. Despair and insult to the imagination. Orthodoxy, the enemy of invention. Do what needs to be done and only then ask whether it was possible or permissible. Do not compromise. Give your destiny time to find you. The greatest challenge in life is to become the architect of your own life. And above all, as you make your way, don't focus on money, because in the end, money means very little. But loving compassion,

as the Buddhists say, radiate through all eternity. I'll tell you just a wonderful story. We had a cultural exchange between three shamans from the Amazon in Colombia who went to Qatar, and three princes came to the Amazon. The princes predictably hated the Amazon. But I was in Doha when the shaman arrived, dressed like a bad mariachi band. And that afternoon, we went falcon hunting with our host. And all day, the shaman looked bleaker and bleaker and bleaker. And when they finally got back to Bogota, they went to see my friend Martin von Hildebrand,

the great anthropologist. And Martin said, como fue? How was it over there? Oh, Martin, terrible, terrible. Mas terrible que terrible. More terrible than terrible. And Martin, those people over there are so poor, all they've got is money. Because there were no fields, there were no forests,

there were no lakes, there were no rivers, right? And so another friend of mine, the late Tom Lovejoy, said anyone who thinks that economy trumps ecology should try to count their money with a plastic bag tied over their head. Well, okay, there's wonderful advice for your daughter and others in this book. But I mean, let's just look at the world today, Wade. Let's look at the world. The Middle East is on fire in one of the most despicable ways. I know what you're going to say, Steve, but when was the world a nice place? Well, hang on. Let me make the case first. The Middle East is on fire.

Russia and Ukraine is a disgrace. Climate change, I know you've got a chapter in the book on it that tries not to scare the hell out of us, but the fact of the matter is we are hearing it every day, and a lot of your friends who are in the environmental movement are going to accuse you of, you know, not being a big help right now, given what you've written about. I don't think that's true, actually. I think they'll see it as a big help.

OK, well, Mark, I hope so. I hope so for your sake. There are a lot of people who are very nervous about the upcoming American election in the fall. And I can go on and on and on. can go on and on and on. And I guess I want to know why your daughter has any, or anybody else's daughter for that matter, has any right to feel optimistic about where we're headed. Steve, in 1945, what would that be? Eight years before you and I were born, maybe a little different. A million people were being killed every month on the planet. A million people every month. We've never lived through a time. And I'll tell you, my father was not a religious man, but he was a very wise man. And my mom used to always, in a Christian sense, think that if we just tried hard enough,

good would triumph over evil, Christ over the fallen archangel and devil. My dad, having been broken in that war, had no illusions. And he'd say, son, there's good and evil in the world. Take your pick and get on with it. And what he was really saying is that they walk side by side, always have, always will. You take your pick. And when you don't expect to vanquish the darkness, you never give up trying.

And you never get disappointed if you fail. And it's a little bit like the Buddhists say, the pilgrim's path is not a destination, it's a state of mind. I don't expect to win. I don't expect to vanquish evil. But I do feel that one has an obligation to do everything you can on, and I don't mean to be precious with this, but on the side of righteousness and what we think to be the good, and we know what that is. And I think that's how I find myself at the age of 70, as energetic, as idealistic, as positive as I was at the age of 25.

Because at the end of the day, what do we have but this one chance to make a contribution? You've done a lot. What haven't you done in this life and in this world that you still need to do? Be a great-grandfather. I've just begun. You know, I don't know. Just we should clarify, you don't mean a great-grandfather. You mean a very good, excellent grandfather. You're not old enough to be a great-grandfather. No, I just had my first grandchild, and I'm about to have a second one. You know, I think a really good question is, what do we do as we come to the end of our lives?

You know, Epicurus spoke about a proper retirement, which was not stopping doing stuff. And to me, retirement is when you, it's not when you quit your job or leave your job. It's when you recognize that whatever contribution you're going to make in your life has kind of been done, right? And maybe it's time to get off the stage and yield to a new generation. You're not there yet. Well, at the same time, we have this fantasy that 70 is the new 40, but it's not. Chronologically, how many years are left? So Epicurus speaks about that wonderful idea of before we drop into complete decrepitude, you take 10 years to kind of just enjoy the glory of becoming old. And I don't know if I'll have the patience to do that. I thought after COVID I'd slow down, and I guess I really haven't. But

I think that's how I see the next years unfolding. Fewer expectations, less pressure, and more freedom to imagine what comes beyond. Good luck, Grandpa. Thank you very much, Steve. There's so much wisdom in this book. Wade Davis, Beneath the Surface of Things, New and Selected Essays. Thanks for coming into TVO today. My pleasure.

Wonderful, Steve. My pleasure. Wonderful, Steve.