The privilege of choosing silence over solidarity
By Anjali Sharma
In attempting to reshape political disengagement into a radical act of boundary setting, Adam Grant has espoused the most harmful belief of all, writes Anjali Sharma.
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“I didn’t post about your cause because I don’t take requests. I’m not a DJ.”
These are words taken verbatim from a viral ‘poem’ written by American organisational psychologist Adam Grant, and posted on Instagram on 9 June. At the time of writing, Adam Grant has 2.7 million Instagram followers and the post has almost 30,000 likes.
This poem is Grant’s attempt to reshape political disengagement into a radical act of boundary setting. In doing so, he espouses the most harmful belief of all, the belief that underlies the crises of climate destruction, political fragmentation and societal disunity: radical individualism. The belief that we owe each other nothing.
As I write this, my home country of India is sweltering through a long and protracted heatwave. The northern state of Uttar Pradesh is where I was born, where my grandma, aunts and uncles and cousins live, and where our family farm still stands. The state has seen days on end reach 48°C.
For those for whom this is a reality, climate change is not a matter of policy, nor of politics. It is not a far-off, abstract idea that we can debate on news panels, or pore over at conferences. Climate change is the slow narrowing of survival itself.
And yet, even as this reality intensifies, with the comfort and benefit of distance, we on the other side of the world have successfully overlooked it altogether. The urgency of the situation that my family is living right now has not in any way translated into attention from those not directly affected.
As a climate activist, my work often relies on public attention. A chorus of voices that ring out demanding change will always be stronger than a lone voice speaking into the void. Knowing this, I have spent the last seven years screaming in the hopes of attracting a chorus. I have spent the last seven years trying to make people care, trying to make people feel, even briefly, what others I know cannot escape.
In the same poem, Grant states that he won’t post about your cause because he wants to be a “force for unity” in a world of division. The assumption embedded within this argument is that disengagement dissolves conflict. That the choice to look away is in some way a solution. That refusing to speak about injustice is somehow a neutralising force.
Grant seems to forget that there is a cohort in society who will never have the privilege of opting out. Some will never be able to choose to look away. How can it be that we do not owe these people our time, our attention, the simple act of amplifying their voices?
Climate change, like all other causes, does not disappear because influential people decide it is too divisive to platform. Silence will not save lives, and refusal to engage will not protect communities living through catastrophe. All it will do is protect the comfort of those insulated from the effects, and enable those that perpetrate these crises by buying them time.
After all, a genocide thrives in silence. The most fertile environment for human rights abuses is one that refuses to engage. Climate catastrophe is at the stage that it is at today because of decades and decades of inaction that has been enabled by the silence that Grant condones.
And the consequence of this that is most cruel is that the burden is intergenerational. It will be borne by my generation, and generations to come. Children born today will inherit a world that will be shaped by our willingness to retreat into ourselves. They will live with the deadly floods, destructive fires and blistering heatwaves that are borne of years of the attitude that Grant sums up in one line - “I didn’t post about your cause because your cause is not my cause.”
It is because of the attitude that Grant advocates that activists consistently attempt to reframe global crises to tug on the heartstrings (or hip pockets) of those with relative power and influence. Climate change as an economic problem, increasing the prices of holidays, insurance premiums, affecting snowfall and impacting ski holidays. War as affecting the availability and prices of fuel. Genocide as a matter of trade disruption.
Radical individualism obscures the lives and livelihoods of the people that will be hit far quicker, and far harder than our hip pockets. But we have normalised it, rebranded it ‘protecting your peace.’
This is not to say that self-care is not a radical act, or an act less worthy. To advocate in a way that is sustainable, we must first take care of ourselves. However, our self-care must always be grounded in community.
Let us be clear. That your solidarity is optional is the biggest privilege in itself. It is a privilege to decide, to ‘take requests,’ to choose what suffering to make visible.
It should not be radical to say that, as humans, we should care beyond ourselves. In every corner of the world, there are people reliant on our care, desperate for it. There are opportunities that we have in our lives that others will never, ever have, by virtue simply of being born Indian, Pakistani, Palestinian, or Libyan, or Syrian, or into poverty, affected by disease, by war, by genocide. One of those opportunities is the opportunity to look away.
We are so lucky to have the opportunity to look away. We must recognise this, and we must never, ever look away.
About the author
Anjali Sharma is 21 years old. At 16, she became the lead litigant of Sharma vs Environment Minister, a class action legal case which argued that the Environment Minister owes all young people a duty of care to protect them from the impacts of climate change. She now campaigns for this duty to be legislated through Parliament, campaigning for parliamentary accountability for the disproportionate impacts of climate change in relation to young people and future generations.
Thankyou your piece Anjali. Adam Grant is a great example of stupid white privilege and should be embarrassed. It is a great gift to be in a position to make a difference and to help others (looking at you Elon). There is a saying 'the behaviour you walk past is the behaviour you condone'. Thankyou for your activism Anjali and my heart goes out to your family.
Great, very heartfelt piece. Am a huge fan of yours! It is so bad and sad for the future of our planet and your generation (and the next and the next and the next) that climate action and activism is framed as taking a side in an endless culture war. That it is a ‘cause’ and not what it actually is — a matter of planetary survival. And therefore an economic and societal imperative. With every year, the facts are becoming more obvious to those who are interested in them.
Yet people have no obligation to join causes or amplify them. A lot of people are counter suggestible. Pushing people to so something can actually make them less likely to join. They can feel cornered and their response can to shut down or push back.