Alienation is my nation

This morning, it was finally time for the panel that I had been dreading for months. It is such a true suicide mission to go into a room like that and try to turn all certainties upside down. But no, we do not need a “cultural shift” (which by the way is just a code word for other people becoming like us) to solve climate change, in fact, it is this very insistence on lifestyle politics that is holding back compromise and effective action. It is also highly counter-productive to stand on the top of a mountain of material affluence and say that all that matters in life is free. Just in case you wonder.

Maybe it was an accidental effect of having a Slovenian lady next to me in the panel, but sometime during my presentation I realized that I had gone into Žižek-overdrive when I, with an unmistakable accent, said something like, “oh my God, in an abstract sense, of course”. Yes, alienation appears to truly to be my nation sometimes.

Now, I am waiting at the Santa Fe Depot for the Surfliner to take me back to L.A.