What's really important about Her Implacable Tinyness

Carl Stellweg

I really don't want to hammer the Mighty Climate Dwarf down anybody's throat, but still I urge everybody to listen to this speech, from beginning to end.

There simply is no-one - repeat: no-one - who speaks so bluntly, so concisely, so fearlessly, so factually correct, with so much dignity and clarity, and, last but not least, so inspiringly, about the huge problem of climate change. She really is a historical figure. She is simply the voice of rational common sense, and there is nothing I admire more than that.

Still, I do not adulate Greta Thunberg. And I do agree with Ellen Boucher, researcher on the history of childhood, that there is danger in depicting her as a prophet, since 'prophets  communicate the voice of God, convey divine revelation that was previously unknown or misunderstood'.

And that's not what Greta is about. She just tells us what we already know but don't want to know - or could have or should have known.

Unlike Greta-fans I came across on social media, I have no personal love affair with her. I take notice, but do not revel in her fragile cuteness as it is exploited in countless pictures and memes on facebook and twitter.

I'm not sure I even like her very much. She seems aloof and sometimes even a little arrogant in her indignation. But I admire her nonetheless. What's so special about her is that she actually isn't that special. Just a smart kid who had a killer idea: skolstrejk för klimatet.

She may be even less smart than her opposite, the 19-year old German girl Naomi Seibt, who I particularly detest, although she wrote an impressive pseudo-academic paper called 'A Deconstruction of Postmodern Socialism and its Motives'. I've read it and I can attest that it is a well-written, decently documented piece of neo-liberal garbage.

Greta may not (yet) have the intellectual capacity to produce such a text, but that doesn't matter one bit. She's obviously intelligent, and furthermore endowed with the determination she derives from her special condition called asperger, which she has branded as her 'superpower'.

I sometimes am envious of her almost total disregard for the trivialities of human interaction that this superpower seems to entail. I'd like to think I've got a bit of that superpower myself, though it certainly isn't enough.

What I appreciate most about Greta may well be her simplicity. It's the simplicity of youth. As Ellen Boucher writes: she has 'not yet developed the moral flexibility that is so often the refuge of adult inaction'.

In a Greta world, things are either good or bad, with not a lot in between, and that is exactly what is needed here. Moreover, on further examination, her inflexibility does not seem to be the result of a narrow or naive take on reality, but a deliberate, pondered choice. 'You say nothing in life is black or white but that is a lie, a very dangerous lie', she says in my favourite speech of hers ('Our house is on fire').

This moral dogmatism also appeals to the influential Slovenian thinker Slavoj Zizek, who supports Thunberg all the way, and according to whom 'her autism is part of her message' and 'dogmatic sometimes can be very good'.

No, of course Greta is not a prophet. Neither does she want to be one: 'I don't want you to listen to me. Listen to the science.' This implies she does not pretend to have the expertise of a true scientist. Still, she has the mentality, or even the mind of a scientist. She understands the value of empirical thinking, which is not to be confounded with academic or intellectual thinking.

She has placed the value of empirical thinking at the very heart of her activism, and campaigning for verifiable truth, for factuality, is highly welcome in this age of proud ignorance. She is an activist for science, or for practical rationality if you wish. Noam Chomsky once professed his allegiance 'Cartesian common sense', and I think that Greta essentially advocates the same. This is why so many scientists cherish her.

Still, I find it also very unsettling to watch her admonish delegations of adult officialdom. It makes me cringe, and almost empathise with those who resent her. It's a bit of an act. By that I don't mean that she is 'reading from script', as some of her haters so viciously purport. But there is something very wrong here, and she seems to sense it herself, since she began her most controversial speech to date with these words: 'This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean.'

And that's more or less right. Grown-ups undergoing the cathartic experience of being told by a child how much they suck, and then applauding and going about their business again and not changing anything about the way they suck - that sucks. That sucks big time. It isn't really helpful at all.

What, by contrast, is important, extremely important, and what can and will make a difference, is Greta's role outside of the palaces of bureaucratic power. As she indicated in her speech: 'I have seen hope and it is not in this room'. What really matters is the way Her Implacable Tinyness has lured millions into the streets - myself, a hater of crowds, included. From Helsinki to Montreal to Los Angeles to Madrid. And that has to go on. Indeed, that's where our only hope lies.