Who is Sane in an Insane World?
A man burned himself to death this Earth Day outside the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. Wynn Bruce, 50, was a climate activist and Buddhist from Boulder, Colorado. He lit himself on fire April 22 and was pronounced dead the following day.
In 2020, Bruce shared an article on the global impact of climate change on Facebook. He later posted a comment that included a flame emoji and the date of his death, 4/22/2022:
Buddhist priest Sensei Kritee Kanko, a friend of Bruce’s, said the act was not suicide, writing on Twitter: “This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis.” She said Bruce had been planning the act for at least a year.
Bruce’s death isn’t the first incident of self-immolation to protest climate change. David Buckel, an LGBTQ+ rights lawyer and climate activist, carried out a similar act in Brooklyn in 2018. One year later, The Guardian asked of Buckel’s attempt to spur action on the climate crisis: “Did anyone care?” At least when it comes to the most powerful people on our planet who are in a position to take serious action to address the climate emergency, the answer is a clear no. Instead, politicians like Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau are expanding fossil fuel production and building pipelines.
Reading reactions to Bruce’s self-immolation, I found plenty of shocked responses and calls to honour his memory by pushing for real climate action. I also saw plenty of snide remarks and people opining that this was clearly a mental health issue—that Bruce must have been crazy to do what he did.
Self-immolation is a common form of protest throughout the world and has a long history. It represents the ultimate act of desperate protest against intolerable conditions. In certain circumstances, such acts can serve as the spark that ignites mass movements and even revolutions. The most famous example might be Mohamed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian street vendor who was driven to set himself on fire after confiscation of his wares and repeated harassment and humiliation by municipal officials. Bouazizi’s act was the trigger for the Tunisian Revolution and eventually the wider Arab Spring.
Those in power who benefit from oppression and injustice feel threatened by such acts. For them, the thought process that would drive someone to sacrifice themselves in protest is totally incomprehensible. They dismiss these figures as irrational, mentally ill.
The 19th century U.S. abolitionist John Brown, who led a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in an attempt to spark a slave uprising, did so to fight the intolerable evil of slavery. Captured and executed for his actions, Brown was portrayed by the ruling classes as a terrorist and fanatic. In the context of the U.S. civil rights movement a century later, Malcolm X expressed well the mentality of those who demonized John Brown:
If a white man wants to be your ally, what does he think of John Brown? You know what John Brown did? He went to war. He was a white man who went to war against white people to help free slaves. He wasn’t nonviolent. White people call John Brown a nut. Go read the history, go read what all of them say about John Brown. They’re trying to make it look like he was a nut, a fanatic. They made a movie on it, I saw a movie on the screen one night. Why, I would be afraid to get near John Brown if I go by what other white folks say about him.
But they depict him in this image because he was willing to shed blood to free the slaves. And any white man who is ready and willing to shed blood for your freedom—in the sight of other whites, he’s nuts. As long as he wants to come up with some nonviolent action, they go for that, if he’s liberal, a nonviolent liberal, a love-everybody liberal. But when it comes time for making the same kind of contribution for your and my freedom that was necessary for them to make for their own freedom, they back out of the situation. So, when you want to know good white folks in history where black people are concerned, go read the history of John Brown.
The presentation of dissidents, political opponents, and leaders of enemy governments as mentally ill has a long pedigree. Stalinist regimes often incarcerated dissidents in mental hospitals. Western media today describe Vladimir Putin as a “madman”. I despise Putin and his reactionary regime. But it’s important to realize, as Joshua Cho points out, that painting him as irrational eliminates the need for diplomacy—conveniently for weapons contractors making big profits from the war in Ukraine. Leaders of official U.S. enemy states have long been described in similar terms. Painting your opponents as insane is a way of dismissing any legitimate grievances they might have.
I don’t know what Wynn Bruce’s mental health might have been like. What I do know is that being concerned about the climate crisis, and seeing the refusal of governments to take serious action as intolerable, is a perfectly sane view—one that is far less common than it should be. If you want to talk about insanity, look at governments that are actively making the climate crisis worse. Look at the corporate media burying stories about how the planet is becoming unliveable. Look at the pandemic, in which governments are removing all COVID-related health measures even as infection rates climb higher than ever.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote that “a sane person to an insane society must appear insane.” Wynn Bruce’s desperate act flowed from the most sane outlook one could have at a time when our species is racing towards ecological catastrophe and the response of politicians is to hit the accelerator. The irrational policies of our governments are the result of the irrational system they defend, capitalism—a system that values profit over all else, including the very survival of humanity. Sane policies will only emerge when we overthrow this rotten system and build a truly rational form of society, socialism, based on human need.