Macbeth and the Messianic Moment

This week was somewhat unusual. With the change in schedule, half of our first session was taken up by my group’s oral presentation, an adaptation of Macbeth. I’m glad we got the opportunity to do a creative project for our oral presentation. We gave the play a humorous and sometimes silly tone for two reasons: firstly, because none of us are Shakespearian actors, and secondly, because humor allows for a high level of emotional engagement. We tried to make our production relatable and enjoyable in the most reliable way we could. We tried to combine some of the issues we’ve gone over as a class, including voluntary standards and their limited impact, companies like Mobil that falsify their records and fight federal investigations, and the impact of environmental exploitation on a community. I worried that our portrayal of the issues could be interpreted as satirical, but this is certainly not the case.

The audience seemed to enjoy the show, and hopefully the engagement of entertainment brought along with it some engagement of the themes and ideas we presented. This seems to be a risk whenever serious issues are presented in a less-serious manner – there is both a reduction of complex issues to simple statements, and an understanding that what happens in a comedy is not to be taken seriously. The opposite this also has its risks: a serious presentation of issues may be uninteresting or confusing to those with less of a background in the subject. And of course, so much depends on the audience the piece is prepared for. My group members and I trust that the class was able to both enjoy the show and process our points appropriately.

From there we moved back to the idea of green engineering. The 12 principles simply brought the three fundamental concepts of green engineering, that waste is food, we must use current solar income, and that we should celebrate diversity, into greater detail. The principles cover things we’ve already hinted at: guidelines for building energy-efficient products energy-efficiently, and built to be taken apart and have the constituent parts put back into the system.

Next we moved forward with the idea of the Messianic Moment. According to the idea, we must stop being satisfied with our powerlessness, and take action. It comes with the catch-phrase “I don’t know if this is going to work, but let’s try it”. My question is, to what extent are we supposed to know if something is going to work? If we don’t know if something is going to work scientifically, it might be a huge waste of resources, or worse, a danger to us all. For example, a company recently dumped a large volume of iron dust into the ocean to try to spur the growth of plankton, which ultimately trap carbon dioxide and sink to the ocean’s bottom when they die[1]. The idea is an interesting one as an example of ecological engineering, but many scientists have called the action rash and not scientifically sound or ecologically safe. But it sounds like the man who had this done was acting in a sense of the Messianic Moment (or at least trying to generate valuable carbon credits).

Maybe the Messianic Moment is more of a mindset for the common man. But is it the feeling of responsibility and satisfaction we get when we recycle an aluminum can, or something more? I like the idea of personal responsibility and connectedness, especially with regards to emotional engagement. But I have trouble seeing the balance point between insignificance and rashness were the Messianic Moment seems to be.