Our House Is on Fire

Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

Authors: Greta Thunberg; Beata Ernman; Svante Thunberg; Malena Ernman

In this post about ‘Our House Is on Fire’ I give my own opinion, not that of any organization.

What is the situation here? A family from the fine arts world is confronted with family problems. More specifically, the daughter (Greta) no longer eats from a certain point on. The parents are at their wit’s end for a long time. The diagnosis for Greta, the eldest daughter, is not insignificant: ADHD, Autism, behavioral disorders, eating disorders, highly sensitive, high-functioning. Beata, her younger sister, joins her in this, mutatis mutandis. But nature found a way out, and Greta survives her eating disorder.

Because of her being different, Greta suffers a lot from not understanding the way society runs. As a result, she was also bullied a lot. The whole family has known it. But Greta develops a benign compensatory behavior. She takes an interest in the environment and convinces her family to share her interest. However, because of her differences, she also adopts a super-pragmatic attitude. The environment, the climate, is in danger. Action is needed! Right away! She decides to take action. She decides to go on a school strike. Her parents support her in this. Pretty soon she gets applause. The flyers of her strike read on the front:

We kids usually don’t

what adults say to us.

We do just like you.

And since you’ve got shit

to my future

I have that too.

My name is Greta and I’m in the third.

And until the elections, I’m holding a school strike

for the climate.

When I see what she is doing, the school strikes in other countries, I don’t quite agree with that flyer. In my eyes, Greta is no longer a child mentally, but an adolescent, a young woman who knows what she wants. And knows how to get results. The fact that she wants to change the way society runs, she freely admits that. What that should look like, she hopes the scientists will find. But change breeds fear of change, and fear in this situation turns into hatred in a number of people. That hatred manifests itself in an anger that is rampant on the internet.

But I myself am confident that nature will be saved, or will save itself, even if it is perhaps not in its present form. After all, nature always finds a way out. Either with humanity or without. Because man is only a part of nature. And the rest of nature can do without us. However, people like Greta are a sign of hope that we can do it with us. When we get into change. Whatever that change should look like. Time is against us. But man is smart enough to lend a hand to nature, if man wants to.

Title: Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis, Authors: Greta Thunberg; Beata Ernman; Svante Thunberg; Malena Ernman, Publisher: Penguin books, ISBN: 9780143133575

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