I

t’s Monday night and I’m 
wasting homework time by 
way of my usual outlet for 

laziness — the internet. When I 
find 
myself 
wondering 

about 
the 
recent 
life 

events of a friend I haven’t 
spoken to in years, I’m 
able — thanks to Facebook 
— to search her name in 
seconds. A slight wave of 
envy sweeps over me as 
my search results come up 
empty; the realization that 
she’s left this corner of the 
virtual world is somehow 
a little jealousy-inducing.

While millennials are often 

criticized for their overuse of 
social media platforms, these 
internet outlets have become 
favorites of older and younger 
generations 
alike. 
Since 
the 

emergence of social media has 
been labeled a primarily millennial 
phenomenon by the public and 
mainstream media, an antithesis 
to fragmenting life into curated 
snapshots has also surfaced in 
this generation. The movement to 
permanently delete social media 
accounts has itself fostered a new 
subcategory of elitism, foiling to a 
more easily visible phenomenon of 
internet snobbery.

This is by no means a jab at 

the friend I attempted to softcore 
Facebook stalk that night — I look 
pretty foolish here because if I’d 
truly wanted to know what she 
was up to, I could’ve picked up the 
phone and called her. In no way do 
I wish to claim that anyone who 
decides to rid themselves of social 
media accounts should be placed 
in the same category as those who 
openly flaunt their less-connected 
lifestyles, wearing their conscious 
withdrawal from the internet like 
an unnecessary patch on a high 
school letterman jacket.

If an obvious downfall of social 

media seems often attributed to 
its publicity of otherwise private 
or unnecessary information on 
a widely accessible platform, 
why shouldn’t the same logic be 
applied in the opposite direction? 

That is to say, why shouldn’t over-
aggressive proponents of “more 
unplugged” lifestyles face the 
same societal scrutiny as internet 

over-sharers? This 
double 
standard 

seems 
to 
stem 

from the skeptical 
eyes 
of 
older 

generations 
and 

the association of 
less technological 
involvement with 
a 
purer 
human 

experience.

There 
are 

countless reasons 

for the deletion of social media 
accounts, 
and 
all 
are 
valid. 

Constantly engaging with such 
platforms can be psychologically 
depleting 
and 
mind-numbing. 

Some users are more prone to 
social 
media 
addiction 
than 

others, so a decisive detachment 
from 
these 
online 
spaces 

would especially benefit this 
demographic. 
Whatever 
the 

reason, 
users-turned-non-users 

frequently claim their removal 
from internet profiles has allowed 
them a heightened sense of 
happiness and productivity in 
their day-to-day lives.

For especially affected non-

users, unplugging is more of 
a necessary individual choice 
than a trend. This may be the 
case for all non-users — but in 
the openly boastful subcategory, 
attitudes toward users can quite 
easily 
become 
condescending 

and demonstrate the fine line 
between 
lifestyle 
choice 
and 

indulgence in the stereotypically 
negative portrayals of millennial 
engagement with social media. 

As with all generalizations, 

an 
exaggerated 
demonization 

of social media masks most 
of its positive attributes. For 
example 
— 
though 
riddled 

with clickbait news titles and 
advertising ploys — social media 
is often an incentivized source 
of social and political awareness 
for those who aren’t looking to 
seek these updates elsewhere. 

Though users often remain on 
social media for the benefits of 
interconnectivity among friends 
and family members, people also 
love to assess what others are 
doing and evaluate themselves 
accordingly. This mechanism 
of easy comparison is perhaps 
even more “human” than its 
less-connected 
antithesis, 
a 

counterargument for those who 
claim that technology disjoints 
the human state.

It makes sense, then, that the 

successful denial of this innate 
urge should elicit a feeling of 
hard-earned pride. However, with 
the inherent benefits that exist 
in a highly connected world, this 
pride is not totally warranted. 
Many argue that social media 
enhances necessary competencies 
of 21st century living, from the 
encouragement of discourse and 
information sharing to digital 
citizenship and critical assessment 
of subjective agendas.

This is not to suggest, however, 

that a life without social media 
platforms 
is 
always 
socially 

irresponsible. Over half of social 
media users assess news articles at 
mere face value: reading headlines, 
a couple introductory sentences and 
perhaps nothing else. To state the 
obvious, social medi a platforms 
themselves don’t seem to foster such 
careful user attention to current 
events. It’s not the possibility of social 
irresponsibility, then, that seems 
most bothersome from the more 
boastful demographic of non-users.

Perhaps the most troubling part 

is the denial of the double standard 
created by this disconnected 
image, the elitist rhetoric it 
condones and the failure to 
consider the beneficial effects of 
social media on other individuals 
— be it professionally, politically 
or otherwise. It’s important to 
recognize, in the age of human-
technology integration, there’s 
no one-size-fits-all formula for 
healthy social engagement.

T

his month, two remarkable 
events 
occurred 
that 

passed mostly under the 

radar here on campus. First, to start 
off the month, the University of 
Michigan celebrated its bicentennial 
with an entire week of climate 
change-themed activities, called 
MC2: Michigan & The Climate 
Crisis. This event was organized 
to explore the existential threat of 
climate change and to reflect on 
the University’s role in confronting 
this crisis as we move into our next 
100 years. 

Second, only a few days after these 

activities wrapped up, Scott Pruitt, 
administrator of the Environmental 
Protection 
Agency, 
announced 

the organization’s commitment to 
abandon all responsibility to uphold 
the United States’s pledge to the 
Paris agreement of 2015, which was 
devised to lower carbon emissions 
to a level that will keep the world’s 
temperature below catastrophic 
warming. The EPA has now 
officially repealed the Clean Power 
Plan, which was our country’s 
framework to meet the goals of the 
Paris agreement.

Meanwhile, 
the 
impacts 
of 

climate change have become all 
too apparent, in the almost-routine 
natural disasters that are occurring 
worldwide. While these events 
are not entirely caused by climate 
change, their severity and frequency 
most likely are. Indeed, the record 
floods, droughts, fires and major 
hurricanes are exactly what climate 
models and scientists have been 
predicting. The estimated cost of 
these disasters in the United States, 
this year alone, is over $300 billion 
(not to mention the loss of human 
life), which dwarfs the $33 billion 
Scott Pruitt claims the Clean Power 
Plan would have cost to implement.

In the face of this global crisis, 

the federal government’s failure 
has created an opportunity and an 
imperative for other institutions to 
lead. Across the country, churches, 
business, universities, and local 
and regional governments are 
signing on in support of the Paris 
climate accord. Many are doubling 
down on their efforts to advance 
renewable 
energy 
and 
reduce 

their carbon footprints. Colleges 
and universities, including our 
peers in the Big Ten, have laid out 
substantive plans to tackle the 
climate crisis on campus.

Our biggest rival, Ohio State 

University, is far ahead of the 
University of Michigan in its 
climate commitment; it has the 
capacity to generate 21 percent of 
the main campus’s energy needs 
from renewables. The University 
of Maryland, another Big Ten rival, 
has fully divested its endowment 
from fossil fuels. Other prestigious 
universities, 
including 
Yale 

University, Stanford University and 
the University of California, have 
partially divested, while Harvard 
University has at least frozen some 
fossil fuel investments.

Considering 
that, 
it’s 

disappointing 
that 
a 
report 

published by Bloomberg News 
this summer revealed that the 
University of Michigan has not 
only failed to address fossil fuel 
divestment, but that we have 
actually increased our estimated 
$1 billion worth of investments in 
these climate-altering companies 
by nearly 40 percent since 2015. 
As MC2 speaker Stephen Mulkey 
said, “It is ethically indefensible 
that an institution dedicated to 
the proposition of the renewal of 
civilization would simultaneously 
invest in its destruction.”

Though 
some 
from 
the 

University’s administration may 
rebut that those new investments 
are going into natural gas, which 
is supposedly more sustainable, 
recent scientific assessments have 
revealed that because of methane 
leaks during the fracking process, 
natural gas use may actually be one 
of the most carbon-intensive fossil 
fuels around — potentially worse 
than coal. The bottom line is, if 
we want to solve the climate crisis 
and avert catastrophe for human 
civilization, we cannot continue to 
burn fossil fuels.

The urgency to act is paramount. 

As a new University of Michigan 
study suggests, the window for 
action may be closing — the longer 
we wait, the worse climate change 
will become and the harder it will 
be to stop. That means action by 
nonfederal U.S. institutions is 
essential, because this country 
contributes a huge proportion 
of the world’s carbon emissions, 
and we cannot afford to wait for 
another presidential election to 
change that.

Despite saying that “the threat 

of climate change is one of the 

great generational challenges of our 
current and future students. We 
remain steadfast in our commitment 
to tackle that threat head-on at the 
University of Michigan,” President 
Mark Schlissel declined divestment 
in 2015. I hope he will reconsider 
this inaction, by taking the clear 
first step in committing our 
University to the Paris agreement 
goals — a proposal that was drafted 
by the Climate Blue student group 
and jointly supported by the MC2 
committee. Thereafter, so that our 
commitment does not ring hollow, 
I hope the University will begin 
implementing plans to transform 
our campus energy production to 
renewables and will stop investing 
in the very activity the Paris 
agreement is attempting to curb.

Furthermore, 
because 
we, 

the students, faculty, staff and 
alumni of the University, are its 
essence, it is our responsibility to 
urge President Schlissel and our 
University administration to act on 
climate change. We can sign the 
Paris petition ourselves to show the 
University leadership our support. 
We can ask them to compete with 
our rivals at Ohio State, to drop the 
excuses and find a way to get solar 
panels on top of every building on 
campus. We can demand that the 
University join other universities 
and divest our endowment from 
fossil fuels.

We can ask the University to 

lead by offering scholarships to 
students dedicated to fighting 
climate change. We can insist that 
they commit to a 100 percent 
renewable energy campus. We, 
ourselves, can directly engage at 
the University by participating in 
a climate action summit on Friday, 
Oct. 27, for the inauguration of 
the new School for Environment 
and Sustainability.

Finally, we can call on the 

University to live up to its creed 
to be “Leaders and Best” by 
actually taking the lead on climate 
change. Otherwise, what will 
future generations say when they 
look back on the University of 
Michigan’s third century?

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, October 25, 2017

REBECCA LERNER

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

EMMA KINERY

Editor in Chief

ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY 

and REBECCA TARNOPOL 

Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

 Climate action now

JONATHAN MORRIS | OP-ED

 Antisocial media elitism

Carolyn Ayaub
Megan Burns

Samantha Goldstein

Caitlin Heenan
Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan

Anurima Kumar

Max Lubell

Lucas Maiman

Alexis Megdanoff
Madeline Nowicki
Anna Polumbo-Levy 

Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Ali Safawi

Sarah Salman
Kevin Sweitzer

Rebecca Tarnopol

Stephanie Trierweiler

Ashley Zhang

 Josie Tolin can be reached at 

jostolin@umich.edu.

ERIN WAKELAND | ERIN CAN BE REACHED AT ERINRAY@UMICH.EDU

 A modern manical Leviathan

 ISAIAH ZEAVIN-MOSS | COLUMN

I

n 
my 
Modern 
Political 

Thought 
class, 
we’re 

reading, among other things, 

Thomas Hobbes’s “Leviathan.” 
Themes 
in 
the 

book 
reminded 

me 
of 
thoughts 

and feelings I’ve 
experienced 
under 
Trump’s 

administration, 
so 
I 
decided 

to 
write 
this 

column. 

Hobbes suggests 

that the people will 
sacrifice their own 
“natural right” — that is, their 
right to preserve their own life 
— for the sake of the Sovereign, a 
figure who has absolute power to 
do as he wishes.

One thing to note: Hobbes uses 

the male pronoun to describe the 
Sovereign, illuminating a central 
fact 
of 
Hobbes’s 
philosophy, 

namely that the only people who 
were “free” were landowning 
white patriarchs. I often think 
about how normalized this kind 
of patent exclusion and prejudice 
was, and how that fundamentally 
changes how legitimate any of 
these philosophies are in the first 
place. Essentially, these people 
were living in a fantasy that 
affirmed their own superiority 
as 
landowning 
white 
men 

themselves. More on this later.

According to Hobbes, the 

Sovereign literally cannot act 
unjustly, since the Sovereign 
creates the state and all its 
institutions, laws and customs. 
Hobbes defines an unjust act as 
one that breaks the law; since 
the Sovereign is creating the 
very environment in which the 
law is decreed and enforced, the 
Sovereign cannot break the law.

We give this power to the 

Sovereign in order to be protected 
from, as Hobbes puts it, the 
natural condition of war between 
people. As everyone tries to 
preserve their own life, conflicts 
inevitably arise, and icky human 
passions and desires take over. 
To avoid this, we succumb and 
submit to the Sovereign, who will 
protect its citizens.

Hobbes 
wrote 
within 
the 

context of the English Civil 
War, which happened between 
the years of 1642 and 1651. 
On one side, there were the 
Parliamentarians (also known as 
the “Roundheads”), led by Oliver 
Cromwell — a name I had always 
oddly revered but only now 
learned about. And on the other, 
the Royalists (or “Cavaliers”). 
Cromwell and his cronies had 

just taken over, which led to 
the execution of Charles I and 
the exile of his son — who, in a 
shocking turn of history, is named 

Charles II.

Hobbes’s 
text 

responds to the ongoing 
debate between these 
two 
factions. 
The 

Royalists, since being 
deposed, decried the 
new 
government 
as 

illegitimate. 
But 
for 

Hobbes, 
these 
calls 

were hapless and held 
no ground, since the 
Parliamentarians were 

the ones in legitimate control. 
They were the Sovereign.

We can use Hobbes’s work as 

a foundation for understanding 
Donald Trump’s emergence, and 
that of the far right in general.

Donald 
Trump, 
I 
think, 

understands himself in similar 
terms to those of Hobbes’s 
Sovereign. According to Trump, 
he can do whatever he wants to 
because of the power he holds. 
This has always been true. It’s 
what’s allowed him to sexually 
assault women, deny housing 
to Blacks, publicly shame every 
demographic that is not his own, 
run a campaign based on his 
persistent disobeying of customs 
in the electoral process and get 
away with it all.

And now he is our president. 

Every time he shatters another 
custom, defies what we expect of 
him with some gaffe that no longer 
can be described that way because 
of how frequently it occurs, I think 
Trump tries to fundamentally 
change how much power we give 
him, our collective understanding 
of our nation’s customs, what is 
normal, the boundaries of the 
American discourse and how 
much we sacrifice for the sake of 
his regime.

By aligning with the Ku 

Klux Klan, for example, Trump 
has brought white nationalists 
into the mainstream political 
discourse. 
Richard 
Spencer 

and Charles Murray are being 
invited to college campuses in 
the name of discourse, when, in 
fact, these are men promoting 
specifically 
racist, 
hateful 

agendas. The blurring of this 
line — between hate speech and 
free speech — has been one of the 
most sweeping consequences of 
Trump’s presidency thus far.

He is trying to reset the terms 

by which he can legitimately rule, 
the threats he can make to our 
very way of life — with respect 
to the environment, to North 
Korea and to his conspicuous 

respect for white nationalist hate 
groups — while still remaining 
in office. And this is how he ran 
his campaign; by the time of the 
actual election, he had thoroughly 
reduced the individual impact of 
each new headline detailing some 
new disgusting act.

We can see instances of 

Hobbes’s 
notion 
that 
the 

Sovereign is always legitimate in 
contemporary discourse as well. 
In Ann Arbor, for example, in 
the days after Trump’s election, 
I heard some of his supporters 
dismissing the outraged, crying 
students — mostly students of 
color — with the logic that these 
people should “get over it,” that 
Trump won fair and square and 
that there was nothing to do but 
“move on.”

But today, so many of those 

people who voted for him are 
discovering the hollowness and 
deception of Trump’s messages. 
They’ve been blindsided by the 
fact they themselves surrendered 
their own sovereignty — just as 
Hobbes describes — for the sake 
of this new leader, a leader who 
would reclaim the United States 
as they knew it, or as they wanted 
to know it.

Because 
unlike 
Hobbes’s 

Sovereign, Trump is not trying 
to 
protect 
his 
constituents, 

to 
preserve 
their 
lives 
and 

livelihoods. Instead, Trump uses 
his power for his own nefarious 
goals: to push an agenda of 
derision, violence and hatred. 
He is, in fact, openly combative 
when marginalized communities 
express dissent and anger. For 
example, 
he 
blamed 
Puerto 

Ricans themselves for the level 
of destruction they faced in the 
wake of Hurricane Maria. Like 
his supporters before him, this is 
Trump saying, “I have won. I am 
the legitimate power-holder. Get 
over it. Fend for yourself.”

Hobbes wrote in a time 

when dissenters were routinely 
hanged or drawn and quartered. 
A time when, as I mentioned 
earlier, 
everyone 
besides 

landowning patriarchs was, as 
custom, regarded as sub-human 
or subservient.

The 
possibility 
of 
this 

comparison, between Hobbes’s 
imagined leader, one who has 
absolute 
sovereign 
power, 

and our actual one, who we, 
as a nation, elected in 2016, 
ought to make us confront our 
contemporary social society in a 
new, skeptical light. 

 Isaiah Zeavin-Moss can be reached 

at izeavinm@umich.edu.

 Jonathan R. Morris is part of 

the planning committee for the 

MC2: Michigan & the Climate Crisis 

Bicentennial event and is a research 

associate in the School for Environment 

and Sustainability.

JOSIE TOLIN | COLUMN

ISAIAH 

ZEAVIN-MOSS

JOSIE 
TOLIN