I’ve been unable to shake the song “Under Pressure” cowritten by Queen and David Bowie. I keep replaying it again and again on my morning commutes. I’ve attempted to write about just the song, but kept coming up short. It wasn’t until I admitted to my self this song was speaking to my emotions around climate change that I realized why it has been sticking with me.
The song, originally written in 1981, certainly appears on all the “Greatest Song” lists with its gripping baseline hook, Freddie Mercury’s scat, compelling composition, and the most epic sung “Why?” in history. I noticed mentions of the song by mainstream writing seems to studiously ignore it’s lyrics and meanings. The lyrics speak to living as and coming out as LGTBQ and I don’t want people to forget those roots. But in my obsessive repeat listening I realized I wanted to add a new interpretation in light of climate change. So what follows is not the standard interpretation, but just my own reinterpretation. First the lyrics:
Pressure: pushing down on me
Pressing down on you, no man ask for
Under pressure that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets
That's OK
That's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends screaming
"Let me out!"
Tomorrow gets me higher
Pressure on people, people on streets
OK
Chippin' around, kick my brains 'round the floor
These are the days: it never rains but it pours
People on streets
People on streets
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends screaming
"Let me out!"
Tomorrow gets me higher, higher
Pressure on people, people on streets (high)
Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence, but it don't work
Keep coming up with love, but it's so slashed and torn
Why, why, why?
Love, love, love, love, love
Insanity laughs under pressure
We're breaking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?
'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
The song is a study in the challenges of living in an oppressive world where our own existence is under threat by societal norms. The pressure of not being able to be our true selves creates an internal agony and becomes external as we attempt to share our true selves with the world.
This societal oppression, a form of control, is born from a type of greed. Greed is the insatiable want for more, and in its more pernicious forms overrides any moral inhibitions that seek to temper greed. Even worse, when it comes to other people, our inability to possess other people morphs the greed into a form of control. This control seeks not just to control specific people, but to impose upon everyone a set of norms which prohibits any criticism of the base greed.
The people for whom greed rules their lives still have that nagging morality which forever threatens to escape the inner prison they have locked it in. For other people to speak of morality, love, sharing, or altruism threatens those beholden to greed with the horrible possibility of facing their own conscience, and find themselves wanting. They can proceed so long as they are ensconced in a guilt free world which never acknowledges greed’s roll in the continuation of suffering.
And so a necessity to control societal norms has arisen from the personal greed. Those with money and influence may use their resources to guide media towards celebrating the successful business man and away from examining the structural reality that keeps people oppressed while enriching that businessman. Even in the non-profit world, those non-profits who treat symptoms of oppression and avoid critique of the oppressive structure are those that receive the biggest grants.
Climate change is an existential threat to the structures of oppressive greed. Climate change is so threatening to the wealthy because it is both an immense problem that demands we marshal all resources potentially exposing their greed, and a problem whose solutions all point towards acknowledging that we all interconnected with our actions. To fight climate change, we must access the resources the greedy have stashed away, and worse we must tear down the system that allows such inequality.
The system of inequality works on the premise of deferring to others the costs of our own actions. A greedy business will see people as a resource to extract as much value out of as they can. A greedy business takes advantage of our common resources, such as the sea, air, and very planet and pretends they are not responsible for the damage they do to it. A greedy business refuses to even acknowledge there are resources in common. To do so risks becoming aware of such dangerous ideas as commonality, interdependence, and love.
So in the first half of “Under Pressure”, people and families are torn apart by the pressure of oppressive greed attempting to both extract what it can from us, while preventing us from speaking of ideas dangerous to maintaining greed. In this light, the homophobia endemic to our culture is a means of controlling our concept of love. LGBTQ threatens to build a broader sense of love.
We can turn away, or sit on the fence as much as we want, wishing that we could just live a “normal” life. But to be our full selves we must face the terror of knowing what this world is about head on. Even amongst progressive circles, we can be averse to mentioning the word love. It’s a squishy emotion that we confidently state cannot be used when speaking of logic and ideas.
We have colonized ourselves to think of love as trite and cliche. We have convinced ourselves it is a topic for sappy love songs and not serious societal problems. Or even worse, love can be brought up in religious terms with the mountain of baggage it brings. The religious has become so problematic that it short circuits entire discussions. So I do NOT speak of religion here, I speak of love.
But I and the song do not think of love as the sappy crap we are fed to think it is.
And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves
I speak of Love that dares us to reimagine a world that is not controlled by greed. I speak of love that compels us to see ourselves as interconnected. I speak of love as our one true way to combat climate change. While it is possible to construct a cold, purely rational argument of how combating climate change is good for the individual, it’s not what is going to move many us. We must be moved forward by our compassion, our empathy, and yes our love of this planet and every last person on it and use that emotion to drive ourselves to build a better world.
And whether or not you buy into this expansive version of love, speaking of it openly and powerfully is the bane of the oppressive structure. It’s why MLK Jr was killed. He spoke not just of equal rights, but of reimagining our country in terms of inescapable mutuality, and applying that to our economy. Love is what kills the greed economy. It’s why they strive so hard to cheapen it. They know greed cannot stand up to love in a fair fight. It is why the media strive so hard to denigrate motives of love and put forth the lie of the profit motive being the only reasonable motive. Our only chance at dealing with climate change is to defeat the greed that drives it.
Whether it is to reverse it, survive it, or to comfort ourselves while the world ends, working to care for the people on the edge of the night and talking about Love is the means by which I intend to fight.
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
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