{"id":202055,"date":"2025-10-10T04:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T04:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/202055\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T04:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T04:10:08","slug":"jane-goodall-and-what-we-leave-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/202055\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Goodall and what we leave behind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jane Goodall\u2019s Famous Last Words interview, filmed in March but not made public until after her death earlier this month at the age of 91, got most of its attention<\/a> for the litany of figures the pre-eminent chimpanzee expert would, given the choice, put \u201con one of [Elon] Musk\u2019s spaceships and send them all off to the planet he\u2019s sure he\u2019s going to discover\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can imagine who I\u2019d put on that spaceship. Along with Musk would be [US President Donald] Trump and some of Trump\u2019s real supporters,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I would put [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in there, and I would put [China\u2019s] President Xi. I\u2019d certainly put [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu in there and his far-right government. Put them all on that spaceship and send them off.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\"Donald\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t appear to be the primary message she intended to leave behind.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy biggest hope is raising this new generation of compassionate citizens, roots and shoots. But do we have time? I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a really grim time,\u201d she said at one point, and then, in an address direct to camera after the interview, she added:<\/p>\n

\tIndependent. Irreverent. In your inbox<\/p>\n

\n Get the headlines they don\u2019t want you to read. Sign up to Crikey\u2019s free newsletters for fearless reporting, sharp analysis, and a touch of chaos <\/p>\n

By continuing, you agree to our\u00a0Terms & Conditions<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even today, when the planet is dark, there still is hope. Don\u2019t lose hope. If you lose hope, you become apathetic and do nothing.<\/p>\n

And if you want to save what is still beautiful in this world \u2014 if you want to save the planet for the future generations, your grandchildren, their grandchildren \u2014 then think about the actions you take each day. Because, multiplied a million, a billion times, even small actions will make for great change.<\/p>\n

Goodall thus becomes one of the figures both lucky and unlucky enough to know how soon the end was, and to leave behind a message. The one-time RAF pilot turned speaker and activist Harry Leslie Smith used the last years of his life<\/a> \u2014 he didn\u2019t become prominent until he was Goodall\u2019s age \u2014 to defend the UK\u2019s social welfare state and National Health Service, which had transformed what was possible in his own life, from attacks at the hands of the Conservative government. AA Gill also used his final piece<\/a> \u2014 following his announcement of \u201can embarrassment of cancer, a full English\u201d three weeks earlier \u2014 to the same end: \u201cThe NHS is the best of us\u201d.<\/p>\n

David Bowie\u2019s final album Black Star, created while he was secretly dying of liver cancer, wove, in its title alone, references to an obscure Elvis Presley death song<\/a>, HP Lovecraftian horror<\/a>, and the dimming<\/a> of Bowie\u2019s own iconography<\/a>. Or so we\u2019re left to speculate \u2014 he gave no interviews<\/a> before the album\u2019s release, and within two days of its release in January 2016, he was dead.<\/p>\n

Our very own Mungo MacCallum knocked off his five decades of writing about Australian politics with typical wit and irritation, apologising for his decision<\/a> to \u201ccut and run\u201d. \u201cIt has sometimes been a hairy career,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbut I hope a productive one and always fun. My gratitude for all your participation. So a seasonal Hallmark message:<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\"\u2018Completely\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Christmas is coming and Australia is flat<\/p>\n

Kindly tell us ScoMo where the bloody hell we\u2019re at.<\/p>\n

And when we\u2019re certain that you know that you don\u2019t haven\u2019t got a clue<\/p>\n

Then join in our Yuletide chorus as we sing: FUCK YOU!<\/p>\n

Thank you and good night.<\/p>\n

A week later, he was gone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joan Didion still had nearly a decade to go when she set down, in Blue Nights, her firsthand report from the land of grief, and by extension her own mortality: \u201cI found my mind turning increasingly to the end of promise, the dwindling of the days, the inevitability of the fading, the dying of the brightness.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of coverage is understandably dedicated to what it is to be young at this time, to look out into a future of seemingly unstoppable environmental breakdown, greater and greater inequality, and ever-narrowing possibilities. But there has been less material about what it is to approach one\u2019s end in that same world.<\/p>\n

The Conversationalist in 2022 ran a long survey<\/a> of various people between their late 60s to their mid-80s about how they currently viewed the world. An 84-year-old holocaust survivor concluded his clear-eyed answer thusly:<\/p>\n

I now have, at the age of 84, a four-month-old grandson. He\u2019s beautiful. He\u2019s gorgeous. One-fourth of him is made of me. As long as there are people there is hope. It\u2019s not good to get cynical or bitter. It doesn\u2019t help anyone, whatsoever, ever. That\u2019s a statement from a very old man who was delighted to have his first grandchild come into the world.<\/p>\n

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Alongside the pessismism and anxiety, many report taking some comfort, or at least being held back from panic, by the sense that these are not uniquely awful times \u2014 many cite the late 60s, with its flood of assassinations, cultural figures dying young and the dragging horrors of the war in Indochina, just as Goodall cites the World War II and the fight against fascism as the example for our times:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t have moments of depression, but then you come out of it and say, \u2018OK, I\u2019m not going to let them win,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to believe that liberty and justice and equity are going to prevail, but I don\u2019t believe that\u2019s automatic. I think we have to make that happen by our choices and by our actions [and] by living responsibly,\u201d notes a 68-year-old from St Louis.<\/p>\n

Which sounds a great deal like the statement<\/a> attributed to George Orwell, put out by his publisher while he was in hospital, fading fast<\/a>. It regarded the criticism 1984 had received for its apparent attack on the left. The statement made clear it was no particular government he was targeting, but the threat of totalitarianism in general: \u201cThe moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don\u2019t let it happen. It depends on you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jane Goodall\u2019s Famous Last Words interview, filmed in March but not made public until after her death earlier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,2331,24740,2490,3120,45045,117210,126063,126064,9118,126065,128,6213,2011,338],"class_list":["post-202055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-culture","tag-david-bowie","tag-donald-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-george-orwell","tag-jane-goodall","tag-joan-didion","tag-mungo-maccallum","tag-obituary","tag-president-xi","tag-science","tag-society","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}