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Ecological Trauma and Recovery
As a global community, we often appear as a dysfunctional family. We bicker constantly, the strong abuse the weak, and alleged leaders behave like addicts, unwilling to change the destructive habits that are destroying our home. As in any abusive relationship, the powerful proclaim a taboo against protest and vilify those who cry out as the crazy ones.
Ten million people in our human family starve to death every year. Children serve as slaves and wither in factories, making trinkets for the rich. On top of this horrific injustice, we daily devastate the only source of real wealth: the earth itself. We lose fertile soil, discharge CO2 into the atmosphere, scatter toxins, turn grasslands into desert, and create islands of plastic garbage in the sea.
Our governments and captains of industry shrug off the signs of dysfunction, and promise to “change,” to become “more sustainable,” like the alcoholic parent who promises to reform, but never does. Marketing geniuses dress up business-as-usual in a “green” disguise – printing pictures of the Earth on plastic containers of detergent – to ease our worries. The sanctioned voices of the status quo assure us that all is well. As rivers die and species vanish, some in our global family watch in horror, others in denial.
Ecological psychology:
A person today, whose senses remain alive, will experience trauma when witnessing the abusive exploitation of nature. They will cry out and try to fix the dysfunction. However, some people may suffer the trauma unconsciously, may not know what is missing in their life, may work in a technological environment for 50 weeks each year, and then flee into nature, where they can feel alive again, for a two week holiday.
Modern neuroses, so prevalent in industrial nations, can be traced to our separation from nature. The marvels and conveniences of technological society provide only a thin veneer over our natural being. We remain biophysical animals akin to ants and raccoons. Millennia ago, certain clever primates overwhelmed all other species by controlling fire and developing tools, winning hegemony over planet Earth, but in our fundamental instincts, desires, and reactions, we reflect a long evolution in the lap of nature.
Regardless of prevailing conceits, we retain learned patterns from 50 million years of primate evolution, 5 million years of hominid development, and 500,000 years of fire-bearing, tool-making hunter-gatherer culture. During this long genesis, humanity grew within the comfort and constraints of an intact ecosystem that supplied sustenance, vital lessons, wonder, and a home. Watching that home fall under the blade of industrialism shocks our system, whether we know it or not.
Although modest and physically challenging, primal life offered benefits and shaped our nature. Early humans, like all animals, matured in stable communities with relatively secure food supplies. For millennia, families remained intact and children grew up watching parents work, surrounded by nature – the ultimate parent – learning lessons from the wilderness and from all creatures.
These natural comforts nourished us for 99.99 percent of our ancestral development. Then, only a few thousand years ago, some humans began living in urban environments, relying on remote agriculture, specialist skills, and the wiles of moneychangers. Within the last few hundred years, industrial culture has widened this separation from nature, divided families, and destroyed communities, creating alienated individuals clinging to scarce jobs and rewarded with packaged food and entertainment, the “bread and circuses” that Roman emperors bestowed to the peasants.
In spite of our civilized ways, human psychology remains linked to our primal origins. As a result, we suffer the trauma of witnessing ecological abuse, watching wilderness obliterated, other creatures eradicated, and the earth diminished.
The capacity of feel
According to Kathy McMahon, a clinical psychologist, who posts stories of environmental trauma on her Peak Oil Blues website, “We live in an insane culture. Rather than marginalize the cries for reform, we need to normalize the pain. Protest and concern are healthy reactions to loss and grief.” McMahon believes we study the wrong people, those traumatized by war, violence, and environmental destruction. “We should study those who aren’t suffering these symptoms, the so-called ‘normals,’ who haven’t allowed these horrible experiences to impact their daily lives. What sort of individual feels none of these things? Those who can’t or don’t feel the loss or who don’t know why they are drinking and drugging themselves, that is the true tragedy.”
Psychologist Chellis Glendinning – in the book Off the Map and essays such as “Recovery from Western Civilization” – describes the “original trauma” of living in industrial society, the failure of technology and globalization to provide essential comforts that nature and community once supplied. This loss, she explains, leads to addictive behaviour as people fill the void with consumption, drugs, and fashions. She describes a “desperate coping” manifested as addiction, anger, numbness, and attempts to appear “normal” by the standards of an insane culture.
A quarter century ago, ecological pioneer Paul Shepard examined natural alienation in Nature and Madness and other books. Shepard proposed that the deficient development of modern citizens has led society to the destruction of its habitat. Ancestral humans, he believed, acquired a healthy reciprocity with nature because young children experienced a mother always present, fathers with comprehensible roles, non-human beings in a primordial terrain, and deliberate adolescent initiation into adulthood.
On the other hand, Shepard explains, industrialized cultures have abandoned nature and divided families, leading to an arrested development. Poorly matured adults, Shepard says, harbour an infantile duality between themselves and nature, fear the organic world, and attempt to fulfill childish fantasies with patriotism, fundamentalism, or social status. Like Glendinning and McMahon, Shepard saw the symptoms of this “childhood botched,” in massive therapy, escapism, and intoxicants. He described our “increasing injury to the planet” as a “symptom of human psychopathology.”
“The only society more frightful than one run by children, as in Golding’s Lord of the Flies,” Shepard wrote in Nature and Madness, “might be one run by childish adults.”
The enablers
Addicts and abusers typically deny their actions, make promises about changing, and reward adult enablers, those intimidated into silence or enticed into support by a share of power’s rewards.
McMahon believes that “normal” acceptance, denial, and even support for ecological destruction “isn’t just misguided silliness, but financial self-interest. Most citizens are invested in or dependent on the lie,” she says. “A lot of money is riding on the insanity of depleting and destroying the biosphere.”
The status quo resists change by marginalizing and ridiculing the whistle-blowers. “Thus the media stereotypes of people concerned about ecological issues,” explains McMahon, “calling them names such as ‘Carborexics” or ‘gloom and doomers,’ creating a phony disorder in people driven to fear because they witness the abuse of the earth.”
Bush administration lawyers Jay S. Bybee and John C. Yoo, who crafted rationalizations for torture, are typical enablers. For their contributions, Bybee earned a lifetime federal judge appointment, and Yoo a professorship at the University of California. When the American Psychiatric Association published a statement against torture, the American Psychological Association “decided” against such a statement. The U.S. military rewarded the psychologists with grants and contracts denied to the outspoken psychiatrists.
The U.S. “Waxman-Markey” climate bill demonstrates how an addict creates the impression of change while feeding the habit. The bill, just passed by the US House of Representatives, features free pollution permits for the biggest polluters and loopholes to help avoid genuine emissions reductions. Although scientists now estimate humanity must cut emissions by 50 to 80 % of 1990 levels to avoid climate disaster, the U.S. legislation suggests cuts of 4 %. Even so, the New York Times praised the bill as, “the most ambitious energy and global warming legislation ever debated in Congress.” To the extent this is true, it only exposes the deplorable record of the US Congress, but the statement in the New York Times attempts to make this sound like a success, concealing the failure and superficial pretense of this legislation.
Al Gore applauded the bill as “a crucial step.” Joseph Romm, a physicist and climate expert, wrote, “How can I reconcile my climate science realism, which demands far stronger action than the Waxman-Markey bill requires, and my climate politics realism, which has led me to advocate passage of this flawed bill? The short answer is that Waxman-Markey is the only game in town.” Romm adds, “If Waxman-Markey becomes law, then I see a genuine 10% to 20% chance of averting catastrophe.”
Would you accept a 10% chance of avoiding catastrophe for your children? Romm, Gore, and the journalists at the New York Times are smart people, and perhaps they think this slim chance is the best they can do for the human family. However, they are also deeply invested in the status quo. Like the abused wife who makes excuses for her alcoholic husband, they appear afraid of a divorce from the domineering power structure.
Al Gore, for example, is a principal in the venture capital fund, Generation Investment Management, along with David Blood and other alumni from Goldman-Sachs, the company that engineered the junk mortgage derivatives bubble and every other major pump and dump scam in America since 1920. They are positioned to make a lot of money from carbon trading deals, the next big stock market bubble. Will the company do any good. Maybe. Will it save the earth? Probably not. It will make a few very wealthy people wealthier and stimulate consumption. The point is, these enablers are invested in the status quo power structure and economic system responsible for reckless consumption and ecological overshoot of the planet. They will protect the abusers. Their support for the watered down, corporate-friendly, reality-denying Waxman-Markey bill shows their loyalty to the dysfunctional power brokers.
In practical fact, the U.S. legislation will sabotage efforts to establish meaningful change at the Copenhagen climate conference later this year. A ten-percent chance of averting catastrophe provides scant comfort to our children.
Recovery
Chellis Glendinning writes, “the ultimate goal of recovery is to refind our place in nature … to feel, to come alive, to come out from under the deadening of the machines and the mechanistic worldview.” Paul Shepard found hope in the fact that, “Beneath the veneer of civilization … lies not the barbarian and the animal, but the human in us who knows what is right and necessary for becoming fully human.”
Shepard saw recovery through rediscovering “this full and natural human.” He wrote that to rebuild healthy adults, children must be born in gentle surroundings and grow up exposed to a rich nonhuman environment. A healthy youth must experience juvenile tasks, use simple tools, and learn “the discipline of natural history.” Finally, adolescents must learn the “metaphorical significance” of natural phenomena and experience the “ritual initiation and subsequent stages of adult mentorship.”
Humanity, on a path to destruction, requires an intervention. As Jiddu Krishnamurti wrote in the 1970s: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
rw. July 2009.
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Tags: denial, eco-psychology, Ecology, enablers, Nature and Madness, Paul Shepard, Waxman-Markey
This was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Ecology . Feel free to respond, or trackback.
10 Responses to “Ecological Trauma and Recovery”
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Kathy McMahon Says:
You mention: “Romm, Gore, and the journalists at the New York Times are smart people, and perhaps they think this slim chance is the best they can do for the human family.”
You are being too kind here. Gore can spend something crazy like $10,000 a month on electrical bills and he wants the best for the human family? No, he’s a part of the power elite. He IS the father. He’s a player. He’s Daddy on steroids. He’s just Daddy with a hemp shirt.
Romm is delusional. Anyone who gets into a car filled with other people, drunk out of their minds, and says, “We have a 10% chance of making it home alive; it’s not a great shot, but no one else has offered to drive,” is insane. The people in the car, who nod their heads saying “Ummm, I guess so…” are insane. They are in it for the ride because to walk would be a pain in the ass. They will die, rather than walk.
The truth ISN’T that we need to look inside and not adjust to an insane culture. It isn’t to parent our children at home.
The answer, as I understand this article to say, is to recognize just how insane we are, and to be willing to sacrifice our place in the “in crowd” by pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes and that Romm sold us out to keep his place in the car.
Of course, only those who will agree that “no one can WALK?!” are allowed a public forum.
That’s the message I hear you say, and that message is one that calls for courage. We don’t need therapists healing our inner child. We need Mom to recognize that she’s not only abused, she’s abusive. She’s not doing “the best she could” for her family. She needs to get out of the car. She needs to realize that it will be really a drag to have to walk home, and that she gets a lot of benefits from staying, and she has to give those up.
But our metaphor falls short here, because none of us can get out of the car. The car is EARTH. But we do need to call for radical action, which is to challenge folks like Romm and Gore and not flatter them.
Corporations aren’t families. They are psychopathic institutions crafted to exploit their surroundings and generate profits for their shareholders. Corporations are the sociopaths in the room who will nod, learn the language, and then stab us and steal our wallets when we start to trust them. I’m not talking the CEO’s here. They are nice guys and gals with hearts, at least quite a few of them. I’m talking the STRUCTURE of the system, the core way it runs.
You and I know that the corporations now own politics. So, we can’t expect anything short of a full-blown revolution to turn this thing around.
I like the line “If you are keeping your head while others all around you are losing it, you haven’t fully grasped the situation.”
No one wants to say it, because we don’t want to be labeled “doom and gloom.” We want to be team players. We’d rather say “It is too LATE to be pessimists.” Truth is, it is too late to be inactive.
We have every reason to be pessimistic, but we have no reason to be hog-tied. We also have to figure out how to be effective, and we are all struggling with that question. Perhaps we can start by not being afraid to encourage fear as a normal and appropriate response to what we’re looking at. When people truly realize how dramatically late it is in the game, perhaps they will act in their own self-interest.
Rex Weyler:
Right. I was being polite, and perhaps too polite. When I see the Goldman-Sachs crowd lining up to make more billions of dollars in the “green” bonanza, I shudder at how far we remain from anything remotely sustainable. We’re a planet in overshoot, yet we want to stimulate and grow our consumption. It is insane. Thanks for reminding us.
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Saul Abrams Says:
Right. Coddling the money-obsessed elite in this insane world is no solution. Consider all the young economics graduates thinking they’ll go out into the world and make their fortunes in the “sustainability” racket. They’ve been trained to climb inside the runaway car driven by sociopaths, just as Kathy McMahon says.
They’ll be sorely surprised when they find out that our consumption patterns are not sustainable just because we build hybrid cars and windmills.
Too bad the economics departments in our universities don’t offer their students some basic courses in physics and biology, not to mention morals and ethics.
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Andrea Peloso Says:
I have been thinking about Margaret Mead’s famous quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
It could also be said in reverse. “Never doubt that a small group of self-serving bullies can destroy the planet; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Who are these people? Someone who is lying will not look you in the eye, but they might use familiar words to make you feel at home. A 10% are not very good odds on our very existence.
But there is more. Says Barry Saunders: “The military produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe…in the most imminent danger of extinction.”
Scientists have been wondering why global warming has been happening faster than the fastest of predictions. Geologists have been estimating much faster depletion rates of oil. In the midst of all this, the military has not been expected to even keep records of the oil it consumes while killing innocent Iraqis and Afghanis. “The military is consuming fuel out of proportion to nations 200 times its size.” (Saunders) We have no records of exactly how much. And our paper money paid for it. These are wars against all people. The unjust war in Iraq, all wars, will be our four horsemen.
Is this something for our journalists to report to the people of the world? Hell no, let’s quote the pawns discussing 10% chance of survival. Or better yet: Let’s get a shot of Michael Jackson’s gloves one … last… time.
I try not to ride in that car, Kathy, and the view from the outside is watching that car drive faster than I can walk, stereo blaring, into the flat end of the world.
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minda Says:
How to resist getting in that car, train, plane literally, that is a psyhological trauma.
Children are overstimulated by “screens” (computer, tv, psp…) and non stop images compressed within the time frame. Overstimulated minds demand more and more and more. Contemporary sickness – attension deficit disorder. Overstimulated sick mind can not stay in one place, it has to constantly move and travel. Who has time any more for local tradition and special places like home?
To be moving today means more carbon in, oxygen out. By the way, would it be logical to consider the rates of the oxygen consumption by humankind along with the carbon output while making models of the rates of GW.?
Rex Weyler
Climatologists do track oxygen content in the atmosphere. Photosynthesis in all plants breaths out oxygen, but as we reduce forest cover and increase desert, we are reducing planetary photosynthesis and oxygen production. We are changing the composition of the atmposphere, adding more CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and other pollutants. Often, all these are expressed as “equivalent of CO2,” but all these atmopsheric gases, including oxygen, are being monitored.
Thanks. rw.
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minda Says:
Thanks, Rex,
I had been surprised by the climate changes, when I took my American children to Lithuania and promissed them that they would have great winters with lots of snow, winter sports, and fun. But, during the winter of 2007-2008 we just had couple weeks of snow! That kind of change in a decade since I had there, was shocking to me. Where have those looong bright with snow, crisp winters gone!
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maria cabral Says:
I agree with your realistic ideals or ideas, but we have lots of people who are now conscious of what is happening to our world and it becomes worse than before. Now it is fashionable to be committed to save the world and that is dangerous.
You can do something to change the world? yes but not while we live with 400 euros per month and while we are exploited. I’m tired of false ecologists and volunteers. I’m sorry but it s what i see around me most of the times. It makes me sad and sceptical. So i do my part and educate my kids with that conscience, hoping that people change one of these days.
because the major problem i see is that people don’t want to change things, they like it as it is now.
Rex Weyler:
Maria, Yes, there may be false people in all social movements, but in my experience, most people attempting to help are decent people doing whatever they can. Being sceptical is fine, but many people in social and ecology movements are sincere, serious, and effective. Most of them also have families and communities that they are trying to protect. Consider that most positive change in society is led by common citizens who stand up for ethics, justice, and common decency.
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Vancouver Peak Oil » Ecological Trauma and Recovery Says:
Excellent article. We’ve posted this on our website at Vancouver Peak Oil. We have other news, analysis, blogs, and links about peak oil, global warming, and other symptoms of human overshoot.
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fatima chowdhury Says:
I like ur writing with it’s straight forward no nonsense tone. My sis and I are launching an online mag in india in Sept ‘09, in which environment is an important section. It is an honest effort to create a platform for readers to not only be informed but also think, debate and hopefully be more proactive or inspired to make a difference. Wuld love to put ur work up duly credited of course. Hope to hear fm u to discuss further asap.
Fatima Chowdhury
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L, Graham Says:
Our children have been indoctrinated to feel entitled to nearly everything. Drive-thrus fast food and coffee are used by people who have nothing wrong with them physiologically. They simply feel they need it now and they want service (now). The entire mind-set is as far from nature as you can get. A building surrounded by pavement.
The Time Machine and Lord of The Flies both come to mind. The blitheness or naivety of the people in ‘The Machine’ and the rage and aggression displayed in the latter. A pathetic disconnection with nature has arisen. Where are we headed?
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Henryk Says:
For 14 years in the U.S. there is a revolutionary patent for the elimination of C02 in cars, reducing 50% consumption of gasoline: the plasma spark plug.
It is difficult for me to understand why this world just says a lot, and no one is willing to help inventors such as Robert Krupa, in Farmington Hills, in the production of its patent. The inventor spoke with producers of spark plugs, but they are not interested in him.
We have all heard the saying, “If something sounds too good to be
true, it usually is”. The amazing new spark plug designed by Mr Krupa,
which he named “FireStorm”, is the exception to this rule.The FireStorm spark plugs give an internal combustion engine more horsepower, 44-50% increase in mpg, and decreased emissions. They eliminate the smog pump, catalytic converter, radio frequency interference, gap growth, exhaust gas recirculation systems, and misfire.
This is achieved because the spark plugs create an electric plasma that fills the entire combustion chamberand allows the air/fuel mixture to burn more efficiently without increasing heat. see:
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=87928
and a radio interview with the inventor:
http://odeo.com/episodes/22575785-Robert-Krupa-Jun-02-2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abwXApkLhbc
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