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Tuesday 31 May 2011

George Marshall: The Psychology of Denial: our failure to act against climate change (2001)


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http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/images/05252011_tornado_joplinafter_highres.jpg

Satellite image showing major damage to houses, school buildings and St. John Medical Center, Joplin, Missouri, after a powerful tornado spun through a densely populated part of town, 22 May 2011
: photo by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)




My first real exposure to the issue of climate change was reading a newspaper article in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1988, by a leading Australian climatologist. Climate change, he said, had the potential to destroy our society and even threatened our continued survival as a species. I was deeply moved (it even spurred me to write my only ever letter of appreciation to a newspaper).



http://images.ninemsn.com.au/resizer.aspx?url=http://news.ninemsn.com.au/img/2011/national/3005_waterspout_9.jpg&width=310

One of a series of waterspouts seen spiralling up from the sea, near Avoca Beach, New South Wales, as heavy storms battered the area, 30 May 2011
: photographer unknown, via The Coming Crisis



However, what really shocked me in the following days was finding that the article had created not the slightest ripple; not one opinion, editorial, or letter. It may as well have never been written. It seemed to me that something very strange had happened. A highly qualified scientist had calmly and credibly outlined a process which, were he to be believed, made all other news in the paper marginal if not irrelevant. Yet the story had sunk without a trace. I could see only two explanations; either it was a hoax, which seemed unlikely, or it was so conjectural that no-one could seriously accept it. Either way, my immediate instinctive drive to do something was squashed.



http://www.cbsnews.com/i/tim/2011/05/30/aussie_waterspout_244x183.jpg

One of a series of powerful waterspouts, reaching heights of up to 2000 feet, in the ocean off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, 30 May 2011; strong winds and heavy rain lashed the region, causing flash flooding and traffic chaos in Sydney
: photo by CBS News


In the following years, as the articles and documentaries and news items continued to appear, I realised that there was a third explanation –- that people can accept the truth of what is said without accepting the implications.



Hail covers the ground like snow, Australian Gold Coast, 30 May 2011: photo by Isabelle Vallin-Thorpe, via Watts Up With That?


In his excellent book, States of Denial, Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering, Stanley Cohen argues that this capacity to deny a level of awareness is the normal state of affairs for people in an information-saturated society. He argues that ‘far from being pushed into accepting reality, people have to be dragged out of reality’. According to Cohen’s definition, denial involves a fundamental paradox –- that in order to deny something it is necessary at some level to recognise its existence and its moral implications. It is, he says, a state of simultaneous ‘knowing and not-knowing’.



Motorists drive through floodwaters following a sudden downpour that inundated low-lying areas in Manila, Philippines  Tuesday May 24, 2011.

Typhoon Songda strikes southern Japan, 29 May 2011: photo by AP/Bullit Marquez



This description is well suited to the current social response to climate change. The ‘knowledge’ of the problem is remarkably well established at all levels of society; the general public (68 per cent of Americans call it a serious problem in polls); the scientists (repeated letters of concern from scientific institutions); corporations (strongly worded statements by the CEOs of oil companies); the financial sector (reports warning of escalating insurance claims); the many heads of government (regular pious speeches warning of imminent disaster).

Yet, at another level, we clearly refuse to recognise the implications of that knowledge. Bill Clinton called for urgent action whilst his negotiators worked tirelessly to gut and destroy an agreement that scarcely began to reflect his own warnings. Newspapers regularly carry dire climatic warnings in the same issue as articles that breathlessly promote weekend breaks in Rio. Individuals, including my friends and family, can express grave concern, and then just as quickly block it out, buy a new car, turn up the air conditioning, or fly across the world for a holiday.

Cohen’s analysis of the social responses to human rights abuses finds that the mechanisms of denial are extremely complex and varied. The circumstances that create any historical event are unique and it is unwise to make direct comparisons. However, following Cohen we can draw out certain consistent psychological processes that are highly pertinent to climate change.
Firstly, we can expect widespread denial when the enormity and nature of the problem are so unprecedented that people have no cultural mechanisms for accepting them. In Beyond Judgement, Primo Levi, seeking to explain the refusal of many European Jews to recognise their impending extermination, quotes an old German adage: ‘Things whose existence is not morally possible cannot exist.’

In the case of climate change, then, we can intellectually accept the evidence of climate change, but we find it extremely hard to accept our responsibility for a crime of such enormity. Indeed, the most powerful evidence of our denial is the failure to even recognise that there is a moral dimension with identifiable perpetrators and victims. The language of ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, ‘human impacts’, and ‘adaptation’ are themselves a form of denial familiar from other forms of human rights abuse; they are scientific euphemisms that suggest that climate change originates in immutable natural forces rather than in a direct causal relationship with moral implications for the perpetrator.

Secondly, we diffuse our responsibility. Cohen writes at length of the ‘passive bystander effect’ whereby violent crimes can be committed in a crowded street without anyone intervening. Individuals wait for someone else to act and subsume their personal responsibility in the collective responsibility of the group. One notable feature of the bystander effect is that the larger the number of actors the lower the likelihood that any individual person feels capable of taking unilateral action. In times of war and repression, entire communities can become incapacitated. In the case of climate change we are both bystanders and perpetrators, an internal conflict that can only intensify our denial.

Psychoanalytic theory contains valuable pointers to the ways that people may try to resolve these internal conflicts; angrily denying the problem outright (psychotic denial), seeking scapegoats (acting out), indulging in deliberately wasteful behaviour (reaction formation), projecting their anxiety onto some unrelated but containable problem (displacement), or trying to shut out all information (suppression). As the impacts of climate change intensify we can therefore anticipate that people will willingly collude in creating collective mechanisms of denial along these lines.

It seems likely, however, that suppression will dominate. In South Africa, many white bystanders who intellectually opposed apartheid adopted a passive opposition. They retreated into private life, cut themselves off from the news media, refused to talk politics with friends, and adopted an intense immersion in private diversions such as sport, holidays and families. In Brazil in the 1970s a special term, ‘innerism’, was coined for the disavowal of the political.



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Centro de São Paulo, visto do edifício altino arantes
: photo by Lukasz, 31 March 2008



We can also draw on historical experience to anticipate which defenses we will adopt when, as will surely happen, we are confronted by our grandchildren demanding to know why we did so little when we knew so much. We can expect to see denial of knowledge (‘I didn’t know’), denial of our agency (‘I didn’t do it’), denial of personal power (‘I couldn’t do anything’, ‘no one else did anything’), and blaming of others (‘it was the people with the big cars, the Americans, the corporations’). For activists everywhere, it would appear crucial that an understanding of denial informs campaign strategy. As Cohen says, ‘the distinctions [between different forms of denial] may be irrelevant to the hapless victim, but they do make a difference to educational or political attempts to overcome bystander passivity’.

One conclusion is that denial cannot simply be countered with information. Indeed, there is plentiful historical evidence that increased information may even intensify the denial. The significance of this cannot be over emphasised. Environmental campaign organisations are living relics of Enlightenment faith in the power of knowledge: ‘If only people knew, they would act.’ To this end they dedicate most of their resources to the production of reports or the placement of articles and opinions in the media. As a strategy it is not working. Opinion polls reveal a high level of awareness with virtually no signs of any change in behaviour. Indeed there are plentiful signs of reactive denial in the demands for cheaper fuel and more energy.

A second conclusion is that the lack of visible public response is part of the self-justifying loop that creates the passive bystander effect. ‘Surely’, people reason, ‘if it really is that serious, someone would be doing something.’ The Herald article failed to inspire me to activity because I saw no evidence that anyone in wider society was paying any attention. Thirteen years later, we have vastly greater information with scarcely any more public action. The bystander loop has only tightened.



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/St._Johns_Hospital_After_5-22_Tornado.jpg

Tornado damage at St. John Medical Center, Joplin, Missouri, with ruins of local theater where two people perished in foreground
: photo by Intelati, 26 May 2011


People will never spontaneously take action themselves unless they receive social support and the validation of others. Governments in turn will continue to procrastinate until sufficient numbers of people demand a response. To avert further climate change will require a degree of social consensus and collective determination normally only seen in war time, and that will require mobilisation across all classes and sectors of society.

For all these reasons, the creation of a large and vocal movement against climate change must be an immediate and overarching campaign objective. People will not accept the reality of the problem unless they see that others are engaging in activities that reflect its seriousness. This means they need to be confronted by emotionally charged activities; debate, protest, and meaningful, visible alternatives. Simply asking people to change their lightbulbs, plant a tree, or send in a donation, however desirable in themselves, will not build a social movement. These activities alone, although valuable, will persuade few.

Anyone concerned about this issue faces a unique historical opportunity to break the cycle of denial, and join the handful of people who have already decided to stop being passive bystanders. The last century was marked by self-deception and mass denial. There is no need for the 21st Century to follow suit.




http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/images/high_resolution/739-205_20110522.jpg

The city of Joplin, Missouri is reeling after a powerful tornado spun through a densely populated part of town. This satellite image shows the storm system moments before spawning the tornado that struck Joplin shortly before 6:00 pm CST, 22 May 2011: photo by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)



George Marshall: The Psychology of Denial: our failure to act against climate change: from The Ecologist, 22 October 2001

Monday 30 May 2011

William Wordsworth: "Three years she grew in sun and shower..."


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"Alaniz Fletcher, Marissa A"

Battle Creek storm, 29 May 2011: photo by Alaniz Fletcher, Marissa A/ Battle Creek (Michigan) Enquirer



Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said...

Both law and impulse:

To kindle or restrain.

The floating clouds
bend...

Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace





Daniel Dalder --This is the storm that came through West Lafayette around 2pm.

The storm that came through West Lafayette around 2 p.m., 29 May 2011: photo by Daniel Dalder / Battle Creek (Michigan) Enquirer

William Wordsworth: "Three years she grew in sun and shower..." (fragments), 1798

Sunday 29 May 2011

An American Way of Life


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An American town and its way of life, Southington, Connecticut. The Memorial Day parade moving down the main street. The small number of spectators is accounted for by the fact that the town's war factories did not close. The town hall is in the left foreground
: photo by Fenno Jacobs, May 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://memory.loc.gov/afc/afccmns/tec031/tec03118v.jpg

Tanners Mollett of Canton, Ohio, rests while cleaning a family grave on Memorial Day Weekend, Graveyard Hill, Shumate's Branch, West Virginia. Graveyard Hill is the site of an African American cemetery on the hillside above the sludge pond ("coal refuse impoundment") now filling Shumate's Branch. Each year former residents of the African American settlement at the mining town of Edwight return with their children and grandchildren to tend the graves of their relatives and hold a family reunion at the former home of Belle Wilson, a family ancestor. This is the one weekend of the year that Performance Coal Company (a subsidiary of A.T. Massey) opens the road into the mountains around Shumate's Branch to allow public access to this cemetery: photo by Terry Eiler, May 1996 (Coal River Folklife Collection/Archive of American Folk Culture, Library of Congress)

http://memory.loc.gov/afc/afccmns/lec123/lec12305v.jpg

Felix Mollett of Canton, Ohio, cleaning a family grave on Memorial Day Weekend, Graveyard Hill, Shumate's Branch, West Virginia
: photo by Terry Eiler, May 1996 (Coal River Folklife Collection/Archive of American Folk Culture, Library of Congress)

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Two farmers talking outside of a main street bank, Roxboro, North Carolina, Memorial Day: photo by Jack Delano, May 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Negroes standing on the corner of the main street on a rainy Memorial Day, Roxboro, North Carolina, Memorial Day: photo by Jack Delano, May 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Children at the Memorial Day ceremonies, Ashland, Aroostook County, Maine: photo by John Collier, May 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

One small boy at the ceremonies was the only representative of the Canadian war dead, Memorial Day, Ashland, Aroostook County, Maine: photo by John Collier, May 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Girl scout at the Memorial Day ceremonies, Ashland, Aroostook County, Maine: photo by John Collier, May 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Even with gasoline rationed, many people attended the Memorial Day ceremonies in cars, Ashland, Aroostook County, Maine: photo by John Collier, May 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8d19000/8d19600/8d19602v.jpg

Marching from the cemetery at the conclusion of Memorial Day ceremonies, Ashland, Aroostook County, Maine: photo by John Collier, May 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

At the Memorial Day ceremonies, Gloucester, Massachusetts: photo by Gordon Parks, May 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Image, Source: intermediary roll film

Washington, D. C. service department cleaning up after the Memorial Day parade: photo by John Ferrell, May 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Saturday 28 May 2011

Memoria


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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Halcyon_pileata_-_Phra_Non.jpg

Black-capped Kingfisher (
Halcyon pileata), Phra Non, Nakhon Sawan, Thailand
: photo by J. J. Harrison, 2 February 2011



He saw, through the man's skin, his skeleton. It had been wired together, the bones connected with fine copper wire. The organs, which had withered away, were replaced by artificial components, kidney, heart, lungs -- everything was made of plastic and stainless steel, all working in unison but entirely without authentic life. The man's voice issued from a tape, through an amplifier and speaker system. Possibly at some time in the past the man had been real and alive, but that was over, and the stealthy replacement was taking place, inch by inch, progressing insidiously from one organ to the next, and the entire structure was there to deceive others. To deceive him, in fact...

Philip K. Dick: from Martian Time-Slip, 1964



Winter of inutile fretfulness and pain
Forgetting the little things and remembering the large
and as the light goes down, visions
of the small insectivorous birds of southeast Asia

In the country of the stranger, the nation
of the enemy, within the endarkened heart
The fallen bird in the gutter, after the holiday weekend car
hit it -- struggling for life, a female robin

Still warm in the palm, heart beating, neck
broken -- flexed backward impossibly, unable to breathe
Walked off and left it wing-folded in the ivy bank, whence frantic peeps
of the young still came

No longer able to remember
all those sad parades





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American Robin (Turdus migratorius), on pavement: photo by Piotrus, 2007

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American Robin (Turdus migratorius), juvenile: photo by Ken, 1 June 2010; image by Snowmanradio, 2010

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Black troops at the Memorial Day parade, Constitution Avenue, Washington, D.C., May 1942: photo by Royden Dixon (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


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Girl next to barn with chicken: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34429v.jpg

Girl with doll standing by fence: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34432v.jpg

Man outdoors, possibly a farmer: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34434v.jpg

Man, possibly a farmer or agricultural laborer: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34410v.jpg

Small farm of John P. Collier, Taunton, Massachusetts: photo by Jack Delano, January 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34435v.jpg

Grading and packing onions, Rice County, Minnesota: photo by Arthur Rothstein, September 1939 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34448v.jpg

Basket of eggplants: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


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Field of cotton: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34433v.jpg

Field with tree stumps: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34407v.jpg

Houses and factories: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


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Brick building: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a33000/1a33900/1a33922v.jpg

Barker at the grounds of the Vermont state fair, Rutland: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a33000/1a33900/1a33921v.jpg

At the Vermont state fair, Rutland
: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


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At the Vermont state fair, Rutland
: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


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Federal housing project on the outskirts of the town of Yauco, Puerto Rico; about an acre of land is provided with each house: photo by Jack Delano, September 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

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Eroded land: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)


http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a34000/1a34400/1a34436v.jpg

Trees in a reforestation project, Maryland [?]
: photographer unknown, between 1941 and 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)