After the previous post, we now look, in more detail at how some modes of suppression might work. The point is to become more aware of how we might be suppressing our selves, to keep the destruction going.
Suppression in Action
Denial
Denial is usually part of a social world view, or ‘common sense’: emotions are irrelevant, the world can’t end, there is too little CO2 to have a major effect, CO2 is totally natural, humans can’t destroy the Earth (probably true, but irrelevant), powerful businesses know what they are doing and would not destroy themselves, scientists are deluded or political, renewables will be chosen by the market and stop the problem, and so on.
Contemporary denial is usually based in politics, in which fear or dissatisfaction is projected onto others. It is not my side that is promoting destruction, it is everyone else. People may claim that the Australian Labor Party really has had all its climate policies undermined by (a relatively tiny and powerless number of) irresponsible Greens who would prefer a Coalition government, rather than entertain the idea that the ALP has continually undermined itself, and its own climate action policies, and is largely incoherent, and often unenthusiastic about action when it has had the opportunity. The ALP could be said to be an organisation undergoing post-traumatic stress. It has taken what it thought were rational steps and been stymied at every turn.
Distraction
The most common form of distraction in neoliberal society is work. Work can be endless, work has demands, deadlines, restructures, endless form-filling, crises, new tasks. It can leave people too exhausted to feel worried about climate change, or to do anything about it. Even going part time may well not solve these problems, as work fills in the spaces.
Modes of leisure can also be distractions: sport, shopping, collecting, going out to eat etc. They also demand money which keeps people at work. Children can be a distraction, as you help them with homework, drive them to tutoring or sports groups, or whatever. The point is to leave you with no time for reflection or action. For poorer people getting food on the table, paying the bills, keeping the house, keeping the job, surviving the neighbourhood etc. may also act as distractions from global as opposed to personal problems. Neoliberal society resists providing people with the leisure to feel what they feel and to act as necessary. These distractions tend to keep people away from self-motivated collaborative groups such as political or climate organisations (perhaps sports or gambling clubs are acceptable) or to keep people at the familial or individual level rather than the collective and collaborative.
There are rare exceptions the the loose group around “QAnon” seems to have been composed of Americans who rightly felt something was desperately wrong, and who did lots of work trying to work out the back ground to Q’s enigmatic statements and promises. They did collaborate with each other in these inquiries, but we can suggest that the collaboration was a distraction from the real problems they faced under the neoliberal regime and under Trump. It did not help them solve those problems, but kept them looking in the wrong direction, and the misinformation split out into the worlds of those who were not involved.
It can be a distraction to focus on climate change as if it were the only problem, when we are dealing with massive ecological destruction, pollution and poisoning, of which climate change is only one symptom. Ocean death is going to be far worse for the planet and the food supply, and much harder to come back from. If we focus on climate change, then focus on replacement of fossil fuel generated electricity by renewables can also form a mode of distraction, even if it is essential. The statistics may look reassuring, but in terms of total energy usage they can be very small. And in terms of total greenhouse gas emissions reduction they can be even smaller.
Displacement/Projection
This is when we select a group or people and take them as being the obvious source of our anger or decide they represent our denied vices. Climate displacement is usually political. Our ingroup is good, and we only don’t have good results from our action because of the obstruction of others. News can also leave you permanently depressed, or angry, with an ability to focus your anger on the enemy. Things like the Murdoch Empire, particularly SkyNews in Australia and Fox in the US, spend most of their time raising anger, mockery, hysteria and abuse. There is little attempt at non-personal analysis, it is primarily about projecting rage onto a victim. You might be angry with your economic situation, blame the left, blame university professors or vaguely compassionate movie stars rather than bosses, business and bought politicians (who are also doing what they apparently have to, to survive in the system). With this kind of focus you can be assured that climate change is simply another plot to take more freedom and ability to look after yourself (your abilities already lowered by neoliberal economics) and blame someone who is less of a neoliberal. It can seem that doing something about climate and eco-destruction would make things even worse for you, and this justifies the anger.
Yes sometimes the ‘other side’ can be harmful, and can be blocking constructive change. The question is whether it is more useful to do something to use the anger and prevent their action or lessen its consequences, or to keep on being angry and blaming as distraction.
Moral Certainty
Moral certainty can feed into projection. We just keep condemning the others, secure in our moral superiority, without having to act, or to feel what is disrupting us. If one is morally certain, then one can suppress awareness of harm. If in a complex system you cannot predict the exact results of actions, then moral certainty allows you to discount what is actually happening. People can be easily sacrificed for the greater good, which creates more opposition and more despair and sense of those others being outsiders – they won’t do what is necessary.
It has taken a while, but perhaps people are now starting to realise that opposition to solar and windfarms may not just be reactionary or immoral but might have a basis in people’s experience of development (as well as being manipulated by people hostile to the idea of climate change). Moral certainty that one is on the right side may cause a person to overlook the Coalition’s corruption and tendency to only apply the market when it concerns people they don’t like, while ignoring market forces or discipline and giving massive subsidies and tax breaks to people they do like, or think essential. The best example being the gas lead recovery, and tax payer funding of uneconomic gas pipelines and gas energy stations. Likewise people may ignore the incoherence of the ALP, because they are certain they must deliver eventually, or they are better than nothing.
Fighting and name-calling other people online, can be based in destructive moral certainty, as well manifesting a form of projection, and acting as a distraction from more gentle persuasion, or applied community action. It also helps maintain the barriers between groups, and reduces the danger of mutual collaboration.
Religion (as a subsection of moral certainty)
Lets be up front, religion does not have to be an obstruction to climate action. Many religious groups encourage active compassion and understanding for humans and non-humans; they can hold that God’s creation should be respected and not destroyed, and that the duty of God’s people is to steward the Earth for their descendants and everyone else. They can look at the Earth and see that it is wondrously made, and very good, and desire to show their love and respect to God by protecting it from human attack.
However, there are those who say Earth can only be destroyed by God’s will, so there is no point objecting to destruction, that they being true worshippers will be saved, or that God has promised not to destroy His followers, so climate is of no concern to them, and there are those who go along with the idea that the market and profit are the next goods after God himself. Such people run the risk of dogmatic assertion, allying with crooks who promise them some of their requirements and generally ignoring science as it is not godly.
As I’ve said previously, it also seems likely that if your religion teaches that the body is a prison or encumbrance, and your true home is another perfect world such as heaven, then there is no point of looking after this material world. It will pass away and life goes on elsewhere.
Splitting
This is where we are caught in our split. We want to rest and get away from work, we want to act and we can’t do both. We want a comfortable life, but we cannot not act or that comfort will be destroyed, and if we act we cannot be comfortable and we risk disruption, and perhaps loss of friendships. We want to look after our children, but if we act we can’t spend time with them, and if we don’t act they may not have a future. This perception of split can be paralysing.
Splitting can also function to separate parts of life, so that they never come together and can be completely separated and inconsistent. For example you want your children to have the best in life, but you continue with environmental destruction as part of your business or politics. Splitting in this sense may be known as ‘compartmentalisation’ or ‘isolation’.
Informational focus and the ingroup
Whole media organisations exist to reassure people that their information is correct and that their understanding of a rapidly fluxing world is satisfactory, while trying to intensify those views and loyalty to those views, by screaming at those who disagree. This is one way these media corporations attempt to capture markets and keep markets. It seems more notable on the pro-corporate, neoliberal and angry right, but it likewise can exist on the more liberal side of things – such as with the common denunciation of rednecks or brain-damaged Trump supporters. Some media essentially have become complete propaganda vehicles, and politicians may encourage people to watch them, to keep them onside and confined.
This kind of media builds it’s veracity by insisting it is the same as its ‘noble’ audience, and that different views belong to outgroups who are inimical to the ingroup, completely ignorant of basic facts and hostile to all that group’s values.
Obviously media can also try to keep onside with political movements. Fox’s attempts to be a news station and not support Trump’s claims of election fraud, only lasted a short time as viewers started to move away because it was not telling them what they wanted to hear. Capitalist media exists to capture audiences, exert political power through shaping people’s ‘understandings’ and to sell advertisements, not to spread truth, or stand for principle.
Much media relies on dogma as it simplifies their audience and who might chose to be their audience. As argued many times on this blog, complexity means that we cannot guarantee the results of our actions and our theories. We cannot have ‘dogmatic’ success. However, the normal response in Western society (and increasingly in global society) is that if a dogma has not delivered the results we would like, we hammer it harder, we persist. We build more coal power stations and increase emissions, for example, while arguing that carbon intensity is decreasing, and hence we are doing good. “Free markets” have not produced widespread liberty, and have not solved the problems of politics, economics or ecology. Likewise negotiations through the UN, have not solved the climate problem, although we often think seem to think negotiations are on the edge of a breakthrough.
This persistence is sometimes useful, because it can take a while for actions to have success, but there comes a time when it seems reasonable to admit the dogma has failed – it may, in keeping with slogan number one (modes of ordering produce modes of disorder) have made the situation worse, no matter how nice it sounds. However, persistence with the dogma may give comfort and meaning and if it acted as a form of cutting off from unpleasantness, hardening the reaction can probably help hold down unpleasant awarenesses (of feeling, and failure) for a while longer.
If people continually never receive adequate information about climate change, or are told that it is doubtful, or that it will hurt them, or that it is a plot by people they have the moral certainty are evil or deceptive, then they will likely not be on board with action. Even if they think climate change is a possibility, it will seem to be being exploited by the outgroup ‘others’.
Again there is a problem that, sometimes, people are deceptive for political purposes. It may not be entirely fantasy.
Fantasy
Many climate fantasies centre upon technologies. John Kerry, US climate envoy is supposed to have said:
you don’t have to give up a quality of life to achieve some of the things we know we have to achieve…
I am told by scientists… that 50% of the reductions we have to make to get to net zero…. as soon as we can… are going to come from technologies that we don’t yet have. That’s just a reality.
And people who are realistic about this understand that’s part of the challenge. So we have to get there sooner rather than later….
We know how to invent and innovate….
Harrabin. John Kerry, US climate envoy criticised for optimism on clean tech. BBC News 17? May 2021
These fantasy technologies tend to undeveloped, largely imaginary or prohibitively expensive to maintain. Things like Carbon Capture and Storage, Geoengineering, green hydrogen. These usually serve as an excuse for doing very little to nothing; future technologies will save us. People also fantasise about plausible courses: that renewable electricity is enough, that burning trees for fuel is immediately carbon neutral. But there are also fantasies that climate change will always improve agriculture, and intensify crop growth. It also seems that fantasies of terrible futures may not motivate people to avoid them. However, hope can be a fantasy as well. Hope is necessary to get people to move, but it also can be a defense: we can hope that things are going better than they appear to be by themselves.
All futures, to some extent, are fantasies. We have somehow to imagine the future in a way that motivates people forward, rather than just appears to be avoidance of pain, and this is a problem. Most climate messaging is just, “we can keep on living as we are doing if we work hard” and for many people that is just not that attractive.
Life in this current set of social relationships, for many, seems to be falling apart. They have little apparent chance of social mobility, education is too expensive and they do not trust it, promotion is hard to get, housing is hard to afford, wages have largely frozen, jobs are precarious and have no advancement, their kids don’t seem to have a shining future… Maybe, as many of those who supported Trump appeared to have thought, they imagine the system might be improved by being ripped down, or hurried to its doom.
Finally, people tend to fantasise with the information available to them. And very few visions of a prosperous welcoming climate safe future, based on things people already know, are available. They do exist, but have almost no circulation in the West. The usual dismissal is that people who want climate action want us all to live in caves.
Without good fantasies we shall probably not succeed in motivating people to fight for that future, at best we might get grudging acceptance.
The final part of this piece looks at why considering these factors is important.
Tags: depth psychology
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