 | Lester addresses U.S. governors on energy future, calls for Marshall Plan for energy innovation | The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: July 21, 2008 |  |
| The Bullroarer - Sunday 20 July 2008 | The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Monday 21st July 2008 | |
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
GAIA Host Collective
These are the five stages of reaction to catastrophe, not necessarily experienced in the same order, and subject to intermittent recurrence, but given time, experienced by all sufferers, and usually beginning with:
denial
anger
negotiation
depression
acceptance.
Most people need to go through all of these stages in order to be able to respond efficiently to a catastrophe. We need to go through the whole emotional roller-coaster ride to grasp the full extent of the problem, before we can see ways to mitigate its effects.
We are creatures whose motivation is largely emotional, but look at the list and look at how remarkably efficiently this series of emotions is organized for the fastest bestest possible resolution :
if the problem is no biggie, denial is the most efficient response
If the problem persists, anger can chase the danger away, while making you aware of the size of the problem.
Trying to negotiate, trying to deal with it, is smart, and can be successful.
Depression comes when you know your problem is too big to handle, the only thing that can save you now is to hide in a dark corner and stay out of harm's way.
Acceptance is when you finally understand what happened. You now know what you have to do to alleviate the nastiness your problem caused.
You may not be able to eliminate the problem, but as long as you can live, you can live with it.
We'll be going through hard times, and whoever survives this mess will have to live with whatever is left of our great global industrial culture.
I appreciate your comments, lukitas.
My concern is that our culture is biased to stop at anger and find scapegoats and then to develop narratives that justify resource war.
Some variation of "we are the good guys and are justified in ridding the world of those evil-doers and taking all of their good stuff ... oil, for example..." always seems to come up.
A bit of an aside for an example of how truth often fares in our culture....
Scott Nearing was an American academic who was marginalized for speaking the truth on these and other matters. He noted the role of resource acquisition in two world wars as well as others.
He also spoke out against child labor at a time when some of the big supporters of Penn State relied upon child labor to make themselves rich. He was fired without due cause -- an injustice that Penn State acknowledged only when Scott Nearing was much older and the damage had been done. Meanwhile, he was blackballed by academics who would not tolerate his critique of militaristic capitalism.
Not to be discouraged, Scott and Helen Nearing lived and wrote and spoke about "The Good Life" which involved radical ideas about tending to one's garden, treating the earth and others well, and living simply.
Back to my point: the cultural institutions and processes we have set up are still very much designed to marginalize and even to do violence to reasonable and reasoned critique. People may not need to be killed physically in order to exclude them. In more and more cases, they are simply excluded from public discourse, or used and co-opted by political or corporate players.
I do find positive change at the grass roots, but find even more people looking for scapegoats to blame and then kill ... so we can have "our" oil ... and anything else "we" might need ... or want ...
Those are the stages of grief. For reaction to a catastrophe, you forgot panic, scapegoating, suspension of ethics, hoarding, and a panoply of generally dangerous, antisocial behavior. I'm not worried about people being really bummed out. I'm worried about a secure food supply, and keeping hungry neighbors away from my tomatoes.
Thank you Ben, I'm very tired of the five stages of grief, which so far don't even adequately sum up my own reactions and emotions and actions into a neat little package.