Here's an interesting little read:
A 27 year old male bellows at a colleagues as she speaks about her ideas on the world, the environment, so innately and avidly. She knows he is joking, just stirring her environmental pot, but she wonders, ‘What is with this guy?’
So, one night, after they started getting riled up over how chickens are treated, she asked him, “Why is it, that every time we start talking about this stuff, you get all defensive and start throwing around judgemental slurs?”
She posed a rather interesting question and he responded with an even more interesting answer.
You see, there is a whole subconscious psychological process when it comes to dealing with environmental issues and after thinking about it, it becomes perfectly clear. In his own words, “it is easier to react to it this way.
To make fun of it, to deny it, to pretend that it’s all a fallacy. Because if I actually acknowledge it, take it all in, I realise it is bigger than me. It is so overwhelming; I start to panic a little. So, for my own self preservation, I choose not to deal with it. Plus, it’s so far into the future, it is hard to comprehend.”
Dr. Steven Moffic states that our brains have never developed a built-in, natural response to dangers many years in the future, such as global warming. To recognise such danger, we need our rational thought processes to convince us that distant dangers are worth our attention.
These other more immediate demands influence one of our main psychological defence mechanisms as described almost 100 years ago by Sigmund Freud. That is denial.
It is easy, and even necessary at times, to prioritize problems, and deny to ourselves the importance of other problems that we can't - or don't want to - attend at the moment. This can be conscious or unconscious denial. All this makes global warming, which is a threat that may not seem obvious for many years, easy to deny or put aside for now.
But, what will happen, if majority of us, like my friend, do put it aside? Will we wait until our rational thinking recognises immediate danger? The way I see it, we can do one of two things:
1. Deny, deny, deny and deny some more or;
2. Acknowledge, accept and react.
We DO have the power.
We have the power as a collective group, as a species, to do amazing things and I have no doubt, that when it comes to the crunch, we will react as we have done in the past.
But the point of power is in the present moment. The point of power is now.
So, next time you think about any environmental issues, take note of your reaction.
Courtesy of Todae:
