Watch: The Violin Player: A video by Francina Ramos and Benjamin Braceras (Argentina) - Age Group 14-17
"An animation movie about a violinist playing at a theater and when he
closes his eyes he finds the entire world melting. After a crazy play he
opens his eyes over an unexpected reality."
"I think it so beautifully expresses our inner fears about climate
change, the internal world and the world of dreams. And it makes Hanna
Segal's point that what is frightening is when our nightmares are in
danger of coming true in reality. It's about a musician who imagines a
melting world as he is playing, then he realizes it is an inner state." Sally Weintrobe.
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A colleague hearing about my psychoanalytic work on climate change said to me, “what can psychoanalysis possibly have to say about a subject like climate change?” I replied perhaps he, like many people, viewed climate change as a problem to do with the environment. Climate change is not primarily an environmental problem. It is a human problem, a consequence of the way we are relating to the Earth and to each other.
We have the technology to move to a low carbon economy.[1] We know enough about climate science to have mobilized us to act if we were to be rational.[2] Our inaction is a problem of will, not technology or science. One factor that saps our will is disavowal: in a state of disavowal we can persuade ourselves that a big pressing problem is tiny, far away, or nothing to do with us.
Our disavowal is formed and maintained not so much individually but within a particular culture.[3] This culture is essentially a culture of uncare, in which short-termism, instrumental values and a sense of super-inflated entitlement to triumph in omnipotent ways over the need to face reality is allowed to flourish. As individuals we collude with and are drawn into the culture in which, in a state of mind dominated by uncare, we do not count the true costs that uncare entails.
Disavowal is an area psychoanalysts are familiar with in their clinical and theoretical work. In a state of disavowing climate change at one level we do recognize it is real, serious and largely caused by human activity, but we find ways to distort that reality so as to minimize its disturbing emotional impact.
Disavowal allows us to maintain a position ‘as if’ we are undisturbed by reality. I suggest a particular form of splitting currently lies at the heart of our disavowal of climate change. This splitting is designed to separate us from a feeling awareness that we are in any way personally implicated in the damage our current way of life is causing. It is this lack of a sense of personal responsibility that the culture of uncare particularly fosters. In the culture we find ways to relieve us of feeling personally implicated with the problem of carbon emissions. These ways include taking the view that each of our individual actions is so tiny as to be insignificant; others (other people, governments, corporations, the media) are to blame; we have no power; climate change is only a future threat; the damage will be repaired by technological quick fixes[4].
The current culture of uncare in the global north enables a deregulated global economy to flourish[5]. I see this culture of uncare as promoting a collective psychic retreat from reality.[6] Within the culture each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, lives ‘as if’ we bear no individual responsibility for damage. This perspective may sound shocking. Psychoanalysts know from clinical work that emerging from a psychic retreat can be a shock, and that people need support and containment, not harsh judgment, to do so.
In the collective psychic retreat we are tremendously preoccupied with our status and position within our particular social groups. Psychoanalysts have much to contribute towards understanding the power of social groups to arouse primitive survival anxieties. These anxieties include that we may be left out, shamed, blamed or even extruded if we break with a group culture that currently is largely silent about climate change.
I believe if we are to understand, in a feeling and heartfelt way, that there are damaging consequences to thinking we can pollute with no cost and relate to others (including our children and grand children) in uncaring ways, we need to start by facing uncare within ourselves. When dominated by uncare, we are not able to think about climate change in a way that will touch us, or mobilize us to find ways to take better care.
Hanna Segal (1987) put it that damage we do can only be modified when (i) we gain insight into our behaviour and (ii) we can visualize the consequences to others and to ourselves of our actions. But, she continued, “we know that powerful social defences operate against such insights”. [7]
Part of modifying damage we do is gaining insight into the powerful hold the culture of uncare has on us, a culture that actively encourages us not to take any individual responsibility. The culture works to immobilize our capacity to care by corrupting our bedrock ego ideals[8], undermining our respect for reality and sidelining our awareness that one of our deepest human needs is to take care, in our personal relationships and as members of society.
When disavowal flourishes, damage inexorably mounts up. The damage is also to our minds: the more we deny reality, the more flooded and traumatized we feel when we do face it. This can have the unfortunate and dangerous consequence of leading to further disavowal in order to defend against what may feel increasingly unbearable.[9]
When uncare is unopposed it can start to spiral, driven by a toxic combination of manic triumph - feeling excited and superior at being able to ‘get away with’ disavowing reality - and rising unconscious guilt. A climate colleague said to me that these days he has a constant background feeling of fear. We were discussing the Australian government’s recent abolition of their carbon tax, about which Rupert Murdoch has said, “… how much are we doing, with emissions, and so on? Well, as far as Australia is concerned, nothing, in the overall picture.”[10] I also feel afraid.
Naomi Klein has said that climate change is the fight of our lives[11]. I think getting involved with the issue of climate change is part of the fight for life itself.
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[1] For instance, see speeches at the Radical Reductions Emissions Conference, a 2-day multidisciplinary conference held at the Royal Society in London in 2013 organized by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research: http://tyndall.ac.uk/communication/news-archive/2013/radical-emissions-reduction-conference-videos-now-online
[2] See Weintrobe, S. (ed) (2012) The difficult problem of anxiety in thinking about climate change. in Engaging with Climate Change. In Weintrobe, S. (2012) ed. Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge and the New Library of Psychoanalysis.
[3] See Hoggett, P. (2012). “Climate Change in a Perverse Culture” in Weintrobe, S. (ed). (2012) op cit..
[4] For a penetrating analysis of hubristic aspects of climate engineering as offering quick fixes to climate change see Hamilton, C. (2013) Earth Masters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering: Yale Univ Press New Haven and London
[5] Cultures of uncare support different economies, not just a capitalist economy. However, a capitalist economy flourishes when the culture of uncare promotes unbridled consumption.
[6] I am applying Steiner’s idea of a psychic retreat to the group. Steiner, J. (1993). Psychic retreats. London:Routledge.
[7] Segal, H. (1987) Silence is the Real Crime. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal., 14:3-12
[8] For a discussion of the power of groups to silence deeper felt ego ideals, see TEXx talk by republican conservative Bob Inglis. Inglis, initially a strong advocate for fossil fuels, argues that what shifted his perspective was realizing he had a “new constituency”, ie: his son and family, who challenged him on his climate views. https://www.facebook.com/EandEI/posts/348107128665948.
[9] As Ruth Leys has put it, the 21st century will be the century of the posttraumatic self. Leys, R. (2000). Trauma: a Genealogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[10] Video clip from sky news. Reported 14.7.14 on Ecowatch http://www.ecowatch.com
[11] Naomi Klein. “Climate change is the fight of our lives yet we can hardly bear to look at it”. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/23/climate-change-fight-of-our-lives-naomi-klein