Archive for category: #Sensuousness #Feeling #Suffering #Emotion

We examine the many causes of dogmatism – moving from sociological, to social psychological, to psychological to bioevolutionary and physiological.

In part I of this series (The Dogmatic Personality: Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral Dimensions), following the work of Judy J. Johnson in What’s so Wrong with Being Absolutely Right: The Dangerous Nature of Dogmatic Belief, we identified dogmatism – not as the content of a particular ideology but as a process of thinking, emoting and acting. We distinguished dogmatism from fanaticism and clarified the differences between dogmatism and open-minded thinking. I spent most the article defining 14 characteristics of dogmatism. Five are cognitive, four are emotional and five are behavioral.

In this article, Part II, we examine the many causes of dogmatism – moving from sociological, to social psychological, to psychological to bioevolutionary and physiological. I will include my own research in sociology and cognitive psychology to support Judy’s book. The image above illustrates that despite the dogmatists’ aggression and scapegoating of groups lower them themselves in the hierarchy, they are slavishly obedient to those above them.

Socio-economic Causes: Contracting Economy, Class and Race Dynamics

Sociologists have found that race relations get better or worse depending on whether the capitalist economy is contracting or expanding. In an economy where jobs are relatively plentiful there are less incidents of racial violence. But when the economy is contracting race relations get worse. Why is this?

Whether or not capitalists intend to, they benefit from racism between workers on their job site. Capitalists have always paid white workers more money and given them privileges relative to Blacks. What is the likely fallout? There will be racial animosity. Black workers will be angry that white workers are being paid more money to do the same work. White workers will look for and find ideologies like racism and fascism to help justify these inequalities. Both white and Black workers face the same problem. They work very hard under difficult circumstances and are not paid very much. They have two choices. The first is either they see their problem as part of a questionable capitalist system or not. If they see that it is, they will unite on the basis of occupying the same class. The other choice is for white workers to think they have more in common with white employers on the basis of race and ignore their class commonalties with Black workers. If they do that, they are likely to be susceptible to many of the fourteen characteristics of dogmatism.

Small business owners are also caught in a bind. In a contracting economy, compared to corporate capitalists, the small business owner is likely to go under. They are also faced with two ways to make sense of things. One is to choose a structural response which is to demand that the state give them more protection so that they are not gobbled up by corporate capitalists. But the other is to blame their workers for wanting more money. In order to make up some of their losses they pays workers less than corporate capitalists pay. In order to keep workers from unionizing they will pay white workers more than Blacks and attack Black workers for being too greedy. After all, they rationalize, the Blacks should be grateful the owner has even hired them. If the small business owners make the second choice, they too are likely to have many of the fourteen characteristics of dogmatism. In fact, in the last two “elections” in Mordor, labor historian Kim Moody has shown that small business owners have the highest percentage of voting for fascists.

This economic, class and race analysis will help explain three of the behavioral characteristics named in Part I. This includes preoccupation with power and status; glorification of in-group and vilification of out-group; and dogmatic authoritarian aggression towards minorities.

Psychology of Dogmatism in Early Childhood Development

Johnson points out that when parents are uninformed, indifferent or malevolent and fail to satisfy their baby’s emotional and social needs it is hard for the child to develop a sense of resilience.

Prolonged separation from the primary caregiver causes emotional, cognitive and social disorganization. When repeated attempts fail to make a connection to the caregiver, they may react with clinginess or aggressive confrontation. These children learn to mistrust themselves and others because they cannot get past the burdensome thoughts and anxiety that erode their self-confidence. (369)

One mother might assume that more often than not, her baby’s crying is manipulative or attention-seeking. Still others respond with alternating periods of tender loving care, normal distancing, smothering enmeshment, negligence and even abuse. Adopting beliefs and holding them with adamant certainly will compensate for childhood insecurities Insecure attachment and the ensuring anxiety may also be converted to dogmatic authoritarian aggression. (370-371)

Young children with a history of neglect or abuse experience chronic hyperarousal that elevates their hormone level and causes chaotic biochemical alternations… This aggregate of misfortune also impairs the development of empathy. (363)

Johnson points out that in Erikson’s eight psychosocial stages of development, these types of problems would correspond to Erikson’s first stage of trust vs mistrust. But I see connections between dogmatism and Erikson’s second and third stages as well. Erikson’s second stage is autonomy vs shame and doubt. Autonomy means the child is practicing saying “no” (also known as the terrible twos). The third stage is initiative vs guilt. Initiative means saying “yes” to activities the child chooses. I see no reason why the budding young dogmatist would also be carrying both shame and doubt along with guilt as developmental baggage. This is because the authoritarian parents would not easily tolerate a child who defies them (saying no) or chooses activities that are not on the parents’ menu (initiative).

Dogmatism and Personality

Trait theory

According to trait theory one of the five major traits of a healthy personality is openness to experience. This consists of one’s desire to seek and appreciate new experiences for their own sake. Openness also reflects tolerance for and exploration of the unfamiliar. Openness means a person is curious, imaginative, insightful and has wide interests, vivid fantasies and unconventional attitudes. Low scores in openness, indicate closemindedness including an unadventurous, unanalytical mind and narrowness of interest. This person is drawn to the familiar, practical and concrete. There is a lack of interest in experience for its own sake. The open and closed personalities of trait theory closely resemble the dogmatic vs open personalities we discussed in Part I of this article. The second global trait is neuroticism. This includes emotional instability and anxiety. It means constant worry with inadequate coping mechanisms. Among the 14 traits of dogmatism this corresponds to characteristic six.

Adler

According to Johnson, within the first two years of life, infants experience inexorable feelings of inferiority due to physical smallness, intellectual immaturity, poor eyesight or hearing and health problems. Adler says that to compensate for the inevitable inadequacies, they began striving for superiority which Freudians might call a reaction formation. Children raised in harsh, punitive or negligent environments create fictions that steer them away from social interest and towards mistaken lifestyles. The three mistaken lifestyles for Adler are:

• The ruling type who seeks to dominate others
• The getting type (goal is passive dependence)
• The avoiding type who sidesteps issues

From an Adlerian perspective, dogmatic characteristics of authoritarian aggression and arrogant, dismissive communication are tendencies that evolved from the early childhood goals of the ruling type.

If the insecure child cannot gain his caretaker’s love, safety and respect, the Divine Father would surely deliver the goods. These individuals do not go to church to maximize their social interest, but rather to both maximize their psychological survival and to minimize their self-doubt. Blind obedience to an authoritarian God is a tradeoff for a secure attachment that was not experienced as a child.

Karen Horney

According to Judy Johnson, feminist psychologist Karen Horney believed that basic anxiety that is prolonged beyond the normal range of anxiety has its origins in faulty parenting which includes parents who are dominating, intimidating, irritable, over-exacting and hypercritical. The second cause of anxiety is the unhealthy hyper-competitiveness of capitalist society.

For Horney, basic anxiety would be overcome by moving with people within a more cooperative society. If a person cannot live under those conditions there are three neurotic orientations: moving towards people, moving against people and moving away from people. Johnson writes that Horney’s moving against is the most relevant to dogmatism. The neurotic becomes driven by a search for glory at the expense of a scapegoated group. The need to proselytize or dominate conversations are typical of moving against strategies.

But I see that Horney’s neurotic trend of moving towards people can apply to the dogmatist’s in-group and their authority figures. They move with obsequious conformity and obedience. They seek out authorities who seem superior and therefore capable of taking care of them

Cognitive psychology: layers of cognition

In this section I will be bringing in three layers of cognitive identity – cognitive distorted interpretations, pessimistic explanatory styles and irrational assumptions. While Judy Johnson does not use these layers in her search for the dogmatic personality, some of these characteristics can easily be connected.

Cognitive distortions

According to Aaron Beck the eight cognitive distortions are:

1. Black and white thinking, which is also connected to catastrophizing. This was among the 14 dogmatic characteristics.
2. Overgeneralization can easily be seen at work in relation to scapegoated groups.
3. Over-personalization is at work when we talk about sensitivity to perceived insults.
4. Magnification is operating in relation to perceived insults while minimalizing would be at play in evaluating the achievements of minorities.
5. Distorted evidence – believing things without looking for good evidence is very common among dogmatists.
6. Selective choice of evidence is occurring when dogmatists stereotype groups without looking for exceptions to the rules.
7. Mind reading – misreading body cues, not asking people what they think because dogmatists lack interpersonal skill in conversations.
8. Feelings of confusion with behavior trapped in feelings and not being able to recognize that actions are different from feelings.

Pessimistic explanatory styles

According to Martin Seligman, whenever a new dramatic situation appears there are three questions that go through people’s minds:

1. How long will this last?
2. How will this affect the rest of my life?
3. Who is responsible?

Let’s say there is an economic crisis of some kind. The most pessimistic answers to these questions are that it will last forever, the rest of my life will be swept into the undertow, and I am responsible for the problem. The optimistic response to an economic crisis is it will be short-term (it will give me a chance to go to school or catch up in other areas of my life), it will not affect the rest of my life (I have solid support from my partner and family of origin) and I am not responsible (capitalism is in crisis all over the Western world). The dogmatist will have a pessimistic explanatory style. This matches one of the dogmatic characteristics, “excessive pessimism”.

Irrational assumptions

Albert Ellis came up with these many years ago. Most of them can be seen in dogmatists:

• It is a dire necessity for me to be loved or approved of by everyone for everything.
• Some people are evil and they know the things they do are wrong, but they do them anyway.
• It is terrible, horrible and catastrophic when things don’t go my way.
• Much human unhappiness is externally caused and is forced on one by outside people and events.
• If something is dangerous or fearsome, worrying about it helps the situation.
• It is easier to avoid than to face life’s difficulties and self-responsibilities because it takes less energy.
• I need to depend on someone or something greater than myself on whom I can rely.
• I should be thoroughly competent, adequate, intelligent and successful always.
• Because something once strongly affected my life, it should affect it indefinitely.
• What other people do is vitally important to my existence and I should make great efforts to change them in the direction I wish.
• Human happiness can be achieved by waiting for the right person or situation to come along.
• I have virtually no control over my emotions and I can’t help feeling certain things.

Clearly for the dogmatist, their early childhood background of neglect, inconsistency, and violence makes them desperate for approval, regardless of what they say. The second irrational assumption about people being evil fits easily with the dogmatist’s perception of those they are scapegoating. The lack of tolerance of ambiguity makes all disappointments catastrophic and earth-shaking for the dogmatist. Because the dogmatist lacks the ability to self-reflect, they cannot see their own part in creating a negative situation. Everything is mechanically and externally driven.

Thinking that I need to depend on someone greater than myself fits right in with an authoritarian, fundamentalist religion or an authoritarian political (especially fascist) leader. Lastly, thinking I have no control over my emotions and I can’t help feeling this way. Dogmatists have no idea of how cognitive interpretations, explanatory styles and assumptions have anything to do with their emotions. Emotions appear to be uncaused eruptions over which the person has no control.

Darwinian Evolutionary Biology

Judy Johnson names the following seven traits that have enabled primates to adapt and procreate during Paleolithic evolution and beyond:

• Activity – total energy output that is expressed in vigorous, energized behavior
• Fearfulness, cowering escape and wariness which activate physiological arousal of the autonomic nervous system
• Impulsivity – acting on the spur of the moment without pause, planning or reflection
• Sociability – preferring to be with others rather than live a solitary existence
• Nurturance – helping others, which includes altruism
• Aggressiveness – verbally and physically threatening or attacking others
• Dominance – seeking and maintaining superior status over others

Dominance

The pushiness of dogmatism and the insistence on aggressive conversion has its roots in dominance-seeking or aggressive tendencies that are part of the package of our evolutionary inheritance. I am not suggesting that dominance and aggressiveness are the only or leading characteristic of human beings. As you can see from the list, there are also traits for sociability and nurturance which counter dominance and aggressiveness. These primitive, old-brain adaptations are still present in our modern institutions which are the products for dominance, aggressiveness, sociability and nurturance. To include evolutionary Darwinian biology as part of a theory of dogmatism, we must address the survival value of rigidly clinging to beliefs and defending them with arrogant certainty. One answer to this is evolutionary. since the rate at which nature and society change is slow from the period of 100,000 years to 10,000 years (9/10 of our existence), it would pay not to change our beliefs too quickly.

Anxiety

A biological predisposition for anxiety is part of shaping dogmatism. While a sudden intense anxiety that might be adaptive thousands of years ago, today it may be a maladaptive tagalong that continues to fire. Although the characteristics of dogmatism are not just biologically based, higher than average levels of anxiety do have a biological basis. Physiologically, Johnson says that excessive anxiety is linked to defects in the GABA system (gamma-aminobutyric acid). Research reveals strong evidence for the genetic heritability of anxiety. Genes initially create an emotional predisposition for anxiety that structurally facilitates a dogmatic style in emotions.

Biological Physiology
Amygdala and extreme stress

The symptoms of PTSD occur in response to events outside the realm of normal human suffering such as natural disasters, combat fatigue and terrorist attacks or torture. While many of us have suffered from serious accident or illness, job loss or death of a loved one, most of us are resilient enough to return to our former selves of personality function. Dogmatists are less likely to do this.

An excitable amygdala is implicated in persistent anxiety and social inhibition. Johnson shows that:

Because molecular structures consolidate early childhood thoughts and emotions in circuits of long-term memory, these circuits continue to influence ongoing experience. In particular, prolonged distress or trauma, seriously impacts neural circuity. (292)

Researchers have found that when the amygdala, a midbrain structure, detects anything that signals danger, it activates an electrochemical fear response. Low-road reactions are instant, reflexive and protective. (296)

Rather than patiently waiting to understand the full context in order to determine how to react, our amygdala signals danger and we reflexively pull back. When at school or playing, if children are repeatedly teased or ridiculed, the felt anxiety may resurface in neutral or friendly social settings, which create overreactions in their interpersonal perceptions and interpretations. These children may become angry and defensive in response to open-ended, harmless questions.

An emotionally activated amygdala releases cortisol, a powerful hormone, the net effect of which is to disrupt hippocampal activity, weakening the ability of the temporal lobe memorial system to form explicit memories. Under prolonged stress cortisol representations of oneself, others and the surrounding world may become distorted. These proteins grow new synaptic connections that further alter brain circulates some of which become static, closed and invested in defensive structures to guard against anticipated assaults.(298)

Anger

There is a physiological price to be paid for prolonged anger. Johnson says:

Self-righteous anger is always twinned with physiological arousal of the sympathetic nervous system. Research on physiological reactions of aggression, especially prolonged hostility, release the chronically elevated stress hormones that not only strain the coronary and gastrointestinal systems, they also impair immunological functioning (218)

Lack of oxytocin

Children who are repeatedly denied cuddling, attention, playfulness and kindness have serious hormonal consequences:

Abusive or negligent parents limited the child’s ability to regulate the length, intensity or frequency of distressing emotions like anger, terror or shame. This emotional dysregulation is further exacerbated if in infancy, a baby does not experience pleasurable releases of oxytocin and other brain chemical that are secreted during positions of social connection. Known as the hormone of love, oxytocin evokes an inner sense of emotional calm and balance (292)

Without loving, nurturing parents who activate the chemical that helps produce children’s positive self-image, they are less resilient to stress and lose confidence in their ability to control their emotions. Consequently, they may become clingy and dependent. Without such skills, these children are more likely to conform to group values and succumb to peer pressure even when it goes against their self-interest or morals. They have no awareness that this desperate conformity has anything to do with early emotional deprivation from caregivers.

Lack of dopamine

From research in trait theory, there is a biological basis of the “Openness to Experience” trait. Being open to new ideas and experiences is influenced by individual differences in the dopaminergic system. Since the polar opposite of openness is closedness, the closed-minded manner in which dogmatic people process information may be due in part to some failed mechanism in the transmission of dopamine.

Conclusion

Here is summary of all the factors that produce dogmatic cognition, emotion and behavior.

Socio-economic

Some of these are from Judy Johnson, while others are my own.

• PTSD (wars, rape, physical abuse, torture)
• Economically contracted society
• Economic competition between racially mixed working class
• Economic competition between small business owners and corporate capitalists
• Political groups with the financial means to ideologically seduce and indoctrinate the disenfranchised and psychologically vulnerable
• Membership in narrow or closed-minded groups that offer a) the promise of social acceptances; b) individual recognition; c) honor and dignity
• Joining a group on the basis of their rigid, authoritarian goals
• Political and economic marginalization of youth
• Inadequate state funding for educational infrastructure and support programs for cognitive impoverishment during childhood and adolescence

Social-cultural

• Parents who themselves have the characteristics of dogmatism
• Parental styles of parenting which are anxious-ambivalent as opposed to secure
• Parental inability to facilitate emotional regulation during infancy and childhood
• Prolonged exposure to role models who seek revenge for past injustices
• Early indoctrination of religious beliefs that discourage natural curiosity and open-minded questioning and reasoning throughout childhood and adolescence (like religious fundamentalism)
• Institutional punishment (at school) for independent thought in childhood and adolescence

Psychological

• Closed personality, neuroticism (Big five)
• Superiority complex, ruling type (Adler)
• Moving towards, moving against (Horney)
• Cognitive interpretation distortions, pessimistic explanatory styles, irrational assumptions

Bio-evolutionary

• Innate evolutionary adaptations for dominance and aggressiveness that linger in modern brains

Physiological

• Biological predisposition for anxiety
• Overly active amygdala
• Lack of oxytocin
• Lack of dopamine

Beyond Capitalism

Colors possess the power to evoke emotions, drive decisions, and ultimately influence consumer behavior. In advertising, the strategic use of color can make or break a campaign, impacting brand perception and message recall. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the psychology of colors and examine how different hues can shape the effectiveness of advertising.

Red: Passion, Excitement, and Urgency

Red is often associated with strong emotions like passion, love, and excitement. In advertising, it’s used to grab attention and create a sense of urgency, making it perfect for promoting sales and limited-time offers. Brands that use red as a primary color (e.g., Coca-Cola, Target) aim to portray themselves as bold, energetic, and…

By studying an artificial neural network, researchers in the US may have gained a better understanding of how and why our memories fade over time. Led by Ulises Pereira-Obilinovic at New York University, the team has found evidence that the stable, repeating neural patterns associated with newer memories transform into more chaotic patterns over time, and eventually fade to random noise. This could be a mechanism used by our brains to clear space for new memories.

In some models of the brain, memories are stored in repeating patterns of information exchange called “attractor networks”. These form within webs of interconnected nodes that are used to represent the neurons in our brains.

These nodes convey information by emitting signals at specific firing rates. Nodes that receive signals will then generate their own signals, thereby exchanging information with their neighbours. The strengths of these exchanges are weighted by the degree of synchronization between pairs of nodes.

Stable patterns

Attractor networks form as an external input is applied to a neural network, which assigns an initial firing rate to each of its nodes. These frequencies evolve as the weights between different pairs of nodes readjust themselves, and eventually settle into stable, repeating patterns.

To retrieve a memory, researchers can then apply an external cue that is similar to the original input, which kicks the neural network into the relevant attractor network. Multiple memories can be imprinted onto a single neural network, which naturally switches between stable attractor networks over time – until an external cue is provided.

These systems have their limits, however. If too many attractor networks are stored on the same neural network, it may suddenly become too noisy for any of them to be retrieved, and all its memories will be forgotten at once.

Losing memories

To prevent this from happening, Pereira-Obilinovic’s team suggest that our brains must have evolved a mechanism for losing memories over time. To test this theory, the trio, which also included Johnatan Aljadeff at the University of Chicago, and Nicolas Brunel at Duke University, simulated neural networks in which the weights between connected nodes in an attractor network will gradually diminish as new memories are imprinted.

They found that this caused older attractor networks to shift into more chaotic states over time. These networks featured faster fluctuating patterns. These patterns of firing signals never perfectly repeat, and can coexist far better with newer, stable attractor networks. Eventually, this increasing randomness causes older attractor networks to fade into random noise, and the memory they carry is forgotten.

Altogether, the researchers hope their theory could help to explain how our minds are able to constantly take in new information, at the price of losing older memories. Their insights could help neurologist to better understands how our brains store and retrieve memories, and why they ultimately fade over time.

The research is described in Physical Review X.

The post Chaos plays a role in how memories are forgotten, simulations suggest appeared first on Physics World.

Humans may have gotten one step closer to figuring out how to make wormholes thanks to fascinating new research.

That’s at least according to Hatim Saleh, a research fellow at the University of Bristol and co-founder of the startup DotQuantum, who claims to have invented what he calls “counterportation,” which “provides the first-ever practical blueprint for creating in the lab a wormhole that verifiably bridges space,” according to a statement.

Published in the journal Quantum Science and Technology, Saleh’s research focused on a novel quantum computing technique that should — at least on paper — be able to reconstitute a small object across space “without any particles crossing.”

While it’s an exciting prospect, realizing his vision will require a lot more time and effort — not to mention next-generation quantum computers that haven’t been designed, let alone built yet. That is if it’s even possible at all.

Counterportation can be achieved, the study suggests, by the construction of a small “local wormhole” in a lab — and as the press release notes, plans are already underway to actually build the groundbreaking technology described in the paper.

While it sounds a lot like teleportation, Saleh noted that it’s not quite the same thing.

“While counterportation achieves the end goal of teleportation, namely disembodied transport, it remarkably does so without any detectable information carriers traveling across,” the quantum expert said.

The concept relies on a unique aspect of quantum physics called quantum entanglement, which allows “entirely separate quantum particles” to “be correlated without ever interacting,” as University of Bristol optical communication systems professor John Rarity explained in the statement.

“This correlation at a distance can then be used to transport quantum information (qubits) from one location to another without a particle having to traverse the space, creating what could be called a traversable wormhole,” he added.

To make counterportation a reality, however, is going to take a whole lot more research — and future breakthroughs in the quantum computing field.

“If counterportation is to be realized, an entirely new type of quantum computer has to be built: an exchange-free one, where communicating parties exchange no particles,” said Saleh.

Unfortunately, these machines are still a distant dream as “no one yet knows how to build” them, Saleh admitted.

When and if this exchange-free quantum computer is built, per the researcher, it could prove revolutionary in the field.

“By contrast to large-scale quantum computers that promise remarkable speed-ups, which no one yet knows how to build, the promise of exchange-free quantum computers of even the smallest scale is to make seemingly impossible tasks — such as counterportation — possible, by incorporating space in a fundamental way alongside time,” Saleh boasted.

While this definitely sounds like something out of the plot of the 2014 film “Interstellar,” reconstituting small objects by leveraging the weirdness of the quantum world is an exciting proposition whether it’s a long shot or not.

More on wormholes: Objects We Thought Were Black Holes May Actually Be Wormholes, Scientists Say

The post Researchers Say They’ve Come Up With a Blueprint for Creating a Wormhole in a Lab appeared first on Futurism.

I used to think trauma was something that only applied to people exposed to extreme situations like war, genocide, abuse or crime. Yet, living on planet Earth pretty much guarantees you some trauma. 

Trauma comes from the Greek “traumat,” which means “wound.” It is an emotional wounding that results from experiencing or witnessing a highly stressful, horrifying event or series of events where one feels a lack of control, powerlessness, and threat of injury or death. This sounds disturbingly similar to what humans are increasingly living through with climate change. 

Being pushed beyond my own limits by the climate crisis forced me to take its traumatic impacts more seriously. As I witnessed the continent where I live burn to the ground during one of Australia’s worst bushfire events, I felt utterly overwhelmed. I’d spent the past decade helping to build the power of the climate movement, hoping to avert disasters like these. It was as though everyone’s work was burning to the ground, taking lives, homes and livelihoods with it. 

The months that followed were like a dream. I moved through the world numb, unaware that the trauma of the experience had sent me into a dissociative state. As often happens in trauma, my brain switched off my capacity to feel as a way of trying to protect me. 

Previous Coverage

There’s no place for burnout in a burning world

I struggled to know what to do or how to respond. Decisions about tiny things felt momentous, and yet nothing felt like it really mattered anymore. Just months before, I had helped organize the largest national climate mobilization in Australia’s history. As people around me exclaimed that maybe this was the social movement tipping point we had been waiting for, I couldn’t feel a thing.

I kept believing I was OK, as I watched my body break down. It, more than I, knew I couldn’t keep going. As trauma expert Bessel Van Der Kolk teaches, “the body keeps the score.”

But trauma is not felt equally. There is a deep inequity in its distribution. In his book “My Grandmother’s Hands,” therapist and somatic abolitionist Resma Menakem reminds us of the greater trauma load being carried by bodies of color. The trauma of oppression doesn’t disappear upon death. It carries on across generations. As such, people from marginalized backgrounds tend to have a much bigger load to bear. 

If I, a middle-class white person living in an affluent country, could experience what I did during the bushfires, I could only begin to imagine the trauma experienced by those on the frontlines of climate injustice — the Black Indigenous and People of Color facing climate impacts first and worst, who are also being required to forge some of the most courageous solutions. 

Experiences of trauma are becoming all too common among those of us working on climate change. Being repeatedly exposed to an existential threat takes a toll. The trauma of this experience needs somewhere to go. If it isn’t processed or given an outlet, it stores in our bodies, layering atop trauma we had already accumulated prior to arriving at this work. 

The four trauma responses in a movement context

There is scant understanding of trauma in the climate movement. Consequently, people are seldom provided with the support to recognize and process their trauma healthily. And so it builds, eventually manifesting in one or more of the following ways:

1. Fight. This occurs when someone responds aggressively to something they perceive as threatening. That could be climate change itself, people they perceive as obstacles or a particular experience that triggers past trauma. Examples of a fight response in a movement context include: attacking or blaming, bullying or gaslighting, power-hoarding, unhelpfully polarizing situations or campaigns, and discriminating against people (consciously or unconsciously). 

2. Freeze. The freeze response is where someone, realizing that resistance is futile, gives up, numbs out into dissociation and/or collapses as if accepting the inevitability of being hurt (much like the overwhelm I felt during the fires). Movement examples of the freeze response include: decision/analysis paralysis, scarcity mindsets, stagnation, complacency, apathy, hopelessness and depression. 

3. Flight. The flight response is where someone responds to a perceived threat by fleeing from it, or symbolically, by launching into a state of hyperactivity, in an effort to ward off the threat. Movement examples of the fleeing mode include: avoidance of feedback/conflict, burnout, and quitting. Examples of the hyperactivity mode include: workaholism; urgency/crisis mindsets; pursuing extreme tactics and strategies; anxiety and obsessive/compulsive tendencies. 

4. Fawn. The fawn response kicks into gear when someone responds to a threat by trying to be pleasing or helpful in order to appease and forestall an attack. In a movement context, this often manifests as putting the advancement of others’ needs — or the causes’ needs — ahead of one’s own wellbeing. Examples include: code-switching (particularly among folks from marginalized backgrounds responding to discrimination and/or micro-aggressions), people-pleasing, over-working, marginalizing one’s own needs and chronic issues with boundaries. 

As I reflected on these four responses, I realized that aspects of the climate movement’s culture can inadvertently encourage or incentivize at least three of these responses — fight, flight and fawn — more so than freeze.

With fight, belligerent language is peppered, almost subliminally, throughout our vocabulary: “fight,” “battle,” “weaponize.” With flight, we are constantly in motion, unintentionally or otherwise, glorifying over-work. And with fawn, we love people who are willing to “step up” to the challenge, to be of service, contribute their all. Putting the issue ahead of the individual is our currency, even when doing so jeopardizes that individual’s wellbeing.

Over time, as more trauma builds and more people respond in the four ways outlined above, movements come to perpetuate the very systems they exist to transform. Trauma begets more trauma. Hurt people, hurt people. People burn out and leave. Unresolved conflict ends groups. Campaigns stagnate. Activists, now jaded and exhausted, settle for centrist, complacent outcomes rather than the transformative change that movements seek.

Building a culture of care and healing from movement trauma

We need movements that support people to process and heal from their own trauma so that we can bring transformed mindsets to the work of transforming injustice. As the saying goes “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” To build an impactful climate justice movement, we must first build cultures that care for the people doing the work.

Already, there are so many amazing people, programs and groups working to weave cultures of care and wellbeing into systemic justice work — much of it led by First Nations people, people of color, women, gender-diverse folk and others on the frontlines of injustice. What would it look like to lean into their wisdom, to grow care rather than illness, stress and burnout? 

The origin of the word “care” is from the proto-Germanic karo meaning “sorrow, cry” and the proto-Indo-European gehr, meaning “shout, call.”

Previous Coverage

As we confront the climate crisis, is bigger and faster always better?

Riffing off this etymology, to center care in the climate movement’s culture, surely we need to create space for people to healthily navigate their emotions about climate injustice. We also need to ensure people, particularly those marginalized by the mainstream, feel seen, heard and valued. And we need an active commitment to repairing and not perpetuating further harm and injustice.

In trying to sketch out the different ingredients that a culture of care might center, a few elements emerged. This is just the beginning of a recipe. As we add more ingredients, the outcome gets richer: 

1. Space. One of the most damaging aspects of unjust systems and trauma is the lack of spaciousness. The renowned psychologist Victor Frankl once said: “Between stimulus and response is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” 

A culture of care would protect time and space for people to rest, reflect, recover and repair. As emergent strategist Adrienne Maree Brown says: “There is always enough time for the right work,” and Nap Ministry Founder Tricia Hersey reminds us: “Rest is resistance.” 

What could this look like in the climate movement?

• Shorter working hours / 4-day work weeks
• 80/20 time for reflection, experimentation and creativity
• Campaign plans and timeframes with ebbs and flows
• Communities of practice and learning circles
• Sabbaticals and long service leave for both staff and volunteers

2. Love. Cornell West said that “justice is what love looks like in action.” At the heart of injustice is an absence of love. Healing climate injustice requires us to love ourselves, others and the earth. bell hooks reminds us: “to begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling.” It is, as M Scott Peck says, “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” If we don’t act with love towards ourselves and others in our work, we can’t bring more love to the systems causing climate injustice. 

What could this look like in the climate movement?

• Regular praise, positive feedback and celebration of people and their work (I distinguish people from their work, as we need to get better at celebrating people’s inherent worth, independent of their work)
• Investing more capacity in people’s leadership, growth and development
• Regularly checking in on people’s wellbeing and building communities of support for people when they are going through difficult times
• Time and space for people to attend to their own inner work 
• Eldership, mentoring and buddies

3. Diversity. Diversity is life. Insight and learning lies in understanding not just the things we share in common but how each of us is beautifully unique. According to social movement research, a few people connected across difference have greater potential for creating the social growth of an idea or process than large numbers of people who think alike. 

Diversity enables greater sense-making, because it widens the pool of vantage points and sense-makers. This is especially beneficial when navigating the complexity of climate change. A culture of care would encourage and celebrate diversity in all its forms — race, class, gender, sexual orientation, body type, health and all their intersections. It would also actively encourage divergence of opinion, rather than rushing to convergence and unity. 

What could this look like in a movement?

• Leaders from a wide range of different backgrounds
• Time and space given to building relationships across difference
• A movement ecosystem comprising a diversity of theories of change, strategies and groups, each of which is respected by the other
• Actively encouraging a diversity of perspectives, feedback and opinions 

4. Boundaries. Therapist and political organizer Prentis Hemphill defines a boundary as “the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” We have arrived at the unjust juncture we find ourselves in today precisely due to a lack of boundaries — of treating the world and ourselves as limitless resources. A culture of care would celebrate and foster a practice of boundary-setting to help bring us all back within happy and healthy limits.

What could this look like in a movement?

• Respecting work hours and supporting people to switch off when not working
• Asking rather than assuming someone can take on more work/responsibility
• Limiting exposure to vicarious climate trauma 
• Setting and holding clear goals to avoid feeling the need to do everything
• Encouraging everyone to set their own personal boundaries and communicate these to those they work with

5. Awareness. We can’t change what we can’t see, yet our most painful trauma is often stored subconsciously — our worst biases often hidden from view. A culture of care would provide support and space for everyone to build greater individual and collective awareness of their blindspots and pain, so that we can move forward in the world with more holistic perspectives. 

What could this look like in a movement?

• Providing support and resources for everyone to process their trauma. In certain sectors this takes the form of supervision. We need a version of this for climate trauma, and we need to build networks of climate-informed mental health practitioners to support those who spend their days addressing climate injustice
• Training and communities of practice to address unconscious bias 
• Creating space for regular feedback and reflection

6. Compassion. Compassion is the sense of concern that arises when we are confronted with another’s or our own suffering and feel motivated to see that suffering relieved. It has four components: 1. noticing; 2. feeling; 3. caring; and 4. doing. Compassion is different to empathy in that it moves beyond feeling to doing, however it is not about fixing others’ suffering for them, rather creating the conditions for suffering to be alleviated. Like love, a lack of compassion is at the heart of injustice. By building a movement’s compassionate capacity, we strengthen its capacity for justice.  

What could this look like in a movement?

• Seeing mistakes as a crucial part of learning, rather than fuel for shame 
• Being clear about each other’s needs and supporting one another to ensure those needs are met
• Learning to let go of judgement — of ourselves and others; in Buddhism, negative judgement about our feelings (the “second arrow”) is viewed as more damaging than the original feelings themselves
• Checking in when we can see someone is struggling
• Coaching to help people build capacity for their own solutions

7. Vulnerability. When we share deeper parts of ourselves, the parts that are not “resolved,” we open up a door in other people’s hearts to feel a little more able to do the same. And in the sharing of the deepest parts of ourselves, we build greater compassion, space for diversity and in turn more transformative movements. Vulnerability also calls on us to work on/for the things we know are needed, even if we know these things are likely to be attacked or ridiculed by the mainstream.

What could this look like in a movement?

• Leaders who act with radical honesty about when they are struggling, have made a mistake or don’t know what to do 
• Properly welcoming new people into movement spaces, taking time to really understand and support the whole person — their strengths, fears and needs 
• Campaigns and movements that demand and strive for what is needed, not just what they think they can get, despite fear or external attack

8. Joy. Why do this work if not to generate joy? How we feel when we work, matters. It determines whether or not people keep showing up for the long arcs required to sustain social change. In her book “Pleasure Activism,” Adrienne Maree Brown says: “Pleasure is the point. Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom.” 

What could this look like in a movement?

• Building play — defined as “time without purpose” — into work
• Regular social time and celebration
• Identifying the feeling states associated with different types of work and ensuring that everyone has plenty associated with pleasure and joy 

9. Fluidity. Change is constant. The most effective movements seek to “be like water,” evolving as the issue does. But movements only evolve as effectively as their members do. Cultures of care ensure space and support for everyone to evolve and grow over time, avoiding the creep of stagnation and resentment.

What could this look like in a movement?

• Strategy, groups and campaigns that have ambitious goals but are always open to change and responsive to what is going on around them
• Reflective practices to learn and iterate strategy
• Support for people to develop in their roles and evolve over time
• Sharing and learning to enable cross-pollination of knowledge and skills

10. Imagination. Imagination is an act of both courage, and intelligence. Far from naivety, it arises from a place of deep sensing — of how the world is, how it was, and how it could be better. Imagination can never end at the point of sensing, it must extend to action, not only one’s own, but the inspiration of others to act collectively. Imagination is a form of care because it refuses to accept the way things are, and instead dares to both dream of and create different systems, structures and worlds. 

What could this look like in a movement?

• Celebrating ambitious ideas and plans and those who generate them
• Creating space in our work to dream, reflect and co-create new ideas together
• Welcoming more art and artists into movements
• Seeking to learn from spaces outside of our immediate circles

This is just a starting point. Building more of these 10 ingredients into the climate movement will be an iterative and emergent process. But one thing’s for sure, we can’t afford to shy away. The more traumatic load we build, the more conflict, burnout and status quo outcomes we will get. Showing the climate crisis the care it is calling for starts with caring for ourselves and each other. 

The Neumayer III polar station sits near the edge of Antarctica’s unforgiving Ekström Ice Shelf. During the winter, when temperatures can plunge below minus 50 degrees Celsius and the winds can climb to more than 100 kilometers per hour, no one can come or go from the station. Its isolation is essential to the meteorological, atmospheric and geophysical science experiments conducted there by the…

Source

[I]f your anger is directed at race and racism…if you’re aiming for change and not…

For their latest magic trick, physicists have done the quantum equivalent of conjuring energy out of thin air. It’s a feat that seems to fly in the face of physical law and common sense. “You can’t extract energy directly from the vacuum because there’s nothing there to give,” said William Unruh, a theoretical physicist at the University of British Columbia, describing the standard way of thinking.

Source

Much has been written about climate change or, to use a more truthful term, global warming. But not much has been written about Organising Responses to Climate Change, which is the title of Daniel Nyberg, Christopher Wright and Vanessa Bowden’s new book. The authors have divided it into ten chapters which are organised in five key parts. This very readable and illuminating work starts with The Politics of Climate Change, followed by The Politics of Climate Migration. Inevitably, global warming will lead to massive global migration far exceeding what we have seen up to date. Part III is about something many people think comes too late in time to prevent the earth from being destroyed, namely The Politics of Climate Adaptation.

As the UN’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said recently at what Greta Thunberg calls the blah-blah-blah festival – also known as COP27 – that took place in the luxery resort of Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022: ‘We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.’ Perhaps, with still increasing CO₂ emisions in 2023, what we call adaptation is merely something that resembles the moving of deckchairs on the Titanic. Whether we adapt or not, what is in store for virtually all of us is climate suffering, as related in Part IV The Politics of Climate Suffering. A handful of super-rich, who have bought land (including bunkers) on the southern island of New Zealand [the earthquake islands], who may also dream of life in space or on Mars, believe they can avoid the suffering. Finally, there is Part V, The Politics of Climate Futures – if we will have a future.

Nyberg and his co-authors start their book with a truism: ‘The climate crisis is the product of a specific political economy: global capitalism […] capitalism relies on the fervent pursuit of continuous economic growth and fossil energy’ (4). Yet, the neoliberal myth of endless growth is still part of the capitalist ideological catechism, despite the fact that we know this is impossible. And we have known this ever since the Club of Rome’s seminal study. Besides, it is simply illogical to continue to propagate the hallucination that endless growth is possible on an non-endless Earth, as the recent study of the Club of Rome has shown – again.

Worse: ‘By 2021, it was clear that existing business practices would not be challenged […] by August 2021, of the $1,950 billion spent by OECD countries on recovery, only $336 billion was assessed as having a positive environmental impact’ (6). Apart from corporate greenwashing, this is why ideologies like business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) exist. ‘Under the ideological cover of CSR, etc., the seven evil sisters – BP, Shell, Gulf Oil, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard Oil of New York and Texas – became the most wealthy and powerful companies in the world. […] To those one might like to add: Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia, Gazprom and Rosneft in Russia, Kuwait Petroleum, National Iranian Oil Company, China National Petroleum Company, Pemex in Mexico, and Petrobras in Brazil.’ Even more devastating for the environment is the fact that ‘global fossil fuel subsidies alone are conservatively estimated at around US330 billion per annum […] the IMF suggests the true amount could be closer to US5 trillion’ (10). Much of this is smoke-screened through two ideologies – the free market and competition.

Of course, this has led – in terms of ideology – to what the authors call ‘the hegemony of corporate capitalism’ (21) and the global ‘fossil fuel hegemony’, drastically exemplified by a US car bumper sticker that reads kick their ass and get our gas. This prevailing hegemony has ‘truly forged a collective will’ (23) to invade countries that have oil and, in other cases, to – conveniently – overlook human rights abuses in many oil-producing and oil-burning countries. Not only in oil-producing countries but elsewhere too, this ‘hegemony is the practice of politics for maintaining dominance’ (31).

Supported by ideologies like these – and a bit of global corporate greenwashing on the side – ‘the global fossil fuel burn has continued to increase year by year’ (42). In the wake of much of this, corporations have set up a global ‘climate change denial industry’ (44) containing well-paid business school professors, corporate consultancies, conservative think tanks and, of course, the mainstream press.

Almost self-evidently, this is spiced up through oxymorons like ‘clean coal’ (47). It is not at all surprising to see that ‘billionaire businessman Sir Richard Branson claims that our only option to stop climate change is for industry to make money from it’ (51). In other words, the system that is getting us closer and closer to the sixth Mass Extinction (McCallum 2021) and to the end of life on earth is also the system that will get us out of the coming apocalypse. For neoliberal nonsense like this, you get to become a ‘Sir’.

Unlike Sir Branson, Greta Thunberg and the like are described by OPEC ‘as perhaps the greatest threat to our industry going forward’ (64). Meanwhile, this very same OPEC may well be one of the greatest threats to human existence. OPEC and its corporations have gotten us on a highway to climate hell with their foot still on the accelerator. True to the title of their book, the authors suggest support be given to three environmental organisations (67): Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and 350.org. The authors – perhaps correctly – argue that ‘the most spectacular environmental movements to emerge in recent years have been Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future’ (74).

Not surprisingly ‘counter-terrorism police in the UK listed Extinction Rebellion as an extremist ideology’ (80), perhaps in preparation for what is going to come as the conflict between corporate profits and those fighting global warming – literally – heats up. Or, as is the case when the usual methods of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff 2018) begin to collapse, a well-armed police force is needed just as much as a handy ideology to keep people ignorant. Meanwhile, the rather harmless Greenpeace has been accused ‘of committing acts of terrorism that violate the US Patriot Act’ (80).

Quite apart from defending the system that made rich people super rich, the state is there to protect them against us, as the authors say, ‘by targeting environmentalists as extremists and terrorists, corporations aim to deflect attention from the damage caused by their own activities’ (81). This has been a time-honoured and proven corporate PR strategy ever since Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring.

Yet another PR strategy is the hallucination that global warming can be managed through ‘climate adaptation’ (89). In contrast, many others have claimed it is already too late (Turner 2014; Monbiot 2022). One precursor supporting the too little too late argument has been ‘Australia’s Black Summer of 2019 and 2020 [killing] three billion animals’. It was merely an early sign for the looming ‘Pyrocene – the age of fire’. At the same time when earth is facing increases in bush and forest fires, ‘coastal areas [are] vulnerable to rising ocean waters [threatening] major coastal cities such as Miami, New York, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Jakarta’ (93) and many more. In the wake of this, many private properties in these cities might become uninsurable as ‘SwissRe and MunchRe’ (96) sensed long ago. Yet this remains mostly unknown to the general public, particularly Republican voters in Miami, for example.

Meanwhile, in Australia – the home of the authors – ‘the Great Barrier Reef generated AU $6.5 billion in revenue per annum and provided up to 64,000 jobs in tourism, fishing, and associated activities’ (100). Despite the fact that the authors of the book see the value of nature only when it translates into dollar terms and jobs (Klikauer 2023), and refrain from seeing the intrinsic value of the environment, coral bleaching is killing the reef. Besides all this, one of the greatest lines in their book is the following: ‘the great irony, of course, is that, having watched the Arctic melt as global temperatures rose, Shell was first in line to drill in the newly melted waters for yet more oil, which would raise the temperature some more’ (103).

Virtually, all these adaptation processes – including Shell’s expansion in drilling and the raising of their ocean based drilling platforms – are also designed as a policy for ‘the stabilisation of hegemonic power relations’ (114). This is partly done by mainstream (read: corporate) media when creating the ‘ignorance of climate change’ (118). Worse, there are companies that offer ‘retreats [at] the cost of €520 and €820 [for your personal and] inner adaptation’ (122) to climate change. Viewing global warming as an issue of the individual has always been a preferred ideology of neoliberalism and its compliant henchmen. Meanwhile, ‘capitalism’s destruction of the natural world [can still be] hidden from public view’ (131) or can be framed as simply another natural disaster. As the world heats up, this ideological trick might become harder and harder to maintain.

Even more obscene is the fact that ‘climate suffering is […] presented as a space for business philanthropy and charity’ (145). And of course, all this can be cranked up by what the authors call ‘the hypocrisy of artists or celebrities endorsing climate action while jetting around the world or living lavish lifestyles’ (153). Important to all of this is to realise that this ‘hegemony has been highly successful in limiting any efforts even to reduce emissions, let alone to tax them’ (169).

Nyberg and his co-authors end their exquisite book with the words, ‘the world stays locked within an economic system that endangers the future of societies, ecosystems, and the vast diversity of life on this planet […] the prevailing hegemony is that corporate capitalism will somehow continue, [which is] magical thinking’ (194). People who sell us this sort of magical thinking are those people who have put us on a highway to climate hell with their foot still on the accelerator.

While Organising Responses to Climate Change is magnificant on telling the story of global warming, and how the global hegemony is used to camouflage what is being done and what is coming, the book is actually very short on what it had originally set out to achieve, namely Organising Responses to Climate Change. It doesn’t offer much on organising responses to global warming. In a few short pages, the authors only suggest people join three environmental organisations: Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and 350.org. Despite this shortcoming, their book still issues a most persuasive call to fight the system that is bound to destroy the planet.