The
Psychology Of Denial
In The Age Of Consumerism
By John James
03 November,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Dr James Lovelock is now in his 80s. Many years ago he coined the term Gaia to describe how the air, the ocean and the soil are as much part of life itself as every living thing. He understood that the combination of everything creates a single giant living system that keeps the Earth in the most favourable state for life.
Late last year he gave a talk to the prestigious Royal Society in London where he said "Few seem to realise that the IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning, but without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia, but there may be little food for any of them."
And recently it was reported that the average summer temperature in Sydney could be close to 50 degrees C. Average?? So we all 'solve' that by getting air conditioning. But what runs that but electricity, and in this country that means coal. Being the creatures we are, we arrange to keep cool by using just what is required to make us even hotter.
The fact that we can even consider this idiotic idea to save us in the future, without dealing with our lifestyle now so it does not happen, is the reason for this article.
On the way I am going to explore two other tracks. This is the second: In the past fifty years the rich countries (including us) have used more resources than every human who ever lived before. We are the throw-away culture – and that is only because we are producing so much we can afford to throw things away.
I lived in Bali for a while in the 70s. There was no plastic, little metal, and just enough food. Nothing was ever thrown away as everything, no mater how small, could be put to good use. Wrapping was a banana leaf, and when finished was eaten by the pigs.
By comparison our waste (the waste that reflects how much we make and consume) is beyond belief. Though I have only US figures, ours are comparable. One example will do: every year Americans throw away enough aluminium cans to make six thousand DC-10 airplanes.
It makes an interesting quiz question: the total US yearly waste would fill a convoy of ten-ton garbage trucks long enough to:
a. reach half-way to the moon
b. wrap around the Earth six times
c. connect the North and South Poles
d. build a bridge between North America and China
The answer
is b. Even though Americans comprise only five percent of the world's
population, they use nearly a third of its resources and produce almost
half of its hazardous waste. And in Australia we could not find the
gumption to phase out plastic bags.
So, here is the third track: In a recent survey of people who voluntarily
cut back their consumption, eighty-six percent said that they were
happier as a result. Only nine percent said they were less happy.
Three tracks.
They tell us that high consumption is threatening the planet, burying
us under unbelievable amounts of waste, and is not making us happier.
Something is definitely wrong.
Why are we doing this?
We are
in fact quite clever in deceiving ourselves. We have exported the
more obvious toxic wastes of the industries that satisfy our consumption
to other countries, to China and India where carbon emissions rose
by 8 percent last year, and will rise even more this year.
The CSIRO, our federal research centre, reported the global outcome:
"There has been a four-fold increase in the rate of human-generated
carbon dioxide emissions since 2000." Four-fold (!!) and the
world is supposed to becoming conscious of global warming, serious
about mitigating it and holding endless and apparently futile conferences
in Kyoto, Nairobi and Bali to address it.
In spite of all the rhetoric, the situation is getting worse by the
day.
This four-fold
increase has come because we are consuming more and more. Now why
is this? Knowing the state of the planet surely we would rein ourselves
in – but do we? There has been enough information shoved in
front of us, but what are we doing with that?
Little, and for good reason.
Remember I am a therapist and have worked with clients for twenty years. In my experience most of us take whatever frightens us or makes us uncomfortable and push it out of sight. This puts it into the unconscious. It does not disappear, but just lies in waiting like a faithful hound until let out.
Meanwhile the conscious part can go on living as if nothing had happened. But as Carl Jung pointed out so perspicaciously, the hound keeps howling from the depth and thereby influences all that we do. So we cant go on as before. We may try to carry on as always, but in truth everything we do is influenced by the unseen and suppressed feelings from the hound in the kennel.
There being no escape, we act out this unconscious material, but pretend we are still being normal. This seems to be the reason we have all become so much busier during the past ten years, and why we are buying more and more as if there is no tomorrow. The greedy men on Wall Street invented ways of making money that could not be sustained, especially over the past 6 or 7 years. The hierarchy in China started building coal-fired power stations at the rate of six or seven every month, and India is planning not to be left behind.
Wherever we look there is madness. Fishermen, knowing that 90 percent of the big fish have gone, resort to bottom trawling that eradicates all in its path; loggers destroy the 'lungs of the planet' in an unscrupulous grab for profits; the Balinese build over their paddy fields to make room for tourist hotels; etc etc. The whole world is in a mad grab for the last bit before it is all gets burnt up.
This is the influence of the hound in the unconscious. We don’t understand what is really motivating us, but remain c
Why? Isn't it better to be honest? In fact, no – its more dangerous by a long shot.
In my experience, once we begin to open Pandora's Box we cannot be
sure what will come creeping out. Most of my clients quite quickly
recognise that they don’t really love themselves. When they
look inside it feels empty. I have only rarely met a client who does
not feel there is an vacant hole within that is black and full of
grief.
It is an essential aspect of growing up that we suppress who we really are in order to be accepted and loved by mum and dad. This means we actually push our real needs away in order to cope with their demands. It is as if we have sacrificed our original selves to get their love, and it leaves a trail of sorrow.
We call it Existential Grief because its about our very existence. It is about us being 'socialised' by the family and school so that we forget who we truly are. This leaves an enormous grief that is too difficult to confront, and we hide it in the kennel of the unconscious, leaving the howls from the kennel to undermine our self-confidence.
In our society we use material goods and social roles to cover up the black hole of grief. By surrounding ourselves with pretty and expensive things we tell everyone else that we are really OK. This is, so I learn from my clients, the major cause of going shopping, going on buying sprees and being consumers. We have come to believe that bright new things will fill the empty spaces inside.
This seems to be why we cannot really confront the devil of global warming that is being fed by every dollar we spend. For our own safety as a species we should all be consuming less and sharing more and striving to make life simple, whereas we are literally hell-bent on getting the most while we still can.
The hound sitting in the kennel of our emptiness makes it too hard for us to look at the truth and change our ways. We cannot alter the terminal path we are on, because to do so would expose our deepest fears that underneath all the tinsel and stuff we really are not worth much at all. Not even the protection we should be giving to our beautiful children is enough to move us to confront this terrifying personal fear.
A four-year analysis of the world's ecosystems sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute found that over-consumption has pushed 15 out of 24 ecosystems essential to human life "beyond their sustainable limits". Our insatiable desire for more is moving the planet toward a state of collapse that may be "abrupt and potentially irreversible".
Since we all know that, can we not go beyond the fear to follow David Attenborough, who said in a recent interview, "How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew and did nothing?"
John James is a therapist, architect, philosopher and medieval historian. With his wife Hilary and partner Marg Garvan he founded the Crucible Centre to use Transpersonal Psychology in personal development. Their exploration into soul and energy work has just been published as The Great Field. He wrote the www.planetextinction.com site to share information on Climate Change.
First published
in Living Now Magazine, Melbourne Australia
