Who's Crazy?

Last night I had trouble sleeping.

Having lost my day-job months ago (I worked as a desktop publisher at Bear Stearns), and having written since 2005 about peak oil (and the related cluster of social and financial disasters it would bring) anxiety about where the world is going is not new for me.But these days the news just keeps getting worse and worse. If there was any consolation it was in the fact that I couldn't be the only person whose nerves were keeping him awake that night.

General Motors is now saying it may run out of cash by the end of the year; its stock price is now at something like World War II levels. If one considers the downstream companies that depend on GM business, a collapse of the company puts literally millions of jobs at stake; given the company's symbolic role as a symbol of American affluence and might in the 20th century it's hard to overstate how psychologically devastating a bankruptcy might be for the nation.

More alarming (if something could be more alarming) was the just-released report from the International Energy Agency, which was by far the most dire in tone they have published in the last several years. "Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable — environmentally, economically, socially," it read, "What is needed is nothing short of an energy revolution."

According to recent reports, agency experts are now saying that existing oil fields are depleting at around 9 percent per year--much faster than previously reported. As the economic analyst Puru Saxena recently put in on the Financial Sense Newshour:

"They said that the depletion rate would be 9.1 percent per annum. If we have urgent investments in the energy industry, then the depletion rate could be reduced to 6.4 percent . . . Now lets assume that demand grows modestly by, say, 1 percent per annum over the next five years, which is quite conservative, then . . . we need to find three Saudi Arabias within the next five years to meet demand. It has taken us 150 years to find one Saudi Arabia. I don't know if we're going to find three in five years."

It was in this context that I started thinking again about an article by Joanne Kaufman that ran in the New York Times Style section a few weeks ago. The piece was about a new breed of environmentalists--a breed analysts at P.R. company Porter/Novelli, (a firm that specializes in greenwashing) are calling "dark green."

"The company conducted a poll of 12,000 people, examining their commitment to various environmental practices — reducing energy use at home, buying energy-efficient appliances, boycotting companies with bad environmental records. Seven percent earned the top designation."

Among those profiled were, of course, Colin Beaven (aka, "No Impact Man") and Sharon Astyk (the author and well-known peak-oil and climate change activist).

At the heart of the Times piece was the implication that that while being environmentally conscious was a good thing, "dark greens" were taking matters too far. "To some mental health professionals, the compulsion to live green in the extreme can suggest a kind of disorder," writes Kaufman. This disorder she labels "carborexia." Chief among her exhibits were the privations Astyk imposes on her family, such as refusing to drive her son many miles to a baseball league and finding ways to do without refrigeration.

(Several peak oil activists had a good responses to the piece, including an incisive reply by Kathy McMahon, the author of the Peak Oil Blues blog, and Astyk herself). It is, of course, telling that a piece like this would run not as a feature in the main section of the paper but in Style, because up to this point modern American society has had the "luxury" of viewing environmentalism as a "lifestyle choice." As McMahon rightly points out, there's been big money for businesses in "going green", as long as people see their role as buying new "environmentally correct" products and not doing crazy things like reducing consumption or growing their own food.

Nonetheless, there is something particularly dissonant and frankly insulting about choosing now, of all times, to pathologize people who are trying to cut back. Did no one point out to the author or the editors at New York Times Style that we are in the midst of a once-in-lifetime credit crisis--a crisis brought on in large part by excessive consumption and debt at all levels of society? That unemployment is now at a generational high, that people are losing their homes across the country? Who, exactly, in such an atmosphere is crazy? The person who voluntarily cuts his consumption or someone who decides to do more shopping, "green" or otherwise?

More importantly, what is the point of psychology in a world gone mad? Is it just a tool for arm-chair pathologizing by one-off journalists--a patronizing cudgel to reassure upper middle-class "consumers" that their lifestyles are "normal"?

The great psychologist and holocaust surviver Viktor Frankl once described the purpose of his method as helping patients "grasp life's unconditional meaningfulness" even in spite of the most terrible events. Lets hope that psychology can re-embrace that lost spirit in the trying times ahead.

Comments

[Tina]

There have always been crises (wars, natural disasters, etc.)throughout the history of mankind. The crisis that we are on the verge of now is huge.

The purpose of a healthy psychology is to be able to maintain a sense of balance and groundedness in spite of or in the midst of changes that are inevitable.

Even when a threat is very real, a response of panic is never recommended, nor does it make the threat go away. When a building catches on fire, what are people supposed to remember? "Don't panic." If everybody starts panicking and clammoring to get out of the building, it actually makes it harder for people to escape. A purposeful sense of order and calm is required to evacuate everyone possible.

I would offer this advice to both environmentalists and anti-environmentalists alike, to those who are sounding the alarm and to those who are trying hard to ignore it.

[Lakis]

But what qualifies as a “healthy” sense of balance or groundedness? And when is that balance healthy, and when is it denial?

Historically, psychology and psychiatry have frequently (but by no means always) tended to describe “health” strictly in relationship to the norms of the society. But what if it’s societal norms, not the individual, that are sick? For example, living in a consumerist, materialist, suburban sprawl world makes a lot of people depressed and crazy. But you don’t hear the psychological establishment (with exceptions) protesting that we must change the world so that people aren’t trapped in such depressing environments. That work is left to radical architects (such as Christopher Alexander), social critics of various stripes, (some) religious leaders, permaculturalists, etc.

Argumentation by analogy is tricky, but there are times when the “don’t panic” advice is just wrong. Consider September 11th; most of the people in those buildings who listened to the authorities’ advice to remain calm and stay where they were died. It was those who panicked and ran who survived. Similarly, in the 1930s in Germany, there were many Jews who stayed in Germany year after year, convincing themselves to remain calm, wait and see, etc., until it was too late. Those who emigrated survived.

Of course our current situation is not precisely analogous to either of those situations. The idea of “escape” is tricky when the crisis is something that will affect the whole world, and it’s extremely difficult to see how everything will play out. But I maintain it’s better (if possible) to at least look at the situation with eyes open (even if it causes serious anxiety) than to be in denial.

[Kathy McMahon]

We all have to question the "consensus trance" that exists in psychology as well as everywhere else. Harry Stack Sullivan was vocal in his description of an insane society during the Great Depression, as was Eric Fromm. Attempting to have people "adjust" to an insane world, and denying their own reality, is what I'd call "psychological terrorism." Many of us know, inside ourselves, when something is seriously wrong. However, the consensus trance functions to cause us to reject that knowledge as 'mental illness.'

Owning what we know to be true, and learning to control and modulate our own (inevitable) anxiety, will be essential skills of the future.

Thanks for an interesting article.

[Lakis]

Thanks for your comment Kathy. I appreciate your efforts to address these issues on peakoilblues.com.

I think that efforts like yours will become even more important as we go forward and the cognitive dissonance between what "authorities" are saying and what people are experiencing gets louder.

[Nudge]

Laxis, thank you for putting a label on that “dark green” issue. Just found your blog through a string of other blog's links.

It is nothing less than horrifying that out of the large numbers of people who profess to be “green”, only a relatively small portion of them are making any real efforts to address their energy use or their impact on the environment. If you grow your own food, sew your own clothing, sole your shoes with used tire treads, eschew the use of motor vehicles, don't watch television, etc, most of those “mainstream greenies” will think there is something very wrong with you.

It's pretty disgusting that types like Thomas Friedman have throngs of followers for basically selling them on the sappy delusion that by just “changing out” all our stuff for high-efficiency things (as well as getting something equivalent to cold fusion running, right now) we can keep living the high-energy-consumption lifestyle. No doubt this is why Friedman has a lot more fans than does someone like Kunstler, who is shamelessly honest about our chances of living an energy-hogging lifestyle in the coming years.