‘I was enjoying a life that was ruining the world’: can therapy treat climate anxiety?
People are increasingly looking for help to deal with feelings of fear, helplessness and guilt amid the climate crisis. But can therapists make a difference and is seeking treatment just a form of denial?
Instead of therapy being a form of denial, I'd turn it round and suggest that denial could be a form of therapy. Not reading Guardian climate stories would be a solid start - can't go wrong there.
The piece is worth reading for those who wish to remind themselves how absurd middle class people can be with a politically correct cause to uphold. Desperately embarrassing behaviour, but it mostly feels like an act to me. Shallow virtue-signalling which also signals the interests and practices of a particular verbal community.
Which behavior most closely matches the actual situation is a question not so much of fact, accuracy, or comprehensiveness as of the interests and practices of verbal communities.
B.F. Skinner - Verbal Behavior (1957)
Which behavior most closely matches the actual situation is a question not so much of fact, accuracy, or comprehensiveness as of the interests and practices of verbal communities.
B.F. Skinner - Verbal Behavior (1957)
8 comments:
The answer to some of these people is to ask them if they have really thought what it will be like if we adopted their ideas.Are they prepared to do without many of the things that make up modern living.
By all means do away with oil, how does the farmer produce cheap food,how does the food get to the shops and how do they then get to the shops to buy it and transport it home?
By all means reduce, recycle and become more efficient, but for heaven's sake, row back on the extreme measures so many eco warriors are insisting are the only way.
A great deal of 'middle class' angst is virtue signalling or conspicuous conviction driven by the need to be accepted in their social circles, just as conspicuous consumption (keeping up with the Joneses) was a popular choice in some previous decades.
Can therapists make a difference in reducing the need for acceptance? Perhaps, but a performance is still only a performance even if you are relaxed about it. The true state of personal acceptance requires behaviour consistent with your beliefs and vice versa.
When I worked in Further Education, there were whole departments turning out counsellors and therapists. The lecturers were often doing this because there were insufficient clients to pay the mortgage, so they worked part-time in FE. As the number of counsellors and therapists increases (and it will do, won't it - warm, dry, no physical exertion, no demanding bosses or enforceable success criteria) then they will obviously be looking for new markets.
It is still conspicuous consumption.
Who can afford the battery vehicles - and not little Leafs-, the large area roofs covered in expensive paneis, the acres of ground for the heat pump heat sink, the homes built or rebuilt to incorporate thick insulation, etc. Even if is all subsidised by the poor deplorables.
These econuts appear to have forgotten that oil, coal and gas are not just fuel to make essential stuff and grow food effectively but are also the raw material for things like plastics. I have no doubt that modern society will not even survive if they have their way.
There are still a few seats free on the B-Ark - all therapists welcome!
One aspect of the drive away from so-called fossil fuels (which coal is, but oil possibly not) is the balance of usage for the various fractional distillations. You can't extract petrol from crude oil without also producing paraffin, diesel, etc, etc down to bitumen. So altering the amounts used by, for instance, going away from petrol to electric cars, means fewer other fractions, or excess petrol. Green idiots do not understand this.
Q: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The number doesn't matter. The real question is, does the light bulb want to change?
John - it's as if they don't think it will actually happen so are prepared to support it to the hilt. Otherwise, the consequences are as you suggest. Do they know that? Hard to say.
DJ - and the personal acceptance is rarely exhibited, just the language and some minor token behaviours such as recycling or even buying a hybrid or electric car. As if that is the therapy for most believers.
Sam - working conditions which are warm and dry with no physical exertion, no demanding bosses or enforceable success criteria - those conditions could be therapeutic for the therapist. Potentially there is no limit to it until the food runs out.
Doonhamer - yes, a major aspect of it is conspicuous consumption. It is conspicuous and most people can't afford it.
Woodsy - plastics must be the big one because it's everywhere. Most activists probably wear polyester clothes.
Ed - yes, petrol could become a waste product. The problem is political nutters trying to force the pace of change without any idea of consequences they themselves will suffer.
decnine - and can it be made to value itself as an alternatively illuminated light bulb rather than a failed light bulb?
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