"Engaging with Climate Change";
edited by Sally Weintrobe, is a beautiful book written by people who
care about the world, about nature, and about the well being of all
humans. Here is an excerpt from the
chapter by John Keene. (highlights by the Frog)
I suggest that when it comes to how we see ourselves, we live in acurious world of doublethink. In spite of Darwin's contribution linking mankind with its biological heritage and Freud's account of the disowned operations of the mind, our public discourse tends to follow the Enlightenment view that rational thought now predominates, and there is recurrent surprise on finding so frequently that this is not the case. One might say that the problems potentially posed by significant global warming tick all the wrong boxes as far as our evolved, individually learned and group responses to our environment and to danger are concerned. The plasticity of human behavior and the power of language, which have been such an advantage in the development of the species, mean that human individuals have to develop their own models of the world and their relationship to it. These models, which operate to a considerable degree outside awareness, are profoundly affected by experiences in infancy. These partly unavailable and partly disowned assumptions, which powerfully affect our behaviour, are not just the domain of psychoanalysis but are well recognized in folklore, myth and in our literary and dramatic heritage. Sadly, rapid and magnificent technological advances have had little impact on these fundamental processes, which restrict our capacity to comprehend and deal with external reality and to restrain our capacities for self-destruction.
