Blog Archives

Coming Out as a Cynical Activist

19/8/2021

(an article originally published in 1/6/15 on the Climate Wellbeing Network website: http://climatewellbeingnetwork.weebly.com)

I have a "Planet Rescue" notebook made from recycled paper, which I bought to record my notes from a training course with activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy at Tyalgum Tops in the 90s. As part of the training we were asked to make a mask representing the parts of ourselves that we were ready to let go of, for the sake of the Earth. After I had made it, I drew a small picture of my mask in my notebook. I named it "My Cynical Despondency"

We burned our masks in a ritual fire that night. But, (perhaps because I still have my drawing?), I have not yet given up my cynical despondency.

Every time I see, on the nightly news, or in my Facebook feed, some new example of the horrors perpetrated by my own species on other humans, animals, ecosystems...my cynical despondency rises again, or rather sinks to a new low. Considering how dysfunctional we are, might it not be better that we do carry on with business as usual until climate change wipes us off the planet so she can start again?

During one of these bouts, brought on by some awful example of animal cruelty for the sake of making money, I drew this cartoon:

I didn't show anyone my cartoon, however, because, well, it's too negative! How could I be a climate change activist and secretly feel that the planet would be better off once it sneezes us off? I closed up my cartoon folder and got on with my attempts to "save the Earth"...But I did Google "does homo sapiens deserve to live?" And amazingly I found a lot of people who say "No!"

Recently, listening to a series of seminars called " The Future is Calling Us To Greatness", I was perturbed to discover a lady who is doing "palliative care for the Earth". There are a lot of people now who believe that it's already too late, that we are about to see the end of life on this planet due to runaway climate change. Perhaps we should all just be trying to enjoy each moment we, and life on Earth, have left, in the manner of someone with terminal cancer?

I am repelled by this idea. I don't want to give up the fight and do palliative care! I want those f***ers to put a price on carbon, stop subsidizing fossil fuels, transition to a green economy; I want global justice for all humans and non-humans. Yet the cynically despondent part of me wishes for the end of my species. It lies submerged under lots of do-do-doing, until the next wave of despair hits and I wonder why I'm even bothering.

But do I have to stomp my cynical despondency back into its box? What if I were to let it see the light of day, tell my closest friends, even share it in a blog? What if I could "come out" to my cynical despondency, hold it in one hand, and in the other hand hold my love for this blue jewel planet and all its wonderful, precious inhabitants, even its dysfunctional pathetic humans, us, me? So that I can keep going, keep moving towards the world I want to live in, no matter how dysfunctional we are at this moment in our history, and no matter how unlikely it seems that we're going to pull out of this nose-dive?

Is that, perhaps, what Joanna means by "Active Hope"*? I think my goosebumps are saying "yes!"

* Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone.

0 Comments

Expressing urgency without alienating: sharing our climate stories

18/8/2021

0 Comments

(originally published on Climate Wellbeing Network website on 20/11/15, now http://climatewellbeingnetwork.weebly.com)

“I’m an activist first and a therapist second”, I heard myself saying to Sally with surprising clarity and quite a charge. We had been discussing how to structure a short “self-sustainability” session for staff in a government environmental department as part of “mental health month”. The theme I had proposed for this session was: How do we take care of ourselves as we face the global challenge of climate change? Sally was suggesting that perhaps beginning with workplace issues and then broadening the discussion to more global issues would be wise? Some of them might not even have thought about climate change?

I found myself reacting quite strongly to this suggestion. I had spent most of my career teaching and supporting people, with body-oriented and arts-based approaches, to take care of themselves in difficult life and work situations; but now the spectre of climate change and its implications for life on earth loomed large for me, overshadowing other self-care issues. “If they haven’t yet thought about climate change, maybe it’s about time they did!” I blurted.

Reflecting on these statements of mine later, I am reminded of Jungian psychotherapist James Hillman’s work, with which I resonate. For Hillman, modern psychotherapy needs to be situated in a larger context, the context of our currently dysfunctional relationship with the ecological world. In the 90’s I had enjoyed the conversational book he and Ventura had written, We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy - and the world’s getting worse, which explored the idea of the therapy room as a place to support people’s expression of their discomfort with the status quo and the arising impulses toward social change activism - “awakening civil courage” - rather than pathologizing and ameliorating these as unhealed personal past trauma.

I’ve never been able to stomach the idea of being paid to do corporate “personal growth/team building” sessions whose purpose is to make workers more efficient and happy while their corporations are busy adding to the global capitalist growth enterprise that is rapidly extracting, exploiting and decimating the planet. So I guess that’s what I meant by being an activist first, therapist second.

My urgency voice is stroppily saying: At this late stage of my working life, I don’t want to “pussy-foot” around putting people’s comfortableness before the life-death challenge of climate change. It’s clear to me that socially sanctioned climate change ignorance/denial is not bliss, but a ticket to oblivion for human civilization as we know it and most of our fellow species.

However, then I am faced with the “yes, but…” that George Marshall has so eloquently described in his book Don’t even thing about it: why our brains are wired to ignore climate change. I realise that Sally was right in being cautious, not only for considering client wellbeing, but even in terms of supporting mobilization: confronting people with the facts has been tried by scientists and activists for many years, and instead of mobilization it has resulted in a backlash response. Clive Hamilton refers to as “sinister” the recent labelling of non-violent and legal activists, by Australian Senator Brandis and others in our climate-recalcitrant government, as “eco-terrorists”, “sociopaths”, “climate catastrophists” and “bullies” who practice “vigilante litigation / lawfare” in order to prevent new massive coal mine developments or coal-seam-gas expansion. Hamilton says these words reveal a deep loathing for environmentalists. Such a loathing presumably springs from the defence of a world-view, and a beloved business-as-usual scenario that is now on increasingly shaky ground.

So how do I honour my feeling of urgency without alienating those who might not yet have dared to come face to face with climate change? How do I find a middle ground: facilitating a movement forward toward engaged citizenship rather than either fostering “comfortable numbness” or feeding a reactionary loathing for “greenies”?

Does one answer lie in sharing stories? When I think about the most memorable aspects of recent talks I’ve attended by inspiring social change agents, what stays with me are their stories. Christopher Wright, co-author of Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations: processes of creative self-destruction, has collected and analyzed many climate change narratives from corporate environmentalists; at a recent Living in the Anthropocene meetup in Sydney, he described how his own “climate aha” epiphany actually came after meeting an Al Gore Climate Reality presenter. Scott Ludlam, WA Greens Senator took what he described as “a risk” at a Festival of Democracy session to tell us a personal story: his mind-expanding experience when he, as a young white city-raised environmentalist, was first exposed to the indigenous perspective on uranium mining on their country. At the same session, Julian Assange spoke to us, via Skype from his prolonged confinement, with some humour about how he draws some optimism from the bungling incompetency of the bureaucratic surveillance machine.

The questions so often asked during Q&A sessions after such presentations are: How did you first become involved…? and How do you keep going in the face of…? We want to know the human story behind the scientific facts and the moral imperative.

Because it is the human stories that contain the seeds of empathy, resonance, that can awaken in us, and make it safe to feel, the enormity of this challenge – because others have trodden that path and survived. Thus perhaps it is by sharing our own climate change stories that we can find that delicate middle way toward a movement that can transition us into a liveable world…

0 Comments

Climate Change: Going deeper than ecology

18/8/2021

0 Comments

(first published in 3/2/15 on the Climate Wellbeing Network website, now:
http://climatewellbeingnetwork.weebly.com)

Picture this scene: a small group of people wearing decorative masks are seated on the ground in a circle in silence. A closer look reveals some masks that resemble animals such as possums and bears, some birds, insects, some that look like trees which are adorned with twigs and leaves, and still others that appear to be landscapes, mountains, rivers and clouds.

The "bear" begins to speak. "Welcome, Beings, to our Council. We are here to discuss the gravest of challenges facing us. We are here to listen to one another. Each of us will have the opportunity to speak and be heard. I ask you not to interrupt one another with advice or suggestions, but if so moved, to utter "I hear you" or other words of support. When all have spoken we will open ourselves to receiving and sharing any wisdom that may come to us about how to deal with our challenges...."

Wind back the clock...

A day before, these people had come to a Council of All Beings workshop. They were people with one thing in common: they were concerned about the changes that human beings are making to the Earth's ecosystems and climate. They had come together from all over Sydney. Some were already friends, others were strangers.

As the first day proceeded, they had engaged in playful experiential processes to get to know one another, settle into their breathing and their bodily sensing. They had used their imaginations to connect with the movements of their ancestors, the primates, mammals, even lizards and fish. This was called "Evolutionary Remembering".

They had shared with one another the feelings that they had brought with them, now safe to emerge, of sadness, anger, fear or emptiness. They had been gently guided into experiencing the gift which may be found under such feelings. Gifts that empower.

Then they had spent some time in the bush, finding a natural "ally" there, a Being that might have something to say...And they came back to the group with ideas and decorations with which to create their ally's mask. The mask that they would ritually put on the next day...

Climate Change Facts - Climate Change Feelings

How does a Deep Ecology workshop such as a Council of All Beings contribute to our engagement with climate change?

The more facts we learn about climate change and its potential consequences, the more likely we are to go into defensive, self-protective responses such as denial, or paralysing responses of despair and giving up. If we avoid these extremes we might find ourselves getting REALLY ACTIVE to the extent that we eventually burn ourselves out!

Deep Ecology goes behind, underneath, the facts, into the psychological and spiritual dimensions of our relationship with other life on this planet-home of ours. It helps us to refind, and really experience, our ecological self: how we are actually part of an evolutionary process, how we are embedded in our ecosystems. We get a glimpse of what it could be like for our fellow Beings on the planet.

Such a workshop also facilitates our coming together to share the 'inconvenient' feelings that are not safe or appropriate to express in everyday conversations with family or friends. And through that shared bravery, we find colleagues with which we can 'go forth' as a movement.

Beyond the scientific facts of climate change are our human choices on how to respond. Participating in a Deep Ecology community gives us the resources to turn our deep caring into sustainable action.

0 Comments

Rosemary Faire

I am an expressive arts therapist and adult educator desiring to support climate change engagement and resilience in transition. My work-life journey has taken me through biological sciences (epigenetics), embodied education, music and movement therapies and deep ecology, and I'm keen to facilitate the formation of creativity-based support groups and peer supervision among those who are concerned about our planetary sustainability.

Coming Out as a Cynical Activist

Expressing urgency without alienating: sharing our climate stories

Climate Change: Going deeper than ecology

Rosemary Faire

Archives

Categories