It's tempting to think that if you scare the shit out of people -- really convince them, down to their bones, that hurricanes, diseases, and starving refugees are hiding just around the corner -- that mass mobilization against global warming will at long last ensue.
There's good reason to doubt it. Fear causes fairly predictable reactions, which do not include international cooperation, equitable distribution of resources, cost-benefit analysis on a multidecadal scale, and short-term sacrifice in the service of long-term problem-solving. They do include increased xenophobia, reactionary moralism, and susceptibility to demagogues.
That is to say, the language of fear intrinsically serves the needs of authoritarian-leaning politics, regardless of the fear's particular object. That's the conclusion of a series of posts on fear and environmentalism I wrote a while back, and it's echoed in a recent article from John Judis in The New Republic. Judis takes a look at some results from the burgeoning field of political psychology and finds evidence that reminders of mortality ...
... can trigger a range of emotions -- from disdain for other races, religions, and nations, to a preference for charismatic over pragmatic leaders, to a heightened attraction to traditional mores.
The researchers call this "worldview defense" -- "the range of emotions, from intolerance to religiosity to a preference for law and order, that they believe thoughts of death can trigger."
Environmentalists terrify the populace with stories of oncoming doom, and in the next breath proclaim that the worldview of humankind must change fundamentally, that we need a global spiritual transformation.
The former triggers worldview defense and the latter exacerbates it. If you tell people that all they know is false and corrupt, and that they must leap with you into an entirely new world, you are going to create extremely high barriers. Almost by definition, very few people are going to join you. The rest will find some way to preserve their reality -- by disputing the message, by disdaining those who carry the message, or simply by tuning the whole mess out.
We -- you and I and all human beings -- cling to what we know, what gives our world order and meaning. Threatening that causes us to cling tighter. We fear loss of control, particularly when confronted by the ultimate loss of control: death.
That reaction is fine if your goals are reactionary. If your goals are progressive, it works against you. Progressives must convince people that changes in the direction of justice and sustainability are the logical extension of who they are. They are a fulfillment of our true nature, not a fundamental break with our past. They are: what you have, what you know, only better, moreso.
Progressives must show people a path from here to there, a continuity that can be bridged with hope and confidence. Fear yields neither.
Postscript: Relatedly, see "Authoritarianism and the political divide" by Jonathan Weiler and Marc J. Hetherington. They identify authoritarianism as "a general moral, political and social intolerance, an aversion to ambiguity and a related desire for clear and unambiguous authority," and say:
The original treatment of authoritarianism suggested it was a static personality type, but much recent work suggests that it waxes and wanes according to specific social contexts, especially levels of threat. When issues arrive on the agenda that engage authoritarianism, these issues will activate perceptions of threat and difference, making authoritarianism more central to shaping the terrain on which politics is contested even if, as has been true over the past decade, average levels of authoritarianism remain unchanged.
Importantly, issues likely to engage authoritarianism are among the most salient today. In 2004, gay marriage and the war on terror were particularly prominent. In 2005 and 2006, Republican elites served up constitutional amendments to ban flag burning and gay marriage, obstructed extension of the Voting Rights Act over multilingual ballots, pushed English as the nation's official language, passed congressional resolutions resisting withdrawal from Iraq, and proposed a long security fence between the United States and Mexico in response to illegal immigration. All these issues tap, quite directly, fundamental concerns about the proper structure of the family and authority, the need to quell possible threats to social homogeneity, and the need to use whatever means necessary to protect a suddenly vulnerable-seeming nation. In short, all of these issues tap anxieties central to an authoritarian world view. [emphasis mine]
Do we really want to tap those kinds of anxieties? I'd say no.
Climate psychology in cartoons: clues for solving the messaging mystery
Children and riot police face off in Canadian “Moms” video
Comments
View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 2:59 am
27 Aug 2007
http://greyfalcon.net/greenenergy.png
It tells people that "peak fossil fuels" isn't the end of the world as we know it.
And that we really have a bounty of energy out there if we ever wanted to go get it.
For both our electricity and transportation needs.
_
Then of course you can tell people about quickcharging electric cars, and plugin electric hybrids.
http://greyfalcon.net/plugins6
http://greyfalcon.net/plugins
http://greyfalcon.net/phoenix
http://greyfalcon.net/tesla
http://greyfalcon.net/electriccars.png
_
I agree that Fear Uncertainty and Doubt doesn't play well for Environmentalists.
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precipice Posted 3:15 am
27 Aug 2007
There is a threshold beyond which those of us attempting to lead and inform cannot be responsible for what people fear. The continuity you describe could be described along the lines of, "Our habits and consuming practices have aggravated climate change, so now we need to take definitive action on all levels to arrest this change before it makes the world uninhabitable for us. We need to change our habits and insist on our government changing the laws that permit massive carbon emissions."
I'm sure many people find that scary, but do we hide the truth from grown-ups? Do we need to sugar coat global warming to avoid scaring anyone? If the stakes are not presented accurately, do you really believe people will make radical changes in their lifestyles and consumer choices?
I live in the progressive land where Lynn Woolsey is our US representative. I don't see significant evidence of people reducing their carbon footprints outside of the ubiquitous presence of the Toyota Prius.
The longer grassroots action is delayed, the more likely authoritarian control will emerge as crises mount. It's mellow right now...but nobody's about to shut down the coal-fired plants. I'm not complaining about the point of your article, but wondering sincerely - how do we motivate massive change?
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GreenEngineer Posted 3:24 am
27 Aug 2007
Yes, unfortunately, that's exactly what David's article suggests. Perhaps we should not need to hide the truth from grown-ups, but both recent research (well summarized here) and the evidence of the daily news suggest that people generally, and Americans particularly, do not really behave as "grown ups" (i.e. rational, responsible decision makers) when confronted with problems that are far outside of their comfort zone.
I think it stinks, but we are basically going to have to baby people through this psychological adjustment. Otherwise, they will simply tune us out.
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JMG Posted 3:46 am
27 Aug 2007
The history of humanity is a history, mainly, of authoritarian to totalitarian societies. Even today, a significant plurality (if not majority) of people live in authoritarian to totalitarian societies.
Here in the US, the government and the elite class increasingly embrace the methods of totalitarian governments. The argument is no longer whether the Bill of Rights means anything; it's whether or not any laws constrain the government agents as they conduct their "black bag" jobs ("sneak and peek" searches), disappear people without charges, and maintain a gulag on nearby islands, sift through all internet communications, infiltrate charities and activist groups, and build and maintain dossiers on people for daring to sign petitions, restrict peoples' ability to hear foreign media or travel overseas.
What have environmentalists had to do with this?
This whole argument boils down to "Stop scaring Joe Sixpack, he gets mean when he's scared."
Yeah, well, Joe gets mean pretty often without environmentalists having to say anything at all. To the extent that policies ignore the grim environmental realities, we can expect even greater social stress, leading to even greater competition for resources, which will lead to even greater authoritarianism.
We can blame the fire on the alarm system if we want to, but that doesn't make it accurate.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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GreenEngineer Posted 3:48 am
27 Aug 2007
To clarify: The book is not summarizing research in human behavior per se. Its primary thrust is to examine the validity of 10 "great truths", ideas which appear in similar form in a variety of different world philosophies/religions.
However, the context of this examination is recent research into the psychology and neurophysiology of human behavior. It is the most readable and yet accurate summary of this research that I know of. And this, in my mind, is the book's real value to the Gristmill crowd. It totally demolishes a number of widely and dearly held beliefs about how people make decisions, and how much control each of us really has over our own behavior. It provides some critical clarity about what really drives behavior, which is critical if we want to present our case in ways that will actually be persuasive.
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sunflower Posted 3:50 am
27 Aug 2007
Leadership does not require mindless fear, nor prophets. It does require trust in people willing to confront emerging risks, without fear.
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GreenEngineer Posted 3:53 am
27 Aug 2007
Questions of "blame" are really a waste of time, so I'm not going to address your comment in those terms. But there is a very strong and well-demonstrated fact of human psychology at work here: When you scare people, they shut down their critical faculties and reach for the familiar, and that which they perceive to be safe. This is well demonstrated in the literature (see my last comment).
This is, perhaps, the reason why most human societies in most places and most times have been authoritarian: it's what we tend to fall back to in times of stress.
Like I said, I don't care to play the blame game. But we have a choice: we can either accept the unpleasant facts about human nature and behavior and work with them, and maybe make some progress. Or we can hold fast to our righteousness, and to the extent that we are noticed at all, we will be working counter to our own goals.
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David Roberts Posted 3:56 am
27 Aug 2007
For whatever reason, whatever contingent mix of circumstances, you and I and most of the people reading this site do not have our identity bound up in consumerism and materially wasteful displays of status. But we have our identity bound up in other things, and our own ways of displaying status, and if those things were threatened -- if our whole way of life were threatened -- we would react just as anybody else does, with a healthy admixture of tribalism and demagoguery. We are not superior to non-environmentalists, nor even particularly different. All people think they are reasonable and enlightened until the amygdala kicks in with some adrenaline.
The point of all this is just to encourage empathy with the people we believe need to change, and a willingness to put some of our own idols in the firing line too. Fear is a tool of manipulation used by those who do not value the autonomy and worth of those they're trying to manipulate. Our side will never win that way.
grist.org
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David Roberts Posted 3:57 am
27 Aug 2007
grist.org
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justlou Posted 4:07 am
27 Aug 2007
Are we the voices of the interests that are leading civilization over the cliff?
Do you really think we have any kind of control to be able to turn any taps monopolized by the current system?
If your point is aimed toward anyone reading or posting on this site you could have done it less cryptically. It does seem to be a stretch.
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:12 am
27 Aug 2007
My point is that adults do act like (stereotypical) children much more of the time than we would like to admit, and that this is simply an aspect of human nature that we have to managed and deal with, rather than deny.
The crack about Americans was neither here nor there. I didn't actually mean that we are fundamentally less rational than, say, Europeans, though perhaps our internal story is less aligned with reality than that of some other cultures.
I certainly did not mean to suggest that environmentalists, or any other group, are immune to these realities. Some are perhaps more aware, and thus more able to compensate (and thus act more "grown up" more of the time), but that's a second-order effect at best. We're all monkeys in the end, and we're each of us less in control of ourselves than we would like to believe.
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JMG Posted 4:16 am
27 Aug 2007
OK, if giving people the most accurate information possible and trusting them to engage the higher brain functions to evaluate and act on that information is a sure loser, then what do you recommend?
What, if anything, does lead to sustainability, given our evolutionary inheritance?
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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David Roberts Posted 4:18 am
27 Aug 2007
Who is this "I" and who is this "self," and what would it mean for the former to control the latter? Perhaps these episodes of unconscious, uncontrolled behavior are the norm, and the "I" and the "control" are the illusions. Blah blah, light the bong, bring me my snowboard boots, I'm back in grad school!
grist.org
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:34 am
27 Aug 2007
I like this analogy because it reflects two very important realities about the human mind:
The unconscious is much, much bigger than the conscious mind. We see only a tiny fraction of all that goes on.
The unconscious is much more powerful. The rider can direct attention, cajole, trick or otherwise try to guide the elephant, but brute force (i.e. "pure willpower") isn't going to get you very far. At the end of the day, the elephant will go where it wants to. The key to self control is not to control the elephant directly, but to control its desires and where it puts its attention.
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GreenEngineer Posted 4:46 am
27 Aug 2007
We have to offer them a good story, a vision of what a better world looks like.
That's easy to say, and really hard to do. I know for sure that it doesn't play to my strengths. I'm not a story-teller, though I may have to become one.
In the meantime, let's look at why it's so hard to do effectively. There's no question in my mind that we can build a world that is much richer, cleaner, and more just by changing our relationship with nature from one of exploitation to one of cooperation. But it's very hard to tell a convincing story about that, one that is credible, believable and engaging.
Part of the reason that this is hard, is that it's always hard to write good fiction. But it's particularly hard to write good fiction that is based on a set of perceptions that most of your audience lacks.
Modern people are very much cut off from nature. They don't know where water, food, or energy comes from. Nature and natural forces, and the web of life are strangers to them. They are much more familiar with and comfortable with technology and human artifacts, because those have been the predominant forces for the last two generations at least. Note that they don't understand technology, for the most part, nor do they need to. But they are comfortable with it, and they believe in it.
It seems to me that one of the basic questions that confronts the would-be teller of a green future is this: For an audience that is saturated with technology, and basically unfamiliar with the ways of the natural world, how do we make the idea of a prosperous future based on ecologically-sound choices believable and attractive?
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sunflower Posted 4:53 am
27 Aug 2007
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:58 am
27 Aug 2007
Most progressives "fear" that the way things are going will lead to bad consequences, and indeed, do lead to bad consequences, eg., racism and poverty. Another example, I think that it is quite possible that the loss of manufacturing in the U.S. will eventually lead to economic collapse. The obvious solution is to encourage manufacturing. How do you move toward the better when talking about the bad present is so problematic?
I think the answer is to lay out the bad, clearly and simply, in a hypertexty way leading to more information if people are interested, and then making the bulk of the presentation be an envisioning of a better way. Over and over again, we see books -- I just finished "the upside of down", for instance -- that spend 90%+ on the negative while promising to show a positive vision -- e.g., "Upside of down" should have been called "downside of up". So, maybe a more practical approach, instead of worrying about neuroscience, is to spend, say, 25% of a presentation of the bad, and 75% on the good.
JMG -- One "beef" I have with you is that you seem to be arguing here that we should be straight with people, and then you have said in the past that we should present a 5%-per-year solution because to present the full-blown solution would "scare" people -- say, like a train-centered society. So should you not "scare" people, or scare them a little bit at a time?
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:02 am
27 Aug 2007
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GreenEngineer Posted 5:19 am
27 Aug 2007
In the meantime, how do we tell story to people without this background? We can't wait several generations for educational reform to be enacted, and then to alter people's thinking.
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GreenEngineer Posted 5:22 am
27 Aug 2007
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JMG Posted 5:30 am
27 Aug 2007
Most world-changing goals can be stated either as "Change the world" or "Do A, then B, then C, then D ... and when you're done, you'll have changed the world."
Few people do anything at all when told "Change the world." It's simply not effective at motivating action, mainly because people think that their actions will be ineffectual or they can't see how it leads to the desired end state.
On the other hand, concrete, discrete, measurable actions, even small ones if they can be shown to lead to the end goal, can motivate changed behavior, which motivates the changed thinking.
That is how you control the elephant, if you will. Right action leads to right thinking more than right thinking leads to right action.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:31 am
27 Aug 2007
In other words, sometimes I get frustrated when I see all the talent and time that goes into making video games, when that same talent could be used to show how a sustainable society works.
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sunflower Posted 5:32 am
27 Aug 2007
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:40 am
27 Aug 2007
Or do you feel that laying out just a few first steps is better? The problem I see developing here, which is why it may be premature to engage in this discussion, is that it starts to get rather abstract -- philosophical, even -- without examples. I think it's important to discuss ultimate configuration of a sustainable society, while at the same time talking about more practical next steps. But how do those two processes get hooked up? (again, without getting too abstract).
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Kristina & Jason Makansi Posted 6:11 am
27 Aug 2007
That said, however, we didn't spend countless hours over the past year and a half working on Lights Out unless we didn't believe that a little education--and lively discussion--didn't go along way. In fact, we agree wholeheartedly with Jon Rynn's post ...I think that education has to be part of the picture, that is, it will be necessary to educate people about how their society works from a technology point of view. A well-known progressive I know once got up from our discussion, flicked on a light switch, and said, "I have no idea how that happened". I think we have to have clear and simple ways of giving people a basic "industrial literacy", and also an "ecological literacy", that is just as important as reading literacy.
This is precisely why we worked hard to provide a hard look at the electricity industry in our book, Lights Out. Whether you agree with the positions taken in this book--or any other books on the energy industry--it is important to understand how those in the industry see the challenges and opportunities. (Plus, it doesn't do any good to demonize the rank and file folks working in the industry--the large majority of whom care just as much about the future of this planet as the rest of us.)
It's fine to say let's solve global warming by using clean, renewable sources of energy--and, in fact, we're all for it--but shifting the focus of the largest industry in the nation won't, unfortunately, just happen overnight. The physics and the technologies, the raw materials and the manufacturing, the educational/labor issues, the investment and economic shifts, all have to be dealt with in rational (we're back to that, again) ways. Is it necessary? Yes. Is it possible? It has to be. Will it be easy? Absolutely not.
Pearl Street::Jason and Kristina Makansi
Read Lights Out reviews
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mkayser Posted 6:14 am
27 Aug 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 6:23 am
27 Aug 2007
Along with a discussion of melting ice caps and glaciers, present a renewable energy plan to halt GHG effects. It's just that simple.
Accentuate the positive economic effects of a renewable energy boom along with a short history of other instances where humans rallyed to a cause and saved the day. With stunning productivity resulting in greater prosperity. Present the scenario as justifiably frightening, then compare this crisis to others that were averted in time by massive human effort and ingenuity.
Reality, even if it is fearful, is the wake up call. Wake up to positive action, not to fear.
No need to sugar coat the situation, expose the possibility that solutions can yield more nutrtious results than a thin candy shell. A revived economy, good jobs, and debt reducing healthy tax base.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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spaceshaper Posted 1:32 pm
27 Aug 2007
Hands up all those who've been so tempted - how many environmental activists are trying to "scare the shit out of people" to provoke "mass mobilization against global warming"? OK, one, two, another one at the back there. And now how many are simply speaking the truth as they see it, make of it what we will? Yes, yes, yes, all the rest of you, I kinda thought so.
For myself, I have a sorry vision of public policy driven not by a sensible fear of impending but still avoidable traumatic global climate change but by a pusillanimous fear of pissing off a few "Joe Sixpacks", to use GreenEngineer's unsavory and condescending term. This is the way our world ends, not with a bang but a whimper?
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:58 pm
27 Aug 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1212 ...
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0702-26.htm
And how do you crack someone out of unconscious denial. I'm not quite sure what is the best way to do that. However I'm sure George Lakoff would have a good idea.
http://www.chelseagreen.com/images/DTE_Sampler.pdf
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/books/
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JMG Posted 3:02 pm
27 Aug 2007
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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caniscandida Posted 6:18 pm
27 Aug 2007
Perhaps your image could be enhanced. Does the rider speak to the elephant, or no? Does the rider try to turn the elephant gently, by pressing one or another knee behind one or another ear? Or does he use a metal spike, with a hook, which causes a bit of pain?
Here is another image, rather more hellenic and platonic: The mind (or soul, psyche), in the act of making a decision, is comparable to the conflict between the hero Bellerophon, riding the winged horse Pegasus, and the Chimaera, usually described as a unique three-part monster, part lion, part goat, part serpent.
The mind (or psyche) is, as it were, in fact all three characters taken together: Bellerophon, Pegasus and the Chimaera. Bellerophon is, perhaps, what we might call the conscious, reasoning intellect; Pegasus is the conscious will, as well as the emotions of pride and self-determination that support it (Pegasus is bipartite, a horse with the wings of a bird); the Chimaera is the great, supremely massive, unknown remainder, about which all we can say is it is powerful, often dangerous, and dominated by such motivating forces as fear, anger, wounded pride, envy, panic, hunger, greed, competitiveness, sleepiness, horniness and so forth.
According to the myth, Bellerophon shoots arrows into the Chimaera, and it dies. The death of the Chimaera is received as a victory. But is that the correct evaluation? Bellerophon himself is a failed hero: after killing the Chimaera, he attempts to ride (hubris alert!) to the top of Mount Olympus, where the gods live, on the back of Pegasus; but by divine warning, Pegasus throws him off, he falls to Earth, and is crippled; he lives out his life in poverty and obscurity.
Better therefore to interpret the killing of the Chimaera as a moral error. Bellerophon's original task, he should have understood, is to keep the Chimaera from frightening and injuring a community of vulnerable beings, including people and non-human animals. Does he need to kill it to accomplish that? Would not some reconciliation and redirection be better? He has surrendered to the monster-killing assumptions of his tyrannical master, who anyway, basically, seeks his death -- the classic false counselor. And in so surrendering, Bellerophon does wrong: to himself in the first place.
Pacifying the Chimaera, and becoming reconciled with it, is far more difficult work than merely killing it. According to the myth, the original Bellerophon was not heroic enough. But one of us might be.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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spaceshaper Posted 10:41 pm
27 Aug 2007
Dave is tilting at the wrong windmill. The effects he's concerned about are real enough, and they've reared their heads a few times in the last century. But not as a result of a Cassandra's warnings - they've arrived when unscrupulous politicians have manipulated an already suffering population using false scapegoats. The Germans, Brits and Italians who marched in fascist rallies in the 1930's were reeling from the effects of devastated economies and massive unemployment. Jews, romanies and homosexuals were an easy target then, after the tsunami of postwar economic and cultural devastation had already hit. If the previous generation of leaders had been aware enough of the consequences of their actions, and the Treaty of Versailles for example had been written with more prescience, the Hitlers and Mussolinis and Moseleys would have had little to work with.
A recent example of manipulation of the populace by would-be authoritarian politicians was the build-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. A few idiots were moved to unsocial or even violent acts against individuals perceived to be arabic or Muslim, but most of the quite comfortable American populace shrugged their collective shoulders and effectively said, OK then, and went about their business. Absent a deeply physically distressed general population, no mass xenophobia and hatred.
In our present situation, it's possible that coherent and realistic warnings about predictable consequences of our actions and inactions may just save us from the deluge. If this happens and disaster is averted we might get to see paint (low VOC of course) thrown on a few humvees and learjets, and oil-company execs getting egged. In the other eventuality, when the disaster arrives nothing will be out of countenance and we may indeed see xenophobic and allophobic hate groups coming to prominence. But it won't be because the the nasty environmentalists filled them fear. It'll be because life has gotten pretty unpleasant all round.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:05 am
28 Aug 2007
http://salzburgacademy.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/moser- ...
One thing it mentioned is that Fear must always be paired with a plan of action that enables people to deal with the problem.
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