As President Bush makes a last attempt to gut environmenal protections, a strange silence continues about the psychological motivations behind ecocidal behavior.
Counseling violent men taught me that actions say more than excuses. A husband who beats his wife or kids "because they deserve it" or "because I'm master of the castle" is actually exhibiting not only psychological immaturity, but malignant hatred no matter how much he says and believes that he actually loves his family.
Nobody seems to be applying the same psychological logic to those in our nation who make it their business to destroy entire landscapes while remaining beyond accountability. The usual reason given for their behavior is greed, but if we consider their behavior, what we actually find is hatred: deep, culturally conditioned hatred of what's left of the natural world. It's time we understood this behavior for what it really is.
We have been told for two thousand years that Earth is either a stage for some spiritual drama leading to an apocalypse (a prophecy that could end up taking itself literally) or, since the Industrial Revolution, that Earth is just a "resource," uncaring and exploitable. Add to this the pioneer waste-it-and-go-elsewhere mentality of American culture and the result is a nation of people who feel at home nowhere. My colleague Linda Buzzell refers to this state as "dysplacement."
Some of us feel so alienated from the world as to actively despise it, and these are the people who want to blast it, pollute it, crush it, and leave it lifeless. The hatred implied by this is terrifying, as is the irrationality set loose by all forms of undiagnosed rage. No quantity of scientific proof can convince such people not to harm the planet, any more than studies on family happiness can convince a batterer to stop battering. To dismiss what they do as a policy priority is hopelessly naive.
If we hope to stop the ongoing destruction of Earth, we will have to be clearer about the deadly, red-hot psychology involved--an internal combustion that consumes the human heart--and quit making excuses for those who suffer from it. Nobody lets an angry teen throw bricks through a window; neither should we allow anyone to go on despoiling our home, whatever the reasons they hide behind.
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
It really is time to stop the excess, the incessent consumtion, the greed. Really. it's time to stop.
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The sneering hostility of a particular brand of right-winger toward "environmentalists" and "tree huggers" and "save the whales types" and "PETA" is a vaguely threatening thing, with an undercurrent of "If I could blow all these people away and get away with it, you'd never find their remains."
You're right. It's abusive thuggery. I've just never quite put it all together before.
The irony is that the planet will go on, no matter what we do to it. It's US who'll die out and disappear. Ecocide is species suicide. Sustaining "the environment" is really shorthand for sustaining a human-friendly environment. There'll be SOME kind of environment, some kind of planet, always.
Rush & Co. have managed to convince their audience that somehow, keeping this rock habitable is a bad idea. Wow.
They, quite simply, don't believe what you do, and they have different priorities. They would prefer to continue traditional use of resources, and consider those who place a higher priority on environmental protection to be naive. Is that a shame? I think so.
But there's no clear or latent "undiagnosed" pathology. To suggest there is is wrong on so many levels, I'm not sure where to start. For one, it allows you to dismiss and effectively demonize a huge chunk of America's population - those with whom you disagree. In fact, it smacks of the ideologically-driven abuse of the psychiatric system under the Soviet Union. Those who don't get with the program are "sick".
This kind of theory also reduces the ability of those who hold progressive views to persuade those with whom they disagree, the only way large-scale persuasion happens: over time. Worse, it insults the intelligence both of your supporters and your opponents, by proposing that persuasion isn't possible or a worthwhile objective... becasue the "bad guys" are mentally ill.
By the way, while we're talking about "undiagnosed rage"?... May want to give this post another read.