Cheermongers and Hope Fiends – Part 2
Todd asked again: so why do cheermongers do what they do
Why? Big question. Lots of facets to the answer. “I tend to get the most response, Todd, when I slow down, get out of my head, stop spouting off about what I think I know, and just express how I’m feeling. It was true back when I was sending out articles to an email list. It’s true now with the blog. Some people deeply resonate with what I’ve said, and appreciate my expression of feeling. But others have a different reaction.”
whats that
“I’m talking about the collapse of civilization, Todd, and the crash of the human population. I’m talking about mass extinction. I’m talking about the possibility that we, ourselves, we civilized human beings, will slide down the chute to oblivion. These things are almost impossible to wrap our minds around, especially inside of our current cultural stories. And when we begin to look at these things, they can be so overwhelmingly frightening that we seek any path we can find to step back from them.”
thats understandable dude
“Of course it is. The enormity of the situation almost compels us to shut down, because if we start to let it in, to feel it, to see it, we begin to sense that our grief is so huge, our pain so great, our anger so sharp, our fear so cold, our helplessness so gripping, that we will be undone by them. We feel like we’ll fall apart or go mad.”
so instead people stuff it down and try to stay positive so why do you get more response when you express your own feelings about things
I thought about that for a moment. “I think what happens is, if I show up and speak of being afraid, of having feelings of grief, or anger, if I speak of my despair, my hopelessness, and especially my growing acceptance of collapse, there are some who respond to that with great fear. If I’m not holding it together, a guy who’s been looking at this stuff for years, then what chance do they have? It’s almost as if they need me to be strong and clear and powerful, by which they mean upbeat and hopeful, because their strength is dependent on mine. If I lose all hope, they fear that they will as well. Losing all hope is not an acceptable option in this culture.”
so then people tell you to cheer up to go read a good novel or watch a movie or get ice cream and stuff like that right they tell you to stop thinking about the world so much to stop thinking negative thoughts to stop the doom and gloom to stop being a fearmonger to hold onto hope no matter what and they even tell you that your negative thoughts are going to actually create the collapse and the apocalypse and all that is that right
“That’s right. They call me a fearmonger rather than just owning that they are afraid. And they correctly identify that my expression of feeling does, indeed, have the power to create catastrophe, just not at the scale they imagine. The catastrophe they fear most is inside them. If I feel, they may start to feel, and if they start to feel, they think, they’re doomed. So they need me to stay positive, to be strong, to hold hope.”
I can understand that I had that happen myself when the chicken showed me my life my whole lifestyle when he showed me what was going on I felt like I was being torn apart like I was dissolving like I was being disassembled into a thousand pieces
I remembered the question that started this off, over two weeks ago. “Todd, did you ever find anything about the correlation between trauma and healing and environmental awareness?”
I didnt find much you were looking for some study or something you know from psychologists or something right I didnt find anything like that but I did find a really good article about trauma and the environment heres the link
I hit the link to find the article Todd was pointing to: a wonderful piece by Lisa Rayner called Ecological Collapse, Trauma Theory and Permaculture. In her article, Rayner looks at the similarities between individual human traumas and wide-scale ecological trauma, and at how both traumas can be healed. The two traumas are linked in causative ways, and Rayner notes how many of the ecologically aware have gone through individual catastrophe. “I am a trauma survivor,” she says. “This experience has given me the ability to understand our civilizational predicament in a way that people who have never experienced severe psychological trauma do not possess to the same degree.”
so shes saying that people whove gone through great pain will be better at facing into and dealing with the world situation like that lady said in the comments like you said before
“That’s my experience. We’ve all been traumatized, we who were born into this absurd and destructive culture, as surely as the land, as surely as the community of life itself. Those of us who have had the opportunity, or have needed, to confront and move through our personal trauma will likely be better able to meet the coming challenges, to more freely blaze the new trails of lifestyle and being that must be created if we are to have a chance at escaping the oblivion of extinction.”
so your documentary is like you want to give people a chance to feel the catastrophe thats already inside of them right to wake them up to let them feel the fear and anger and all that to kick the hakuna matata right out of them
“You could say it that way.”
so dude why is it wrong to call you a fearmonger
“That’s a good question, Todd.”
Next time.
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May 17th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Folks,
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2534
Worth reading. I was especially impressed with the comaprison of how large a population reduction we will need and what that looks like by comaprison to Iraq.
AV
May 17th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
thank you, AV!
May 18th, 2007 at 10:04 am
I agree, AV. And what a beautiful Freudian typo - Iraq as coma prison, as in only a culture in a (self-delusional) coma could imprison itself in such a way (to say nothing of the Iraqis themselves). This discussion of population at TOD is also well worth reading, including the comments: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2516
Dan
May 19th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Interesting blog. Here’s my take on it. I would classify a fearmongerer as someone that ONLY looks at the Dark, and a cheermongerer as one that only looks at the light. People need to be aware of both sides, as many non-western cultures understood.
After taking a Permaculture Design class, I realized that I dwelled too much on the negative. I kept reading stuff over and over again on subjects the I already knew much about. I wasn’t really being fair to myself or making myself happy. conversely many of my classmates dwelled too much on the light (”let’s run our cars on french fry greese”), without understanding enough of the problem.
reading the Tao Te Ching, I recently ran across this sagacious passage: “carry the Yin on your back and the Yang in your embrace.” In my own words, someone “not liking” what you have to say is not a valid argument, while focusing just on the problem could hardly be called a solution. Each has its own place.
I now try to look at the world’s problems as logically and clear-headedly as I can, and when I’m working on solutions I try to stay positive, though not in a glib way, but more as a strategy.
May 20th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Hey True
In the face of an insane culture, where the majority are permanently stuck in chearmongering and positivity (even though increasing evidence shows there is little foundation for it), we need to acknowledge what’s really happening!
IMHO we live in a shallow or false consensus trance bubble of materialistic happiness. A lot of what we do and a lot of the way we think is anthropocentric bullshit. Quite a few indigenous cultures have tried to explain this to us for a very long time!
If this comes over as fearmongering, so be it. I’m terrified at what I can see going on. The planet isn’t dying, she’s being killed by us ‘civilised’ ones. I’m full of fear, sadness and grief at the collapse of the biosphere already underway.
This is not so much for me and my community, but the mass extinction underway (at a rate never seen before in geological time), the loss of all that stunningly beautiful life that deserves to be as much as we do.
If we don’t take a stand for this life, and raise our voice against this, who will? If not now, when?
We need insight and compassion for sure to deal with this! Read the Shambhala Prophesy at http://www.joannamacy.net/html/great.html#
Tim and Sally you are doing Shambhala Warrior work, and I support you in it.
Regards
Ted
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:55 am
Peace Training:
Conservation, a Strategy for a Life of Comfort, Joy & Ease.
Step 1. Stop flying in jet aircraft. Your travel choice matters. We don’t have time to not have time. Trains don’t leave contrails. Skip the Plane, Take the Train
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:48 am
Ted,
I would have to say that I agree with your analysis. There are too many cheermongerers and not enough people looking at the ugly side of what’s going on. The first step is to be informed, which is why this is such a good movie. Then come the responses (not solutions). Then, the trick is to work on responses without ever losing sight of the problem and becoming delusioned.
I admit that the chances of their being a good ending to this story is unlikely. Though my expectations and my hopes for this thing are very disparate, I try to be the change I wish to see,” as Gandhi admonished. I am a Permaculture farmer, I show movie screenings in my community, and I am relearning all sorts of skills that have been lost in this culture; I would have to say that it feels very good.
-True
May 24th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I am trying to help people with solutions, but they just don’t want to hear there is a problem.
For instance, I built a nationwide carpool network to help people locate their neighbors willing to carpool. But as gas prices rise, people would rather cut back on other things, rather than give up the freedom of car culture.
Lawns to Gardens features “How To” videos for learning to grow food at home, but I doubt they are watched that often.
My wife even thinks that preparing for collapse is “going too far”, and if the system fails, “so be it, we deserve to get kicked off this planet”.
If we go from a culture of “There’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong to “There’s no hope we’re doomed!”, then we are certanly dead.
I believe in acting now to prevent total collapse. It’s the shocks to the system that should wake people up… but even Katrina hasn’t made us stop and think. America keeps plodding along, because people want to keep their jobs - all connected to money - all connected to growth.
Ultimately, we are trying to grow when we already have too many of us in the limited bowl… many people will start dying very soon.
It’s a sad fact of limits to growth, thanks to our ignorance and evil governments that refuse to tell humans the truth.
May 25th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Tim, It strikes me as rather obscene and pathetic that it should require suffering sexual or physical abuse; losing a child to malnutrition; being forced by militia to slaughter your parents; suffering untreated disease or starvation; growing up in a war zone; or other such “catastrophes,” or “traumas” to, as you write, “be better able to meet the coming challenges, to more freely blaze the new trails of lifestyle and being that must be created if we are to have a chance at escaping the oblivion of extinction.”
I believe that anyone who occasionally, at least, lets go of ego, and more than occasionally lives consciously and spiritually, is able to be fully present and feel the reality of our screaming surroundings, and then surrender to the inevitability and essential running out of time.
It is said that the “weapons” of Shambhala are compassion and insight. Compassion powers one to act on behalf of all sentient beings, and insight provides to depth of understanding that all beings are interconnected, and the ripple effects of one being’s actions affect the universe entire. Thus, Tim and Sally’s work is prayerfully to encourage and weave a continuity of wakefulness where there is silence, fear, and denial, underlying all the changing conditions of life.