The Biodiversity Of Emotions With Caroline Hickman
Mimi 0:00
"Psychology, so dedicated to awakening the human consciousness, needs to wake itself up from one of the most ancient human truths: We can not be studied or cured apart from the planet". That's a quote by James Hillman, a well known 20th century American psychologist. This quote also appears on the website of today's guest, Caroline Hickman. The interconnectedness between the planet and human psychology is not necessarily a new idea, but conversations around it do need to be had more, especially as it relates to how humans can learn to cope psychologically with the existential threat that is the climate crisis. In previous episodes, we've ventured into conversations about climate anxiety and eco-grief. Today, we're digging a little bit deeper to discover what it means to embrace the biodiversity of emotions, and to welcome radical hope into our lives.
[intro music]
Jordan 0:55
Hey, this is Jordan!
Mimi 0:57
And this is Mimi.
Jordan 0:58
And welcome to the Imperfect Eco-Hero podcast.
Mimi 1:01
The series that connects community, normalizes imperfections and empowers heroes.
[end of intro music]
Mimi 1:10
I am so excited to introduce today's guest. Caroline Hickman is a lecturer at the University of Bath in social work and climate psychology. And as a practicing climate aware psychotherapist, she has done work in social work since 1983, and as an integrative psychosynthesis psychotherapist with children, couples, and adults for 25 years. Caroline has also done extensive research on children and young people's relationship with nature and feelings about the climate and ecological crisis. Recently, she co-authored an incredible global study on young people's anxiety over a government and action on climate change. The study involves serving 10,000 young people, all of them between the ages of 16 to 25. In the survey, these youth were asked a variety of questions about their feelings and thoughts about climate change. Unsurprisingly, the results confirmed that children and young people around the world are in great distress and find climate change terrifying. Our conversation today begins by jumping right in to Caroline explaining the intricacies of this study.
Caroline 2:15
So my research for the last 10 years, and specifically the last 5 years, has been qualitative data research with children and young people. So, I sit with them in the room, or…or on zoom in the last couple of years. And so I've been researching with children as young as four and five. But that's face to face. But I only had 3/400 children's stories about how they feel. I knew that would not have the global impact that we wanted. We needed large data for this. So we were lucky we got supported financially, by a [inaudible] who paid for the poll. [Jordan says something inaudible] And in this there was something really important to bring the voices of large numbers of children to the table.
Jordan 3:09
Across how many countries…Like, how did you guys adjust for, like, the language barrier, just out of curiosity.
Caroline 3:15
Ten countries. Because we had to do this quickly. Because we only got the go-ahead back in April. And we wanted to get the poll out, get the results, get it analyzed, and make a statement to the world before COP. So we basically did two to three years academic work in probably five months, which was a bit insane. Which includes working evenings and weekends, every weekend, for the last few months… has been devoted to writing this and doing this and we just threw ourselves at it as a research group, because it's timing. We've got COP coming up. We…you know, we couldn't wait until January to release this. So we had to choose countries which were predominantly English speaking. Which means of course, we had to exclude lots of other countries, but…but we got a decent range in terms of global north and global south. And in terms of countries that were facing the immediacy of the climate crisis now, like the Philippines, and Nigeria, and India, and Brazil. So we had to select countries that we felt would give us the best diversity. We were limited to 10 countries. So, there was quite a wrangle in the research group about which countries we were going to choose. So we j—…it was a tough decision. And for me, I…the…the part that I'm sad about—but I'm working on it—is, you know, we missed out the low-lying Pacific nations. We missed out small countries. Um…and I'm working on it. I’m working on getting funding for that. Because for me, I really want their voices to be added to this now, but I also want to rerun it, in two or three countries like America, the Philippines, India, after the summer we've just had. Because I think we're gonna see different data, because this poll was run in May. And since then, we've had all the flooding in New W…New York, we've had the heat jam in the Pacific Northwest, we've had terrible events all summer, showing us that climate change is increasing in intensity. I…I…I think all these things impact on different people, in different ways, at different times. And some very engaged young people will have read the IPCC report, and others will have been oblivious to it. But I think it enters the collective unconscious. So you know, I'm a depth psychologist, depth psychotherapist. And so I use a psychological framework that includes the conscious, and the personal unconscious, and then the collective unconscious. And this is quite a Jungian framework depth psychology. So what that means is, unconsciously what's affecting me, out of my awareness, is what's affecting the children in Bangladesh. And it is what's affecting the people in Australia. And we may not be aware of this consciously. But I think we know it's in our bones. I think we know it in ourselves. Because we're connected in this web of life.
Jordan 6:42
When the IPCC report came out, it was also when all the wildfires in Turkey were happening…
Caroline 6:48
Yeah.
Jordan 6:48
…and like, I think it was, I think, also why on a collective, we were all on the same page, even for that brief [laughs] second, was because we had all these events that kind of supplemented it for...I want to say...it...for me in my life, the first time, like, whenever I'd heard about the IPCC report, where I live, I don't really see the effects of climate change. But this was the first time I couldn't be anywhere without seeing the fires that were happening in Canada, in my own country, with the tornadoes that randomly hit cities near me. And then this IPCC report comes out saying this is a code red. I felt like even though I’m…I know about climate change, and I’m…we're working in it, it's still fina— like, it clicked in, like, yeah, right, this is— it’s sh— literally showing us point blank, the reality that we're living in. And I, like, I wonder…
Caroline 7:36
Oh I love— I love that you say that, Jordan, because it's it is—I was just thinking as you were speaking—it's the reality. And it's…it's just becoming more real, isn't it? To the extent that we can't look away! Or we can try… But the defenses that we have to use, increasingly, we have to become more hardened, and more bitter, and more frightened in order to look away from this, and disconnect ourselves from the rest of humanity. In that sense, it's a bit like COVID, isn't it? We know that we're not going to get a solution to COVID in the world, unless the whole world is safe. And it's the same with climate change. I think there is a shift in consciousness and awareness. And I think COVID has played its part in that. But I think there's also a reaction against that, where people kind of go back into their country and think, “oh, we'll be alright”. But with climate change, there is no place to hide.
Mimi 8:37
No that— Yeah, that's exactly right. Like I keep thinking, like, where…where could you go now? And there's nowhere to go. Like, you're going to be impacted, wherever you are.
Caroline 8:47 Yeah.
Mimi 8:47
And it's just…it's so scary!
Caroline 8:50
Well, you are!
Mimi 8:51
Yeah!
Caroline 8:51
And you’ll be either impacted personally, or you'll be impacted socially or collectively. So okay, let's say we have a fantasy. Let's have a fantasy moment, right? So we have a country that will be okay. All right. Marvelous. Let's all move there. Problem is, there's going to be millions of climate migrants. Where are they going to go? How are we going to deal with that? You know, we have a collective social responsibility. I do not want to live in a world that only makes us safe. And that's not a political positioning. It's a moral, ethical, emotional, spiritual, cultural position.
Mimi 9:34
Yeah.
Jordan 9:35
I remember reading a post recently by Dr. Wilkinson. And she was saying that there are, like, five steps to kind of help you figure out your calling in climate. And the first one was feeling your feelings, and th— then scouting your superpowers. And I remember thinking, like—especially with my first attempts getting involved in this movement—I kind of skipped those. I was like “I don't want to feel anything, I just want to act.” [Caroline laughs] Like, “Acting is going to help cure my anxiety”. You really do have to feel your feelings first before any work can get done—not just on yourself but outside in the world and the communities you live in.
Caroline 10:10
Oh, that's it, healing the different parts of ourselves…
Jordan 10:13
Yeah.
Caroline 10:14
…rather than being at war with ourselves. Because these are natural emotions. It's like, we can't get rid of these emotions, we can try, but actually, they don't go very far, they come back. So, it is so much better to be in relationship with them. And they can be very surprising. I got [overlap with Jordan starting saying something then stopping] surprised recently by emotion, which I had no idea was there. Not a clue. It completely threw me. And I just learnt so much from being able to kind of just allow it that weekend and just go, “Okay, well, you're unexpected. I don't know where you've come from”. But instead of kind of…being completely overwhelmed, or judging, or being hurt by it, I just stayed curious. I talked about this as the biodiversity of emotions. It's a shorthand way of saying, in the same way as we need grass, and trees, and rivers, and elephants, and giraffes, we understand bio— ecological biodiversity. We need emotional biodiversity. So we need the anger, the grief, despair, the joy, we need the hope and the hopelessness. We need all of them, instead of kind of separating them out and saying, “These are the good ones, and these are the bad ones”. They don't know they’re bad, right? They...they're just there, they just…are themselves! And if we allow all of them, they all work together, they all have a message, they all create meaning. And I think that biodiversity then emotionally gives us the resilience that we need to face this climate crisis. So I think there's some positives in facing this adversity. And in facing the…this challenge—that humanity has never faced before, has it?—it gives us this opportunity to grow psychologically, and emotionally, and spiritually, and culturally. And in the Climate Psychology Alliance, we talk about growing down, and not just growing up. And th— and this means growing down into these feelings and these emotions.
Mimi 12:23
I'm curious about how you came to understand emotions in such, like, a beautiful way, like— how…what were conversations like, or experiences like, growing up with emotions? Because I don't think your understanding of emotions is often understood by many people, like, people have emotions, but they're not really in tune with them the way that you are. So I'm just curious how you got there.
Caroline 12:45
Great question! So no, I obviously didn't grow up with this. I grew up full of shame, feeling anxiety or depression, I grew up thinking that only some emotions were good, and some were bad, some were disallowed. And then feeling bad about having feelings. So I would get depressed, and then get depressed about being depressed. So...
Jordan 13:08
Very relatable. [laughs]
Caroline 13:10
Yeah! [laughs] And then I judge them and worry about myself and think, “oh, there's something wrong with me”. Yeah it…itt took years of going into therapy, and spiritual work and shamanic work, and processing things through many different psychological spiritual modalities. I experimented throughout my 20s and 30s. And I just went out and explored all these different ways of bringing yourself into relationship with yourself and all different parts of yourself, spiritually, soulfully. So that's the kind of straight answer. And alongside that, I realize I failed quite a lot. I got things wrong, I messed up, I made bad decisions. But I had this attitude of, you know, I'm here to learn my…my…as this sort of personality alongside the kind of journey of the soul. Which is I'm here to learn, I'm here to grow, I'm here to figure it out. Or [laughs] maybe not figure it out. I'm here to get lost. I'm here to get confused. And to learn— I learned to trust all of that shaped me and gave me a journey— an inner journey of adventure and an outer journey of adventure. Which, so long as I was doing that, slowly, slowly, everything started to kind of come together. And everything started to make more sense. And I started to understand myself, as well as understand others. And it gave me a way of understanding terrible things th— that were happening in the world. And also in my work as a psychotherapist, I learned to be humble, because I just got surprised, again and again and again of what the human psyche was…could a— could...could achieve. So I managed to learned, I think, through failure to be humble and to be not…not egoti— egotistical, although there's ego, but to not be sure and to be uncertain, and to sort of sit in service to that work. I've made all the major changes in my life by sitting with my back against a tree for a day, and thinking, “What do I do? I don't know what to do!”. And somehow, things come to me. And I think “Oh well, I'll do that”. And, you know, the kind of structured, organized, egotistical part of me says, “that's crazy”. But another part of me says, “Yeah, but who knows? What if? You try it, see what happens”. And I think once you can kind of bring those two parts of yourself together…So I'm not away with the fairies! It's not like, “Oh, I'm at service to the universe”. No, I never make choices. It's about having that willpower, plus that willingness to wait and see and be surprised.
Jordan 16:07
I'm curious what is, like, one thing in your life that happened that you didn't…that you didn't expect along the journey? [someone laughs] But what's like the one big thing or…or at least the most recent?
Caroline 16:16
Oh that's so mean, you can't ask me to pick one, Jordan!
Jordan 16:19
Okay, let's do the most— what's been the most recent? [Mimi laughs]
Caroline 16:24
Well, the most recent is…the most recent is painful. And I'm thinking, can I share it? I think I can, yeah! I'm asking is it okay to share this and I'm checking emotionally with myself and my body's like, “Is this going to be okay? Yeah, I think it's okay”. So the most recent, which absolutely surprised me….So…So, you know…so, here I am, you know, 25–30 years as a psychotherapist counselor working in this field, depth psychology, some wisdom, researcher, academic. And I got absolutely confused, bemused and blown away by an emotion that arrived three weeks ago, out of nowhere, which I never would have expected, couldn't anticipate, didn't see coming, and didn't understand. And…so the good thing is, I have the wisdom to allow it to be there and be curious and say, “Gosh, I didn't expect you”, but I had to feel the pain of it, which I struggled with initially. When we m— last met, my dog was alive. And he was, you know, 13 and a half. And I probably told you, you know, he's old, and he's not so well. So I spent the whole of July trying to keep him alive. And I spent the first part of August trying to face the imminence of his death. And…and I had him put to sleep on August the 13th. And…have felt profound grief, because he was my companion and [laughs] love of my life. So it was breaking my heart to have to say goodbye to him. But I knew I had to, because he was getting sick. And I wanted to time it right. So I didn't leave him to suffer too long. But I also had to kind of time it right, so I could hang on as long as possible and have as long as possible. So I knew from the beginning of July, our days were numbered, and I hit the grief. I'd probably been grieving low level all year. But I hit the grief at the beginning of July and started praying and thought, no, hang on. No. I have to make sure every day we have left is the best possible day, ever, for this dog. So I cooked him— I started cooking him organic roast chickens, right, we got through five organic…roast chickens. I didn't eat any of it. So I would be cooking these chickens and feeding him these chickens and I went to the shop and I bought all of these squeaky balls, his favorites, 40…balls. And we would go down the river and we would…he would swim and he would lose balls. And instead of worrying about him losing balls, I had so many it didn't matter how many we lost. And so I just thought we ought to just absolutely embrace life in these last few weeks and live life fully with love and joy and playfulness and grief at the same time. And not hold back. I thought to myself “I'm going to not hold back from this experience of grief and love and life, all at the same time”. For his sake and my sake, and he really wasn't in any pain, he was eating, and sleeping, and coughing as we know, and swimming and very happy…but it was me that was in pieces. So, I wanted to honor his life in the way we approached his death. Because you don't always get the chance to do that, do you? Sometimes it's kind of taken away from you. But I wanted to try and do…have a beautiful death for him that honors his life, and the spirit, and the character that he was. I ma— I made sure we had a lovely last day. We had walked in the woods and lay with him while they put him to sleep, and there was no resistance from him, he was relieved, he was happy to go, he was relieved. So it was absolutely the right time. And then three weeks after that, I was sitting outside the back of my house one day, and guilt hit me! From nowhere! I felt guilty about the six or seven times, in his 14 years of life, that I had been a really shit dog mother, where I'd really let him down. And I’d missed what he wanted, or shouted at him, because I lost my temper, because I was tired or something stupid, you know. Or I tried to give him chicken when he wanted sausage— I don’t know, just…silly little things! But the guilt was overwhelming. And I felt remorse, and guilt, towards him for all the times I had failed him and let him down. And…I kept perspective, I knew these were very small things, and very few. But it was also so important to me that I felt that guilt, because that was part of our relationship. And it was also an indication of love. You know, the grief we feel is an indication of the love. And I loved him. So it was right to feel that guilt, even though it hurt to feel that guilt. And even though I knew I gave him a wonderful life and a great death, I had to feel the guilt that played its part in our relationship, was part of the tapestry. So if you think of a tapestry, there's a weave in a tapestry, which might only be a small, small bit, but the guilt was important too. And I had no idea I was gonna feel that. And if I got really attached to that and felt really bad about the guilt, or giving myself a hard time about the guilt, or disallowed the guilt, that would have dishonored the multiplicity and the complexity of that love, and that life. So I had to allow it. Even though I didn't get it—I couldn't understand it—I had to respect and feel remorse. And I'd say sorry to him, and feel guilt and remorse a minute left. Within a day or two, it came in, it taught me something, it deepened me, and then it left. So it's hard, isn't it to have that wisdom and have the humility to respect the feelings when we can't understand them, or control them, or rationalize them, or make sense of them? Because you can be “where's this coming from?” But I was glad I had the capacity to kind of trust that these feelings made sense, even though it took me [laughs] a while to figure out what…what sense they…they had, because it's part of the tapestry of a life. It's part of love.
Mimi 23:16
Thank you for sharing that like that. I think it’s really beautiful. And you know, you give a really beautiful example of…of how emotions arise and how…Yeah, again, going back to this, like, idea that you said, like, this biodiversity of emotions, you know, like when you go through something as extreme as losing a loved one, like your your dog, you're gonna feel so many different emotions. And I think it's so great how you've expressed that you just welcome every emotion that comes and how important they are. And I think you also showed how…how one's relationship with their emotions, and also one's relationship with nature is so valuable and so important in your life
Caroline 23:59
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's a source of great distress and pain for all of us that we've…hm…that we've kind of disconnected from nature. And we…we no longer frequently—I'm generalizing, I apologize—but I think there's this disconnect in our relationship with nature, where we don't necessarily see ourselves as part of nature. And as…alongside that we don't see our own nature; we don't see the nature of our feelings or the way our body might respond. So that reconnection with nature aligns us, I think, with our purpose. And what we're doing in this climate biodiversity work, that by healing that and reconnecting with that, it enables us to feel closer to the work and give our hearts to the work. Children! You know, my research is with children, and young people primarily, and I think children embody a lot of the pain, and the grief and despair of the climate crisis for adults—I…I know I'm generalizing—but that's often because children is more closely aligned with nature, they're more close to the natural essence of being of…a child. Of course, not all children, of course, children grow up in pain, impressed and worrying, of course. But there is still a natural aspect to childhood that, I think, stays alive for the majority of children. And I think as adults, we lose that more often. And I think we would like to get back to it. And I think that's partly why we feel s— often, so challenged by children and young people, when they communicate about the climate crisis, because they speak the truth in a way that can be really hard to hear. So I think it's just really important not to over idealize people who might sound like [laughs] they know what they're doing, but we're all still learning. We're also figuring it out. And sometimes we’re lost and confused. And I think it's really good to be able to be lost and confused, and at the same time to have a map.
Jordan 26:06
On the topic ‘bout telling people that they're also not perfect—I do this very often and I do get scolded often at work—that when I tell people I'm not very confident, people lose trust in me. But Iike, I also like to tell people, and I think for me, what I love when people are that honest, is I think there's also room to work on it and to improve it, when they're like, “We don't know what we're— like, we know some of it, but we don't know all of it”, it opens the floor to conversations on it. I find when people come in saying that they know everything and that all of this is perfect, it kind of limits and stops that conversation. I no longer feel comfortable offering suggestions. But when you're also like, “this is the best that we know so far, but like, there's still so…so many ways to improve”, I think that then lets people who haven't contributed yet contribute their ideas, and then we can expand and grow on them. So, I do think being honest, to an extent, definitely, I think, will benefit this climate movement, much more than…than not— like, hea— people listening and hearing the fact that most adults don't know what we're doing. We know…we know some and we're…we’re trying and we're making headway but there's so much room to make it better.
Mimi 27:17
Well, I think we also got into this mess from being so inauthentic and being, like, this, like, we're top dog and like we're above— like, that's just, like, not natural at all. So Jordan, to your point, yeah, like, we need to approach this with authenticity and with honesty, because we can't go into it with the same lies that we told ourselves, that…that got us in this mess, right?
Caroline 27:39
Oh, you're absolutely right, Mimi, you're so right! Yeah, it's that kind of arrogance, you know, heroic, you know, “we are superior” thinking that got us into this mess, where we've got all the answers. And then technology's got all the answers and, and just growth is good. You're absolutely right! And you're…you’re right too Jordan! It is about being able to hold that tension between the opposites of knowing and not knowing, and competence and incompetence. And in the middle of those two, there is something else that can emerge, which I— you're absolutely right, it does create space for others. I think it's also, though, important for me to not put that feeling onto somebody else, especially not onto children and young people. So that's what I'm trying to explore here in this conversation. Because, you know, there's too many messages out there saying, “oh the young people will save the planet”, you know, “the youth activists will save the world”. And I think that's an abdication of the responsibility and culpability of adults who've got a greater responsibility. So it's a fine line is it? It’s a negotiation. So we say, you know, intergenerationally, we need to work together. And we do our bit and you do your bit. And then well…something amazing might happen. Even if I don't know what I'm doing, I'm kind of okay with not knowing what I'm doing. So I just think it's really important to not put our despair and our distress, and our guilt, and our shame on children and young people. That's where we have to draw a line. And I think that can happen, particularly with the Youth Climate Strike movement, where adults can— I'm generalizing— but adults can react badly towards children. Because of the guilt and shame it triggers.
Mimi 29:29
Yeah, I'm just like, just sort of thinking out loud here, but like, why…why do you think adults are so quick to put that guilt and put that shame on children? Like are children the scapegoat, or like, do you see that as like, maybe like, a psychological barrier to, like, dealing with the climate crisis, like, they…they don't know how else to deal with it except to blame someone else?
Caroline 29:51
I think there's lots of reasons. I don't think it's just one reason. I think, to some extent, modern contemporary industrial capitalist society disallows children's voices. Full stop. And we treat children as the other. And we minimize and we patronize…and we criminalize children and young people. Because, you know, there's a superior/inferior split going on, I think as well as that, children trigger guilt and shame, in adults, where we've either not noticed what needed to be done, or we feel bad because we noticed what needed to be done, but we've been selfish or kept kicking the can down the road thinking, “Oh, we've got time to deal with this”. And increasingly, it's obvious, we haven't got time to deal with this. And I think there's a reaction, a defensive reaction there, where the adults can defend themselves against those painful feelings. And the way we do that is by silencing children. I also think it's really hard for anyone over the age of…I don’t know…mid/late 20s, to truly empathize with what it feels like to be a young person. And I think there's a real big cultural difference with what it's like to grow up today. Uh…A 10 year old got very cross with me a few years ago. And he said, “No, you don't get it!”. He said, “You DON’T understand”. And I thought I was understanding, but he had a really good point. He said, “You, Caroline, grew up thinking that polar bears would be there forever”. He said, “I've grown up knowing they would go extinct”. And I think that's a really important point that children are growing up with the knowledge—the conscious aware knowledge—of the climate crisis, and knowing about mass extinction, in ways that older people didn't. I grew up thinking the planet would be around forever, and everything would be fine. You know, and then it dawned on me, you know, in my 20s, that that wasn't going to be the case. But I had that security of knowledge. A relationship with the planet, in my childhood, and teens, and early 20s. So okay, I had to hit the disillusionment, the grief, the despair, the anger, the frustration, in my mid 20s, when I learned this stuff. But children don't get the opportunity to be disillusioned because they're— I know I’m generalizing, but they're kind of born into this sense of grief and loss of the planet. So I think we have to work quite hard to empathize, and to imagine what it's like to be them, in order to respect their experience of this, which is different to mine. I think generationally, you two are probably in the middle…of this?
Jordan 32:57
Yeah.
Caroline 32:58
So…You sort of sit in between this…those groups?
Jordan 33:02
N— Well, it’s funny you mention that. I was— I recently was just having a similar thought, like, I…I definitely grew up, I would say, into my high school before climate change, even th— the term became a real thing. But up until then, you know, like, you just…you think about life differently, you don't really even really think about it being finite, you just assume it's gonna be infinite, everything's gonna be here, and you're just gonna be living the way that everyone else has lived up until this point.
Caroline 33:28
Yeah.
Jordan 33:28
But just the other— I think it was like a year or two ago, I’d started a job and they were asking me to, like, put in a part of my pay to our retirement saving plan. And it was the first time in my life…my parents were like, “You should do that we did”. And I was like, “I might not even be here. Why am I putting in money that I have now to a retirement saving plan, when I actually— like the Earth might not be around” and I realized that the thought my— that never crossed my parents’, like, like— and I remember telling them like, “that's not even something to worry about”, but I was like, “No but…but it is now.” Everything I thought about life, and like the way I thought my life would go, is vastly different. And I find that I struggle, even trying to understand my life, because I have… half my friend group who have started families, living a life, like, that appear to be blissfully aware that climate change is a thing or who aren't, like, actively showing it on…on social media. And then I've got another group of friends that are struggling to even cope with it, and don't even know how to l— how to live. Do they have— Do we have kids now, like, a lot of choices that, like, I guess people would make about whether or not to have kids, whether or not to live in a house? Like, all these questions, now have this underlying layer of, like, how is this impacting climate change? Like, is this the best choice…
Caroline 34:44
Yeah.
Jordan 34:44
…the way that we live— It's almost, like, this big ex— existential crisis. It's almost traumatic! Cause the way that we have always liv— like, humanity has always lived is no longer… possible. It currently isn't possible for a lot of communities.
Mimi 34:58
It IS traumatic! Yeah, it's traumatic and…
Jordan 34:59
And I feel like this is like a new unprecedented level of trauma that, like, I'm experiencing only now, but like kids have grown up their entire life…
Caroline 35:10
Yeah.
Jordan 35:11
…not knowing that the Earth is fine.
Caroline 35:12
Gosh, you're so right! This philosopher, Timothy Morton, is really interesting on this. He's, and I'm kind of, you know, using his words horribly, and badly, and misrepresenting him. But he said something like, uh… he talks about climate change as a hyper object, which is too big to imagine, too big to see, too big to understand. And he says, ‘This isn't PTSD —Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”— he says something like “we're suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder, because we suffered the trauma back in the 40s, and 50s, 60s, collectively as humanity, when climate change became a reality in people's minds — not everybody's minds, but some people's minds. And we're waking up to that trauma, it kind of went underground, and now we're waking up to it. But it's been there all along. These things are so hard for our brains to process, because humanity has never faced anything like this before. So we've got nothing to base it on, nothing to cognitively frame this with. So we go into a kind of disbelief that this illusion— an illusion, we go into a dreamlike state of disbelieving it, because humanity has got no experience of this. I mean, you know, people try and equate this to traumas of this to something like, you know, world wars, we…we've got collective traumas. Yeah. But they're not the same as climate and biodiversity crisis, because we could still convince ourselves that we would get over those wars, we'd get through them, we would get beyond them. And then life could go back to normal, more or less. And we see the same messaging with the COVID virus, you know, after vaccination, we've got to build back— better, we've got to get back to normal, right? We cannot say that about the climate biodiversity crisis. This is why it's blowing our minds, because we can never go back, because it's too late, because the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is too late. Even if we went to zero carbon emissions tomorrow, it would be too late. And I think that's really hard for us to comprehend. Because—
Jordan 37:29
Do you think that's because there's not a single, like, there's not a, like a person or group of people that are predominantly— like, when I think about world wars, and even think about nuclear warfare, like there was, you know, a country, a group of people… Not to say that people—
Mimi 37:43
It’s very direct. Yeah…
Jordan 37:44
Yeah, like, there's like a very direct reason this is happening. Whereas I feel like with climate…climate change, because it's so interconnected, and it's multiple systems, multiple groups of people— also then the planet and like all these other things so out of our control, that that's why this feels almost so much worse, is that, like, there was still an element of control that humanity had with world wars and, with...
Caroline 38:09
Yeah!
Jordan 38:10
And that we just— we have to almost understand that, unlike everything else, there's so many aspects of climate change that are so out of human control… At least for me, that's what I always struggle with, when it comes to my climate emotions is that no matter what I do, and I could do literally everything, it's still so far out of my control. And that terrifies me!
Caroline 38:36
I know... Humanity, having this delusion that we can control nature is so dangerous, and has got us into this mess! You know, we are so misaligned and disconnected from the force of nature and natural process, natural forces, that we have kind of arrogantly stupidly, willfully thought that we could push it, and push it, and push it, and push it, and push it, and that we would somehow win this game, or this story, with the natural world, with climate change. It's extraordinary arrogant, egotistical, delusional thinking, and it's selfishness and greed…and infantile, that we honestly did not respect that nature has its own force. And I think…I think the terror you talked about is really important. Because, you know, we're in this radical uncertainty of, even if we all did take every action we could take, it might not be enough. So the only way to engage with that, [laughs] in my view, is to learn to tolerate this radical uncertainty, but without collapse into the despair that you've just been talking about, or without collapse into the delusional thinking of “we can control this, we can beat this”. It really calls us into working in cooperation with nature, being in relationship with the natural world. And that requires partnership with the natural world, relationship with the natural world. And that's really hard to do, because we are so, now, convinced of our own capacity to engineer and dominate nature.
Jordan 40:36
So how do you effectively tell, and then get people to understand how bad the situation is, but then also give them hope and reasons for wanting to...to...to do the work, be better and like, make an effort?
Caroline 40:57
Right. I think it's really important that what we're talking about here is— because this is depth psychology, and you know, what we've been trying to go to, and I really appreciate the two of you having this conversation with me, uh…in the way that we've been able to do and kind of go to these depths. Because what we're talking about is radical hope, what we're talking about is what Joanna Macy talked about, is active hope, not naive hope. You know, naive hope is, “Oh, the government will save us!” or “Oh, technology will save us!”, you know? And what we've been trying to go to is the grief of a…the emotional honesty of knowing that that is not going to happen, it's too late. But what we want, don't we, is a both/and solution, not an either/or. We don't want to split into either we're hopeful or hopeless. We don't want to split apart those emotions. Because it's really important to be able to hold the tension between hope-fullness and hope-lessness, because they're both really important part of this tapestry, emotionally what we've been talking about. So I am aware of my capacity to feel hope, and make space for my hopelessness. And I just don't want to get stuck in either one. When I hold the tension between the two and allow both to be there, then it allows me to kind of function with this kind of radical uncertainty, which [laughs] sounds so posh, doesn't it? But it's like, it's not as easy as that. But it's like, if we're going off a cliff, well, I'm going to help fighting, I'm going to try and live fully with this crisis. Because that way, I'm fully engaged with it and fully living with it, through it, not retreating from the world, or complaining that the world isn't doing what I would want it to do. You know, we all kind of— depending on your belief system— we all…The other way I put it is like, I incarnated at this point in time, for a reason. So I have…I may as well, you know, do my best to fully live and accept those challenges, and be useful. I want to be useful, I want to have purpose, I want my life to have some meaning. And, you know, feel like I…you know, gave my heart and gave my best. And… and I will fail. And that's okay, so long as I, you know, continue to stay with that, and just keep going, and keep doing my best. And because this is a human crisis, at an individual level, as well as at this systemic global level, we can't escape it. You can go into denial, or you could collapse into trauma, or terror, [laughs] but it's not going to make it go anywhere. It's not going to go away! So we may as well try and go through it, and honor the reality of what we have to go through. Even if you don't want to get through it. I'd rather avoid it! I'd rather it wasn't happening, but it is happening. So the only comfort I can find is to find some courage, and some radical hope, and think “Well, I'm just gonna go through it and learn and discover how to do that as I do it”. Like going through Murphy's death with him. I didn't know what it was going to be like to hold him and think about it. But I wanted to experience that with him to honor that relationship. So I think that's all we can do. But we have to live through this, because I think the more we can do that, the more we can honestly encounter this, the better chance we have of acting with honor, and being true to ourselves and others.
[outro]
Mimi 44:57
Thanks for listening to this episode of Imperfect Eco-Hero. Stay connected with us through our instagram @Imperfect_ecohero or email us at imperfectecohero@gmail.com. If you want to learn more about our podcast or see resources related to this episode, visit our website imperfectecohero.com.
