Climate Inside: Projection Politics



art by Anthony McCall

  In a very simple yet functional definition, denial is not seeing what’s there. Projection as a psychological phenomenon is in this sense its opposite: projection is seeing what is not there.

It is projecting from your own unconscious an image on someone else, and believing the image is really them.  Usually it’s not a pretty image—that’s negative projection. Some projections are positive, in the sense that we project an image that is considered “good”: a heroic or angelic image. But much of the time it’s negative: we project an image of evil, a devil image.

The psychology of this is basically that we project what we don’t want to face about ourselves, or have some need to hide in our own behavior and self-image.

Projection as first defined by Freud and given much more elaboration by Jung is much more complex than this, and in many ways it is both inevitable and an aid to becoming a better person. But it is also very tricky and dangerous, because it can easily obscure reality. My concern here is how it operates in the public realm—in political and public policy judgments, which are based in part on judgments about people, and ultimately what is or isn’t real in the world, such as the reality of the Climate Crisis.

Projection is another expression of the unconscious. It is an expression which bypasses rationality, but which can seem to be rational—that is, we invent reasons for the legitimacy of these powerful feelings. That’s another characteristic of the unconscious: the feelings are very powerful, partly because they exist in that darkness that we don’t (or can’t) consciously acknowledge or examine, and so these repressed feelings explode with enormous force, which feels like certainty.

It is unpleasant at best to face the uglier parts of ourselves. Especially in societies or groups that impose or encourage the idea that people are either completely good or completely bad, to admit there is even something bad hidden in us, might shatter our image of ourselves. We can deny that irrational anger, jealousy, envy, aggression, lust and lust for power exist in us, and then project them onto others.

Projections are extreme. President Obama or President Bush are not just wrong on this or that issue—they are evil, masters of deception and malevolence.

Could they be evil in reality? Yes, but the tests are factual, what they’ve actually done.

In our society, the people who draw projections most often are public figures: celebrities and authority figures. The President of the United States is always the president of projection. Those who disagree with him see him as an all-powerful dictator, or a weak numbskull, or both. Those who agree with him see him at times as a hero, and at other times as betraying their faith and dashing their hopes when he doesn’t do exactly what they want him to do, or he turns out not to be a perfect hero.

Entire groups can project, and be projected upon. That seems to be a big part of the current political polarization—the politics of extremes. We’re the angels. They are the devils. 

It is more than mere partisanship when everything your political opponents favor, you automatically consider not only wrong but evil. A number of prominent Republicans once acknowledged the reality of the Climate Crisis. The cap and trade idea was originally a Republican solution. Now it is major news when Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman offer some acknowledgement of global heating, though so far they don’t support doing anything meaningful to deal with it.

What is so Democratic about global heating, which is a series of objective and mostly scientific questions and answers? The answer is, intrinsically, nothing. But two things happened: powerful fossil fuel corporations prevailed upon the Bush administration to reverse course on dealing with the Climate Crisis, even though during his campaign, G.W. Bush acknowledged its reality and the need to deal with it. And shortly afterwards, his opponent (and the man who would have been President had all the votes been counted), Al Gore became even more identified with the issue, with his popular movie and book, An Inconvenient Truth. For Republicans, Gore was the target of negative projection, and global heating became yet another political litmus test.

So what was once a somewhat partisan issue but with room for compromise on what actions to take to address the Climate Crisis, became polarized. And what was once generally acknowledged—the existence of global heating—was denied, almost entirely along lines of political party or political ideology.

Along with these shifts, projection really took over. Climate scientists themselves were demonized—they cheated, they were in it for the money. Al Gore was in it for political gain—he lived lavishly while calling for sacrifice from others.

So add projection to denial as powerful phenomena that can be exploited for political and economic gain by corporate interests and ambitious politicians.

But simply naming projection as a factor is not the point.  The point is that in the end it is a product of an individual’s psyche, and an individual can do something about it. Political projections become more powerful when they are reinforced by a group, and by constant repetition in the only media ever consulted. But in the end, it resides in the individual.

 First of all, we each need to consciously grasp the concept of projection, and how it operates. We need to look at our most extreme, most emotional views and ask ourselves whether reality merits this response, or whether it comes from a projection that needs to be looked at within ourselves. We each need to examine our own political views to see whether our projections are distorting our judgments.

Such projections can be dangerous to us personally as well as in leading us to make bad decisions on public policy. A “conservative” who attacks “liberals” for being “bleeding hearts” might well be destroying his own capacity for compassion. In another way, by projecting negative traits onto others, we don’t deal with them in ourselves, and they can turn into uncontrolled behavior that’s self-destructive and hurts those close to us.

Projection of evil onto adversaries leave us blind to our own contradictions.  Right now GOPer governors and legislatures in several states, elected to cut budgets and enact smaller government, are passing laws that result in bigger and more intrusive government, and wind up costing the states more.  In the name of liberty they are curtailing liberty. These leaders may well know exactly what they are doing, but projection can blind their supporters to the reality.

  Ideology both feeds projection and benefits from it.  GOPers persist in claiming that lowering taxes on the rich eventually creates jobs, when there's no evidence it does--especially now, with 9% unemployment exactly ten years after the Bush tax cuts for the superwealthy began.  GOPer politicians rail against high taxes so much that their supporters simply don't believe the fact that federal taxes are comparatively low--the lowest since 1950, and that top tax rates (even without the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy) are much lower than they were under Reagan.  This can't be true, because they believe the image being projected, both the positive image of their party and the negative image of their opponents.

Projections can easily become group projections, and they can assume particular power when projected onto individuals or groups, and we aren't seeing the reality of what's there--we aren't seeing good and bad, we're seeing only very very bad.  In further examining projection, next time: the Other.

Coincidentally Jung

This is the 50th anniversary of the death of C. G. Jung.  I noticed this by chance a few days ago, when I saw the date of his death on the back of his autobiography: Memories, Dreams, Reflections.  I was reading passages in it, partly to prepare posts in my "Climate Inside" series here, partly as I ease into the reflections of summer and the month of a significant birthday.  I also have been looking again at some videos concerning Jung. 

But the coincidence of accidentally running into the date of this 50th anniversary a few days before it happened would probably not seem very strange to Jung.  Though he broadened and deepened and in some ways changed concepts named by Freud, he contributed several important new concepts and tools, including the idea of synchronicity: meaningful coincidences.

To me Jung is a fascinating figure as well as one of the most important voices of the 20th century.  He noted that he never wrote until he felt impelled to do so, because he was sure that what he had to say would be rejected or ignored in his own time, except by a few.  Though his reputation has grown, most of what he wrote is again rejected and ignored, though his approach to psychology is the most vital in many contemporary areas of inquiry, sometimes directly as in the archetypal psychology that was carried on by Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman (and in another way by Joseph Campbell), and sometimes "coincidentally" as in today's attitudes towards ecology, Buddhism, Native American and other indigenous cultures.

Jung was remembered by those who knew him for the depth and deftness of his work with patients, and for his friendships, his fierce energies, his stories, his great laugh.  He left the tower on the lakeside that he built and where he retreated in solitude to work and to play, his sculptures and artworks.  But for following generations he left mostly his writings:  "My life has been in a sense the quintessence of what I have written, not the other way he around.  The way I am and the way I write are a unity.  All my ideas and my endeavors are myself.  Thus the 'autobiography' is merely the dot on the i."   

Update: A BBC News essay suggests other legacies of Jung, and the second of a series in the Guardian rehashes aspects of Jung's relationship with Freud, and corrects the record (as Deidre Baird did in her biography, following Aniela Jaffe and others), on Jung's stance on the Nazis.     

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too."

Tom Stoppard

Political Perplexion

Sarah Palin, Tim Polenta, Michelle Backmaniac and Chris "Chris" Christy, all GOPer presidential candidates or touted as same, have one thing in common revealed by polls this week: were they nominated to run in 2012, they would each and all likely lose their own home states.  Their home state GOPers don't even favor them as presidential candidates.

The former governor of Alaska would lose Alaska, the former governor (T.P.) and current congressperson (M.B.) from Minnesota would lose Minnesota, and the current governor of New Jersey would lose New Jersey.  They each and all have higher unfavorables than favorables in their states, by a lot. 

And yet...GOPers in Congress are holding the world economy hostage, and GOPer governors and legislators in many states are enacting the most radical laws ever passed since at least the Civil War and post-Reconstruction.  They are criminalizing abortion, a protected constitutional right; they are violating civil rights all over the place, creating blatantly discriminatory tests for the right to vote, cutting programs for the poor and sick--even taxing the poor--while enacting giveaways worth billions to the rich and favored corporations.  To the point of classic corruption.  All without attracting much notice in this supposedly information-rich society where nothing escapes unnoticed.  Unless it's not trivial, I guess.

Perplexing.  If you have any residual hope of this political world making any sense.

Emerson for the Day

"Between narrow walls we walk--insanity on one side, & fat dullness on the other."

Emerson
journals

A Failure of Imagination

I think I'm moving into one of my periodic jaded phases.  Jaded with the news, which isn't actually new, and  that doesn't seem to do much good even when you know it.

For instance, two pieces today that are cogent, timely and "important."  One is a not untypical column by Robert Reich that spells out exactly what's been happening in the U.S. economy for the past 50 years, and what has to happen to get it to work as well as it was working for a lot of people. Which by the way was hardly perfect.

The other is an even better column by the usually cogent E.J. Dionne, but this is exceptionally eloquent and timely.  It begins: "While the United States remains utterly frozen in a debate about budget deficits and all the things that government shouldn’t do, other countries are marrying public and private resources to make themselves stronger and more competitive."

He continues: While other countries have jumped ahead of us in green economics, we have backed away from any effort to put a price on carbon to battle climate change and promote new technologies. In the Republican Party, politicians have to apologize for even thinking about global warming.

And while other countries invest in their basic facilities, we are letting our broadband access, roads and bridges, and rail and water systems go to seed. We created the interstate highway system, and now we can’t maintain our sewers.

Oh, yes, and nearly 14 million of our fellow citizens are unemployed.

He notes the corporate leaders as well as not-for-profit organizations that know this in some detail.  He ends:

You might recall an observant politician who noted this year that “South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a ‘D.’ ”

A few months later, the same politician said: “We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investment in our people and our country.”

That would be President Obama, and you wonder: Is there any chance that he can move our national conversation to the task of “winning the future”?

Good question.  And good analysis--"Our imagination deficit is the shortfall we should worry about. We seem incapable of doing what we did in the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and, yes, Nixon years: imagining how practical public action could make our citizens’ lives better, our country stronger and our private economy more productive."

Yes, it is a failure of the imagination.  Not a failure to imagine--certain of us can imagine all kinds of things, like the Rapture, like things they hear that nobody actually said, etc.  But a failure to apply perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the human species and one of our greatest (and only) survival advantages: the ability to imagine and especially to imagine the future, in a way that synthesizes and analyzes present reality and past experience.

But these days the main audience for such analyses as Reich's and Dionne's seem likely to be those mythical astropologists from another star system, digging around in our ruins.

See what I mean?  Jaded.

A Devastating Truth

It's gone way beyond inconvenient.

Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink is the Guardian headline:

"Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency.

The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius – which scientists say is the threshold for potentially "dangerous climate change" – is likely to be just "a nice Utopia", according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA. It also shows the most serious global recession for 80 years has had only a minimal effect on emissions, contrary to some predictions."

If this story and these numbers are confirmed, it's more than the latest in a series of wake-up calls that didn't wake anybody up because nobody heard the alarm.  It's a kick in the head.

Another British newspaper--the Independent--quotes another study:  " An irreversible climate "tipping point" could occur within the next 20 years as a result of the release of huge quantities of organic carbon locked away as frozen plant matter in the vast permafrost region of the Arctic, scientists have found."

A study into the speed at which the permafrost is melting suggests that the tipping point will occur between 2020 and 2030 and will mark the point at which the Arctic turns from being a net "sink" for carbon dioxide into an overall source that will accelerate global warming, they said.

A Guardian editorial accompanying their story concluded: "The siren sounded by the IEA data is loud and clear. The world's economy is expanding again and belching out more carbon. The benign climate we have known since the dawn of civilisation looks about to blow. We are going to have to start re-engineering the global economy right now."

Let's not even think about how fear fed by fossil fuel interests has, at this precise moment, turned the U.S. Republican party into the irrational extremist opposition: Former New York Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a 27-year veteran of Congress who was known as a staunch protector of the environment, said he has "never been so disappointed all my life in the pretenders to the throne from my party."

"Not one of them is being forthright in dealing with climate science," he said in an interview. "They are either trying to finesse it, or change previous positions to accommodate the far right. They are denying something that is as plain as the nose on your face."

Whatever the politics, the hope of "solving" the Climate Crisis is gone.  (It's a misuse of words to begin with: you "solve" problems; you meet or address a crisis.)  But the need to act now to save the far future is now transparently urgent.  Stopping the causes, working on prevention, is extremely urgent.

But so is the immediate task, the set of tasks and challenges that will dominate the world of today's children and generations after--perhaps even beginning with today's young adults.  It is the world of Joplin and Tuscaloosa, of the Texas fires and Mississippi floods, of increases in tropical disease infections and heat wave deaths in cities.  It is the world in which we deal with the effects of the Climate Crisis, and work on protection.

On Sunday, President Obama spoke at the Joplin, Missouri memorial service for tornado victims.  In many respects, this was a template for leadership in the Climate Crisis age:

  "In a world that can be cruel and selfish, it’s this knowledge -- the knowledge that we are inclined to love one another, that we’re inclined to do good, to be good -- that causes us to take heart. We see with fresh eyes what’s precious and so fragile and so important to us. We put aside our petty grievances and our minor disagreements. We see ourselves in the hopes and hardships of others. And in the stories of people like Dean and people like Christopher, we remember that each us contains reserves of resolve and compassion. There are heroes all around us, all the time."

Compassion, courage, self-sacrifice--these will be needed in many circumstances and communities, many more times in the near future.  But in another respect, the message will need to change.  The President began this way: "We can’t know when a terrible storm will strike, or where, or the severity of the devastation that it may cause. We can’t know why we’re tested with the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a home where we’ve lived a lifetime. These things are beyond our power to control."

All of that is true, but it is not the entire truth.  While we can't know why a specific storm has devastated a specific community, we do know why the future is likely to be stormy, and why this may be beginning now.  President Obama has so far done the politically astute thing of emphasizing clean energy for economic advantage, for jobs and for a generally better environment.  But today's news tells us that confronting the Climate Crisis more directly can't be avoided.

A Fitting Memorial



Paul Chappell in Iraq

In college, Paul Chappell learned that socialism was practical.  He read Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and believed that the Iraq war violated international law and the Nuremberg Principles. He studied Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Paul Chappell's college was West Point, where Chomsky was asked to lecture on whether Iraq was a just war.  Chappell became an officer stationed in Iraq, installing a defensive system to counteract mortars and artillery.  Today he is the author of The End of War and an advocate for waging peace.  In an interview in the April issue of The Sun (part of which is online here):  "Yes, West Point teaches that war is so dangerous, it should be used only as a last resort. I learned that the United States needs to rely more on diplomacy; that politicians don’t understand war and are too quick to use it as a means of conflict resolution. West Point also teaches that if you want to understand war, you have to understand its limitations and unpredictability. World War i and World War ii both started out as limited conflicts and grew into global blood baths. War is like a natural disaster. You can’t control it."

People who must fight the wars know what letting loose the dogs of war means.  Many times over the years some soldiers who returned spoke and wrote eloquently about that reality.  Erich Maria Remarque's relentless evocations of the first World War in All Quiet on the Western Front and Spark of Life told of the realities of modern war from the soldiers point of view, long after governments on both sides had comforted their citizens with exhibits of spacious bunkers and luxurious trenches.  Not much has changed.

Chapell's lessons in socialism, by the way, were of West Point itself, and the U.S. Army: "If I said to most Americans that we should have a society that gives everyone three meals a day, shelter, healthcare, and a college education, and that it should be based on selflessness, sacrifice, and service rather than greed, they’d say, “That’s socialism.” But that’s the U.S. military. A lot of conservative Republicans who think socialism is the ultimate evil admire the military."


Paul Chappell today

 The military isn't a utopia, Chapell says, but the ethical basis of socialism and the ethics soldiers learn--to depend on each other--are the same: "When I try to persuade people that America should have universal healthcare, I say, “You know, in the military we have universal healthcare, and the military believes that you should never leave a fallen comrade behind. You take care of everyone.”

On the day to remember those who gave their lives in this country's name, it is appropriate to announce again the goal of ending such deaths, especially the needless.  Right now in particular this world has no more time,  no resources, and no more capable and idealistic young people to give to war.

"A Community Treasure"

There's this lady in western Pennsylvania the newspaper says: "although she describes her life as extremely normal, many consider her a community treasure."

Hey, wait a second, that's my sister!  Fresh from conducting another successful retreat, Kathy Duffy is rolling out some new workshops and providing all the services of the Energy Connection Creative Healing Center.  She's got a lot of fans in western PA and now her work has been recognized in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Congratulations!

Last Week, Next Weeks

So the political gabfests have gone quiet for the weekend, and even some political blogs are using the downtime to retool.  But a little unfinished business here from last week...

Lawrence O'Donnell, who is among other things the best-dressed man on TV, had a segment on Thursday that was both a withering deconstruction/evisceration of a front page New York Times story announcing that Sarah Palin was showing signs of a presidential run, and the funniest five minutes I've seen on television all year.  I was laughing out loud through the whole thing.  Probably not everyone's reaction but check it out.

Later on Rachel, Chris Hayes was trying to get us to remember way back to--what was it now--April--when the GOPer House voted to pass the Paul Ryan budget, with its plan to kill Medicare and pretty much kill Medicaid.  The fallout has been so deadly for the GOP that it's turned into a "what were they thinking?" moment.  Apart from the predictable GOPer overreach (predicted here among other places), there was, Chris Hayes reminded viewers, a different political context.  The GOPers were still on a roll from winning control in November, they felt they had a mandate and their deficit mantra seemed to have caught on.  The Democrats were still on the defensive, and the GOPers had forced concessions of $35 billion on the budget so that the federal government wouldn't shut down.  The Paul Ryan budget was the next step.

To Hayes' analysis, I'll add one detail and one of the biggest factors he didn't spell out.  The detail was April 15--there was a frenzy to pass the Ryan budget-cutting, no new taxes budget by tax day for its symbolic value.  The big factor was that President Obama had once again lulled the GOPers into believing their own propaganda--that he was weak, indecisive and in over his head.  He kept out of the budget negotiations, and applauded the outcome, seeming to the GOPers to be capitulating.  They thought they had him on the run.

But Obama's pushback was already in the works.  He had waited until the danger of government shutdown had passed, and then was ready to go on the offensive with his (and Democrats') priorities.  The GOPers gave him a timely gift--the Paul Ryan budget--which he used to such devastating effect in his April speech in which, among other things, he identified the Ryan plan as "ending Medicare as we know it."  And the Dems have been on the offensive ever since, thanks to public support of Medicare that is now the conventional wisdom.  Recall that Obama's speech was not received well everywhere in the media, still under the GOPer mendacious "budget-cutting" spell. But it was the turning point.

Now two problems remain in the immediate future: the need to raise the national debt ceiling, and the need for Dems to keep in control of the Medicare message by keeping it simple: we're for it, they're against it.  At the end of last week, Senate GOPer leader Mitch McConnell linked the problems by announcing that he wouldn't vote to raise the debt ceiling unless there was a deal to cut Medicare spending.

Will the Dems see the need to keep the issue clear?  Will the need to slow the growth of health care costs and further reform elements of Medicare trump this, and will GOPers then be able to muddy the waters for the next elections?  The statement from Harry Reid's office (appended at the end of the TPM McConnell report linked above) suggests clarity remains, but Reid himself is less than articulate on this matter.  There are reports that the Biden group has identified a trillion bucks in cuts, and they may include entitlements.  I find that a little hard to believe.  But all of that is going to supply political drama for the rest of the summer, and if some murky changes to Medicare ensue, right up to November 2012.   

Followups

The Democrats mantra on the election yesterday was that it was all about Medicare, while GOPers insisted it was because of the 10% two other candidates got.  The GOPer position doesn't explain why even if they'd gotten all of that, they would still have lost 21 points from the GOPers victory margin just 6 months ago. And tracking polls showed that as the Tea Party candidate went down in the polls, most of those votes went to the Dem.

But the Dems need to notice that while Medicare was clearly the most potent issue, their candidate and new Member of Congress, Kathy Hockel was a very good candidate.  Her appearance on Rachel Wednesday was quite impressive.  She speaks clearly and to the point.  (Way better than one of Rachel's other pol guests, Harry Reid.)       

Though it didn't get much attention due to the Senate vote in which 40 GOPers voted for the Ryan budget plan to kill Medicare, but in the House Eric Cant made good on his threat--he got the House Appropriations Committee to condition a $1 billion budget supplement to help with disaster relief for Joplin--where things seem pretty chaotic right now--on cutting $1.5 billion from a program to provide loans to U.S. companies in order to create more fuel-efficient and carbon-neutral vehicles:

"It is staggeringly shortsighted to pay for the economic losses of climate disasters by choking off funding for policies that reduce the threat of future climate disasters,” said Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “The Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program is helping US companies right now, to remain competitive and protect good manufacturing jobs, by producing highly efficient vehicles that cut dependence on foreign oil. What’s next? Should we cut funding for flood insurance and slash the FEMA budget to pay for flood damage along the Mississippi?" 

Climate Inside: Acceptance of Denial

I'm a start at the top and read down to the end kind of guy.  So that's what this is: in addition to being the third in this "Climate Inside" series, it's the first of three posts, meant to be read from top to bottom rather than the usual reverse chronology of the blogworld.

For most of the 20th century in America, psychology was something for the urban rich.  Upper middle class New Yorkers underwent Freudian analysis to such an extent that by the 1950s it was a cultural joke.  Jungian psychology always had adherents in America, but his most prominent American clients traveled to Zurich to consult with Jung himself.

When I was growing up in a working class culture, there were two kinds of people: sane and crazy.  Crazy generally meant you couldn't hold a job (or keep house if you were a woman), which in itself was shameful, a moral failing.  So sane people were those who could hold a job.  Crazy people were consigned mostly to state mental hospitals, large and far away.

Abuses in mental institutions led in the 1960s to most of the big state ones closing, and local hospitals opened mental health clinics with a range of services for people who weren't permanently consigned to mental wards.  Then the counterculture of the 60s and 70s sparked interest in Gestalt therapy and other psychological theories, the human potentials movement, T-groups and encounter groups and so on.

So the stage was set for the major cultural impact and acceptance of psychology in the 1980s, as it spread through the recovery movement, through the awareness of psychological as well as physical and sexual abuse, and such momentarily fashionable but memorable contributions as John Bradshaw's Inner Child and Robert Bly's book, Iron John, that largely began the men's movement (a psychological rather than political movement.) Meanwhile, Jungian concepts spread through weekly TV seminars on Northern Exposure and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

All this led to probably the first psychological concept to become an accepted one in everyday life: denial.  It is of course the concept that is now most associated with those who deny the reality of the Climate Crisis.  And it is meant psychologically: not just denying an asserted fact on the basis of evidence, but persistently and reflexively denying a fact when the evidence that it is a fact is overwhelming.  That's part of the sense that it's used in the term "climate crisis denier" or for example in the statement on the Climate Crisis issued last week by 17 Nobel Laureates: "We cannot continue on our current path. The time for procrastination is over. We cannot afford the luxury of denial."

"Denial" is a concept attributed to Sigmund Freud, more extensively described by his daughter Anna Freud, but popularized by the recovery movement, which began with Alcoholics Anonymous, after its founder consulted with Jung in Switzerland.  People deny something factual, deny for example that they have a drinking problem (or deny that they need help to overcome it), because they have a psychological need to believe otherwise.  Sometimes this denial is so thorough that people have no memory of something that happened (such as abuse) that they want very much not to have happened, or because it is important to them for other reasons to believe that the person who committed an act against them would never have done so.

In practice, it is a tricky concept because it can be applied to almost anything.  Anything you deny, people can say you're "in denial" about it.  (Sometimes of course they are right. "Everyone is in denial about something," writes Benedikt Carey, "just try denying it and watch friends make a list.") 

But psychologically it is a self-defense mechanism.  And it often makes sense, at least for awhile. Some people when told they have a fatal disease find it too overwhelming to accept, so they deny it, though gradually many come to accept it.  (Another way the concept of denial was popularized was as the first in the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief.)

But the trap is that being in denial will furnish its own reasons for why it is reasonable or correct.  Though the impulse and energy comes from the unconscious, the conscious is either convinced or simply willing to get out of the way, so whatever the unconscious wants to express just comes out.  Very strong feelings--especially defensiveness--are clues that denial might be operating.

Being in denial is comforting.  It means you go on as before.  Accepting that you are an alcoholic means complete and arduous change.  AA developed the now-famous 12-step program and the idea of needing a support group to help you through it, all of which were adopted for other addictions and behaviors by the recovery movement.  Such change is really, really hard, and it's natural to want to avoid it by denying the need for it.

That's applicable to denying the Climate Crisis as well.  Accepting it means accepting the need for personal and societal change that would be extensive,  and at least seems like it would be painful.  That's part of the psychology of denial: the natural reaction of avoiding pain--or more accurately, the pain you rightly or wrongly anticipate in degree or kind.

So the root of denial would therefore be fear.  Fear is a powerful emotion that opens the unconscious and its powers.  Fear is healthy when it helps us elude danger or overcome threats.  But it can also distort our perceptions.  On the one hand we might see a monster looming in the dark, when it's just shadows under a tree.  On the other hand, we might fail to see a threat because we are afraid of it--we'd rather it wasn't really there, so we don't see it there.  Those who deny the Climate Crisis accuse those who accept it of the former delusion.  The latter delusion is the product of denial.

When confronted with real danger, most of us at one time or another, and for some period of time, will have the impulse of denial.  Your impulse is:  It will go away.  The noise you hear is something else.  Or--it isn't happening yet.  I found myself with that one recently, as I read a story about the Saudis decreasing their oil output, saying that they did so because of a world glut.  Finding no evidence of such a glut, the story suggested the Saudis might be covering up that their oil reserves are finally running out.  I've been reading about Peak Oil for years.  But my first reflex when reading this story was to not accept that it was finally actually happening.  (It's probably the secret desire of many Boomers that the shit won't hit the fan until we're gone.)

But of course, to really confront these dangers, we must face them and at least admit the truth.  The evidence of the Climate Crisis is overwhelming.  As GOPer Jon Huntsman said (even though he claims not to believe we need to do anything about the Climate Crisis), if 90% of oncologists agreed on a specific cancer, we'd listen to them.  Even years ago, when global warming was seen as a distinct if as yet not proven possibility, this should have been enough to orient actions that benefit us in other ways.  We don't require 100% or even 75% certainty to deal with other threats.  There are people in Oklahoma alive tonight because, even though they'd never seen a tornado before, they built a storm cellar anyway.

The power of denial in regards to the Climate Crisis was brilliantly expressed just today by Bill McKibben in a Washington Post oped.  Instead of writing about denial, he adopted the language and urgency of denial:

"Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected."

But being in denial about a persistent danger, with such persistent manifestations, does not erase the fear.  The fear and the emotions caused by the inner conflicts between what you see and what you want to believe will find other outlets.  They might lead to depression, or fuel an outsized and even violent anger.  They might push you further into other delusions that are somehow more comforting, even if they involve the world ending in some other way.

Staying in denial is made easier by other psychological phenomena to be explored later.  For now it's important to again name the purpose of writing about this.  "Being in denial" is a psychological mechanism with characteristics and examples.  It allows individuals to use the concept and test themselves against it.  Am I in denial about this subject?  Am I motivated to be in denial?   Do I evaluate information about this subject as I evaluate information about other subjects?

What do I believe will be the consequences of no longer being in denial?  That I'll have to completely change my life, all by myself, regardless of the costs?  Or is there room between denial and martydom?

What makes it possible for people to remain in denial about anything is the support of others in their belief.  That's why co-dependence and enablers are such important concepts in the theories of addiction.  Right now being in denial about the Climate Crisis guarantees you a whole network of co-dependents and enablers, as well as a whole television network and a lot of talk radio.  You might even get paid for it. The politics of this denial is briefly explored in the following post.

The Politics of Denial

The severe weather map for today.  The red squares are tornado watch, yellow is severe thunderstorm warning, green is floods, blue high winds, orange is fire weather advisory.

Here in North America, the climate outside has become alarming of late.  Massive tornadoes tore through parts of Oklahoma on Tuesday, with tornadoes or tornado warnings in Texas, Kansas, Minnesota and once again in Joplin, Missouri.  Meteorologists warn that tornadoes are possible on Wednesday in a large area east of these states, with violent weather possible as far east as Pittsburgh and south to near Washington, D.C.

This follows days, weeks and months of extreme weather, from record-breaking snow, rain, wind, heat, flooding, drought and fires, as Bill McKibben recounts in his timely oped piece in the Washington Post, which brilliantly expresses the psychology of denial.  But it is just as important in how it links psychological denial to politics and economics.  For that's a crucial element of all this.  The individual response of denial is being systematically supported, inspired, encouraged and especially exploited, by certain corporate and political interests.

After McKibben's devastating list of weather and climate events it's psychologically necessary to deny --all predicted by climate scientists as evidence of global heating--he ends with this:

" It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies."

That pretty much says it all.  When faced with such immense danger--possibly the end of human civilization but pretty certainly major and uncomfortable changes in ordinary life--it would seem that a self-protective human psychological reaction would be denial.  But in a healthy civilization, we would get over that, realizing how important it is to confront these threatening possibilities and do something about them.  Our leaders would lead us in doing this, and we would support each other in dealing with the psychological impact as well as the social needs.

But the same forces that want to ignore the Climate Crisis because acknowledging it and dealing with it might eventually cut into their extreme profits, are intent on supporting and amplifying this response of denial, to the extent of making it an ideological tenet of political faith.  That support is extensive and well-funded, from the buying of politicians and media, to the scruffy little details, like paying pittances to people to monitor climate- related threads on the Internet and quickly add a denial mantra to the comments.

There are other factors, many with a psychological impact, that links the needs of fossil fuel industries with the comfort zones of much of the American public.  But the manipulation of denial is of major consequence.

 This deliberate amplification and exploitation of denial has been added to the extreme polarization of politics. For it's not just denial that gets into the mix and supported.  It's anger, paranoia, xenophobia, prejudices of all kind--all supported in a seemingly clean and companionable way, but all dependent on some ugly energy from the unconscious.

 But though this denial can be psychological, and coexist with other compatible psychological phenomena, it is also a cynically political position.  This is dramatized especially by the GOPer politicians who once acknowledged the reality of the Climate Crisis and the need for action, and who supported cap-and-trade legislation (itself a GOPer idea.)  But suddenly now Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Palenta, etc. have all adopted denial of it all.  That seems a lot more like political than psychological denial.  Yet it feeds the genuine denial defense mechanism of others.

This exploitation has effectively polluted public discourse, to the extent that full-throated support for confronting the Climate Crisis from anyone is rare.  Even a decade ago, it might have been reasonable to suggest that it might take time for the science to be extensive enough to be really convincing, and that it might take time for people to get used to the idea, and to finally admit to themselves that things had to be done.  And for awhile, it seemed we might be approaching that time.  But the exploitation of denial went into high gear, and here we are.  Decades after we should have begun confronting this, we won't even admit the need to do so.

So it is important for people to understand the psychology of denial and the impact of the climate inside on their thinking and behavior.  But it is also important for people to understand how powerful interests are manipulating them, turning a natural inclination into a fierce self-destructive fixed idea, and involving them in the massively destructive politics of denial. 

Denial: Costs

Denying the reality and the causes of the Climate Crisis can cost us the future.  In the long run, it could cost us human civilization as well as much of the natural world we know--including the loss of animal and plant species that would leave us bereft and struggling to survive. 

But even in the near future, even now, denial and its political exploitation have their costs, in money and lives.  This is coming into focus more and more, as the U.S. as well as much of the rest of the world is feeling the reality and the impact of huge weather and climate events that cause disasters, deaths and injuries, and tear communities to shreds.

The denial of the Climate Crisis is fueling the denial of the effects of what may be caused by the Climate Crisis.  This is another subtext in Bill McKibben's Washington Post piece.  For to truly ignore the connections among the many events, it helps to downgrade the importance of the events themselves.

Here's the kind of measured expertise that people would be heeding if denial were not so strong: meteorologist Jeff Masters' conclusion to his discussion of this record-breaking two months of tornadoes:  "In summary, this year's incredibly violent tornado season is not part of a trend. It is either a fluke, the start of a new trend, or an early warning symptom that the climate is growing unstable and is transitioning to a new, higher energy state with the potential to create unprecedented weather and climate events."

This statement allows for the possibility of this being a fluke, but the other two possibilities suggest the need for attention to preparing better for more likely disasters in the future.  Even if they are flukes, preparation is a good idea anyway--but patterns likely to lead to future danger adds urgency.  It is precisely this kind of situation--seeing patterns that can lead to future danger or future opportunity--for which the human brain has its most decided survival advantage.  But denial cancels that out.

"In policy debates about environmental issues, evidence of extreme weather is often dismissed as fleeting anecdotes," notes a Boston Globe editorial advocating more attention to preparation.  "But it is hard to ignore the cumulative impact of science, technology, and experience."

The Globe editorial then mentions "an expert panel assigned by Congress in 2008 to recommend ways to deal with climate change provided a sobering analysis of what is at stake: Every ton of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere not only drives up the earth’s temperature, causing potentially disruptive weather events, but raises the cost of taking action later on."

That's the cost of far future disasters caused by present and near future greenhouse gases emissions: the familiar if strange fruits of Climate Crisis denial.   But we need to admit the pattern and eventually the cause if we are to prepare for near future problems and disasters: everything from better structures to withstand extreme weather and protection for coastal cities to better public health and systems of response to areas of immediate emergencies.  For the society as a whole, preparation and prevention cost less, in money, in suffering and in lives.

Some of this preparation goes by the stunningly inept title of adaptation.  Doing something directly about greenhouse gases is called mitigation.  (Why does anyone wonder why scientists, social scientists and bureaucrats can't communicate when they insist on such dead vocabulary?)   I used to call this the activities of Stop it (addressing the Causes of global heating) and Fix it (addressing the Effects.)  We really need to do both, but there was a time I worried that smart Republicans would manipulate public alarm to devote all attention to addressing the effects while saying we can't afford to address the causes, too.

 That may still happen, but so far GOPers have stuck with strict denial.  Denial, together with the politically related insistence on fatally wounding the federal government while siphoning money to corporate interests, has led to such barbarity as suggested Tuesday by the House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor.  He insisted that any emergency funds voted by Congress to help tornado victims in Joplin and elsewhere be offset by cuts in government spending elsewhere, or GOPers wouldn't support it.

Cantor represents a district in Virginia, where disaster resulting from severe weather is not unknown and these days certainly not impossible.  Looking at the weather map, it could even threaten it this week.  His tune may change in that event.  But the power of denial is so great that you really can't count on even the most extreme reality to overcome it.  No one knows if Cantor or any politician is truly in denial about the Climate Crisis.  You almost hope that they are, because sacrificing lives and communities now and in the future for momentary political advantage or even the riches and seeming power conferred by wealthy corporate masters is even worse.  But the effect on the rest of us, the world and the future is the same.         

A Good Day for Obamacrats

The New York Congressional district 26 is one of the most Republican in the country, and certainly in New York state.  In the 2010 congressional election, the Republican won with 74% of the vote. 
Tuesday in a special election to replace that disgraced GOPer, the Democrat Kathy Hochul was declared the winner barely an hour after polls closed.  With over 90% of the precincts reporting, she is holding  48% of the vote, with her GOPer opponent at 42%, and just as significantly, the Tea Party candidate at only 9%.

Her victory is attributed to voter alarm over the Ryan plan to destroy Medicare.  Polls suggest this is true, though there were other important issues.  So President Obama's congratulatory statement doesn't specifically mention Medicare, though he was the first to say that the Ryan plan "ends Medicare as we know it," which started this pushback: "I want to extend my congratulations to Congresswoman-elect Kathy Hochul for her victory in New York's 26th Congressional District. Kathy and I both believe that we need to create jobs, grow our economy, and reduce the deficit in order to outcompete other nations and win the future."

Obamacrats can also point to another significant accomplishment today: Chrysler (following the example of GM) has repaid its "bailout" loans to the U.S. federal government (and to Canada), six years early.  The resurgence of the U.S. auto industry due to the support President Obama and the Democrats gave them--which GOPers called radical and socialism--is already being turned to political advantage. 

Obamacrats also are likely to benefit from a less obvious story that developed Tuesday: the rumor that Elizabeth Warren, head of the Consumer Protection Agency she virtually created, is being courted to run against Scott Brown for his Senate seat from Massachusetts.  While the politics of her actually running is being debated,  it's the rumor itself that has positive political effect.  If GOPers continue their opposition to her permanent appointment to her post--especially accompanied by the tawdry antics that accompanied her testimony in the House on Tuesday--they may push her into running, and given the impact of Medicare and the Ryan budget demonstrated in New York--it would mean at the very least that GOPers would have to spend  a lot of money in MA to support Brown, even if they didn't ultimately lose the seat.  As well they might.  So they may decide to ease off and conclude that they're better off with her in the federal government than running against them.

Meanwhile, President Obama was "greeted warmly" in London on his state visit to the UK.

Tornado Times

At this hour, Oklahoma is being hit by at least two large tornadoes, one of them reportedly massive, with wind shears above 200 mph, and an eye like a hurricane.

Meanwhile the tragedy of Joplin continues to unfold, with some 1500 people still unaccounted for.  NOAA has ranked the Joplin tornado as "the deadliest single tornado to strike the U.S. since modern tornado recordkeeping began in 1950."

O'Bama

President Obama and family visited his newly confirmed ancestral home of Ireland on Monday.  He spoke to some 30,000 cheering citizens of Dublin, telling them he'd come "to find the apostrophe that we lost somewhere along the way."  Earlier he's visited the village of Moneygall, where his mother's great-great grandfather was born.  He saw the house where he lived, and which he left to come to America.

President Obama also visited a pub and drank a draft Guinness stout. "Obama downed the thick beer in only four slurps. Christy O'Sullivan, a government clerical worker who took a long lunch break to watch the Obama's trip to Moneygall, told the AP: "The president actually killed his pint! He gets my vote. He's the first president I've actually seen drink the black stuff like he's not ashamed of something."

But while in Ireland President Obama kept in touch with the news from Joplin, Missouri, and directed the FEMA director to be on the scene.

Then the Obamas flew to London a little earlier than planned, to avoid plumes of vocanic ash drifting into British air space from the Iceland eruption.  They will stay at Buckingham Palace, and serious talks with UK leaders will be included along with the pomp and circumstances in subsequent days.

Joplin Tragedy

It was a single, huge tornado (though with multiple vortices) that stayed close to the ground and at times moved very slowly, as when it seemed to stay surrounding the Joplin, Missouri hospital.  With 116 dead so far, it is the most destructive single tornado in the U.S. since 1947.

And while the search for dead and injured goes on, more threatening weather is forecast for late Tuesday, including the possibility of more tornadoes.

Recipe for Iowa?



A nice bowl of Polenta and ethanol


GOPer former gov of Minnesota Tim Polenta announced his candidacy for prez with a youtube video Sunday and a speech in Iowa Monday.  In Iowa he called for the phasing out of ethanol subsidies (while presumably agreeing with GOPer dogma on maintaining Big Oil subsidies.)  Political observers are puzzling over that one, since it has always been the kiss of death in Iowa.  But maybe Polenta knows something no one else does? 

One thing I wonder if he knows is whether fellow Minnesotan (with generations of family in Iowa) and fellow Evangelical panderer Michelle Bachmaniac is getting into the race.  If she doesn't and it turns out he knew it, this would say something for his political acumen.  Because he's risking his future viability if he goes up against Backmann and loses.  Politicos figure he has to win Iowa to go on with any momentum (or money.)

Meanwhile, his shot at President Obama's "courage" went over like a lead balloon, and his assertion that he will tell the truth was contradicted by assumptions as fact, shadings and outright lies in his opening statement.  Moreover his record as governor is already being attacked by a fellow GOPer for presiding over one of the largest property tax increases in state history.  Others claim he left the state and the state government in horrible economic shape, which doubtless will come up on the campaign trail if it turns out anyone can remember his name.

Climate Inside: The Thin Thread of Consciousness

In 1957, when Carl Jung was 82 years old, he sat for a series of film interviews over four days in the August heat of Zurich, conducted by a psychologist from the University of Texas.  Jung did not give many such interviews, but did so this time because it was principally meant for psychology students.  Still, in the midst of talking about his work over half a century, he made a statement, almost a plea, of wider application and great urgency.
  "Nowadays particularly the world hangs on a thin thread," he said.  The U.S. and the USSR were building thermonuclear arsenals with the power to destroy civilizations in minutes.  Jung pointed out that the threat to humanity was no longer from outside. "We are the great danger," he said.  This of course is true today as well.  Even if the threat of thermonuclear destruction has receded, humanity as well as much of the natural world is endangered by the climate change that humanity is causing.

Why? It is not because we lack knowledge, or the power to confront this challenge.  There are economic and political forces preventing it, but given the gap between the kind of knowledge that usually prompts action, and the failure to accept it,  much of the responsibility must lie in the climate inside.  Just as it had something to do with how we learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb.

"The psyche is the great danger," Jung continued.  "And so it is demonstrated in our day what the power of the psyche is, how important it is to know something about it.  But we know nothing about it."

Jung meant not only the dearth of serious attention by experts, but mostly the refusal of even an educated public to take the psyche seriously.  "Nobody would give credit to the idea that the psychical processes of the ordinary man have any importance whatever." 
     
So why do they have any importance?  Especially during the first half of the twentieth century, Freud, Jung and others investigated psychological phenomena and began to explore how the psyche works.  They came up with tools that allow everyone to understand themselves and each other better, and to assert more control over their behavior.  Despite today's emphasis on drugs and very targeted therapies, these concepts and tools are widely accepted, even if mostly implicit.  I have found that the conceptual tools I will describe in this series--according to my own crude understanding of them--to be very useful.  They are useful in understanding attitudes of others that have political and very real consequences.  But I use them to understand my own attitudes and to check my rationales for my behavior.

I use Jung as a guide because he is the broadest and deepest of these thinkers and investigators.  But also because Jung emphasized the individual.   He thought the psychical processes of the ordinary person have great importance.  He insisted that the psyche of every individual is unique, and that the mix of forces and tendencies that his theories name are different for everyone.  But the more the individual knows, the better equipped the individual is to figure things out and to act on that knowledge.

I use Jung also because he thought about the psychology of all human individuals-- not just the very sick persons, but people with ordinary problems--problems and potentials we all have in common.

The most basic concept is the psyche itself, which is composed of the conscious and the unconscious.  This division didn't begin with Jung or Freud.  It's ancient.  Thoreau wrote in his journal about the relation of the two in the writing process with great sophistication.  But Jung developed it further.

These are complex subjects but just three things are most important for now.  First, the unconscious is vast and powerful.  Another psychologist likened consciousness to the froth on a wave in comparison with the ocean of the unconscious.  And the unconscious is unknown.  There are ways of thinking about it, ways to investigate it, but by its nature (and by definition) it is outside conscious knowledge or control.  "...the unconscious is always unconscious," Jung said in these interviews. "It is really unconscious."

But (second) the unconscious isn't just a murky place of fantasy--it motivates and inspires behavior.  People can and do act directly at the direction of their unconscious.  If you don't understand or accept that this happens, the unconscious has really free reign. "If you are unconscious about certain things that ought to be conscious," Jung said, "then you are a man whose left hand never knows what the right is doing, and counteracts or interferes with the right hand."

That's partly and most importantly because (third) the unconscious can supply rationales for what it does.  The unconscious routinely deceives the conscious mind as well as bypassing the conscious mind.

Some believe that's why the trickster figure--including the devil on your left shoulder, etc.-- is so prominent in stories everywhere and at every time.  We sense the power of self-delusion and self-deception.

This may seem to quash human freedom, the importance we give to conscious control.  But once I understood these elements of the psyche, I found it liberating.  It meant that by understanding that the unconscious can lie to you in the language of reason, and by using conceptual tools Jung and others developed to test whether something was likely coming from the unconscious, I could increase conscious control over behavior.  Even knowing that these complexities exist, and a little of how they work, increased my sense of who I am, and of being human.

Next time, the first of those conceptual tools for understanding one way the unconscious works to influence and even define how we see the outside world as well as ourselves, and consequently what we do.

Climate Outside:Tornado and Floods

photo from Daily Beast



photo: Los Angeles Times

 A monster tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri, killing at least 30.  It was so powerful that it destroyed entire neighborhoods, took tractor trailers into the air and dropped them in twisted wreckage outside a truck stop.  A major hospital was damaged, and so can't take tornado victims. President Obama has promised federal help.  The governor called out the National Guard, and a state of emergency has been declared.  There are unknown numbers of injured.  Some of these photos were sent via Twitter and posted at The Daily Beast. (All of these photos are from Missouri.)

  Minneapolis was also hit with at least one strong tornado, with loss of life, as was a town in Kansas.  Heavy winds and thunderstorms tore through a chunk of the Midwest. 

Meanwhile massive flooding continues from the record-high Mississippi River in Louisiana.  But there is very serious flooding elsewhere as well:  in Quebec and a large part of eastern Montana, with thunderstorms causing mudslides and threatening flooding in Utah.  Along the Mississippi, though the river has largely crested, flood waters will remain in place and the largest ever recorded water flow will continue for several more weeks, testing levees and continuing to do damage.  Flooding in other places has similar longevity.

White House Week

In a speech on Thursday, President Obama spoke about the changes in the Middle East, the Arab Spring: "Those shouts of human dignity are being heard across the region. And through the moral force of nonviolence, the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades."

He also outlined critera for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to bring stability to the region.  GOPers attacked his call for making the pre-1967 borders--with negotiated land swaps--the basis for negotiations, but other Presidents including Bush had supported the same standard.  President Obama reinterated and clarified his position in a speech to a conservative Jewish group on Sunday, winning Josh Marshall's praise in a post titled A Proud Day for Obama.

Next week President Obama heads for Europe: he will visit the UK, France, Poland and his mother's ancestral home in Ireland.

Another One Bites the Dust

The L.A. Times is reporting that Mitch Daniels has announced early Sunday that he will not run for President, due to family considerations.

Not unexpected---his wife left him, married someone else, left him and returned to Daniels, who married her again.  In this nebby age, a lot of splaining to do.

Update: And Another One Joins Up: stepping on his own Monday announcement, Tim Palenta issued a video announcing he is running for Prez.  Oh, and so is Godfather Herman Cain.