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Another excerpt of Joanna Macy’s essay in Roszak’s “Ecopsychology”:
Fear of Pain:
Our culture conditions us to view pain as dysfunctional. As Kevin McVeigh says in his despair-and-empowerment workshops: “Instead of survival being the issue, it is the feelings aroused by possible destruction that loom as most fearful. And as they are judged to be too unpleasant to endure, they are turned off completely. This is a state of psychic numbing”.
Fear of Appearing Morbid:
In such a cultural setting, feelings of anguish and despair for our world can appear to be a failure to maintain stamina or even competence.
Fear of Appearing Stupid:
People are inhibited from expressing their anxieties because they feel that in order to do so they need to be walking data banks and skilful debaters. Taking action on behalf of our common world has unfortunately become confused with winning an argument.
Fear of Guilt:
Few of us are exempt from the suspicion that as a society—through expedience, lifestyle, and dreams of power—we are accomplices to catastrophe.
Fear of Causing Distress:
Pain for the world is repressed not only out of embarrassment and guilt, bout out of compassion as well….And so, partly out of concern for [our loved ones] we keep up a pretense of ‘life as usual’…Aware of what their parents find too painful to confront, [children] learn not to voice their own dread.
Fear of Provoking Disaster:
“To speak of catastrophe will just make it more likely to happen.” Actually, the contrary is nearer the truth. Psychoanalytic theory and personal experience show us that it is precisely what we repress that eludes our conscious control and tends to erupt into behaviour.
Fear of Appearing Unpatriotic:
In a time of crisis, some would have us silence our fears and doubts, lest they erode the belief in the American dream.
Fear of Religious Doubt:
Throughout history, human suffering has always tested our belief in a divine order. The issue is known as theodicy: how to square the existence of evil with the existence of a benign and powerful God. That question has brought us back again and again to a core truth in each major religious heritage: the deep, sacred power within each of us to open the needs and suffering of humanity.
Fear of Appearing Too Emotional:
Many of us, schooled in the separation of reason from feeling, discount our deepest responses to the condition of our world.
Fear of Feeling Powerless:
A frequent response that people make to the mention of acid rain, world hunger, or other ominous developments is, “I don’t think about that, because there is nothing I can do about it”. Logically, this is a non-sequitur; it confuses what can be thought with what can be done. When forces are seen as so vast that they cannot be consciously contemplated or seriously discussed, we are doubly victimized; we are impeded in thought as well as action.
Fear of Pain:
Our culture conditions us to view pain as dysfunctional. As Kevin McVeigh says in his despair-and-empowerment workshops: “Instead of survival being the issue, it is the feelings aroused by possible destruction that loom as most fearful. And as they are judged to be too unpleasant to endure, they are turned off completely. This is a state of psychic numbing”.
Fear of Appearing Morbid:
In such a cultural setting, feelings of anguish and despair for our world can appear to be a failure to maintain stamina or even competence.
Fear of Appearing Stupid:
People are inhibited from expressing their anxieties because they feel that in order to do so they need to be walking data banks and skilful debaters. Taking action on behalf of our common world has unfortunately become confused with winning an argument.
Fear of Guilt:
Few of us are exempt from the suspicion that as a society—through expedience, lifestyle, and dreams of power—we are accomplices to catastrophe.
Fear of Causing Distress:
Pain for the world is repressed not only out of embarrassment and guilt, bout out of compassion as well….And so, partly out of concern for [our loved ones] we keep up a pretense of ‘life as usual’…Aware of what their parents find too painful to confront, [children] learn not to voice their own dread.
Fear of Provoking Disaster:
“To speak of catastrophe will just make it more likely to happen.” Actually, the contrary is nearer the truth. Psychoanalytic theory and personal experience show us that it is precisely what we repress that eludes our conscious control and tends to erupt into behaviour.
Fear of Appearing Unpatriotic:
In a time of crisis, some would have us silence our fears and doubts, lest they erode the belief in the American dream.
Fear of Religious Doubt:
Throughout history, human suffering has always tested our belief in a divine order. The issue is known as theodicy: how to square the existence of evil with the existence of a benign and powerful God. That question has brought us back again and again to a core truth in each major religious heritage: the deep, sacred power within each of us to open the needs and suffering of humanity.
Fear of Appearing Too Emotional:
Many of us, schooled in the separation of reason from feeling, discount our deepest responses to the condition of our world.
Fear of Feeling Powerless:
A frequent response that people make to the mention of acid rain, world hunger, or other ominous developments is, “I don’t think about that, because there is nothing I can do about it”. Logically, this is a non-sequitur; it confuses what can be thought with what can be done. When forces are seen as so vast that they cannot be consciously contemplated or seriously discussed, we are doubly victimized; we are impeded in thought as well as action.
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