summer erupting
As we face another summer the likely threat of more wildfires erupting in warm dry areas of the country bodes badly. Those who witnessed their homes virtually ingested by raging flames as well as those waiting fearfully to learn if the fires will attack them, and those of us who have seen fires blazing in homes and buildings—all experience a participant observer’s trauma. TV and social media transmit and often amplify the sensation of trauma even from a long electronic transmitter distance. Traumas are piling on us: the war in the Ukraine, the ever-increasing mass shootings, the pending losses of rights to abortion and possibly gay marriage, the proliferating conspiracy theories spinning around us, the reports of institutional sexual abuse, the unending pandemic, climactic terror, and on-and-on—we begin to long for a calm, peaceful, temperate period.
It’s no wonder that so many Americans look back to an invented, misremembered past, say the 1950s, when everything seemed plain and easy. But those times were not better. Remember the cold war and the hydrogen bomb, remember the Korean War, remember segregation, remember racial and ethnic quotas for law school and medical school, remember telephone party lines...
It merely seems that the present feels hotter than ever.
As a primary psychological defense, denial can lead to a truly dead end.
Is it any wonder that the truly cosmic danger, the actual possibility of human annihilation, is looming before us in a not-too-distant future? We do have the means at least to arrest global warming and to avert a truly apocalyptic end. Are we too over-occupied with our current woes? Fifteen years ago I started experiencing a peculiar shortness of breath that I dismissed as a cold symptom along with odd feelings down the inside of both arms, feelings like muscles that had been worked hard and were recovering. Both symptoms disappeared when I was at rest. This went on for over a week. I was attending a conference out of town when, walking to dinner from a day-long session, both symptoms recurred. My brain bell suddenly tolled: it’s my heart! It was soon apparent that I was suffering from unstable angina, a dangerous possible prelude to a full-blown heart attack—a myocardial infarction. Fortunately, I very soon got to a hospital emergency room, was admitted and ultimately had 3 coronary artery stents installed.
But, on the train ride home, having ignored the advice to go immediately to a hospital, I was sitting in my seat, resting and feeling nothing, and realized that had if it been my computer hard drive crashing I would have been hysterical, very upset, extremely anxious to get it fixed. Whereas the real possibility that I could die right there on the train seemed somehow unreal. That was, of course, an example of the defense of denial, which is why so many people ignore obvious symptoms of an imminent heart attack and then die.
And that is what we all are experiencing now vis-à-vis climate warming. The planet is warning us with devastating wildfires, with temperatures in Sicily and India reaching levels fatal to humans, with ocean waters beginning to rise and threaten coastal cities, with ocean temperatures rising and threatening to kill off food resources, with violent tornadoes and hurricanes, that among the imminent disasters is potable water soon heading toward universal dehydration and death, that, in effect, planet earth is dying.
As a primary psychological defense, denial can lead to a truly dead end. We all need to get our heads out of our collective sands and begin to address climate change now. Despite all the other urgencies bombarding us, losing sight of this very likely fate of our planet and our survival cannot, must not endure.
Let the coming hot summer ring our cerebral bell. Let us deny no more.
