The Illusion of Self and Separation
Lake Placid as seen from Whiteface Mountain, New York
How about something a bit different? Comprehending that all the predicaments we face are a result of our behavior of technology use and that our behavior is a function of our psychology, I thought it would be interesting to some to delve into our psyche a bit. Just a bit though - I'm not a psychologist and I don't even play one on TV.
One thing I have suspected for years is that many of us in the overshoot community have similar personalities. For instance, Tom Murphy did a survey quite a few years ago to discover the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator of the people who read his articles and found that most of them fit into similar types as he did. This meant that most people did not fit into those personality types and therefore most likely wouldn't be interested in reading his articles, so attempting to broadcast his media further and wider would have little effect. This is precisely the reasoning I brought into my last article.
I have also noticed other psychological properties in the overshoot community that appear to be fairly common. One of them is known as HSP, and while I have posted a few things about it here and there, I haven't brought it up frequently nor recently. This article goes into three types of HSP. Highly Sensitive Persons are neurodivergent (versus neurotypical), which means that "their brains process information differently and are wired to be more attuned to environmental stimuli and emotional cues than the average person. While not a disorder, this innate trait reflects a different neurological makeup, aligning with the concept of neurodiversity, which celebrates the natural variation in human neurology." Being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) is an innate temperament trait, not a mental disorder. Occasionally, an HSP may also have autism or ADHD or overlap with other issues.
One of the most painful tidbits of wisdom I have from my 4 decades as a professional MC/Officiant who performs wedding ceremonies and receptions is that little if any formal education about relationships exists within the school systems here in the U.S. As a result of this, few people are prepared emotionally and educationally for marriage until they are generally at least 25 (and some way older than that!). Everyone has relationship strengths and growth areas. Most couples are ill-prepared for solving the inevitable problems that will pop up in their marriage because they don't have a full set of tools for the job. No two people are going to agree 100% on everything. This lack of knowledge about relationships extends far beyond a marriage, though. How many people actually ever think about their relationship to all the other species we inhabit this planet with? I tend to think of the U.S. as an outlier with far more countries having better knowledge and/or principles regarding relationships than we do here.
Understanding this conceptual block within peoples' mindsets is very important and similar to the concept of wetiko. Because wetiko is self-masking, it is very difficult for any person suffering from it to be able to see it in herself or himself. This same deficit occurs in not understanding our relationship to the world around us. Christine Webb explains the topic of human exceptionalism, arrogance and hubris, how this worldview is not universal, and our relationship to all the other species here, quote:
"If we see ourselves as separate from nature, we treat the Earth not as a community we belong to, but as a set of resources to extract, manage, or “fix.” Recognizing this changed how I think about the ecological crisis. It’s easy to blame global warming on fossil fuels, industrial excess, or political inaction. But we don’t just need to reform these institutions—we need a new relationship with the living world, and a different story about who we are within it."
A very helpful video has been released where Nate Hagens interviews a forensic psychologist and a distinguished psychoanalyst, Dr. J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., ABPP, and Dr. Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., ABPP. As you can probably guess, this episode deals with psychology, specifically, the Dark Triad and Dark Tetrad types of individuals, psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sadism. Another item you can probably guess about this episode is that what is pointed out fits into the predicament category, as is divulged right around the 1:02:35 mark in the video.
Back when I was investigating alternative ways of living, I paid a lot of attention to specific details and found it difficult to understand why so many people who had built "off-grid" farms or lived in Transition Towns or permaculture refuges returned to civilization. Much of it had to do with incorrect assumptions people had before they ventured into these types of goals. Personality clashes with others living within those paradigms, medical issues, and the inconveniences/hard work of such living seem to be some of the more prevalent reasons.
I gave special attention to a friend who had embarked on living in a yurt. Off Grid John produced this last video about why he chose a yurt to live in and why this might not be the greatest idea. One of the reasons not explained in that video but discussed in other videos is the encroaching sprawl of civilization into the forest and land his yurt was on. Despite John's knowledge of sustainability, the landowners around him didn't have that same knowledge or perspective of the world around us, which made John's existence there miserable at times (above and beyond the annoyances of mice, ticks, mold, and critters who shared the same piece of land with John). I admired his resolve and ability to overcome, adapt, and improvise. He would consistently make things go right no matter the circumstance, and some of those circumstances would have done me in. It's one thing to imagine that kind of living and a whole different matter to actually do it.
So, when one really digs deep, one begins to see how almost everything in life boils down to relationships and cooperation since we are interdependent on everything and everyone around us. The illusion of self and separation and the evolution of "consciousness" are what condemn us to the ultimate outcome; extinction, according to Dave Pollard. One sentence wraps up the article quite well:
The illusion of self and separation is therefore closely related to our illusion of control. This really does explain how we have gotten here and why we are a rationalizing species rather than a rational one. This gels rather nicely with Robert Sapolsky's scientific findings that we lack free will and that our behavior is entirely determined. Ultimately, this means that the final outcome of our species was always going to be this way. One must let go of the illusion that it could have been different. However, because of denial of reality, he or she (in many, many cases) won't. Perhaps this is why so many people have this obsession with "solutions" so that they can "fix" the predicaments we face, which are actually operating just like they should, given the laws of biology, physics, and chemistry.
This brings me to another dimension of our psychology; the constant attempt to reduce predicaments into solvable problems, known as reductionism. I see so many scientists who understand their specialty very comprehensively but are siloed into that field almost exclusively and cannot seem to be able to get their heads out of the carbon tunnel vision (or name any other tunnel vision here) so many of them have. Being so focused on the symptom predicament they are familiar with and attempting to solve it never works because the symptom predicament cannot be separated from the root predicament of ecological overshoot and those two cannot be separated from our behavior of technology use and civilization.
When it comes to all these illusions that we suffer from, an article from Anastassia Makarieva brings some very important realities to the forefront, quote:
"In natural species, overpopulation is strongly suppressed and is practically never observed. It destroys the ecological community. But under some rare conditions overpopulation does exist in nature. What are these conditions? It is the abundance of some environmental characteristics used by life. Such abundance arises for species introduced on new territories, like rats and rabbits in Australia, or after volcanic eruptions. In all such cases we observe exponential growth and population expansion.
The reasons for this expansion are not obvious and must get a scientific explanation. Life cannot be stable without competitive interaction of individuals inside each population. Without competition and selection of defective individuals, the number of the latter increases. The species loses its organization and goes extinct.
Under conditions of abundance, defective individuals can occupy free territory and claim free resources, and thus avoid competition with normal individuals. In order to switch on competition, it is necessary to expand the population to occupy all available territory and resources, in other words, to do away with abundance. Life in continuous abundance is impossible. Therefore, expansion is a genetically programmed characteristic of life."
I do think that she is touching on the Maximum Power Principle here. Once again, our lack of agency is highlighted and explained. The outcome? "The species loses its organization and goes extinct."
Speaking of the MPP, William E. Rees has a new article out that is top-notch on explaining it along with the related delusions I have pointed out here (and this article was written before he published his, which is why I am now including it here). I have also mentioned his article in an article scheduled to be published next month...stay tuned!
Time and time and time again, I come up with the same outcome. If what keeps the planet habitable is going extinct or otherwise disappearing, then this inevitably means that habitat is going away.
Before I close, the constant stream of narratives being generated is yet another one of my peeves. I so appreciate Elisabeth Robson's articles which never shy away from the gritty reality of where we are and without providing a bunch of nonsensical hopium along the way, and this one delivers the truth as much as ever, quote:
Until we face up to the truth, we cannot prepare for what is coming. Decline does not have to be sudden to be devastating. Instead of a dramatic crash, the world may experience a stair-step descent: recessions leading to energy shocks; energy shocks leading to more recessions; recessions leading to financial crises; each one stripping away another layer of security. Social services erode. Infrastructure decays. Trust in government evaporates. Life gets simpler, more local, with smaller communities. Desperate humans may worsen environmental destruction for a time, until populations collapse, too.
While we can’t change our long-term fate here in my county, we can soften the blows that are coming our way, and soon. But we can only do this if we are honest with ourselves. Being honest in our community’s primary planning document would be a good start."
While we can’t change our long-term fate here in my county, we can soften the blows that are coming our way, and soon. But we can only do this if we are honest with ourselves. Being honest in our community’s primary planning document would be a good start."
She said the actuality upfront:
"Can we be honest with ourselves? It seems we can't."
Why is this so difficult to accept? I repeat that question over and over...and over again. Are there counties or cities or towns anywhere taking collapse into consideration? If you know of any, please let us know in the comments section!
Until next time, I leave you with my latest sets of pictures from Fred Clifton Park at Lovers Leap Overlook and Philpott Lake!
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