Monday 22 November 2010

Mr Brightside's Modest Proposals



This is a few days old now - a musing on the Berkeley research that explored people's fear of fear and their peculiar evidence-averse just-world view. This left me in something of a quandary. Does one tell the tale with all its' sorry implications, and run the risk that the audience jams down the shutters? Or does one ease up on the implications and give folk the opportunity to feel that there is nothing that needs to be done? What peculiarly unhelpful psychology we are blessed with.

In the end I plumped for doing what I do. It seems strange and willfully perverse to insist that a movement as broad and internally argumentative (not to mention overwhelmingly voluntary) as environmentalism should have one voice and one message and that it is somehow the sole responsibility of environmentalism to find the tiny chink in the public's psychological defenses that will miraculously overcome the foibles that evolution has left us with. You know - the one thing that'll turn it all around? Do you know it? I dont.
We could do with some help here. Hello? We. Could. Do. With. Some. Help. Here. It's a job of work that needs doing and will not be accomplished without the participation of every slice and nuance of the population.
Hmm. I feel a rant coming on so I'll stop. Although...

I get the impression that when the shit does hit the fan it will be the environmental movement that will be blamed - in glorious isolation - for failing to rally the planet, for failing to successfully herd cats and teach elephants to tap-dance. Fence-sitters are probably already drafting the charges now.

No comments: