(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Throwing spaghetti at the wall of climate denial. Caressing,cajoling & ‘slaps’ can foster action [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-24 Throwing spaghetti at the wall of climate denial. Caressing, cajoling & slaps can foster action. Writing about environmental collapse is to wade into deep and treacherous subconscious waters, as it is a subject that can trigger negative responses in most people. This can be particularly so, when attempting to address the underlying causes of climate information avoidance and environmental inaction. PeterOlant wrote a diary recently in which he attempted to point out that climate inaction is a denial based failure, which enables the agenda of the corporate, power and money Beast. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/12/2199016/-The-Null-curriculum-To-not-address-Climate-is-to-be-a-Climate-Denier?utm_campaign=recent#comment_87211734 He also spends time in unraveling the tangle of environmental connectivity to all other human endeavors and issues of importance, attempting to provide the clarity necessary to help bring this realization to the forefront of Climate consciousness. In the comments, another very climate concerned diarist, questioned his approach to communicating his message, wondering if his wording and tone might be counterproductive. This is a very valid and important question, that many of us wrestle with, like Jacob with his angel. Together these two experienced and committed individuals created an important exchange about the pros and cons of gentility vs aggressively forceful messaging. The commenter adequately represented a point of view that I have come across many times, which as I interpreted it, essentially boils down to this: doesn’t coming on too strong turn people off? The answer is yes, but, as I’ve seen repeatedly, the alternative is also something of a non-starter. At the end of their exchange, I weighed in with this response. “Many of us that write about climate and search for a way to reach a broader audience on this site face the same conundrum of how best to frame our approach. When people are in denial, soft messaging gets ignored and strong messaging elicits push back, anger and shut down. There does not seem to be a happy medium, just a point where the one response switches to the other. Until people are ready to hear the message, they are not ready to hear anything. Try confronting an alcoholic about drinking, for anything you say, gently or not, will be rejected. We have reached the point where, (as birches says) 'our house is on fire'. Discourse tailored to accommodate the denial generated sensitivities of others has become of little use in this emergency. Sometimes a slap is more effective than a caress. So we keep throwing 'spaghetti' at this wall of denial hoping that some of it will stick. And, to judge from SninkyPoo's latest diary https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/5/2197624/-What-the-Hell-Just-Happened it's starting to. If we accomplish one thing before the shit hits the fan, perhaps it will be buffering the shock for some on this site, by exposing as many of them as we can to the reality they are working so hard to shut out.” At one point in their discussion, Peter pointed out that we are knee deep in environmental collapse and that called for more aggressive messaging. I agree. When your house is on fire you don’t hand out gilt edged notices to warn people and you don’t continue to let them sleep in late. You shake them awake and yell at them to run! And that is what we are attempting to do with the majority on DK. The difference being that in a burning house, the smell of the smoke and the heat of the fire are palpable, unlike the abstraction that environmental collapse still presents to most people. As humans, we can be aided in processing information through repeated exposure, especially new and unwelcome ideas or facts, which sink in as they move toward familiarity through repetition. A great deal of this process takes place through subconscious absorption and adaption. Messaging to foster this requires a mix of persistence and cajoling, tempered by ‘caresses’ and punctuated by ‘slaps’ when necessary, to inhibit regression (as when the hero slaps the hysterical heroine). The sum total of large and small efforts, enhanced by the pressure of ongoing ‘tapping’ may eventually unstick this denial jammed lock. Patient application is the key, because in the face of the overwhelming horrors of environmental collapse the mind looks for any escape hatch, and denial is always on the ready to provide one. I heard a story once about a horrible massive pileup on the German autobahn, which has stuck in my mind because my subconscious recognized it as a powerful metaphor. I was told that hundreds of cars were involved. One poor man got sandwiched from the legs down between his car and the one in front, which most likely happened when he got out of his car to look for damage. He must have stopped his car in time to leave a space that he then stepped into. Then another car rear ended his, trapping him, with many more piling on in the rear as they had already done in front. Off in the distance, one of these cars caught fire, which in time ignited the next car and so on, moving inextricably toward the trapped man. There was no way to free him and he watched as the fire grew closer and closer. Tragically, his fate had already been sealed from the moment he had been entrapped. When we address environmental collapse and the subconscious road blocks to pro-action, we are attempting to move these cars and the difference here, is that with patience and tenacity, they are movable. A few people who have shed enough denial to be able to receive this message, will still find it forceful, but no longer perceive it as browbeating (which is a defensive perceptual overlay), because it no longer menaces their comfort zone. Instead, this ‘wake up’ falls into the enlightening perspective cast by a far greater threat, the threat to their survival. But they may not know they are ready until they hear our call to action and no longer react by ‘flight’ rather than ‘fight’. It also stands to reason that these are the strongest and biggest ‘fish’ and therefore the most potentially worthwhile to land. I know this first hand, as my more aggressive ‘apple cart upsetting’ efforts, have had the effect to free a number of people trapped by collective denial and they in turn have joined the fight for survival. The going may be slow, but ironically, El Niño has come to our aid and just as collapse ramps up exponentially, so does awareness. Fear will sort out our priorities, vaporize feelings of despair amongst the brave and motivate them to act as our fundamental priority for survival kicks in. I thought this excerpt from another response Peter left in the same thread strikes at the heart of the messaging dilemma we face: “Shaming and Blaming is also known as holding people accountable. Some people are more accountable than others. But we have a lack of power and urgency in our public discourse regarding climate change. And it is getting people killed and will get more killed. Keeping silent about the death camps in Germany was deplorable. Keeping silence about our planet overheating and in the process killing millions is also deplorable. Silence is complicity.” I will only add that in our present circumstances even ‘deplorable’ is too soft a word when describing the general indifference exhibited by the majority on DK as stacked up against the horrors it ignores with its silence. Caring without emergency level action is worthless and amounts to complicity in this crime. It is a silence that condemns our children and the future of our wondrous world. Monstrous, while it tramples on the decorum preferred by denial to evade the harshness and threat of reality, gets closer— but still falls far short of the mark. 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