Friday, April 08, 2005
Collective Foreboding
The recent announcement that roughly 25% of the species now present are anticipated for extinction over the next hundred years has me wondering if we are prepared for the impact on our collective human psyche of this and other tragedies that now seem inevitable.
The epidemic of despair American public health authorities alerted us to in the 1990s pointed to anxieties over unmet expectations generated in part by media and our toxic mainstream culture. Even the despondency we are now wading in as a consequence ofmoral depravity in our country's leadership appears easily surmountable, though, by comparison with what could possibly follow the convergence of oil depletion, microbial pandemics, and environmental system failures. I mean, how will human psyches cope with this in say 50 years?
For myself, I'm a cheerful person, but many are not, and I wonder if we wouldn't be wise to develop a collective dance of atonement for honoring our animal relations that will be passing on, and how we might do this in a way that doesn't exacerbate already catastrophic levels of depression.
The epidemic of despair American public health authorities alerted us to in the 1990s pointed to anxieties over unmet expectations generated in part by media and our toxic mainstream culture. Even the despondency we are now wading in as a consequence ofmoral depravity in our country's leadership appears easily surmountable, though, by comparison with what could possibly follow the convergence of oil depletion, microbial pandemics, and environmental system failures. I mean, how will human psyches cope with this in say 50 years?
For myself, I'm a cheerful person, but many are not, and I wonder if we wouldn't be wise to develop a collective dance of atonement for honoring our animal relations that will be passing on, and how we might do this in a way that doesn't exacerbate already catastrophic levels of depression.
