I don’t like the practice of answering people’s questions with the response I guess they most want to hear. Lately, with people who I know to a certain degree, if they ask, I have just been saying that I am not doing well, and if they follow up provide a brief explanation of how multilateralism and evidence-based policy are collapsing while the world commits itself to climate chaos.
I tend to get two fallacious responses.
The first is the inductive fallacy: bad things have happened before (Black Death, WWI, etc) and people and civilization have endured, therefore we will endure whatever climate change brings as well. In terms of logic, this is an obviously weak argument. If a man is playing Russian Roulette and manages to pull the trigger once without getting shot, that doesn’t prove that trigger-pulling is nothing to worry about. Furthermore, there are excellent reasons to think the world is more dangerous now than at the times of the Black Death or WWI. It wouldn’t take too many nuclear strikes against cities to produce a nuclear winter which would essentially kill us all.
The other is motivated reasoning: you need to have hope. This approach basically rejects the value of knowledge and thinking, or at least the idea that hypotheses should be tested against logic and evidence. Deciding how you want to feel in advance, and then seeking out beliefs that reinforce the feeling, is a recipe for ending up totally deluded about the world. Someone who decides what they think based on how they want to feel loses the connection which a skeptical mind maintains with the empirical world. Instead, they become like transcendentalist gurus who only care about how the world seems inside their own mind. They are no longer able to help anybody, except perhaps to become as disconnected and useless as they are.
I know people who ask how you are doing seldom want an honest answer. It’s a social cue to come back with a light and social answer. At the same time, I am utterly terrified about how the population normalizes and ignores the dismal signs of just how much trouble humanity is in. The mechanisms that let people cope and maintain a tolerable emotional bubble around themselves seem thoroughly interconnected with the mechanisms which are letting us destroy the future because we don’t want to think about scary things, or give any consideration to the interests of others when we choose what to do for ourselves.
I have been trying to make sense of why I feel so intensely unhappy now, especially when in numerous ways life was a lot worse while I was in the PhD program. The closest thing to answer is that before I felt like there were worthwhile things to try to achieve in the world, but I was just being blocked from taking part effectively in them by nearby obstacles and barriers. Now I feel like I have no idea whatsoever of what to do to try to dodge the planetary calamity ahead. With the climate change activist movement distracted and disempowered, I also feel uniquely alone.
As an aging woman entering the final phase of my life, I often feel sad. I wake up in the middle of the night with scary thoughts and worries about the future of our environment and life for the younger generations. I can no longer watch the news or look at some of the world’s despicable leaders. I cry when I hear about raging forest fires and unbreathable air, I am overwhelmed by the suffering of the poor and the injustice of it all. It takes me a lot of courage and determination to rise early and carry on as best as I can.
I have had an adventurous and privileged life. I have food, a home, intelligence, a beautiful family and friends. I am educated, quite healthy, and capable of many things. I have also lost two home countries, witnessed an occupation, and escaped from a war. I have suffered violence against me as a woman, at times I have felt lonely and discriminated against as a refugee. I have fled and been embraced in different cultures. I have seen the world in its beauty and horror. I have children and a granddaughter whom I love bottomlessly. I have a son who survived a serious medical crisis and I am forever grateful. I fear for our children’s future.
It is impossible to be happy with the state of the world and the values that people embrace. Without religious faith, I carry no hope for a heavenly afterlife. To live and to cope, I work hard, nurture my garden and love all its moods. I care for others, try to be generous every day, I read, I teach and love my students. No matter how much I do, there are times when I feel overwhelmed and unwell.