Yeah, wasn’t that brilliant? Do you have a video link to that?
I’ve got the transcript here
http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2428806.htm
...but it’s not the same as seeing it live.
Now while I love Greg and John’s work on Revelation, and have a copy of their book “666 and all that”, I also thought the Psychologist on the show had some interesting points to make to the more
fatalistic members of the whole greenie “End of the world” mob. (Apocalyptic thinking is stretching over into Peak Oil / Global Warming / Economic Collapse as well as theological thinking).
While I’m convinced there are real concerns about POGWEC, and would draw up *possible* risk mitigation scenarios, I make an important distinction between saying certain things are *possible* but I don’t think they are *inevitable* if we take emergency precautionary measures now.
Some people, in both Christian theological circles and greenie secular movements, just can’t live with that uncertainty.
Narrator
Psychologists like Susan Tanner are also concerned about the impact of doomsday thinking.
THE PSYCHOLOGIST
Susan Tanner
Clinical Psychologist
Now many things are not predictable. The world is a very uncertain place. People change their jobs, organisations fold, collapse, you know, There is no guarantee in anything any more…Global threats like war, climate change certainly create anxiety too because the future is no longer guaranteed…
.…that sort of unpredictability and uncertainty creates a lot of anxiety, and anxiety is often a precursor to depression.
Unresolved anxiety sets people up for depression, because you can then feel despondent that well there actually isn’t anything I can do. Because climate change is out of my hands, terrorism is out of my hands…
So that can lead to what’s called catastrophic thinking, that imagining the worst scenario of what might happen and then believing that that’s what will happen.
Narrator
Surprisingly, being certain about the end can actually bring relief to those suffering anxiety…
Susan Tanner
Apocalyptic thinking can be very useful to people who need to feel a sense of control, and that they therefore feel calm because they know what’s going to happen. Living with uncertainty, living with a question mark is the hardest thing to do for all human beings. We like to know what’s going to happen. That’s why we visit clairvoyants and you know we have our tarots read and all sorts of things….
This is exactly the kind of doomerism I fought so strongly years ago when I was in the peak oil movement, and I even warned one email list that their ‘technically unavoidable collapse’ mantra could undermine psychological health and make some young people suicidal.
Sadly, it happened anyway, with a 19 year old young man on the list. I was trying to point out that while there are *very* real risks, it is not *inevitable* that 5 of our 6.7 billion were to starve to death in the coming anarchic collapse… and that I did not even see a complete anarchic collapse as likely.
A year ago I met with this boy’s dad, who has been searching for answers as to his son’s suicide. The irony is the dad is an energy specialist, working in coal-seam gas. He’s a nice guy, and obviously traumatised. But he was curious as to how I found being a member of this doomer email list, and some of the experiences I had. We talked about many things, and he shared one email exchange he had where he was actually trying to help his son listen to some of the stuff I was saying on the email list. But of course my not being a scientist or energy specialist affected my credibility in this boy’s view, and so he was blinded from listening to the sustainability experts I was quoting. I was touched that the dad shared this email exchange with me.
Anyway, for what it was worth I shared the psychological perspective of this Compass episode with the dad and hope it helped comfort him somehow.
(PS: The dad is objective enough to take the risks of peak oil very seriously, even though his son lost his life over it! He’s a great guy.)