Psychodynamics/Global Dynamics: The Psychological Costs of Unsustainable
Development
Dr. Terry Martin
School of Education
University of
Southampton
Southampton
SO17 1BJ
UK
Tel:
44-(0)-23-8059-3481
Fax:
44-(0)-23-8059-3556
Key Words: demographic trends, global agenda, sustainable
development, inter-dependency, global community in the mind.
Abstract
The Shadow of the Future, the title of the 2004 ISPSO Symposium,
was also chosen by Professor John Caldwell for his Sir Robert Madwick lecture
at the University of New England in 1988.
His concern was about our demographic knowledge of both past and future,
and he acknowledged a debt to the great Australian demographer, George Knibbs,
whose own book, The Shadow of the World’s
Future, ‘provided the first estimate of the ceiling imposed by resources on
population growth’, (p.7).
As well as
demographic issues of population growth and patterns of migration, global
inequities in distribution of wealth and environmental and ecological impact
have also become pressing issues, affecting our views of the future. Throughout
the Cold War and since, our deepest security needs have been met through a
bizarre arrangement of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Human beings have always had to come to
terms with their own individual mortality, but only in relatively recent years
has the human race had to face up to its possible annihilation and extinction. Heron (1990, p.47) refers to the need for
all of us to confront a global agenda.
Global
demographic trends mask significant variations in different parts of the
world. Many developing countries have a
high proportion of their population of school age or younger, whilst many
developed countries have a high proportion of their population, because of
increasing life expectancies, of retirement age or older.
In this paper I
want to consider the psychological consequences of confronting a future in
which apocalyptic scenarios of disaster and catastrophe have become a dominant
discourse. Intense and primitive
anxieties about survival are aroused and social/global defences have been
constructed to contain them, often with disastrous consequences.
In thinking
about the unthinkable (Kahn, 1963), I propose a concept analogous to the
“organisation-in-the-mind”, (Hutton, 2000), or the “institution in the mind”
(Armstrong, 1997), which I shall call the “global community in the mind”.
The
stunning, now familiar pictures of earth from outer space, have given us a
sense of our shared planetary home, space-ship earth, in all its fragility and
vulnerability. We are also more aware
of the global extent of our shared inter-dependence. Such an image can also act as an icon, described by Williams
(2000) as “a window into an alien frame that is at the same time the structure
that will make definitive sense of the world we inhabit.”
A
psychoanalytic perspective on these issues, would be an invaluable contribution
to complement other understandings that have not taken seriously enough the
depth and extent of the anxieties generated nor of the importance of the inner
world of meaning, (Maiteny, 2000).
Introduction
My working
hypothesis in this paperpaper put very starkly and bluntly,bluntly is
that the biggest shadow of the future is that we, the human race, may have no
future. 3
My hypothesis makes no claim to originality, for we have known since Malthus
that population growth, left to itself, will eventually outstrip food production and
resources and condemn at least some of the human race to misery, starvation and
premature death. More recently the work
of the Club of Rome (Meadows et. al. , 1972) has
provided an even starker picture of the future with scenarios of overshoot and
subsequent collapse of the world’s population as it exceeds the resource limits
or carrying
capacity of the earth.
Although much has been written about the
external reality aspects to these issues, the environmental impact of economic
growth through and
resource depletion
and pollution, there is little literature on the psychological aspects of
this knowledge and awareness, the impact on our inner worlds, or of a
psychoanalytic perspective on these
issues. Papers by Maiteny (2000) and
Reed & Bazalgette (2004) at the Grubb Institute are significant exceptions,
and I am pleased to acknowledge my personal debt to them and their thinking.
The Shadow of the Future, the title of the 2004 ISPSO Symposium,
was also chosen by Professor John Caldwell for his Sir Robert Madwick lecture
at the University of New England in 1988.
His concern was about our demographic knowledge of both past and future,
and he acknowledged a debt to the great Australian demographer, George Knibbs,
whose own book, The Shadow of the World’s
Future, ‘provided the first estimate of the ceiling imposed by resources on
population growth’, (p.7).
At some level
within ourselves we know these things and this knowledge arouses intense and primitive
anxieties about survival,.
3
that preclude or
inhibit attention to psycho-social development. These anxieties stimulate
widespread social defences at all levels, including on a global scale,.
3
thatThese
defences provide temporary protection forand
shield at least some of us, but they also exclude the rest, who
happen to be the majority of the human population, the poor and already
dispossessed.
Human Perspectives
Most of us,
most of the time, take a fairly parochial view of human concerns and affairs
and this is graphically illustrated in Figure 1 of the Club of Rome’s report
(Limits to Growth) entitled Human Perspectives 4,. t, Tthe
caption of which whichthis figure reads:
54
Although the perspectives of the world’s people vary in space and in
time, every human concern falls somewhere on the space-time graph. The majority
of the world’s people are concerned with matters that affect only family or
friends over a short period of time. 6 Others look
farther ahead in time or over a larger area – a city or a nation. Only a few
people have a global perspective that extends far into the future. (p.19)
5 I would like to give a personal illustration of
this important point. It is Thursday
June 3rd, just two weeks before this ISPSO symposium, and I am crouched over my
laptop in my hotel bedroom overlooking the beautiful beach and sea on Cheung
Chau, 7 a tranquil
offshore island according to the tourist brochure, and I’m not going to disagree. It is 45 minutes by ferry to Hong Kong, a district of which,
Kowloon 8 has the dubious
distinction of being the most densely populated place on the planet. Hong Kong was reluctantly reunited
with China in 1997, the country boasting the world’s largest population, and
whose oppressive heat and crowded streets I have escaped from for three days to
work oncomplete
this paper on, irony of ironies, the psychological costs of population growth, thea dominant factor
in unsustainable development.
Why am I in
Hong Kong at this most unlikely time? I
am paying a brief visit to my middle son, Daveid, a
recent graduate in aerospace engineering, who is on a three month placement
from his employer Airbus, with Cathay Pacific.
I have flown over a quarter of the way around the world on a
technological marvel that was hardly a dream when my grandparents were borne
towards the end of the nineteenth century.
My grandparents, two of the four died before I was born, belonged to
what is often referred to as the ‘lost generation’, perishing in and
traumatised by the First World War, including several great uncles I never knew
but were spoken of in hushed whispers in my youth. Wars in the twentieth century made a major contribution to
curbing population growth; 100 million dead is a conservative estimate.
Meanwhile
David’s younger brother, Rob, is another quarter of the way round the world,
currently in New Zealand, on a gap year trip about which I receive an
occasional brief and vaguely reassuring email.
Everything is just fine and he is having a great time.
I’ve no grounds
to complain; at his age I was on a similar trip around the Middle East, which
included several days in Baghdad, where I foolishly attracted the attentions of
the Iraqi army by photographing a tank outside a Post Office. No emails or mobile phones in those days and
my parents only got an expurgated version of these events much later in life.
The globe
trotting exploits of my eldest son John put the rest of the family’s into the
shade (or perhaps I should say shadow).
Base Camp Everest, the Inca trail, Mount Kilimanjaro (although he did
drag me up that one), to name a few, he is currently working for an
international aid agency, actively helping some of the world’s poorest, and
advocating their interests, particularly on the issue of fair-trade, to our
(western) politicians, who are nervously ambivalent about altruistic gestures
as election time approaches.
Three children,
so I’ve done my bit for the population explosion, but I wonder about and fear
for their future and the kind of world they will inherit and inhabit; it will
certainly be different from the world I grew up in, so rapid is the pace of
change. Their grandchildren (I’m
jumping the gun a bit here as none of them has yet got any children) will be
alive in the twenty second century.
What kind of world and life will they and their as yet unborn
contemporaries have? In terms of
technological progress we can scarcely imagine, but in terms of quality of life
the prospects are looking decidedly bleak, at least for the majority.
I imagine that
my perspective and pre-occupations are little different from yours, but they
raise profound questions about our relationship to both time and space. Does taking up the role and identity of
‘global citizen’ require that I abandon my family, neighbourhood and national
loyalties and identities? The task of
managing, within ourselves the complex inter-relatedness of these different
aspects is a crucial challenge for us all.
I note in passing that there is in
Figure 1 no reference to the past; an understandable but regrettable
omission. A greater appreciation of the
past might contribute to a greater concern about the future.
In particular
about future time we can ask the following questions: 96
·
What are
our current obligations to future generations?
·
How far
into the future do these obligations extend?
·
What
prevents us from fulfilling these obligations?
Similar questions
can of course be asked about our current obligations to the present generation
of people throughout the different regions and countries of the world,
particularly the poor and marginalised.
How far geographically do these obligations extend, and what is it that
prevents us from fulfilling these obligations?.
‘Why should I care about
posterity? What’ has
posterity ever done for me?’ may have mused Groucho Marx, but if we take
seriously these issues about population growth and sustainability then we have
no choice but to take both a long term and global perspective. But how long is long term? One hundred years? One thousand years? One
million years? There are important
ethical and cognitive issues at stake here.
Psychodynamic perspectives: 21st Century Icons
Reed &
Bazalgette (2004),
p.1)
describe a more positive and constructive approach to those
anxieties I mentioned earlier. 107
One way to manage our temptation to respond irrationally to the
anxieties of life is to rely on frames of reference which can structure, shape
and give meaning to experience, enabling us to feel as if the world is rational
and orderly. Icons are symbolic markers
that help to organize complex, sometimes contradictory events in ways that
orient us to reality. (p.1)
They go on to
quote Rowan Williams who describes an icon as “a window into an alien frame
that is at the same time the structure that will make definitive sense of the
world we inhabit.” They draw upon two
icons, the mushroom clouds that hung over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9
August 1945, 118
and the vivid image of smoke and flame as passenger aircraft smashed into the
twin towers on 11 September 2001, 129
through which to explore “how iconic images have shaped the modern world and both
helped and hindered our understanding of it.”
In a similar spirit I propose that the image of the planet earth has
also acted as an icon, which can mobilise anxiety in both positive and negative
ways. 130
These stunning, now familiar pictures of earth from outer space, a view from
outside, have given us a sense of our shared planetary home, spaceship earth,
141
in all its fragility and vulnerability.
The images
have evoked poetry. 15
To see the earth as it truly is, small and beautiful
in the eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the
earth together, brothers on that bright loneliness in the eternal cold-brothers
who now know they are truly brothers. (Archibald
MacLeish, 1968)
Its boundary is a thin skin of atmosphere,
providing us with air to breathe but also protection, so far, from an inhospitable outer space.
I also propose a related concept or
construct, analogous to the “organisation-in-the-mind”, (Hutton, 2000), or the “institution
in the mind” (Armstrong, 1997), which I shall call the “global community in the
mind”.
Hutton (2000)
makes the following distinctions:
Organisation-in-the-mind is a conscious or pre-conscious construct,
focused around emotional experience of tasks, roles, purposes, rituals,
accountability, competence, failure, success. It calls for management.
Institution-in-the-mind is an unconscious construct, focused around
the emotional experience of ideals, values, hopes, beliefs, dreams, symbols, birth,
life, death. It requires leadership.
InsofarA as
I can understand the distinction between the two constructs, the first one is one more
specific and concrete and are outer focused, the
other more general, abstract and inner focused; they are two sides of the
same coin or ends of a continuum. My
proposed construct “global -community -in -the -mind” would embrace
both the conscious and unconscious aspects of our emotional experience of the
global extent of our inter-dependence and fate, and shared dependence upon its
life support systems,
and associated ideals, values, hopes, beliefs, dreams etc..
The
construct includes The icon is the visual
embodiment of the construct which It requires
the (internal)
management of our roles as global citizens and (external) political
leadership. Both mManagement and
leadership require both
knowledge and wisdom.
The Limits to Knowledge and Knowing
So what do we actually know about Spaceship Earth and the
real extent of our vulnerability?
However
as Buckminster Fuller, American designer and architect, wrote,
162
Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship
Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. (1969, Ch 4)
Edward O. Wilson at Harvard University puts it succinctly:
‘One planet, one experiment.’
We have had to find out and make it up as we go
along; learning from experience with a vengeance. There is
an inevitable dependence on scientific expertise and opinion that engenders its
own sense of vulnerability.
Hardin
Tibbs, (1999), in the
introduction to his paper, ‘Sustainability’, raises the
alarming image of the Earth
as a dead planet? 173,
184
He goes on to ask, 195
Could this be the future of our planet? If current environmental
deterioration continues, Earth could become as inhospitable to human life as
the barren planet Mars. This paper explores the risks, the scenarios, and the
options. (Hardin Tibbs, 1999)
The ‘whole daunting complex of seemingly barely soluble world
problems’, such as 20
Environmental degradation, Poverty, Education, Capitalist
perestroika?, Search for meaning, Social dissonance/stress, Crisis of,
governance, Genetic diversity, Sustainable development, Enterprise and
self-reliance,
Debt, Food for 10 billion, Population, Resource consumption, Global
communications, New technology, Global Equity? (p. 16),
is
described by futurists as the “World Problématique”, 16 and
illustrates the scope of unsustainability, 1217
(Figure 1, p.18).
How
do weto
cope with what we know but often choose not to know.know? It is Eeasy to become
(cognitively) overwhelmed with the scale of problems. Cognitive,
affective limits? Introjection-issues have got inside us.
Scale
of problems
Weick
(1995xx)
writes about the scale of social problems, but what he says can be applied, a
fortiori to globlal
problems. The population problem,
environmental problem, etc. are big problems, and that’s the problem. 22
The massive scale on which social problems are conceived
often precludes innovative action because the limits of bounded rationality are
exceeded and arousal is raised to dysfunctionally high levels. People often define social problems in ways
that overwhelm their ability to do anything about them. (p. 426)
He
goes on to argue how lurid description drawing attention to
the scale and complexity of suchocial, and I would add
global, problems can 23
… disable the very resources of thought and action necessary
to change them. When the magnitude of
problems is scaled upward in the interest of mobilising action, the quality of
thought and action declines, because processes such as frustration, arousal,
and helplessness are activated. (p. 427)
Defences are one way of
protecting ourselves as we reach our cognitive and affective limits, and preventing us from being
overwhelmed, but the price we pay for such denial is that we take no action. The contemplation of big problems readily
arouses anxiety and attendant basic assumption behaviours of freeze, flight
and fight.
The Limits to Growth System Dynamics/World Model 1248
The
first report of the Club of Rome , (The
Limits to Growth,
(1972) is now nearly thirty years old but continues to exert enormous
influence, even when it is the focus of disagreement and dissent. Three of the authors (Donella H. Meadows, Dennis l.
Meadows and,
Jorgen Randers) and
William W. Behrens III) subsequently published an update (1992). They have not shied away from thinking about
the World
Problématique using
Their
world model described in their book is a System Dynamics model, based upon ‘a
new method for understanding the dynamic behavior of complex systems. The
method is called System Dynamics.’
Their ‘world model was built specifically to investigate five major
trends of global concern – accelerating industrialization, rapid population
growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of non-renewable resources, and a
deteriorating environment.’ 1259
To
those of us with an interest in group relations then both psychoanalysis and
systems theory provide the underpinning conceptual basis. What is the relationship between systems
theory and System Dynamics? I believe
this to be a crucial methodological and conceptual issue. Common to both is an interest in
understanding the behaviour and dynamics of complex human/social systems. Any understanding entails a representation,
map or model of reality. The process of
representing, mapping or modelling happens inside the minds of individuals but
is communicated by utilising some publicly shared symbolic code or
language. System Dynamics, which is
based upon modelling physical aspects of reality, uses mathematical variables
to represent key time-dependent aspects of reality, and mathematical equations
to model the (causal) influences or mechanisms of one variable upon
another. The equations usually contain
parameters that are determined empirically.
When modelling physical aspects of reality, the mathematical equations
embody some known scientific law enabling precise predictions to be made
by solving the equations. Solving the
equations means computing the values of all variables for any specified time in
the future (prediction) or past (retro-diction). Analytic solutions are hard to come by, but numerical solutions
can be readily obtained by using computers.
Systems
theory or systemic thinking, in the sense deployed within group relations, is a
looser notion, less formalised and more intuitive, and according to Reed &
Bazalgette (2004, p.20) ‘postulates that every part is reflected in the whole
and that the whole is more than the summation and expression of all the
parts.’ The behaviour of complex
systems cannot be deduced simply from the behaviour of its constituent parts,
usually individual human beings, but displays emergent features that can only
be grasped by maintaining a sense of the whole, the boundaries that demarcate
where the system ends and the environment begins and the transactions and
influences across these boundaries.
These transactions/influences are often conceptualised in terms of the
psychoanalytical mechanisms of projection, introjection and splitting. A feature of this kind of systemic thinking
is the taking into account in any model/map of a system, of the internal
worlds, subjectivities and agencies of the key human actors whose own
experiences and meanings are central to their own personal models/maps of the
situations they inhabit. Reflexivity is
an inevitable feature of this approach.
Any
model, whether constructed within the systems theory or System Dynamics
paradigms is, ‘like every model, imperfect, oversimplified, and
unfinished.’ I believe we need both
these approaches and understandings of systems to grapple with the World
Problématique.
Senge (1990, p. 12)
claims that ‘systems thinking is the fifth discipline’, and it is
interesting that some of his examples emanate from MIT, home to the World Model and
System Dynamics.
Exponential Growth and the Population
Problem21-23
Essential to an
understanding of this approach is an appreciation of All five elements basic
to the study reported here--population, food production, and consumption of
non-renewable natural resources--are increasing. The amount of their increase
each year follows a pattern that mathematicians call exponential growth.
A
quantity exhibits exponential growth when it increases by a constant percentage
of the whole in a constant time period.
Such exponential growth, which is a common process in biological, financial, and many other
systems of the world. Also called
geometric growth it occurs whenever a quantity increases by a constant percentage of the
whole in a constant time period.
Assume that the
population at time t, P(t), doubles after a fixed unit interval of time: 26
P(t+1)=2×P(t)
We will also assume an
initial population of 1 at time zero; so we must be dealing with some kind of asexual
reproduction, amoeba maybe. The population
at subsequent time intervals is most vividly displayed graphically, but . 27
thWe results can however also be tabulated the results:
28
|
Population |
1 |
2 |
4 |
8 |
16 |
32 |
|
? |
?? |
|
Time |
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
|
10 |
20 |
Most people are surprised at how rapidly an enormous population gets generated. It is over one thousand after ten doublings (one thousand and
twenty four to be exact) and over one million after twenty doublings (1,045,876 to be exact). There is nothing special about a growth rate
of two (doubling), although the dramatic effect of exponential growth is quickly apparent. The growth rate is a measure of the net
effect of fertility and mortality. The
fertility (fraction of population giving birth each year) creates a destabilising positive feedback loop
and mortality ((fraction of population dying each year) creates a
stabilising negative feedback loop.
As long as fertility is larger than mortality then populations will grow
exponentially. A good rule
of thumb is that the doubling time in years can be calculated by dividing the
growth rate (expressed
as a percentage) into seventy. So with a growth rate of “only” 2%, a
population doubles in 35 years and quadruples in seventy years, a single human
lifetime.
To what extent does the
growth of the world’s population follow this exponential pattern? If you look at Figure 1-1 from Meadows, D. et al.,
(1992)
30 then it certainly looks like it. Graphs can be deceptive and a plot of World
Population 1950-2050 31 (the right hand
half being a projection into the future) might be more reassuring. However
supporters of Zero Population Growth claim that the levelling off is itself evidence
of the population already having exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet.
One website gives a
“clock” showing moment by moment changes in the global population.
http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop 32
When last accessed on (15/06/04) it stood at 6,37468,563847,827955, and rising at nearly 200,000 per day. Another website gives the following
tabulated data:
33Exponential growth is a
dynamic phenomenon, which means that it involves elements that change over
time. (...) When many different quantities are growing simultaneously in a
system, however, and when all the quantities are interrelated in a complicated
way, analysis of the causes of growth and of the future behavior of the system
becomes very difficult indeed.
World Vital
Events per Time Unit: 2004
|
Time unit |
Births |
Deaths |
Natural increase |
|
Year |
128,970,393 |
56,202,306 |
72,768,087 |
|
Month |
10,747,533 |
4,683,526 |
6,064,007 |
|
Day |
352,378 |
153,558 |
198,820 |
|
Hour |
14,682 |
6,398 |
8,284 |
|
Minute |
245 |
107 |
138 |
|
Second |
4.1 |
1.8 |
2.3 |
Global figures mask
regional variations, where not just total numbers but fertility and mortality
rates vary significantly. Much of the ‘developed’ world, due to increases in life expectancy
accompanying falling birth rates, is experiencing a different demographic time
bomb. An ageing population is putting
increasing demands upon a diminishing younger generation for health care and social services, and added to this a serious collapse in
pensions. Also immigration is proving
difficult to control with public attitudes to ‘illegal immigrants becoming increasingly hostile.
34
The Limits
to Growth
and Beyond the Limits
The authors of the Club
of Rome report are aware of In spite of the
preliminary state of otheirur work, but nevertheless the
broad implications are inescapable. we believe
it is important to publish the model and our findings now. (...) We feel that
the model described here is already sufficiently developed to be of some use to
decision-makers. Furthermore, the basic behavior
modes we have already observed in this model appear to be so fundamental and
general that we do not expect our broad conclusions to be substantially altered
by further revisions.
TheiOur
conclusions are (Meadows et. al., 1972, pp. 23-24):
1. 1. If the
present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food
production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on
this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The
most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both
population and industrial capacity. 2354
2. 2. It is
possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of
ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state
of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of
each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to
realize his individual human potential. 2365
3. If the world's people decide
to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin
working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success. 2376
Given that these
conclusions were first presented to the world over 30 years ago we might wonder
if it is not already too late. Twenty
years later they wrote their conclusions as follows:
1. Human use of many
essential resources and generation of many kinds of pollutants have already
surpassed rates that are physically sustainable. Without significant reductions in material and
energy flows, there will be in the coming decades an uncontrolled decline in per capita output,
energy use, and industrial production.
2. This decline is not
inevitable. To avoid it two changes are
necessary. The first is a comprehensive
revision of policies and practices that perpetuate growth in material
consumption and in population. The second is a rapid, drastic increase in
the efficiency with which materials and energy
are used.
3. A sustainable society is
still technically and economically possible.
It could be much more desirable than a society that tries to solve its
problems by constant expansion. The
transition to a sustainable society requires a careful balance between
long-term and short-term goals and an emphasis on sufficiency, equity, and quality
of life rather than quantity of output. It
requires more than productivity and more than technology; it also requires maturity, compassion, and
wisdom.
The importance
of human, and indeed humane, values highlighted in the last sentence is also
brought in particular focus by Garrett Hardin
in
Over
the course of the last 30 years there has evolved at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology a new method for understanding the dynamic behavior of complex
systems. The method is called System Dynamics. The basis of the method is the
recongnition that the structure of any system--the many circular, interlocking,
sometimes time-delayed relationships among its components--is often just as
important in determining its behavior as the individual components themselves.
The world model described in this book is a System Dynamics model.
The
tragedy of the commons
In his influential paper, “The tragedy of the commons”. He, Garrett Hardin draws attention to
the fact that 36
An implicit and almost
universal assumption of discussions published in professional and semipopular
scientific journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical
solution. A technical solution may be defined
as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences,
demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of
morality.
He goes on to
persuasively argue that the ‘population problem cannot be solved in a technical
way,’ 37 and therefore must
require a change in human values and attitudes, particularly towards the
commons, 38 those resources which
we share with others and are owned by everyone. When population is low relative to shared resources, it is in
everyone’s interest to take full advantage of their right to take resources
from and put wastes into the commons, and thereby to accumulate wealth. However, the selfish accumulate wealth from
the commons by acquiring more than their fair share of the resources and paying
less than their fair share of the total costs. Ultimately, as population grows
and greed runs rampant, the commons collapses and ends in the tragedy of the
commons. The “tragedy” occurs as the result
of everyone having the fatal freedom to exploit the commons. All participants must agree to
conserve the commons, but any one can force the destruction of the
commons.
The tragedy
points to the need for, but difficulty of co-operation. Harding argues that some degree of coercion,
mutually agreed upon, will be required to secure compliance.
The three icons
for the 21st century, each speaking of some separate aspect of our response to
our needs for survival, also speak powerfully and collectively of the
price we have been prepared to pay in order to ensure it.
Hardin Tibbs (1999) explores the implications for
the fictitious Pascal Corporation which
Even if (it) does decide to anticipate
environmental damage, it faces a further impediment. Although it wants to take
significant steps toward fundamental environmental improvement, the
effectiveness of its actions will be diluted or negated by the fact that the
rest of its industry is not making the same changes. Not only this, but Pascal
Corporation’s competitiveness and market position may be harmed if it takes
action unilaterally.
So even if Pascal Corporation has decided to apply
corporate environmentalism, its actions may still be ineffective. The ultimate environmental
“judgment” will depend on the actions of the whole industry, not of one player.
Sustainability 40
Sustainable development is development that meets
the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs.
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Population Websites
http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop
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The
tragedy of the commons
We
are all prone to planetary anxiety,
demographic
time bomb scenarios, novel “Sons of Men” by P D James also Margaret Atwood
Anxieties
about survival-pensions, health.
Impingement of boundaries.
Fragility,
vulnerability of ecosystem, anxieties about survival
Toffler-Future
Shock
Futurology
However
we are now realising that many of the technological developments which have given
some of us these great improvements in our standards of living, (too easily
equated with quality of life), have been bought at a cost of deep and possibly
irreversible damage to the life support system of our shared planetary home. The gains have been largely for a privileged
minority of all of the fellow travellers on space-ship earth. As a consequence we now contemplate, think
and worry about death in new and hitherto unknown ways. The combination of a Cold War, in which our
deepest security needs were met through a bizarre arrangement of Mutually
Assured Destruction (MAD), and an environmental/ecological crisis of
potentially catastrophic proportions, confronts us with the threat not just to
our own personal mortality, but to the possible annihilation of the whole of
human and biological life. We are all
prone to planetary anxiety, Heron (1990).
Anxiety
plays a central role in contemporary understandings of both psychoanalysis and
existentialism. In the face of death we
are confronted with the threat of non-being, the annihilation of our self. Despite the increase to our life expectancy
we are all vulnerable and we can never defend ourselves totally against the
inherent insecurities of the human condition. An illusion of immortality seems
to be a precondition of engagement with our project of life. Some see this as intrinsic to the ultimate
tragedy of life and the human condition, others as a positive virtue, essential
for sanity and survival. Firestone
(1994) discusses the various psychological defences against anxiety and the
differing attitudes, healthy and morbid, towards death. Defending ourselves, individually and
collectively against anxiety is always at a cost, and we are therefore
confronted with the need to assess the value of the benefits against these
costs. In order to make this assessment
some reference to personal values is inescapable and the clash values between
individuals and groups can become the source of much deep-seated conflict. Healthy and morbid are not neutral but value
laden terms.
The
particular conditions of what he refers to as high modernity and the
implications for both our sense of self and attitudes towards death are
described most eloquently by Giddens (1991).
Compared with traditional societies where to some extent identity is
pre-formed through position in the existing social matrix and death is a real
and immediate experience, in high modernity identity is a reflexive project and
in day-to day life we are separated
from
contact with experiences which raise potentially disturbing existential
questions-particularly experiences to do with sickness, madness, criminality,
sexuality and death.
(1991:
244)
In
response to threat, or more accurately, perceived threat, we humans experience
anxiety. The bigger the perceived
threat is then the bigger is the anxiety we experience. The biggest threats are to our survival and
the greatest danger we can ever know is the threat of not-self, the
annihilation of the self. The
annihilation of the self is not the same as death although there are close
links. We can experience the threat of
the annihilation of the self in various ways, including feelings of complete
isolation, disappearing into nothingness, as losing control of ourselves and
our lives and falling apart, falling into chaos, fragmenting, crumbling to
dust. (Rowe)
Primitive
anxieties that act as defences
Not
all perceived threats are real threats, and deciding what is real is not always
a trivial task.