Writing Climate Change (32)
The Fight for the Climate – Psychology & Power
This is part of a series on writing climate change for fiction
Climate change cannot be separated from questions of power. Who decides what is happening? Who has influence? What ideas hold sway?
The psychology of power profoundly shapes many ways in which climate change is playing out. We’ve already seen how feelings of powerlessness are one of the biggest drivers of inaction. Now we need to consider some other aspects of power.
When it comes to fiction, power is also central. Any story about a subject like climate change will involve characters with power, without power, grasping for power, losing power, gaining power. The outcome will result from who has power, how much, and how they use it.
WHAT IS POWER?
In its simplest terms power is the ability to take action. You want to do something, you go and do it, stuff happens. At this most fundamental level all living things pursue power – the power to feed, to grow, to be safe. As we saw when we looked at trauma, having this kind of power taken away is profoundly damaging – it threatens your very survival.
When it comes to society, power becomes power over others. The use of power might be mutually beneficial, or a zero-sum conflict. The exercise of power might be brutal and overt, or it might be subtle and institutionalized. Sum up everyone’s use of power, and you get the shape of society as a whole. Power is unequally distributed, therefore that shape is determined overwhelmingly by conflicts over power, and by those people who hold the most power.
CLIMATE AND POWER
As we’ve seen before, greenhouse gas emissions are a direct reflection of wealth. Therefore the kind of power we are talking about is largely economic power. Rich vs poor. Rich nations vs poor nations. The psychology of billionaires and poverty.
Next we have political power. Politics has the capacity to reshape economics (if it chooses to do so), therefore the thinking of statesmen, political advisors, parties, politicians, and voters also matter for climate change.
Lastly we have all those other, often more subtle forms of power. Stuff like racism, patriarchy, and more. Often subtle forms of power shows up in social norms rather than in explicit laws or economic dominance.
When you combine all these forms of power together, you get the climate change debate as it exist. We’ve already looked at how the dominant approach to climate change is highly technocratic and technology focused. We’ve already looked at the various ideological and economic reasons why that is. Now we’re going to get inside people’s heads to understand why that is.
HOW FIGHTS WORK (or don’t) BETWEEN THE POWERFUL & POWERLESS
A curious thing happens repeatedly in political fights. You see this when one side holds more power than the other (and usually feels smug and complacent about it too). This phenomena is endemic in climate debates.
Here’s how it goes down.
The powerful and the powerless have a conflict. Maybe some poor people want a pedestrian crossing in their neighbourhood to stop children being killed, but wealthy people (who keep running over children) oppose it because it’ll slow down their commute to the country club... whatever the debate may be.
The powerless typically do the following. They amass carefully researched evidence and arguments. Child death is bad. Pedestrian crossings prevent child death. Look science! Look economics! It’s cheap. It’s effective. Etc. Etc. Etc.
The powerful will then do this: ignore everything, say “Yeah, but nah”, spout off some clichés, refuse to acknowledge the issue even exists, then talk outright bullshit. Somehow this proves more effective than the truth.
This happens all the time. The powerless try to win fights by rational argument. The powerful win fights by bullshitting, appeal to cliché, and brute force. If you want to sum up the climate fight for the past 40 years, that’s it.
The powerless mistake truth for power. The powerful mistake power for truth.
Consider climate change:
climate activism started with scientists making scientific arguments.
climate activism is dominated by “speaking the truth” and “listening to the science”.
climate denial started with corporate spin-doctor’s telling lies.
climate denial is dominated by conspiracy theories and bullshit.
official responses to climate change are routinely founded on a mix of complacency, naive optimism, and bullshit.
To understand why this happens we need to understand how power changes how people think, feel, and behave.
HOW POWER CHANGES PEOPLE
Where going to go through a quick overview of some of the things you’ll find in the sociology literature on the effects of power. This is a huge subject, so this is necessarily oversimplified. Even so, you should get a feel for why those people in a position to do something about climate change tend to either do nothing, or pursue very particular kinds of actions. Often idiotic actions.
These effects can play out between as little as two people, or between entire societies. The stronger the power imbalance, and the fewer checks on power, the stronger these effects become.
Remember – climate change is about wealth. When it comes to global wealth, we have created one of the most unequal societies in history.
This can get abstract, so to ground us in the art of story-telling, we’ll follow the tale of Bob and Tom...
Bob took over the construction company from his father. He feels secure in his position, and plans to hand the business over to his own son one day. He just landed a big deal, and the money is coming in.
“Tom” is not actually called “Tom”. He’s here on a temporary work visa, and people can’t pronounce his real name. His contract with the company is also temporary. If it doesn’t get renewed, he’ll have to leave the country, back to a place very different from here.
The new construction brief is “green”, but it’s fairly vague what the client means by “green”. Bob will make that decision. Tom will have to build it.
We’ll start with Bob’s side of the equation - how having power changes people.
The Power to Act
Power is empowering. By definition. The fairly unsurprising outcome is that people feel better and do more.
They are more goal focused. They have more positive emotion. They have more extraversion. They have less social inhibition (all those social norms have less hold on them). They are more sensitive to reward. They take more risks. They have more certainty and less doubt. They are more single-minded. Their thinking is less complex, because the barriers to jumping straight to action are so much lower. They can be more individualistic and self-expressive, because the gap between what they feel and what they can actually do is so much smaller.
At best you get someone very confident. At worst you get an eccentric arrogant narcissistic asshole who thinks he’s Jesus. This is one of first and most obvious effects of power.
Bob stands at the front of the room, presenting the design. He’s wearing new clothes – a garish Hawaiian shirt and cowboy boots. Tom sees the design plan and cringes. He can see an obvious design flaw. But he holds his tongue. If he upsets the boss he’s finished. A more senior staff member, called Hank, raises the issue.
“The consultant’s opinion is that this just won’t-”
“Drop it, Hank.”
“Well, whose opinion did you take?”
“I don’t ask for opinions.”
“What do you go by?”
“Judgment.”
“Well, whose judgment did you take?”
“Mine.”
“But whom did you consult about it?”
“Nobody. Hank, I been in construction since I was a boy. When I see things, I see them.”
Bob shrugs, like he’s Atlas shrugging the weight of the world off his shoulders. Hank falls silent. Tom’s just thankful he has a job.
Social Distance, Empathy, and Perspective Taking
Power means I don’t need to care what you think.
By definition having power means I don’t need to understand you. I can tell you what to do. I can replace you. There’s one of me, and lots of you. When you include social class, I might literally live in a different world than you.
Those with power focus more on their own perspective than those of others. Reduced empathy. Reduced awareness. They are more likely to see people in terms of stereotypes. They don’t need to adapt themselves to others, or mimic their behaviour to fit in, or accept identities imposed on them. They are more likely to see people as a means to an ends. They find it easier to satisfy their own needs and desires, with the risks of selfishness that implies. They are more likely to have contempt towards their subordinates, being accustomed to grovelling, yes-men, and a lack of social challenges. Psychological distance exists between themselves and others.
Bob doesn’t understand why that Tom kid is always late. Bob got here on time. It’s not hard. Get up. Get in your car. Get to work. Lazy prick.
Today Bob gets stuck in traffic. The council is doing road-works putting in cycle lanes. He thinks of Tom. Maybe the road-works are why Tom’s always late. Bloody council. At work he writes a submission to council about how this cycle madness harms local business owners.
The real reason is that Tom’s vehicle license isn’t recognized in this country – he’s working on it, but it costs a lot and his job is minimum wage. If he walks, it takes an hour. If he bikes, he has nowhere to lock it up – his bike got stolen. He can’t afford a new one.
“Bloody road-works!” says Bob, when Tom finally arrives.
“Yeah. Bloody road-works,” says Tom.
Simplification of Thought & Lack of Consequences
People in power can get away with more stupidity.
They can get themselves into a situation where they are more confident, less accurate, and receive no feedback – setting up a self-reinforcing cycle of stupidity.
It’s simple. Eliminate subordinates who disagree with you. Surround yourself with yes-men. Use wealth and influence to buffer yourself from the consequences of failing. Fall into a delusional sense that you control far more than you actually do. Really let yourself run away with it. Come to believe that you really do know more than anyone else alive. Maybe you did invent the wheel? Am I Jesus?
Hank got shifted onto a different project, and Bob’s plan went ahead. Rumour had it Hank was looking for a new job. An unspoken sense of dis-ease existed in the company, but no one would say anything. This was going to be a massive screw-up when it was finished.
But the plan looked good on renders, the client was happy, and they got nominated for an architectural award - by a friend of Bob’s father. At meetings, Bob said the word, “Groundbreaking,” repeatedly.
Hypocrisy, Entitlement, and Unethical Behaviour
Unconstrained power tends to get abused. Without external checks on behaviour, people are only constrained by their internal checks - morality and virtue. Few people are perfect saints, hence, the more power you give people the more likely they are to use it do stuff like sexually assault teenagers.
Being in power also makes people feel special. You are on top. Special people deserve special treatment. Right?
Being on top means you have the power enforce standards without having to follow them. Like mistaking power for truth, people can mistake power for goodness. My ability to punish other people makes me good. Right?
Bob is having an affair with the company accountant, Sandra. She’s a great gal. He’s just having a bit of fun . Bob thinks it’s nothing serious. Sandra considers this situation to be something rather more troubling, but she needs the job.
Bob gets one of the boys – Tim? Jim? Tom? – to run errands. A bottle of wine. Chocolates. He adds it to the project account under “miscellaneous expenses”. He’s not doing anything wrong, technically. The boss carries a lot of weight on his shoulders. He deserves it.
One day Tom shows up late, again. Lazy little bastard!
Bob rips into him about discipline, and responsibility. The gifts for Sandra are adding up, so he docks Tom’s pay for bad behaviour. Later he cuts a few corners on the project to pay for a holiday with Sandra. The stress has really been getting to him, what with Hank quitting on him and all.
Power-Addiction
Some people very much want power. Power for power’s sake is the aim. The result – many of the world’s powerful people have no real aims as such, beyond their own self-aggrandizement.
This can potentially take the shape of an addiction, much as one might have an addiction to sex or substances. Like any addiction it is wrapped up in denial (because to acknowledge it would be the first step to breaking free). For a drug addict, the results are mostly just sad. For a power-addict, the results may be catastrophic to society. Their denial may be backed up by a military, a large fortune, or the influence of their fame. Their “leadership” becomes pathological and destructive – and they take us all down with them.
Obviously this isn’t great for a world which requires real leadership, rather than mere domination.
When Bob’s daughter got all hippy-dippy greeny on him, he’d mostly been annoyed. But now Bob is coming to see this green stuff as an opportunity. It’s the next big thing. That and digital. If he can combine green with digital he’ll be on a winning ticket.
He reviews the plans that got Hank so annoyed. The render shows a row of autonomous pods, and giant interactive screens, and ferns. Honestly he’s not sure how any of it is supposed to work and he doesn’t care. “This will work,” he says to himself, “This will get me places. Dad will finally respect me.”
Paranoia
There’s a paradox in power. On the one hand we have that sense that the powerful are free. They can do anything. They don’t need anyone. Hence, they feel more confident and liberated. However, this confidence is also combined with high levels of fear.
They have a paranoid sense of liberation.
All people depend on relationships. We need each other. The powerful are no different. The real difference is that power allows you to dominate those relationships. Relationships between equals are negotiated, not enforced.
Everyone experiences anxiety in relationships. Maybe they will leave? Maybe they don’t like me? In a balanced negotiated relationship we can be confident that the other person really does care. In relationships of domination we don’t know.
Therefore the powerful are prone to paranoia. If their ability to dominate falters, all those relationships of domination might break down. People might leave. Worse, they might hate us and seek revenge. Do they love me? Do they hate me? I don’t know.
For climate change we see this in rich-guy doomsday-preppers, “elite panic” during disasters, official plans more concerned with maintaining order than dealing with problems, and eco-fascist visions of maintaining group domination in an apocalyptic hell.
In all cases, the breakdown of my own power is imagined as the breakdown of society as such. If I can’t dominate those beneath me, how else is this thing going to hold together? Power can be confused for sociability itself. To maintain my power is to maintain society.
This fear can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fear of social breakdown creates that breakdown because those in power behave like it is happening.
Bob didn’t tell anyone anything, because he didn’t want them to panic. He reached for a second bottle to quell his nerves. In the absence of information from the top, rumours swirled. Bob simply clamped down harder.
“Everything is fine!” he said at the meeting.
The staff panicked.
System Justification & Outsize Influence
The escape from eternal paranoia is to make my power natural. Inevitable. Good and true. My perspective needs to become the perspective of society at large.
These justifications of power typically involve attributing positive qualities to the powerful and negative qualities to the powerless. Rich people are competent, hardworking, geniuses. Poor people are dumb, lazy, filthy. This can extend to the full dehumanisation of the powerless, and the deification of the powerful. I am a god, and they are animals. Anyone successful at maintaining power long-term will spread these stereotypes across society. The powerless must also believe I am a god and they are animals.
On top of this we can add the oversized influence powerful people have on the organisations they lead, or the world in general. Cults of personality are the obvious example (e.g. Stalin, Mao, Hitler), but this shows up in smaller ways everywhere. The actions of entire countries or corporations can be significantly the result of one person.
For climate change, all this means we take it for granted that tech-billionaires are worth listening to, whereas the poor Africans their philanthropy tries to help are not. Hence we get the domination of eco-modernist, green capitalist responses to climate change, because this is what rich people believe.
Fortunately, innovation allows us to magnify the impact of our efforts. Just as innovation will get us to zero emissions, it will also allow us to continue the remarkable progress made over the last century to improve human welfare around the world.
- William Henry Gates III (“Bill” Gates), tech-billionaire, at COP28 suggesting the answer to climate change is tech-innovators
Paternalism
The powerful in society are caught in a tension between responsibility and self-interest. You can assist people with things they cannot do for themselves. You can also exploit them. If you’re clever you can combine these two opposites into a synthesis of coercive exploitative helpfulness. Slaves need our care. The White Man’s burden must be fulfilled.
Historically, the justification of power has usually involved strong doses of paternalism, for good or ill. In the world today we get rather a mixed bag. Archaic forms of paternalism persist, such as the British Monarchy. Billionaire philanthropy mixes genuine aid with self-interest. The libertarian Ayn Rand fever-dream preaches that the most noble act for billionaires is to pursue ruthless unmitigated self-interest - hubris as a virtue.
As the saying goes, power corrupts. However, for some people, power will enhance their sense of moral duty rather than undermine it. How they use that power will depend on how they believe their responsibility should be expressed.
“I like to consider our workplace a family,” said Bob.
Everyone smiled politely. Tom wondered if he meant that literally, considering Sandra, and how everyone fit into this hypothetical family. Bob, the father. Obviously. Tom, third cousin twice removed?
“As a family, with family values,” said Bob, “we will be donating native trees to the Sunny-Heights nature reserve. Near my house. I walk my dog there. We’ll get a plaque and everything. I think we can claim carbon credits too. I need to ask the lawyers. It’s a great place for families.”
Pathology
Certain people feel a stronger need for power for than others. People high in narcissism, psychopathy, and the like.
Thankfully not everyone in power is a nightmare. But nightmare people really do like power, and go to the effort to get power, and are more willing to play ruthless power games, and often succeed at getting power. Moreover, as we’ve seen above, the experience of power will bring out any narcissistic or psychopathic traits people already have. Therefore a certain portion of people in power can become monsters.
Such people are motivated by self-interest alone, with few moral constraints. The results of their leadership are toxic. An organisation run by pathological people can be described as a “pathocracy”.
...pathocracy is a system of government 'wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people'.
... the transition to pathocracy begins when a disordered individual emerges as a leader figure. ....
Soon other people with psychopathic traits emerge and attach themselves to the pathocracy, sensing the opportunity to gain power and influence. ....
'If an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic'. ....
Once they possess power, pathocrats usually devote themselves to entrenching, increasing and protecting their power, with scant regard for the welfare of others. ....
At some point, they are destined to fail, because their brutality and lack of moral principles are not shared by the majority of the population...
We usually think of this for cults and dictators, but pathocracy can play out on smaller scales too. A kind of everyday totalitarianism.
Hank’s replacement was a guy called Alan. His CV was perfect. He aced the job interview. After Alan took over the department the staff turnover increased dramatically. Bob was worried his best people were leaving, but those worries dissolved when Alan showed him the performance metrics.
“Let me handle that environmental project,” said Alan, knowing that the best way to be trusted is to be seen as a good person. “I can cut the costs in half. It’ll be great, the greatest. I love nature.”
Power vs. Criticism
Climate change requires a lot of powerful people to confront the possibility that what they’re doing might not be working, or worse, is actively harmful. If they’ve fallen into the trap of confusing power for goodness, truth, and society itself, then criticism will likely trigger Identity Threat.
That means powerful people vigorously pursuing the wrong idea with ever greater vigour the more wrong they become. Pride cometh before the fall, and all that.
At a social event Bob ran into Hank. Freed from the constrains of employment, Hank laid it out bluntly. “You’ve got a problem Bob. Your project design is complete horseshit.”
That evening Bob fumed. “I’ll show him horseshit.” He doubled the number of autonomous pods, and decided to give Alan a promotion.
Implications for Climate Change
Much of the above can be summed up with the word “Hubris”. We can now see how powerful people might choose to value their own gut-feels and vibes over the carefully researched evidence of a bunch of nobodies. We can see how the political establishment might grow profoundly complacent. We can see how leadership roles become dominated by pathological people - zero interest in doing the right thing.
In literary terms hurbis takes us back to Tragedy. Because we live in a deeply unequal and hierarchical world, many of the decisions being made on climate change are shot through with hubris. The end result of those decisions will be tragedy.
Here’s a fun aside.
Former doctor and British MP Lord Owen would like hubris to become an official mental illness: “hubris syndrome.” Here’s the proposed criteria (from Linguistic biomarkers of Hubris syndrome):
1. A Narcissistic propensity to see their world primarily as an arena in which to exercise power and seek glory;
2. A predisposition to take actions which seem likely to cast the individual in a good light e i.e., in order to enhance image;
3. A disproportionate concern with image and presentation;
4. A messianic manner of talking about current activities and a tendency to exaltation;
5. An identification with the nation or organisation to the extent that the individual regards his/her outlook and interests as identical;
6. A tendency to speak in the third person or use the royal ‘we’;
7. Excessive confidence in the individual’s own judgement and contempt for the advice or criticism of others;
8. Exaggerated self-belief, bordering on a sense of omnipotence, in what they personally can achieve;
9. A belief that, rather than being accountable to the mundane court of colleagues or public opinion, the court to which they answer is: History or God;
10. An unshakeable belief that in that court they will be vindicated;
11. Loss of contact with reality; often associated with progressive isolation;
12. Restlessness, recklessness and impulsiveness;
13. A tendency to allow their ‘broad vision’ about the moral rectitude of a proposed course to obviate the need to consider practicality, cost or outcomes;
14. Hubristic incompetence, where things go wrong because too much self-confidence has led the leader not to worry about the nuts and bolts of policy;
HOW POWERLESSNESS CHANGES PEOPLE
If power tends to create hubris, what does powerlessness do?
We can sum this one up as “social decay”. At the individual level, powerlessness leads to a state of collapse and avoidance. But it goes much further too. Society at large becomes shaped by the experience of dis-empowerment. That in turn influences what actions that society can take. Are they even able to deal with a systemic issue like climate change or not?
Just as checks on power limit hubris, checks on powerlessness limit the social decay of powerlessness. Just as a person’s character can limit the effect of hubris, likewise here.
The Struggle for Power
Broadly speaking, humans can relate to each other in one of two ways: affiliation or competition. Love or war. Humans are noteworthy among animals for just how much we go for love.
However, when you structure society around extreme imbalances of power, people will go for option number two. War. People will literally start behaving more like chimpanzees (or lobsters if you prefer) – all Machiavellian power games and dominance displays.
If you live in a society of domination and submission (like a chimpanzee), then your life will be ruled by the need to climb into a position of dominance. To be at the bottom of a power hierarchy is profoundly damaging. You must get up or out.
Therefore you must get rich. You must get famous. You must get a promotion.
When huge numbers of people feel compelled to behave this way, you’re on your way to a fairly cruel society.
Tom found himself working under Alan. That guy was clearly a psychopath. Staying in this job was killing him. He had to get out.
Tom applied for a job where they done group interviews. He and five other candidates had to complete a team exercise. It was a mess. One loud mouth guy dominated the whole thing. Cooperation was impossible when the best outcome would be for all your team members to die of food poisoning.
In the race for job security, Tom found himself forgetting about his family back home, about hopes and dreams, about duty and care. He needed money. He was losing himself. When he failed to get the job, he kicked his girlfriend’s pet cat – as if the cat was to blame.
Status Competition
In developed democracies, overt hierarchy is mostly experienced via workplaces, school systems, the police, and so on. Most adults can get some reprieve from being explicitly under the boot. We do have significant freedom.
What is much harder to escape is wealth inequality. That’s especially true when the system justification for that inequality is meritocracy – the rich and poor deserve what they get.
If the society you live in is fragmented, hypercompetitive, even cruel, and the social narrative is telling you that failing to be materially successful means you’re a loser, how do you form a stable sense of self-worth? Chances are you will start competing for status (like a chimpanzee).
Because it’s about wealth, that competition will likely be expressed materially. Fancy clothes, fancy holidays, fancy achievements. A bigger house. A bigger car. You’ll post photos of your fancy lunch on social media. Anything to signal that you’re not a loser.
Failing to achieve at least some measure of self-respect means you could get trapped in shame. From shame we get all kinds of mental health issues. For young men in particular, shame may be transmuted into violence.
In other words, we have a mix of consumerism and social decay.
Tom still couldn’t get a new job. They were discriminating against him. His girlfriend broke up with him. He told her she had always been a bitch. He found himself watching Jordan Peterson videos, “It’s winner-take-all in the lobster world, just as it is in human societies.” Tom was becoming ever more miserable. He also had a growing sense of destiny. Late at night he’d dream of writing a novel, and becoming famous, changing the world.
One day Alan drove into work in a new car. Tom wanted to slash the tires, but he was too afraid, and he was starting to think Alan actually did deserve it. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe Alan actually was the better lobster.
Short-termism
To lack power is to lack control. This typically means your ability to plan for the future gets shot to bits. You might not even be able to imagine a future. Worrying about the fate of the planet in 100 years just isn’t something you have time for. Apply this across huge numbers of people and society at large may struggle to think long-term.
Tom sunk all his savings into a car so he wouldn’t feel like a loser. Not that he thought of it that way. It was self-care for his lobster brain which needed more serotonin. He needed it now.
But now he had no savings. He was working overtime to compensate. Driving to work he’d break the speed limit to get there faster. Everyday he’d see some people protesting something on a bridge, but he didn’t know what it was. Time is money. Looking would be losing. He ate breakfast at a drive through. He was putting on weight. No pain, no gain. Live in the moment.
Cynicism and Paranoia
To lack power is to lack control over your life and the world. This really isn’t great for people’s state of mind. This is especially the case when, thanks to hubris, you know the people who do have control are doing bad things.
At a minimum people can start becoming cynical and hopeless. Nothing will ever work. Everything sucks. Nobody care. It’ll never change. At worst, people descend into conspiracy theories. The Elites are plotting against us! This attempt to maintain a sense of control and positive self-image in a world that robs you of both can lead to some fairly dark places…
The Appeal of Subjugation
You are at the bottom. You can’t climb the ladder. You’re stuck. What do you do?
Let’s assume you don’t study anarchist political theory as a hobby. Let’s assume these questions about power are an unexamined aspect of life for you. What do you do? Your life sucks. You’re a loser.
You’re head is full of cultural narratives telling you that you deserve this. You are overwhelmed by shame at your failure. To shake off these narratives would require work. It would require a teacher, or life experience, or even a storyteller to come a long and unpick that for you. You are stuck. Loser. You feel powerless. What do you do?
You need to find some way to feel okay with this. Some way to not be a loser anymore. One option you have is to merge your sense of identity with something bigger. Something powerful. The Nation. A Great Man.
The Great Man shows me who is beneath me. The others. The cause of my problems. I merge myself into his greatness, I become great, and a I unleash my hate onto the worthless scum below.
I am not a loser anymore.
Tom was afraid of Alan, and yet he was starting to feel a sense of pride. Alan was putting out the results, at least on paper. Tom was a part of Alan’s team. Tom was a part of that success. Tom had stayed, when all the “weak people” (Alan’s term) had run away. Tom had grit.
Alan had vision too, he cared far more about the meaning and purpose of the project than the Boss did. One day Alan would be the boss. Tom decided to stay. He was now working 70 hours a week.
Implications for Climate Change
What do we get when we sum all this up? Call it “Anxiety World”.
Social trust collapses. Stress-related health issues explode. Society becomes more violent, depressed, and dysfunctional in every way. Ironically they’re at risk of sliding into explicit authoritarianism as people seek a way to cope. At best, as a faint silver-lining, the dysfunction may trigger a backlash, as human nature re-asserts itself, and people stand up straight and say, “No. I’m not a goddamn lobster. I refuse to be treated as one.”
Such a society struggles with basic tasks, much less profound challenges like transitioning off fossil fuels.
Conclusion
We have a society which structurally gives excessive power to certain people. Those powerful people then experience hubris. That hubris means they abuse their power. That abuse threatens those over whom they have power. That threat causes problems throughout society. We end up with a dysfunctional society – stupidity ruling over despair, seasoned with cruelty.
At the more trivial end, we get idiotic dramas like the cult-like environmentally “aware” brewing company we looked at previously. At the more serious end, we get systemic biases in how our world operates. Those biases tip us towards approaches to climate change that favour the rich and powerful, and are often a wild mix of over-confidence, complacency, and paranoia.
Our societies escape this fate to the extent we’ve found ways to reign in the excesses of power. Humanity has wrestled with this for at least several thousand years. This takes us back to the question of political ideologies.
In general, conservatism tries to encourage paternalism, and hold power accountable to moral values. Liberalism tries to create a balance of powers, and carve out spaces of liberty free from power. Socialism tries to reduce power differences by creating equality. The fight for the climate is deeply entwined with these long-running struggles over power. The established powers-that-be lean conservative-liberal. Climate activists lean liberal-socialist. This shapes both sides' approach to climate change.
So, we’re does this leave you, as a story-teller?
Power is deeply entwined with narrative. We tell stories about good kings and bad kings. We tell stories about who deserves what. Power is social. Power is both a game, and a story. Power can only exist if enough people agree to go along with it.
But, if the story changes...
Next in the series we’ll finish up psychology with some quirks of the modern world.
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