Cheermongers and Hope Fiends – Part 2
Todd asked again: so why do cheermongers do what they do
Why? Big question. Lots of facets to the answer. “I tend to get the most response, Todd, when I slow down, get out of my head, stop spouting off about what I think I know, and just express how I’m feeling. It was true back when I was sending out articles to an email list. It’s true now with the blog. Some people deeply resonate with what I’ve said, and appreciate my expression of feeling. But others have a different reaction.”
whats that
“I’m talking about the collapse of civilization, Todd, and the crash of the human population. I’m talking about mass extinction. I’m talking about the possibility that we, ourselves, we civilized human beings, will slide down the chute to oblivion. These things are almost impossible to wrap our minds around, especially inside of our current cultural stories. And when we begin to look at these things, they can be so overwhelmingly frightening that we seek any path we can find to step back from them.”
thats understandable dude
“Of course it is. The enormity of the situation almost compels us to shut down, because if we start to let it in, to feel it, to see it, we begin to sense that our grief is so huge, our pain so great, our anger so sharp, our fear so cold, our helplessness so gripping, that we will be undone by them. We feel like we’ll fall apart or go mad.”
so instead people stuff it down and try to stay positive so why do you get more response when you express your own feelings about things
I thought about that for a moment. “I think what happens is, if I show up and speak of being afraid, of having feelings of grief, or anger, if I speak of my despair, my hopelessness, and especially my growing acceptance of collapse, there are some who respond to that with great fear. If I’m not holding it together, a guy who’s been looking at this stuff for years, then what chance do they have? It’s almost as if they need me to be strong and clear and powerful, by which they mean upbeat and hopeful, because their strength is dependent on mine. If I lose all hope, they fear that they will as well. Losing all hope is not an acceptable option in this culture.”
so then people tell you to cheer up to go read a good novel or watch a movie or get ice cream and stuff like that right they tell you to stop thinking about the world so much to stop thinking negative thoughts to stop the doom and gloom to stop being a fearmonger to hold onto hope no matter what and they even tell you that your negative thoughts are going to actually create the collapse and the apocalypse and all that is that right
“That’s right. They call me a fearmonger rather than just owning that they are afraid. And they correctly identify that my expression of feeling does, indeed, have the power to create catastrophe, just not at the scale they imagine. The catastrophe they fear most is inside them. If I feel, they may start to feel, and if they start to feel, they think, they’re doomed. So they need me to stay positive, to be strong, to hold hope.”
I can understand that I had that happen myself when the chicken showed me my life my whole lifestyle when he showed me what was going on I felt like I was being torn apart like I was dissolving like I was being disassembled into a thousand pieces
I remembered the question that started this off, over two weeks ago. “Todd, did you ever find anything about the correlation between trauma and healing and environmental awareness?”
I didnt find much you were looking for some study or something you know from psychologists or something right I didnt find anything like that but I did find a really good article about trauma and the environment heres the link
I hit the link to find the article Todd was pointing to: a wonderful piece by Lisa Rayner called Ecological Collapse, Trauma Theory and Permaculture. In her article, Rayner looks at the similarities between individual human traumas and wide-scale ecological trauma, and at how both traumas can be healed. The two traumas are linked in causative ways, and Rayner notes how many of the ecologically aware have gone through individual catastrophe. “I am a trauma survivor,” she says. “This experience has given me the ability to understand our civilizational predicament in a way that people who have never experienced severe psychological trauma do not possess to the same degree.”
so shes saying that people whove gone through great pain will be better at facing into and dealing with the world situation like that lady said in the comments like you said before
“That’s my experience. We’ve all been traumatized, we who were born into this absurd and destructive culture, as surely as the land, as surely as the community of life itself. Those of us who have had the opportunity, or have needed, to confront and move through our personal trauma will likely be better able to meet the coming challenges, to more freely blaze the new trails of lifestyle and being that must be created if we are to have a chance at escaping the oblivion of extinction.”
so your documentary is like you want to give people a chance to feel the catastrophe thats already inside of them right to wake them up to let them feel the fear and anger and all that to kick the hakuna matata right out of them
“You could say it that way.”
so dude why is it wrong to call you a fearmonger
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