In defense of eco-neurosis

Fish Lake in Central British Columbia, one of two lakes to be turned into toxic mine waste cesspools. Photo Georgia Straight.

A friend recently forwarded me two links on the topic of ecological neurosis. The first one describes the case of couples who try to do the right thing for the environment but only succeed in jeopardizing their marriage. The second one reports on a growing number of viewers of the movie Avatar who are so enamored with the natural beauty of the fictitious planet Pandora, that they have trouble reconnecting with the reality of everyday life and develop suicidal tendencies as a result.

I recommend both links.

My friend was implying that there is something seriously wrong with the Western middle class when they allow themselves to binge in the coziness of self-centered eco-depression, in spite of the obscene wealth that they enjoy compared to, say, the people of Haiti. And he certainly has a point.

Nonetheless, I responded back to him expressing my strong disagreement. There is nothing wrong, I said, about people being neurotic in the face of today’s ecological destruction. If anything, feeling neurotic and depressed about the sixth wave of mass extinction, the depletion of our oceans, agribusiness-driven mass deforestation, the torture of animals inside factory farms, and of course the effects of climate change, is a sign of profound sanity.

At just about the same time, another friend forwarded me the following link which reports that BC’s Environmental Assessment Office has performed its duty admirably once again. It has diligently rubber-stamped yet another industrial project which will forever wipe out a unique natural ecosystem. This time, it’s an open-pit copper and gold mining project in central BC which requires the transformation of two pristine trout-bearing lakes into cesspools to store mine tailings, rocks, and toxic chemicals. Ten thousand years from now when the mine has long been abandoned and the memory of the mining company’s very name has been erased from humanity’s records, those two lake ecosystems will still be destroyed. If you don’t feel neurotic after reading such news, there is a chance you are losing touch with reality and you may want to have your head examined.

I myself have been struggling with eco-neurosis for many, many years. Keeping my sanity, let alone my positive thinking ability, in this constant avalanche of catastrophic environmental news, is a daily struggle. And yes, my marriage sometimes feels the strain of my neurosis (I hereby officially apologize to my wonderful wife) and yes, I sometimes ache for the overwhelming digital beauty of planet Pandora (which my neurosis has so far required me to visit twice).

My insanity has been compounded in recent years by the realization that ecological protection and social justice are one and the same struggle against the world’s elite class and its neoliberal iron grip over the planet. Marxist analysis, in particular, has helped me understand how the capitalist mode of production has thrown 4/5 of the world’s population into bondage and misery and has precipitated the world’s ecosystems into rapid collapse. It helped me realize that in this equation, I am personally both a victim of class exploitation, and an accessory to and beneficiary of the West’s imperialist plundering of the world. Realizing that Haiti was a food self-sufficient country 30 years ago, and would still be today had it not been for Bill Clinton and the IMF’s dismantling of its local agriculture to make way for US subsidized grain imports, does nothing to restore my inner psychic balance.

The feeling of powerlessness in the face of such crushing forces and intractable inner contradictions, is overwhelming. If I didn’t feel emotionally compromised and schizophrenic after such a realization, I would have to be either dead or comatose. Thank goodness for my neurosis. It means I’m still alive.

The trick, of course, is to channel my insanity – which I realize is in itself a contradictory project – so it can be transformed into a positive sentiment, such as anger toward the system, and into positive action, such as taking part in the upcoming social revolution, which I sure hope to see before I die. My friend, himself a hardcore Marxist, kindly responded to my dissenting remarks with this comment:

“I think the real problem [of eco-neurosis] emerges when concern over an issue becomes personally self-destructive instead of focusing the energy on the external, broader political-social transformations necessary and even more importantly on the possibilities that are opening up, either latently or actually.  

As you can probably tell, I have dealt with my own serious concerns about ecological problems by externalizing instead of internalizing, and recognizing that they were subordinate to the bigger questions of global equality, of both the real physical social-technical-economic, and even more importantly, of the global political power that will be necessary to fully attain the former.”

Eco-neurotics of the world, you are sane. Unite!

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