Year: 2021

How on Earth do we begin to talk to each other and work from a starting point of experiencing or anticipating societal disruption and even collapse?

It needs to become the biggest conversation, with views from different contexts. I am still learning as I talk to more and more people from around the world. Some of them share their thoughts in this book, including Rene Suša, Sharon Stein, Vanessa Andreotti, Tereza Čajkova, and Dino Siwek, who are scholars and activists in decolonization efforts, and XR’s Skeena Rathor, who works on co-liberation from the systemic oppressions that underlie environmental destruction. With this detailed attention to the causes of climate chaos, I hope the book helps support a sober and non-divisive approach to navigating the implications.

This is the foreword to “The Responsibility of Communicating Difficult Truths About Climate Influenced Societal Disruption and Collapse: An Introduction to Psychological Research” which provides a synthesis of some relevant peer-reviewed literature within the field of psychology. An audio of this foreword is available.

Professor Jem Bendell, University of Cumbria, UK.

Your anxiety or even emotional distress about the situation with the climate is normal, sane, healthy and even righteous. Those difficult emotions you have been feeling may also be a painful gateway to a different expression of who you are, depending on how we support each other in that process of change.

My steps with integrating international development and deep adaptation.

Guest post by Dr Malika Virah Sawmy.

It’s heart breaking to witness how intentions are real and absolutely beautiful in international development. Everyone wants a more beautiful and fairer world. But the issue is how we manifest those intentions. How do we manifest the more beautiful world our heart knows is possible, to quote Charles Eisenstein.

Sadly, when you work in international development, you have, what I think, are two main coping mechanisms to deal with our work in the context of an unfolding global crisis with climate chaos – and what has been termed by scientists as a period of biological annihilation.

The commitment to nonviolence in climate activism and deep adaptation is a central principle and we must criticise anyone who suggests otherwise. The risks of tolerating any deviation from this principle are too great & therefore we have no choice but to risk painful reactions, even from colleagues, when confronting it.

Trying to reduce harm and the antecedents of harm during societal disruption and collapse is not going to be pretty. I launched the Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF) as a safe space for people to help each other process difficult emotions and work out what next in life to reduce harm, save more of the natural world and seek meaning and joy in the process. It has been wonderful to see the voluntary commitment from people around the world to grow the activities. I left the daily operations in September 2020 and on February 8^th this year I tendered my resignation from DAF’s non-executive board, called the Holding Group. That is the final step of me stepping away, in line with my knowledge of the research that shows we humans are susceptible to the counterproductive self-infantilising process of arguing about ‘leader’ character and views rather than taking responsibility ourselves. I am delighted that two experienced women from the Global South have agreed to be nominated in my place and look forward to seeing them communicating about Deep Adaptation.

My Deep Adaptation Q&As are back for 2021. In these discussions, a guest shares their own perspective on what matters to them as we consider, or respond to, societal disruption and collapse.  The Deep Adaptation framework is for dialogue, without one right way of responding to our environmental predicament, or one source of knowledge on that. Therefore, I host these Q&As to broaden the discussion – and discussants – on the matter of societal disruption. All previous Q&As are available, with guests including Vanessa Andreotti, Skeena Rathor, Joanna Macy and Charles Eisenstein.