The ache for me is a disconnection. The feeling that we’re progressing as a species away from what will ultimately keep us happy and healthy. It’s an increased sense of individualism. It’s a pressure to do more and more and more and do it on our own. The cost of living is reaching dangerous levels and people are moving back down Maslow’s hierarchy to a point where they’re struggling to meet their basic needs, never mind self-actualisation and belonging. It’s a difficulty to look after ourselves at the end of the day because the system has us putting everything we have into someone else’s money-making business for most of our lives and we are left aching and tired and dispirited.
Don’t get me started on social media/technology, potentially my biggest ache of all. Diminishing our patience, our attention spans, our creativity. Leaving us content with connecting from afar instead of face-to-face, intentional and meaningful connecting.
The ache of President Biden signing an agreement for the Willow pipeline, while knowing it not only goes against his own word, but that it will completely undo all the babysteps the US has seen with green energy
It’s so great to hear about your plans for your next book, Sarah, and to hear a little about the process you go through in arriving at an idea. My creative process is much the same (including the obsessive research and collating of ideas, and the use of hiking as a distillation process!)
My biggest pain point at the moment is in witnessing how many people around me appear to be in a state of ignorance or wilful denial about what’s happening in the wider world, especially in relation to ecological breakdown, but also how this breakdown relates to all of the other political, economic, social and spiritual crises we face. I think this tendency towards siloed thinking and seeming inability to think holistically and grapple with complexity is very much contributing to our downfall (the environmental movement itself is also guilty of this – for example, by focussing so heavily on climate change, while ignoring equally dire problems, such as biodiversity loss).
While Covid offered us a ‘portal’ into a world of other possibilities for living and being (as Arundhati Roy wrote about early on in the pandemic), it also feels like most people squandered those opportunities in their desperation to get back to ‘’normal’ / business as usual’. Seeing people return to their pre-pandemic life of planning home renovations, zoning out to Netflix / reality television, and dreaming about their next holiday to Fiji or Europe – all while choosing not to face the responsibilities that these times demand of us – is both exasperating and enraging.
I feel like we need a collective slap to wake us up (and I sense that we’re about to get a big economic one very soon), but I fear that most people will be so unprepared that we’ll see chaos and ruin before we’ll see the possible light on the other side.
I believe World problems stem from the accumulation of individual problems. Identity, fear of rejection, self-serving behaviour, greed...... and on it goes. I am currently getting my teeth into a book called "It Didn't Start With You" by Mark Wolynn. The science behind inter-generational trauma, where the stresses and trauma of up to 3-4 generations before us can be passed down through the eggs and sperm to subsequent generations, is kind of blowing my mind right now. I am looking for past trauma to explain my personality and behaviour, but perhaps it's not all mine???? Keep up the good work. Keep asking questions and being curious, that's what keeps life interesting. :)
Heres some food for thought... What are us humans actually suposed to be doing on this earth? Take away the perfect parenting pressure, (social) media pressure, social expectations (financial, professional) and all the things that have conditioned us to be who we are today. Why do we need cars, tv, social media platofrms, junk food? Do we need them? Who gave them to us? Why did we take them so willingly? What if these things disappeared?
Cognitive dissonance, collective inaction, political corruption, media manipulation, fear, shock, deep anger at the general unwillingness of every day people to even attempt to try for better or question the status quo. The daily frustration of influencers, love island and gossip columns getting attention while activists get zero. Conspiracy, misinformation, the increased violent sentiment towards women. I feel powerless despite doing everything in my power to change. Divesting, campaigning for change, joining independent candidates and helping by volunteering, giving to causes doing real work and grassroots, where I can. Shopping ethically and changing my families routines. Nothing is enough without government intervention and mass public support. I constantly look for hope. I hold onto the small shred I have left but some days It feels like a terminal diagnosis. we are simply running out of time for intervention. There is definitely a ‘mourning’ for the world we were told we would grow up into, the opportunities that would await us, only to find it’s all falling apart. Deep frustration we have the answers, we have the technology, we have so many solutions yet they are quashed and ignored by governments in favour of old toxic systems. Humanity is SO capable. But we are held hostage.
It's the ache of knowing that there is so much to do to save humanity from impending climate doom and witnessing the inaction and excuses of governments all over the world.
I'm reading The Ministry of the Future - K Robinson and Less is More - J Hickel at the moment. Both offer brilliant insights into possible ways out of this mess. The depressing part is wondering if greed and resistance to change will win out against the collective desire to survive as a species.
I do think that it's vital to hang on to hope and keep plugging away with any means available to us to avoid disaster
Thanks so much Sarah. The pain point for me is human greed and ignorance generated by, I feel, an unwillingness to acknowledge and address their own and the world's challenges. They don't want to know themselves warts and all and they don't want to know others. People all around me are distracting themselves with lots of overseas holidays, brand new clothes and appliances etc. I find it, at times, unbearable and nausea-inducing.
Love how you've described your process, Sarah. And good on you for having the courage to sit on the edge and to go deep into the darkness. BTW, please holler when you're in the darkness so you're not alone in it.
I'm so with you in terms of how walking helps our minds to unjumble the mess ... I get many character insights, ideas, etc on walks.
To what aches for me - the fragility of life at present, the anxiety and mental health struggles that so many of us grapple with, the inability to agree to disagree ...
Hmm... a great way of tapping into the collective unconscious - a call for us to collectively 'name' an ache which those of us awake (enough) universally experience.
and he similarly grapples with collective ways to address the pathology.
I struggle with the same broad concept - how to take 25 years of experience as a psychologist (and now ecopsychologicst) and subtlely, subversively, cleverly shift the compass need at a community level such that individuals (re)'discover' their own connection to nature and suddenly 'SEE' the pathological behaviour (suicidality) killing us all! The ache (pain point) for me is finding my way through the many (psychological) barriers that prevent this from happening - damned frustrating, very slow and filled with false starts - hard work for an admittedly over-achieving, possibly ADHD, over-committing professional like me!
Having said that... it's the trying and incremental (miniscule) successes that lesson the ache... with a hope of eudaimonic satisfaction on my death bed (hopefully a few years forth)!!! of having valiently TRIED!
The ache of wanting to self-preserve and stay in my bubble or to embrace an uncertain future with both hands and accept whatever comes. My declining health has seen me desperately clinging to any hope that this isn't it for me. Facing my own demise has seen me cling to all the things I was working so hard to let go of- that money can fix my problems (treatments and specialists), comfort in the familiar, burying my head in the sand and being completely self-absorbed because of my pain. I know I would be better off accepting things as they are and continuing to focus on things outside of my own health, but it is bloody hard. The suffering that faces so many people if we don't change quickly has become real to me now and I really don't know how to handle it (I've found your books a huge comfort though).
The mental health crisis in our youth. My son who is 14 is suffering from severe mental health issues. Thankfully he has help but so many don't. It takes months to get into see a psychologist (and that is only if you can pay and are lucky). My friends have teenagers who are also suffering. Its great that we identify they need help but if we can't actually provide the resources to help keep them alive and functioning then what as a community are we doing????? The next generation is at risk because of this issue.
Amazing. Last night I dreamt that I shared this thought with you... and now here we are.
I've been thinking a lot about the language around climate change and feel like the overwhelming disconnect for many comes from the scientific and political language often used in this conversation.
Anyway, my thought is that this harm being caused to place and people needs a different language, one that is more human and personal. Psychoterratic language, makes me feel it the most and as you would say 'gets me fired up'.
As I understand it, Glenn A Albrect has done amazing work in this field, but I think what the world needs now is someone like you Sarah, to help us understand the itch / pain caused by the most well known psychoterratic word, solastalgia - a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change.
The ache is distraction and disconnection (and all the d words you mentioned in the last pod).
‘Stolen Focus’ has helped me articulate the ache (also loved your pod with johann hari) but my brain feels like it’s in that messy, unorganised stage you mentioned is part of your process... it’s like I have an itch in the middle of my back and I’m trying furiously to reach it and scratch that itch but I can’t quite reach and I never completely feel satiated...
Reading The Beast and Wild has helped me confront the management of my anxiety and, I thought, the serious itch I’ve been feeling for years re our climate. Now I feel complete overwhelm about the future. Huge noise and connection through media and yet complete disconnect too, failing relationships locally and globally, the fat greedy all-consuming powers, my small skinny voice…too much to mention. I just want to run away, I choose no noise, no tv, less social media, minor consuming etc. for bathing in nature, walking/running in wild spaces but when I return to ‘the norm’ I feel crippled by it. Then the guilt; if I run away, I’m deserting the cause, burying my head in the sand. I’d stop shouting my thoughts and concerns because who’s actually listening anyway? In essence I’ve lost hope in humanity and I’m scared. Where the hell do we go from here?!
One thing I've noticed is how apathetic the majority of the population is to most of these issues.
Covid-19 was a perfect example of it here in Sydney; only a small portion of the population was anti-mask/vax, but it was also only an equally small part of the population that was pro-mask/vax. Most people just dealt with whatever happened without letting it affect them. Used a mask as soon as it was mandated, but stopped using it the day it wasn't. Took the vax when it was (basically) mandated and didn't bother with it afterwards. They have not thought about the issue since the lifting of the mandates.
They tend to just live in the moment and worry about the bread and circus stuff (sports/reality tv/pop culture/economy). I'm not sure there isn't anything we can do to shake them out of this, that there will ever be an awakening. Every single civilisation in human history has failed, usually to ecological collapse. They all continued damaging their environment, maintaining the status quo as best as they could right until the very end.
While the above sounds grim, in all the past civilisations the group of people that could try and fix the damage was minuscule or they didn't even understand what was happening. We know exactly what is happening now, and with a pool of 8 billion people, we have a humungous amount of smart people and the capital/technology to figure our way out of this.
I'm optimistic that as long as those of us who care keep fighting, and loudly, we will get there in the end. The apathetic majority realise something is wrong with what we are doing to the planet, as they did with the Covid-19 policies, so they will go along with it as long as we continue to tell them what needs to be done.
We do need to figure out how we deal with the emotional toll that comes with being the ones who have to keep fighting. I feel like your books, podcast and your substack, are a good way for all of us to collectively vent that energy. Thank you for doing what you do, know that it makes a big difference to us fighters and recharges us for the next round. :)
The ache for me is a disconnection. The feeling that we’re progressing as a species away from what will ultimately keep us happy and healthy. It’s an increased sense of individualism. It’s a pressure to do more and more and more and do it on our own. The cost of living is reaching dangerous levels and people are moving back down Maslow’s hierarchy to a point where they’re struggling to meet their basic needs, never mind self-actualisation and belonging. It’s a difficulty to look after ourselves at the end of the day because the system has us putting everything we have into someone else’s money-making business for most of our lives and we are left aching and tired and dispirited.
Don’t get me started on social media/technology, potentially my biggest ache of all. Diminishing our patience, our attention spans, our creativity. Leaving us content with connecting from afar instead of face-to-face, intentional and meaningful connecting.
The ache of President Biden signing an agreement for the Willow pipeline, while knowing it not only goes against his own word, but that it will completely undo all the babysteps the US has seen with green energy
It’s so great to hear about your plans for your next book, Sarah, and to hear a little about the process you go through in arriving at an idea. My creative process is much the same (including the obsessive research and collating of ideas, and the use of hiking as a distillation process!)
My biggest pain point at the moment is in witnessing how many people around me appear to be in a state of ignorance or wilful denial about what’s happening in the wider world, especially in relation to ecological breakdown, but also how this breakdown relates to all of the other political, economic, social and spiritual crises we face. I think this tendency towards siloed thinking and seeming inability to think holistically and grapple with complexity is very much contributing to our downfall (the environmental movement itself is also guilty of this – for example, by focussing so heavily on climate change, while ignoring equally dire problems, such as biodiversity loss).
While Covid offered us a ‘portal’ into a world of other possibilities for living and being (as Arundhati Roy wrote about early on in the pandemic), it also feels like most people squandered those opportunities in their desperation to get back to ‘’normal’ / business as usual’. Seeing people return to their pre-pandemic life of planning home renovations, zoning out to Netflix / reality television, and dreaming about their next holiday to Fiji or Europe – all while choosing not to face the responsibilities that these times demand of us – is both exasperating and enraging.
I feel like we need a collective slap to wake us up (and I sense that we’re about to get a big economic one very soon), but I fear that most people will be so unprepared that we’ll see chaos and ruin before we’ll see the possible light on the other side.
I believe World problems stem from the accumulation of individual problems. Identity, fear of rejection, self-serving behaviour, greed...... and on it goes. I am currently getting my teeth into a book called "It Didn't Start With You" by Mark Wolynn. The science behind inter-generational trauma, where the stresses and trauma of up to 3-4 generations before us can be passed down through the eggs and sperm to subsequent generations, is kind of blowing my mind right now. I am looking for past trauma to explain my personality and behaviour, but perhaps it's not all mine???? Keep up the good work. Keep asking questions and being curious, that's what keeps life interesting. :)
Heres some food for thought... What are us humans actually suposed to be doing on this earth? Take away the perfect parenting pressure, (social) media pressure, social expectations (financial, professional) and all the things that have conditioned us to be who we are today. Why do we need cars, tv, social media platofrms, junk food? Do we need them? Who gave them to us? Why did we take them so willingly? What if these things disappeared?
Cognitive dissonance, collective inaction, political corruption, media manipulation, fear, shock, deep anger at the general unwillingness of every day people to even attempt to try for better or question the status quo. The daily frustration of influencers, love island and gossip columns getting attention while activists get zero. Conspiracy, misinformation, the increased violent sentiment towards women. I feel powerless despite doing everything in my power to change. Divesting, campaigning for change, joining independent candidates and helping by volunteering, giving to causes doing real work and grassroots, where I can. Shopping ethically and changing my families routines. Nothing is enough without government intervention and mass public support. I constantly look for hope. I hold onto the small shred I have left but some days It feels like a terminal diagnosis. we are simply running out of time for intervention. There is definitely a ‘mourning’ for the world we were told we would grow up into, the opportunities that would await us, only to find it’s all falling apart. Deep frustration we have the answers, we have the technology, we have so many solutions yet they are quashed and ignored by governments in favour of old toxic systems. Humanity is SO capable. But we are held hostage.
It's the ache of knowing that there is so much to do to save humanity from impending climate doom and witnessing the inaction and excuses of governments all over the world.
I'm reading The Ministry of the Future - K Robinson and Less is More - J Hickel at the moment. Both offer brilliant insights into possible ways out of this mess. The depressing part is wondering if greed and resistance to change will win out against the collective desire to survive as a species.
I do think that it's vital to hang on to hope and keep plugging away with any means available to us to avoid disaster
Thanks so much Sarah. The pain point for me is human greed and ignorance generated by, I feel, an unwillingness to acknowledge and address their own and the world's challenges. They don't want to know themselves warts and all and they don't want to know others. People all around me are distracting themselves with lots of overseas holidays, brand new clothes and appliances etc. I find it, at times, unbearable and nausea-inducing.
Love how you've described your process, Sarah. And good on you for having the courage to sit on the edge and to go deep into the darkness. BTW, please holler when you're in the darkness so you're not alone in it.
I'm so with you in terms of how walking helps our minds to unjumble the mess ... I get many character insights, ideas, etc on walks.
To what aches for me - the fragility of life at present, the anxiety and mental health struggles that so many of us grapple with, the inability to agree to disagree ...
Grace and peace, my friend xx
Hmm... a great way of tapping into the collective unconscious - a call for us to collectively 'name' an ache which those of us awake (enough) universally experience.
David Key - an ecotherapist and writer recently bosted a blog with a similar exploration of the collective blindness that appears to be sending our 'developed' societies mad... https://www.ecoself.net/folie-des-milliards-and-cultural-ecotherapy/
and he similarly grapples with collective ways to address the pathology.
I struggle with the same broad concept - how to take 25 years of experience as a psychologist (and now ecopsychologicst) and subtlely, subversively, cleverly shift the compass need at a community level such that individuals (re)'discover' their own connection to nature and suddenly 'SEE' the pathological behaviour (suicidality) killing us all! The ache (pain point) for me is finding my way through the many (psychological) barriers that prevent this from happening - damned frustrating, very slow and filled with false starts - hard work for an admittedly over-achieving, possibly ADHD, over-committing professional like me!
Having said that... it's the trying and incremental (miniscule) successes that lesson the ache... with a hope of eudaimonic satisfaction on my death bed (hopefully a few years forth)!!! of having valiently TRIED!
Keep your head down, fellow travellers!
Mark
The ache of wanting to self-preserve and stay in my bubble or to embrace an uncertain future with both hands and accept whatever comes. My declining health has seen me desperately clinging to any hope that this isn't it for me. Facing my own demise has seen me cling to all the things I was working so hard to let go of- that money can fix my problems (treatments and specialists), comfort in the familiar, burying my head in the sand and being completely self-absorbed because of my pain. I know I would be better off accepting things as they are and continuing to focus on things outside of my own health, but it is bloody hard. The suffering that faces so many people if we don't change quickly has become real to me now and I really don't know how to handle it (I've found your books a huge comfort though).
The mental health crisis in our youth. My son who is 14 is suffering from severe mental health issues. Thankfully he has help but so many don't. It takes months to get into see a psychologist (and that is only if you can pay and are lucky). My friends have teenagers who are also suffering. Its great that we identify they need help but if we can't actually provide the resources to help keep them alive and functioning then what as a community are we doing????? The next generation is at risk because of this issue.
Amazing. Last night I dreamt that I shared this thought with you... and now here we are.
I've been thinking a lot about the language around climate change and feel like the overwhelming disconnect for many comes from the scientific and political language often used in this conversation.
Anyway, my thought is that this harm being caused to place and people needs a different language, one that is more human and personal. Psychoterratic language, makes me feel it the most and as you would say 'gets me fired up'.
As I understand it, Glenn A Albrect has done amazing work in this field, but I think what the world needs now is someone like you Sarah, to help us understand the itch / pain caused by the most well known psychoterratic word, solastalgia - a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change.
The ache is distraction and disconnection (and all the d words you mentioned in the last pod).
‘Stolen Focus’ has helped me articulate the ache (also loved your pod with johann hari) but my brain feels like it’s in that messy, unorganised stage you mentioned is part of your process... it’s like I have an itch in the middle of my back and I’m trying furiously to reach it and scratch that itch but I can’t quite reach and I never completely feel satiated...
Reading The Beast and Wild has helped me confront the management of my anxiety and, I thought, the serious itch I’ve been feeling for years re our climate. Now I feel complete overwhelm about the future. Huge noise and connection through media and yet complete disconnect too, failing relationships locally and globally, the fat greedy all-consuming powers, my small skinny voice…too much to mention. I just want to run away, I choose no noise, no tv, less social media, minor consuming etc. for bathing in nature, walking/running in wild spaces but when I return to ‘the norm’ I feel crippled by it. Then the guilt; if I run away, I’m deserting the cause, burying my head in the sand. I’d stop shouting my thoughts and concerns because who’s actually listening anyway? In essence I’ve lost hope in humanity and I’m scared. Where the hell do we go from here?!
One thing I've noticed is how apathetic the majority of the population is to most of these issues.
Covid-19 was a perfect example of it here in Sydney; only a small portion of the population was anti-mask/vax, but it was also only an equally small part of the population that was pro-mask/vax. Most people just dealt with whatever happened without letting it affect them. Used a mask as soon as it was mandated, but stopped using it the day it wasn't. Took the vax when it was (basically) mandated and didn't bother with it afterwards. They have not thought about the issue since the lifting of the mandates.
They tend to just live in the moment and worry about the bread and circus stuff (sports/reality tv/pop culture/economy). I'm not sure there isn't anything we can do to shake them out of this, that there will ever be an awakening. Every single civilisation in human history has failed, usually to ecological collapse. They all continued damaging their environment, maintaining the status quo as best as they could right until the very end.
While the above sounds grim, in all the past civilisations the group of people that could try and fix the damage was minuscule or they didn't even understand what was happening. We know exactly what is happening now, and with a pool of 8 billion people, we have a humungous amount of smart people and the capital/technology to figure our way out of this.
I'm optimistic that as long as those of us who care keep fighting, and loudly, we will get there in the end. The apathetic majority realise something is wrong with what we are doing to the planet, as they did with the Covid-19 policies, so they will go along with it as long as we continue to tell them what needs to be done.
We do need to figure out how we deal with the emotional toll that comes with being the ones who have to keep fighting. I feel like your books, podcast and your substack, are a good way for all of us to collectively vent that energy. Thank you for doing what you do, know that it makes a big difference to us fighters and recharges us for the next round. :)