Collective trauma

Terry: Which brings us to the reason we’re having this conversation in the midst of a summit on collective trauma. The human emotional toll and overwhelm are important.

I think we thought, oh, we will see the facts and respond. What we’ve discovered is very much like trauma, people have shut down. They’ve been wanting to go into denial, we’re conditioned to resist these ideas. Maybe we’re sometimes too traumatized to do what we need to do. How are you seeing and feeling about trauma in the midst of all of this?

Karen: I think many people don’t know how to hold onto climate change. It is overwhelming, we want to turn away. I often mentioned that I don’t get invited to many parties because I think it is like, ‘oh, she’s just going to raise climate change at the dinner table’.

One thing we’ve really learned within science and communication is that it doesn’t work to only talk to people’s heads, to fill us with facts. Data and evidence don’t really help. You have to tell stories, you have to connect with our hearts, you have to connect with values—the deepest values because we have different worldviews, different identities and beliefs. We touch each other in different ways.

Consequently, there’s a huge engagement within arts communities. They’ve defined other ways of not just communicating the science but of really dealing with, embodying, what’s happening to us collectively.

The trauma dimension, really healing that trauma, can release a lot of the energy, energy we need to be able to face, head-on, the challenges, now and in the future. This is especially for young people who are almost getting this problem dumped on them. We need to be able to show them that the possibility space is much bigger than they think. That is something we have to believe, and enable in ourselves, in order to communicate it to young people. We can’t try to get people to think something we don’t authentically understand to be true.

Terry: There must be moments when you see the trajectory of change, you feel overwhelmed, you feel a sense of despair and begin to think an apocalyptic vision may come into being. And then other times when you feel more heartened.

We all have stuff, personalities in dialogue, different voices and different points of view. And, I know there is another interpretive form which is that, after we face the darkness, after we recognize that we may be the last generation or two of people growing up imagining we could take the future for granted, we might discover incredible gifts. We might say our souls consented to be here for this and that it’s an honor to be here at this time.

There’s an opportunity to tell a story with the way we live our lives that express our values and that this is perhaps a sacred opportunity, that it is inspiring to us and, even in the worst of worst-case scenarios, it’s still possible to be a force of all of the best in the human spirit.

Karen: That’s beautifully said because I think it’s part of what drives me,

I read the news a lot. Reading the latest news on Antarctic ice or species loss or … It just does break my heart. I can remember editing the IPCC summary for policymakers where you look at what the probabilities of sea-level rise and you know it is heartbreaking. It is so hard to actually imagine and we just take it kind of dryly. But we’re talking about not just like the beach moving up. We’re talking about water covering vegetation that shouldn’t be underwater, toxic waste, all these types of things.

We can’t even fathom what we’re actually doing, that border between oh my gosh, you know, it’s game over. To, no, we can actually do much better.

I remember when I was a student taking a course on the extinction of species. The professor said you are alive at the most important moment in history, the time where you can make the biggest difference. It really was one of those moments where I realized this matters. The work we do really makes a huge difference right now. I think that, hold that, to be able to deal with the loss, the grief and to look in front at what could be coming.

Then again there is so much potential and possibility on this planet right now for social change. That’s where I’m very interested, social change and transformation is the sustainability. In many ways, like a lot of my earlier research on impacts, vulnerability, adaptation and human security—looking at what the problem was—it has really twisted towards what the drawdown project is. Let’s look at the solutions and how we do it in an ethical, equitable and sustainable way? That really drives my research now, getting into that deeper part.

It’s how do you connect with people who don’t see the world the same way that you do? People who are traumatized, people who have been oppressed, people who have given up on caring for or just don’t think that life is worth it, don’t care what happens.

In my own development, I’m thinking of a paper probably around 15 years ago on winners and losers. Where did this idea of winners and losers come from? Is this a natural inevitable evolutionary idea, kind of like Darwinian, or is it socially and politically constructed and generated?

My aha moment was that not everybody cares about the losers. That was a real wake up call for me, that there are people who would say like, “I don’t care if the whole Greenland ice sheet melts because it will reveal some interesting geology, mineral wealth or something.”

It breaks my heart, even more, to think that there are people who couldn’t care if millions of people lose their homes because there’s gold. We’ve all read those fairy tales and fables, the King Midas sort. I think, for many people, social justice (and not just for humans but for nonhuman life) is a powerful, strong driving force. That hope is that our hearts do break open and not break down, right now.

A genuinely integrated view

Terry: The way you’re talking about it now reveals why I thank you so much for your career’s worth of work. It has both the scientific rigor necessary to participate in that domain and a genuinely integral view.

Karen: You are looking at the interior changes that individuals and groups are challenged to go through. The challenges in collaborating. The challenges of agreeing and adapting. The kinds of conflicts that get created. And then challenges the of conversing across those boundaries, the transformation of the worldviews and paradigms out of which we’re understanding all of this. These define and determine what we can do.

Terry: So often the science around climate change is looking at it as if it were merely a technical problem rather than a full spectrum, four-quadrant, affair (an integral theory approach).

The fact you’re looking at this in an integrated way—and you’re a respected voice in the most important forums where this conversation is going on—is heartening to me. This opens a transition in our conversation where we can talk about what those challenges are and where you see opportunities in terms of adaptive leadership and collaboration.

Karen: I think that the distinction between technical problems and adaptive problems is really important. It’s like we have all these goals. We kind of have targets. We’re really just trying to, you know, have more solar panels and more people on bicycles.

We focus so much on technical behavioral dimensions but the adaptive challenges are really about mindsets. They’re about the way we see the system, the way that we relate to the system—what are some of our assumptions and beliefs about that very system. If we treat it like that we’re bound to fail. It’s not that we can’t figure out how to store solar energy in batteries. It’s that we’re not looking at that full spectrum of the alternatives that are available right here and right now.

When I look at adaptive challenges I really see them as very personal too. They’re about the way we individually and collectively see the world and the assumptions we have. They’re very political because they’re really about what we take as the given—what we just accept as ‘this is the way life is’, this is the way society has been formed, this is the way people are. I think combining those: the practical; the political; and, the personal together really is an integral perspective. It’s taking the subjective and objective, the interior and exterior, and bringing them really together in a way that gets people to relate to the problem in a deeper way.

It’s funny because when I talk about this, about the importance of beliefs and values and worldviews and paradigms, a lot of scientists will just bob their heads and go, “yes, you’re absolutely right, we need to change people’s beliefs and values and worldviews”.

From a developmental perspective, you realize, wow, nobody likes to be changed by somebody else. Often that’s very oppressive. It’s manipulative. It just backfires in so many ways. It is trying to get people to realize, when we talk about that personal part of the adaptive challenge, that this is about challenging your own assumptions, your own beliefs, dealing with your own trauma. It is dealing with everything so that you can show up in that political sphere, so that you can relate to people who are scared, who don’t really see the same world as you do or have different concerns.

At its core it’s to make connections. That’s really like my research now—it’s called adaptation connects—adaptation as transformation. How do we empower people to see the transformations that are right in front of us?

I think that type of work really resonates with many people today. In the climate community, the discourse has changed a lot in the last five years. Values, emotions, wellbeing, empathy—words that were not there 10 or 20 years ago—are really coming up. We’re starting to see a real yearning for a more integral approach to problems and the solutions.

Reconsider and be challenged

Terry: To challenge ourselves, what specifically might you want to ask people to reconsider? To be challenged by?

Karen: I often ask about beliefs because a lot of the scientific community says yes, we can limit warming to two degrees. Then I’ll ask how many of you really believe that we can do that? You get very few hands in the room. I’ll ask, how many of you are very flexible with your beliefs and your belief systems? People say… not really.

What would we need to believe? What comes up when we say we can limit warming two degrees Celsius? There are a lot of beliefs. People hold: oh, it’s already too late… We blew it 30, 40 years ago. Others might say: people never change… people are done with development by the time they’re 25. Or: the models are saying that we cannot limit warming to two degrees.

I look at models and I ask what are the assumptions? Are models always right?

An example is some of the integrated assessment models that say there’s a 5% chance that we can limit warming to one to two degrees Celsius by the end of this century. But, if you look at the actual scientific paper, at the very end they talk about their assumptions. These include no new climate policies and that renewable energy will not be competitive with fossil fuels.

It doesn’t focus on collective cultural change, shifts in consciousness, widening circles of care, changes in what we eat… Non-linear social change is often not included in models.

Getting people to reflect on what are the beliefs that you hold and what is your sphere of evidence is important. One thing I often give my students in an exam question is to place them in the year 2100. I have them look back and say, what were they thinking, you know, back in 2019 and, you know, where was, you know, what were they, how was, what was their view of the world?

Also what was missing? What were their blind spots? What could they not see that was like right in front of them? That was there as the possibility and potentiality at that moment. Getting people to really start to reflect, oh, do I also have blind spots? What that might they be?

I think that’s a really good exercise for all of us. When we start to think about the future we tend to colonize it with our views of the world right now (as if this is the way it always is).

Yet, we know that future generations will see it very differently. They will be very happy about anyone who actually saw the possibilities that existed right now. Someone who said, the thousands and thousands of people who actually said, we can do something about this. We can do better.

Terry: In this collective trauma summit we’re talking with a community of people who are interested in transparent communication. They are generally interested in the transformation of their own consciousness and mobilizing compassion, self-compassion, in relation to our trauma.

People with these beliefs have tended to be viewed as a kind of a new age fringe—the mainstream has even excluded us to some degree. We sense that although what we’re doing is good there needs to be this transformative shift. We need to go through, maybe, multiple profound shifts, even in our way of being—the whole picture isn’t going to change without us changing too. I need to challenge myself, challenge my assumptions. What can you tell me that might help me show up better?

Karen: I can really relate to that. Ridicule is a powerful way of dismissing someone.

There are so many people who are really feeling it and hurting. I think we all have to really occupy a new paradigm and show what it is to actually live to these ideals. You’re there and many people are ready to come there. I think it’s almost, you know, a giant consensus that the world we have created right now is not working for many, many people.

To be able to be teachers, healers, to be the ones that can, through very gentle actions, help people to move when they’re ready is like being an attractor. A lot of people are opening up. If you’ve ever had a crisis where your worldview no longer works, you know about such shifts.

We’re here right now. There are ways of actually going deeper that will empower you to be able to be a bigger part of the solution. Empowering ourselves, especially going from that personal sphere into the political sphere, into the collective, into being able to connect with people, is important.

The good news is it’s not just the idea humans that are creating the problems—humans are the solutions. Humans are the most powerful solution that exists to climate change. We are the ones that create the technologies. We are the ones that actually are responsible for the way we organize society.

It starts to bring people into looking more closely at these issues. Issues of power interests, the things that have led to exactly the world that we have right now.

We have a collective voice. How do we work better together?

This gets into the idea of the individual is the collective individual trauma. You heal yourself and you heal a wider field too because you are more of yourself can show up.

My short answer is the time is ripe right now for many of these views to just come into the dialogue about climate change. We know so much about what’s going on. We’ve known that for decades.

The real challenge is to focus on how do we transform in ways that are not just engineering or things that are from that same paradigm. How do we transform when climate change solutions, actually, address many other problems, social challenges, that we have right now in the world.

End of part 1
Karen and Terry continue to explore the solutions in part 2 (coming soon).