Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope: Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change 3031084306, 9783031084300

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Douglas A. Vakoch Sam Mickey   Editors

Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change

Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope

Douglas A. Vakoch • Sam Mickey Editors

Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change

Editors Douglas A. Vakoch METI International San Francisco, CA, USA

Sam Mickey Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Environmental Studies Program University of San Francisco San Francisco, CA, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-08430-0    ISBN 978-3-031-08431-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Introduction: Eco-anxiety, Climate, Coronavirus, and Hope

Abstract  This chapter provides an overview of the theme and contents of this anthology. It introduces the main ideas, theories, and methods related to research on eco-anxiety, including its appearance in the anxieties people experience in relationship to the crises of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. There are several ways to categorize these various anxieties, but in general, eco-anxiety is here used as an overarching term that includes climate anxiety and coronavirus anxiety. This introductory chapter highlights the psychological, phenomenological, existential, and artistic perspectives explored in the book, and indicates how these perspectives on eco-anxiety provide grounds for hope in a time of crisis. The chapter concludes by providing a brief summary of each of the book’s chapters. Keywords  Eco-anxiety; Climate change; Climate anxiety; Coronavirus anxiety; COVID-19; Hope; Phenomenology People all over the world are feeling various kinds of distress because of the global ecological crisis and its local manifestations. This phenomenon has been growingly called eco-anxiety (Pihkala 2020a; Hickman 2020). Since December 2019, another major form of global distress has been strongly felt in nearly all corners of the world: anxiety because of COVID-19. This coronavirus anxiety, which has also been called COVID-19 fear, is a phenomenon of its own (Asmundson and Taylor 2020), but it also has profound connections with eco-anxiety, and it could be considered a type of eco-anxiety. The origins of pandemics are closely tied with known problems in human interactions with the more-than-human world, such as industrial animal farming (Blum and Neumärker 2021). In practice, numerous people have felt both eco-anxiety and coronavirus anxiety at the same time. Many dynamics are similar, although there are also profound differences due to the diverse characters of the threats. A virus can spread rapidly and cause serious illnesses, even death, over a time period of just some days. The ecological crisis moves more slowly, but is no less deadly, quite the contrary. There are numerous forms of ongoing slow violence (Nixon 2013) to both humans and the more-than-human world, and sometimes the ecological problems erupt as powerful v

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and sudden events. Extreme weather events, grown more intensive by climate change, are a prime example. Both coronavirus anxiety and climate anxiety can have profound connections with death-related anxiety (for eco-anxiety and “mortality salience,” see, e.g., Adams 2016). This book provides in-depth explorations of eco-anxiety and coronavirus anxiety. These phenomena are approached in their wide scale: they can sometimes fulfill clinical criteria, but fundamentally they are sensible and adaptive responses to very real problems. The term anxiety itself is wide-ranging: it can refer to an emotion, to a mental state, to an anxiety disorder, and to existential anxiety (Barlow 2004). Moreover, many other feelings and emotions often manifest along anxiety, such as fear, worry, confusion, motivation, sadness, guilt, or anger (Pihkala 2020a). Thus, when speaking about eco-anxiety and coronavirus anxiety, one needs clarity about what forms of it are currently discussed. Anxieties often evoke problem-centered framings: anxiety is usually seen as something negative, a problem that needs to be overcome. As an eco-anxiety researcher, I’ve answered to numerous questions by journalists about ways in which eco-anxiety could be transformed into action. However, the issue is complex: some kind of anxiety is required in order for people to respond adequately to threats which include major uncertainty. The aim is not to get rid of eco-anxiety, but to help channel its energy into constructive outcomes instead of paralyzing anxiety, depression, or trauma. (For practice-oriented guidebooks about eco-anxiety, see, e.g., Ray 2020; Grose 2020; Weber 2020.) The adaptive potential of anxiety, which researcher Charlie Kurth (2018) calls “practical anxiety,” is much needed (Pihkala 2020a). In relation to COVID-19, it has been even easier to notice that some forms of fear and anxiety have been very much needed. Actually, some of the biggest problems related to COVID-19 were born because there was too little fear and anxiety, or misplaced forms of them, by especially decision-makers but also by common people. Anxiety tried to warn humanity in January 2020, but most people were over-­ confident, indeed over-optimistic. If the warning signals had been heeded in time, there would not have been need for the strong forms of fear and anxiety, which then became widespread since February 2020. Panic results from a situation where normal fear and anxiety are not anymore enough; think about the massive buying of toilet paper and other emergency responses when the pandemic spread. The chapters in this book are not making overly simple statements about the goodness or badness of eco-anxiety or coronavirus anxiety. The authors are exploring these phenomena in the variety of forms they take. There are forms of them which include human rights violations, such as the facts that many children feel dread because of the climate crisis (see Hickman, Chap. 8, this volume). There are terrible existential anguishes, such as the ones felt by many young people over whether they can try to have children because of predicted climate futures (see Arnold-Baker, Chap. 6, this volume; Schneider-Mayerson and Leong 2020). Suffering must be taken very seriously, but many forms of anxiety are also fundamentally very important because they rupture a false sense of security and challenge unjust economic and social structures (see Part I of this volume).

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Both eco-anxiety and coronavirus anxiety are felt in a time when humanity is facing existential threats in all senses of that concept, and is at a threshold. Unfortunately, governments and decision-makers have often displayed a great lack of wisdom in reacting to these global anxieties. Swift action to alleviate systemic problems would help enormously in alleviating the problematic forms of these anxieties. This book does not frame eco-anxiety or coronavirus anxiety only as a therapeutic issue, but the authors constantly point toward the need for a critical socio-political understanding of the causes of these anxieties (see further Adams 2020b).

The Question of “Hope” Another major keyword for this book is hope. Hope is a very big word, which has deep meaning for numerous people (for a wide popular overview, see Scioli and Biller 2009). However, like anxiety, hope is also a term that is used in various connotations. Some associate hoping with wishful thinking and inaction, as did the young climate activist Greta Thunberg in her famous speech by in 2019: “I don’t want your hope—I want you to act …” (Thunberg 2019). Indeed, there is a strong need to critically analyze the various meanings of hope and hoping. In research, there are nuanced discussions about various modes of hoping (Webb 2006) and different kinds of environmental hope (Kretz 2013). Hope often has targets and aims, but there are also open-ended forms of hope, which point to a desired direction, but are not so strongly tied with a particular practical outcome. Ethically, hope is often differentiated into unconstructive and constructive forms. Wishful thinking or over-optimism is a classic form of unconstructive hope. McGeer (2004) observes another important and problematic form of unconstructive hope: “willful hope,” the imposing of one’s own view of hope onto somebody else, not respecting the autonomy of the other. Constructive hope refers to such attitudes where people also act in accordance to the aims expressed in hoping (Ojala 2017). The term “planetary hope” in the title of this book refers to deep desires for the future flourishing of Earth’s ecosystems. In the 2020s, humanity has reached a point where its impact on these ecosystems is so huge that many planetary boundaries of ecological well-being are being breached (Steffen et al. 2015). Some people argue that there is no hope left at least in the ways that hope is classically defined: as a belief in an uncertain outcome. Numerous others argue that hope is still possible and actually elementary: defined, for example, as “radical hope” or “realistic hope,” hope is something that keeps people going. These forms of “gritty hope” (Doherty and Cunsolo 2021) are not based on optimism in the philosophical sense, even though they may have a cheerfulness in them, in addition to a sense of tragedy (Kelsey 2020). These are more open-ended forms of hoping, and fundamentally connected to meaningfulness. In these views, hope is intimately tied with finding meaning in being and action toward good, even though the future is truly uncertain (Jamail 2019; Pihkala 2018; Moser 2020).

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the dynamics of planetary hope and despair in many ways. On the one hand, there has been much despair and even feelings of hopelessness amidst the suffering. On the other hand, there emerged, early on, new intensities of hoping. There were many news items about animals returning to areas where quarantine measures had restricted human activity, and of clear skies because of decrease in pollution; people wished that these would be signs that more-­ than-­human nature could recover quickly if only societies stopped polluting (Daly 2020). Many people noted that the political measures taken because of the pandemic showed that contemporary societies are actually able to make decisions of that level, and hoped that something similar could be seen in relation to the climate crisis and other major ecological crises. An overview of many such dynamics is provided by the interdisciplinary research group BIOS (2020). However, as the pandemic has continued, the initial hopes have been in turmoil. There are profound fears and expectations that the required structural changes will not be made. On the other hand, some new developments, such as more ambitious climate politics by both the United States and China, have sparked new hopes during the pandemic. The future is genuinely open, although it is evident that much damage will anyway occur because of the climate emissions already produced. As a result, there is a need for critical analyses of power and hope. There are many examples of “willful hope” in relation to climate hoping: efforts to impose one’s own view about hope or hopelessness to others. Weber (2020) has coined the innovative terms “hopium” and “reverse hopium” to describe two major versions of this dynamic. Some people cling on fervently to optimism (hopium), while others adhere to collapse beliefs with equal efforts for certainty (reverse hopium). Many commentators have argued that people should have the right to their constructive hope (e.g., Florsheim 2021), even while the grief and indignation that many collapse-believers feel is very understandable (for emotions and collapse thinking, see Baker 2013). The depth dimensions of hope include meaningfulness and vitality. Hope enables people to continue living, to continue the struggles for something better. In this sense, hope is different from optimism or pessimism. Despair can be a part of the cycles of hope. The ability to find meaning or purpose in life becomes crucial (Gillespie 2020; Macy and Johnstone 2012; Macy and Brown 2014; Nairn 2019; Pihkala 2018; Stoknes 2015).

Research About Eco-anxiety, COVID-19, and Hope Currently, both eco-anxiety and coronavirus anxiety are subjects of great research interest. Among various forms of eco-anxiety, climate anxiety has received the most attention (Clayton 2020; Pihkala 2019). Researchers are mapping theoretically the various dimensions of these wide phenomena and different forms of empirical research are being conducted. The chapters of this book are geared more toward theory, but there are also many empirical observations.

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The chapters bring important insights also to the currently growing efforts to construct measures and scales for these anxieties. A preliminary scale for climate anxiety was proposed recently by Clayton and Karazsia (2020), and it has been further developed by new research (Hogg et al. 2021; Wullenkord et al. 2021). A weather-focused Climate Change Worry Scale was developed by Stewart (2021). Several different scales were rather quickly developed for coronavirus anxiety: the brief Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS; Lee 2020), the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S; Ahorsu et al. 2020), and the COVID Stress Scales and the COVID Stress Syndrome concept developed by Taylor et al. (2020). On the basis of theoretical work, it is clear that these kind of scales have significant overlap with each other, because fear, anxiety, and worry are so closely connected with each other. Theoretical in-depth discussions can help scholars and medical professionals to observe various forms of these anxieties, fears, and worries, and help in differentiating those forms which need special psychological support. Coping methods have understandably been a major theme in related research and practical efforts. More research is warranted, but it has been observed that many kinds of methods can help with these anxieties. There is a need for self-care, psychological support by professionals, and peer groups. Political actions are closely tied with coping, because ardent efforts to counter the threats would increase people’s sense of security and their resources for coping (see Juliano, Chap. 10, this volume). (For overviews of coping with climate anxiety, see Mah et  al. 2020; Pihkala 2019; for discussion of coping methods in education in relation to eco-­ anxiety, see Pihkala 2020b.) Hope becomes intertwined with coping, as psychologist and education researcher Maria Ojala has insightfully shown in many empirical studies (e.g., Ojala 2012a, b, 2016). It seems that the connection is dynamic: hope is generated by coping, and sometimes coping is generated by constructive hoping. There have been many recent efforts to study the relationship between coping with climate change and various forms of hope: scholars have observed that for most people, hope and action are connected (Li and Monroe 2017), but some people act out of sheer determination and moral values, even though they have no optimism (Bury et al. 2020). In the chapters of this volume at hand, many kinds of hopes are explored, and it is often found that hope is closely connected with determination and joint endeavors in caring.

Arts and Coping with Global Anxieties Arts have been found to be a highly important means to engage with difficult topics such as these global anxieties. Emotions live in our bodyminds, and arts provide opportunities for embodied reflection and action. Indeed, many kinds of art-based methods have been applied to both eco-anxiety and coronavirus anxiety. There have been art-based interventions aimed directly at engaging some important aspect of eco-anxiety, such as enabling people to encounter ecological grief

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and/or eco-guilt. Examples include art exhibitions where names of lost species have been displayed as a kind of memorial. These kind of events often evoke both sadness and guilt (for examples, see Barr 2017; Adams 2020a; see also Hron, Chap. 7, this volume). In addition, many art-based methods enable great openness and variety in people’s engagements with them: each person may reflect on something which is important for her/him in that moment. Because of the complicated and manifold character of people’s feelings related to the climate crisis, art-based methods can serve especially well in their exploration (e.g., Bentz 2020). Some feelings may be so difficult to encounter that arts can offer highly significant means to tentatively approach them. Art-based methods have been important also in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Building connections between historical events and the present, several experienced art therapists (Potash et al. 2020) published an article relatively early during the COVID-19 pandemic where they draw from their work experiences amidst various pandemics in recent history such as Ebola and SARS.  While the authors focus on art therapy, the borders between explicit therapy and other uses of art are often fluent here. With an example from an Ebola pandemic, they capture insightfully the various potentials of art: Art in the context of psychosocial support groups allowed for the expression of emotions both positive and negative—gratitude, love, sadness, fear, anxiety, depression, anger, disbelief, grief—while engendering a sense of control in a safe environment. Art making altered perspectives and combated disconnection. Exhibitions of paintings allowed for communication and feedback. Not limited to visual arts, music (and particularly prayers) played an essential role in facilitating solidarity and offering inspiration. Lastly, art, music, theater and dance helped provide levity in the form of comedy and satire. (p. 105)

During COVID-19, visiting art spaces live was often difficult or impossible, which gave rise to creative virtual methods. There is already some research about this, such as the article “The Use of Online CB-ART Interventions in the Context of COVID-19: Enhancing Salutogenic Coping” (Segal-Engelchin et al. 2021). Even a single online meeting can help people to process their distress and receive both peer support and professional support. Creative expression at home can also help in many ways with anxiety and distress, as an analysis of paintings by women during lockdown demonstrates (Lakh et al. 2021). The art-focused chapters in Part III of this volume, which will be introduced in more detail below, are geared toward narrative methods, used both privately and publicly. There is growing interest in environmental humanities and especially ecocriticism toward these kinds of methods (e.g., Garrard 2014; Bladow and Ladino 2018), and websites have been created to help educators and communicators to make use of these kind of methods (Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators 2021). Information about lived experiences of pandemics and ecological crises can serve as peer support and as a motivator for political and ethical action (for climate anxiety, see, e.g., Johnson and Wilkinson 2020). Indeed, arts are not only therapeutic or creative in a nonpolitical sense, but can be closely connected with efforts for justice (e.g., Foster et al. 2018).

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The chapters and parts of this book, which are introduced below, provide many connections between the global anxieties described in this introduction. In the future, the work will continue to combine insights provided by research and action in both spheres. Scholarship on climate anxiety and scholarship on coronavirus anxiety can inform each other, as well as scholarship on arts and coping in relation to each of these global distresses.

Part I: Phenomenologies of Eco-anxiety The first part discusses psychological and philosophical foundations for understanding eco-anxiety, climate anxiety, and pandemics. The main focus is on COVID-19, but the discussion extends much further. Several of the chapters use phenomenological and existential approaches. In the first chapter, “Not to Be Unworthy of the Event: Thinking Through Pandemics with Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze,” Eva-Maria Simms engages in a twofold investigation. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is applied to probe “the event structure of the body” and Deleuze’s philosophy to discuss “the event structure of the socio-political world.” Pandemics as anxiety-producing events challenge us to gain new understandings of the various aspects of our bodily existence, but also of the larger, systemic connections between humans and the ecosystems in which we live. The ethical challenge is to be worthy of the event, she argues, using Deleuze’s concept. In “We Breathe, Therefore We Are: The Gasp of Life,” Tina Williams explores the central role of breathing. Air and breathing enable our subjective existence, but they also link us with the natural world and other human beings. Williams approaches eco-anxiety as an existential angst, drawing from Heidegger; eco-angst is a warning signal, manifested by stifled breath and shaped partly by air pollution. COVID-19 is a danger that spreads through air and that threatens our co-breathing relationships. Phenomenologically, all these breathing relationships are interconnected, and this fact directs us toward caring for all life. Sam Mickey continues phenomenological reflections about air relationships in his chapter “Atmospheres of Anxiety: Doing Nothing in an Ecological Emergency.” Simms and Williams already touch on ways the ecological crisis and the COVID-19 crisis cause a “rupture” in our “attunement” to the world, but Mickey extends this discussion further into Heidegger’s thought as well as the ideas of the contemporary environmental philosopher Timothy Morton. Mickey applies the existential idea of Gelassenheit, doing nothing, into our current plight. Asian-American artist Jenny Odells’ work is discussed in relation to the key task of cultivating both inner and outer dimensions of doing nothing. Simon Lafontaine engages especially the work of Lauren Berlant and Alfred Schutz in his chapter, “Anxiety and the Re-figuration of Human Action: Living in a Crisis-Shaped Present.” Berlant, a leading theorist in affect studies, provides conceptual tools to analyze various “genres” through which events are interpreted.

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Schutz’s analysis of anxiety and the structures that guide an individual’s apprehension of events are then brought into creative discussion with Berlant’s thoughts. As in previous chapters, the topic of death and mortality is touched upon, as Lafontaine examines these fundamental issues of life. In the concluding chapter of Part I, “Authentic Compassion in the Wake of Coronavirus: A Nietzschean Climate Ethics,” William A. B. Parkhurst and Casey Rentmeester apply Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy to our era of climate crisis and COVID-19 crisis. Nietzsche discussed pandemics both in medical and in existential senses. Pandemics reveal true characteristics of humans, and Nietzsche warns against “pity combined with disgust,” which is actually reflected in many responses to COVID-19. The authors suggest that the coronavirus provides the opportunity to practice “deep compassion,” based on an existential awakening to human finitude.

Part II: Beyond Birth, Existence, and Environment The chapters in Part II bring various phenomena and groups of people into creative dialogue with eco-anxiety and COVID-19 anxiety. The case examples include children and youth, birth strikers, the #MeToo movement, and those grieving stillbirths. In her chapter “Birth Strike: Holding the Tension Between Existence and Non-­ existence,” Claire Arnold-Baker explores the existential underpinnings of maternity, birth striking, and the climate crisis. Maternity or hopes for it have a strong existential dimension, but the climate crisis strongly intensifies these challenging questions. Arnold-Baker discusses the ethical issues related to women’s choices, freedom, and responsibility, and she points out that contemporary existential crises may also inspire people to find more meaningfulness. She concludes that questions of mortality and continuation of life are ever present in our era. In “Stillbirth Grief, Eco-grief, and Corona Grief: Reflections on Denialism,” Madelaine Hron focuses on several socially difficult types of grief: ecological grief, pregnancy and infant loss (PAIL), and COVID-19 grief. Drawing both from interdisciplinary research and her own experiences, Hron points out that the social attitudes to all these griefs include denial, dehumanization, and disgust. Examples of the actions by PAIL groups show how unethical discourses can be resisted. For instance, Hron discusses memorialization, sentimentalism, and lamentation, and she invites readers to apply these approaches to ecological grief and COVID-19 grief. Caroline Hickman discusses the challenges and possibilities of intergenerational relations in “Saving the Other, Saving the Self: Exploring Children’s and Young People’s Feelings About the Coronavirus, Climate, and Biodiversity Crises.” She explores the emotional landscapes of children and youth, pointing out that many of them are sensitive to the interconnectedness of humans and the rest of the planet. They often engage in climate activism, both for the sake of their futures and for the rights of other species. However, the COVID-19 crisis sparks the need for even more discussion across generations, since risk perceptions are different: many youth fear climate change more than the coronavirus. There is a need to imagine shared

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futures together by people of various ages and to resist intergenerational misunderstandings. Christoph Solstreif-Pirker applies insights from feminist psychoanalyst and artist Bracha L. Ettinger to our current plight in “Participating in the Wound of the World: A Matrixial Rethinking of Eco-anxiety.” He discusses a relational and transitive constitution of human subjectivity and explores Ettinger’s “matrixial” theory for understanding the contemporary relationship between humans and nature. Solstreif-Pirker proposes a “psycho-planetary plurality,” wherein anxiety is transformed into a proto-ethical agency of relationality and care. He argues that the “ecological trauma might be overcome in establishing a shared borderspace between the human and the planetary unconscious,” and he exemplifies this investigative venture with a specific art-based performative methodology. Merritt Juliano’s “From Oppression to Love as Mother Earth Joins the Time’s Up and #MeToo Movements” examines the interlocking dynamics of oppression of both women and nature. She conducts an interdisciplinary review of ecofeminist theory, ecofeminist theology, various psychological theories, and the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to understand the roots of the problem. Juliano asserts that mindfulness and mentalization may help in efforts to dismantle oppressive behaviors, but this requires the broadening of mentalization-based therapy by also including human-nonhuman relations. She argues that the current dominant paradigm bears similarities with narcissistic modes of thinking and behaving in the world, which run counter to a systems-based understanding of life that can allow for the development of empathy and a sense of interconnectedness.

Part III: Eco-Poetry and Creative Writing The final part of the book is devoted to the role of imagination, creativity, and the arts. The contributors focus especially on written texts, but many of the case examples have circulated online and are thus combinations of visual elements and text. In “Ecoprogramming the Vulnerable Bodies,” Om Prakash Dwivedi explores the possibilities amidst the current pandemic for a worldview that would give environmental issues a more central role. Using a theoretical framework related to vulnerability, Dwivedi examines ways in which a sense of interconnectedness might be extended. He discusses literary readings from different cultures and knowledge traditions in order to reflect on the possibilities for a better, “ecotopian” world. He introduces “ecoprogramming” as a concept to describe the changing of mindsets to become more deeply ecological. Abhik Gupta explores the possibilities of ecocentric poetry in his chapter “Anxiety in Isolation: Anointing with Ecocentrism.” Going back to some older poetry and philosophy, such as the writings of Walt Whitman and Martin Buber, Gupta discusses “a dialogue with Nature” as a means to overcome the loneliness generated by quarantine conditions and anxiety. He proposes that “identifying with

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Nature” might transform loneliness into more tranquil solitude, with the help of poetry. One important part of the viral online responses to the coronavirus crisis has been the wide circulation of poetry and other narrative writings, which explore ways to survive the crisis. Nicole Anae studies this “corona writing” in her chapter “‘Narrative Medicine’ in the Age of COVID-19: The Power of Creative Writing to Reimagine Environmental Crisis.” Taking the concept of narrative medicine beyond a clinical setting, Anae analyzes the ways in which such writing can productively discuss people’s feelings about global problems and their local manifestations. She argues that creative literary expression can explore climate anxiety as well as the coronavirus crisis, with a therapeutic impact. In the final chapter, “Soul Suffrage: A Narrative Eco-poem,” Michael Hewson explores the feelings of solastalgia—feelings of loss and nostalgia due to changing environmental conditions—through a narrative setting in the Swiss Alps. An old sign tells travelers to “make sure the vista stays natural,” but Hewson asks: What should be considered natural, now or in the future? The human interventions in the scenery are manifold, both in the forms of cleared pastures and the metallic structures of the ski lifts. Explicitly and implicitly, Hewson discusses the potential of art for shaping environmental attitudes. Panu Pihkala Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

References Adams, M. 2016. Ecological Crisis, Sustainability and the Psychosocial Subject: Beyond Behaviour Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Adams, J.L. 2020a. Environmental Hospice and Memorial as Redemption: Public Rituals for Renewal. Western Journal of Communication 84 (5): 586–603. https://doi.org/10.108 0/10570314.2020.1753234. Adams, M. 2020b. Anthropocene Psychology: Being Human in a More-Than-Human World. London/New York: Routledge. Ahorsu, D.K., C. Lin, V. Imani, et al. 2020. The Fear of COVID-19 Scale: Development and Initial Validation. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11469-­020-­00270-­8. Anonymous. 2020. Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators. Available via https://www. existentialtoolkit.com/. Accessed 28 Oct 2020. Asmundson, G.J.G., and S.  Taylor. 2020. Coronaphobia Revisited: A State-of-the-Art on Pandemic-Related Fear, Anxiety, and Stress. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 76: 102326. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102326. Baker, C. 2013. Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths for TURBULENT times. New York: North Atlantic Books. Barlow, D.H. 2004. Anxiety and Its Disorders: The Nature and Treatment of Anxiety and Panic. 2nd ed. New York: Guilford Press.

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Barr, J.M. 2017. Auguries of Elegy: The Art and Ethics of Ecological Grieving. In Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss & Grief, ed. A. Cunsolo Willox and K. Landman, 190–226. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Bentz, J. 2020. Learning About Climate Change in, with and Through Art. Climatic Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-­020-­02804-­4. BIOS Research Unit. 2020. Quick, Slow and Intertwined Crises—Ecological Reconstruction in an Uncertain World. www.bios.fi. 7 Apr 2020. Bladow, K.A., and J.  Ladino, eds. 2018. Affective Ecocriticism: Emotion, Embodiment, Environment. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Blum, B., and B.K.J. Neumärker. 2021. Lessons from Globalization and the COVID-19 Pandemic for Economic. Environmental and Social Policy. World 2 (2): 308–333. https://doi.org/10.3390/ world2020020. Bury, S.M., M.  Wenzel, and L.  Woodyatt. 2020. Against the Odds: Hope as an Antecedent of Support for Climate Change Action. British Journal of Social Psychology 59 (2): 289–310. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12343. Clayton, S. 2020. Climate Anxiety: Psychological Responses to Climate Change. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 74: 102263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102263. Clayton, S.D., and B.T.  Karazsia. 2020. Development and Validation of a Measure of Climate Change Anxiety. Journal of Environmental Psychology: Article 101434. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101434. Daly, N. 2020. Fake Animal News Abounds on Social Media as Coronavirus Upends Life. National Geographic, March 20. Doherty, T.J., and A. Cunsolo. 2021. Speaking of Psychology: How to Cope with Climate Anxiety, with Thomas Doherty, PsyD, and Ashlee Cunsolo, PhD.  Speaking of Psychology. American Psychological Association. Florsheim, M. 2021. Don’t Tell Me to Despair About the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect. YES! Magazine, June 15. Foster, R., J. Mäkelä, and R. Martusewicz, eds. 2018. Art, Ecojustice, and Education: Intersecting Theories and Practices. London: Routledge. Garrard, G., ed. 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Gillespie, S. 2020. Climate Crisis and Consciousness: Re-imagining Our World and Ourselves. London/New York: Routledge. Grose, A. 2020. A Guide to Eco-Anxiety: How to Protect the Planet and Your Mental Health. London: Watkins. Hickman, C. 2020. We Need to (Find a Way to) Talk About … Eco-Anxiety. Journal of Social Work Practice 34 (4): 411–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2020.1844166. Hogg, T.L., S.K. Stanley, L.V. O'Brien, et al. 2021. The Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Scale. Preprint. 10.31219/osf.io/rxudb. Jamail, D. 2019. End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption. New York: The New Press. Johnson, A.E., and K.K. Wilkinson, eds. 2020. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. New York: One World. Kelsey, E. 2020. Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think Is Critical to Solving the Environmental Crisis. Vancouver/Berkeley: Greystone Books. Kretz, L. 2013. Hope in Environmental Philosophy. The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 26: 925–944. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-­012-­9425-­8. Kurth, C. 2018. The Anxious Mind: An Investigation into the Varieties and Virtues of Anxiety. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Lakh, E., L. Shamri-Zeevi, and D. Kalmanowitz. 2021. Art in the Time of Corona: A Thematic Analysis. The Arts in Psychotherapy 75: 101824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2021.101824. Lee, S.A. 2020. Coronavirus Anxiety Scale: A Brief Mental Health Screener for COVID-19 Related Anxiety. Death Studies 44 (7): 393–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2020.1748481.

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Li, C.J., and M.C. Monroe. 2019. Exploring the Essential Psychological Factors in Fostering Hope Concerning Climate Change. Environmental Education Research 25 (6): 936–954. https://doi. org/10.1080/13504622.2017.1367916. Macy, J., and M.Y.  Brown. 2014. Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers. Macy, J., and C. Johnstone. 2012. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy. Novato: New World Library. Mah, A.Y.J., D.A. Chapman, E.M. Markowitz, et al. 2020. Coping with Climate Change: Three Insights for Research, Intervention, and Communication to Promote Adaptive Coping to Climate Change. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 75: 102282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. janxdis.2020.102282. McGeer, V. 2004. The Art of Good Hope. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592: 100–127. Moser, S.C. 2020. The Work After “It’s Too Late” (To Prevent Dangerous Climate Change). Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change: e606. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.606. Nairn, K. 2019. Learning from Young People Engaged in Climate Activism: The Potential of Collectivizing Despair and Hope. Young 27 (5): 435–450. https://doi. org/10.1177/1103308818817603. Nixon, R. 2013. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ojala, M. 2012a. Hope and Climate Change: The Importance of Hope for Environmental Engagement Among Young People. Environmental Education Research 18 (5): 625–642. ———. 2012b. Regulating Worry, Promoting Hope: How Do Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults Cope with Climate Change? International Journal of Environmental and Science Education 7 (4): 537–561. ———. 2016. Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education: From Therapeutic Practice to Hopeful Transgressive Learning. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 21: 41–56. ———. 2017. Hope and Anticipation in Education for a Sustainable Future. Futures 94: 76–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2016.10.004. Pihkala, P. 2018. Eco-Anxiety, Tragedy, and Hope: Psychological and Spiritual Dimensions of Climate Change. Zygon 53 (2): 545–569. ———. 2019. Climate Anxiety: A Report. ———. 2020a. The Cost of Bearing Witness to the Environmental Crisis: Vicarious Traumatization and Dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress Among Environmental Researchers. Social Epistemology: The Cost of Bearing Witness: Secondary Trauma and Self-Care in Fieldwork-­ Based Social Research; Guest Editors: Nena Močnik and Ahmad Ghouri 34 (1): 86–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2019.1681560. ———. 2020b. Anxiety and the Ecological Crisis: An Analysis of Eco-Anxiety and Climate Anxiety. Sustainability 12 (19): 7836. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12197836. ———. 2020c. Eco-Anxiety and Environmental Education. Sustainability 12 (23): 10149. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su122310149. Potash, J.S., D.  Kalmanowitz, I.  Fung, et  al. 2020. Art Therapy in Pandemics: Lessons for COVID-19. Art Therapy 37 (2): 105–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421656.2020.1754047. Ray, S.J. 2020. A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet. Oakland: University of California Press. Schneider-Mayerson, M., and K.L.  Leong. 2020. Eco-Reproductive Concerns in the Age of Climate Change. Climatic Change 163 (2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-­020-­02923-­y. Scioli, A., and H.B.  Biller. 2009. Hope in the Age of Anxiety. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Segal-Engelchin, D., E.  Huss, and O.  Sarid. 2021. The Use of Online CB-ART Interventions in the Context of COVID-19: Enhancing Salutogenic Coping. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18 (4): 2057. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph18042057.

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Steffen, W., K.  Richardson, J.  Rockström, et  al. 2015. Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human Development on a Changing Planet. Science 347 (6223): 1259855. https://doi.org/10.1126/ science.1259855. Stewart, A.E. 2021. Psychometric Properties of the Climate Change Worry Scale. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18 (2): 494. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph18020494. Stoknes, P.E. 2015. What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing. Taylor, S., C.A. Landry, M.M. Paluszek, et al. 2020. COVID Stress Syndrome: Concept, Structure, and Correlates. Depression and Anxiety 37 (8): 706–714. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.23071. Thunberg, G. 2019. ‘Our House Is on Fire’: Greta Thunberg, 16, Urges Leaders to Act on Climate. The Guardian, January 25. Webb, D. 2007. Modes of Hoping. History of the Human Sciences 20 (3): 65–83. Weber, J.A. 2020. Climate Cure: Heal Yourself to Heal the Planet. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications. Wullenkord, M., J. Tröger, K. Hamann, et al. 2021. Anxiety and Climate Change: A Validation of the Climate Anxiety Scale in a German-Speaking Quota Sample and an Investigation of Psychological Correlates. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/76ez2.

Panu Pihkala  PhD, is Adjunct Professor (title of Docent) of Environmental Theology in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki. His interdisciplinary research deals with the psychological and spiritual dimensions related to environmental issues and especially climate change. Pihkala has become known as an expert in eco-anxiety and has had his work published widely on the topic. He is also affiliated with HELSUS (Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science). Pihkala also researches environmental education, and he participates in the multi-disciplinary environmental studies in the University of Helsinki. Psychosocial studies, communication, environmental history, ethics, and philosophy are especially close to his studies.

Contents

Part I The Experience of Eco-anxiety  1 Not  to Be Unworthy of the Event: Thinking Through Pandemics with Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze����������������������������������������    3 Eva-Maria Simms  2 We  Breathe; Therefore, We Are: The Gasp of Life������������������������������   15 Tina Williams   3 Atmospheres  of Anxiety: Doing Nothing in an Ecological Emergency��������������������������������������������������������������������   25 Sam Mickey  4 Anxiety  and the Re-figuration of Action: Living in a Crisis-Shaped Present����������������������������������������������������������������������   33 Simon Lafontaine  5 Authentic  Compassion in the Wake of Coronavirus: A Nietzschean Climate Ethics ����������������������������������������������������������������   43 William A. B. Parkhurst and Casey Rentmeester Part II Beyond Birth, Existence, and Environment  6 Birth  Strike: Holding the Tension Between Existence and Non-existence������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   57 Claire Arnold-Baker  7 Stillbirth  Grief, Eco-grief and Corona Grief: Reflections on Denialism ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   67 Madelaine Hron  8 Saving  the Other, Saving the Self: Exploring Children’s and Young People’s Feelings About the Coronavirus, Climate, and Biodiversity Crises������������������������������������������������������������   77 Caroline Hickman xix

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Contents

 9 Participating  in the Wound of the World: A Matrixial Rethinking of Eco-anxiety����������������������������������������������������������������������   87 Christoph Solstreif-Pirker 10 From  Oppression to Love as Mother Earth Joins the Time’s Up and #MeToo Movements��������������������������������������   99 Merritt Juliano Part III Eco-Poetry and Creative Writing 11 Ecoprogramming the Vulnerable Bodies ����������������������������������������������  111 Om Prakash Dwivedi 12 Anxiety  in Isolation: Anointing with Ecocentrism��������������������������������  119 Abhik Gupta 13 “Narrative  Medicine” in the Age of COVID-19: The Power of Creative Writing to Reimagine Environmental Crisis ������������������������������������������������������������������������������  129 Nicole Anae 14 Solastalgia  and Soul Suffrage: A Narrative Eco-Poem������������������������  139 Michael Hewson Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  149

Part I

The Experience of Eco-anxiety

Chapter 1

Not to Be Unworthy of the Event: Thinking Through Pandemics with Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze Eva-Maria Simms

Before and After In early March 2020, I was at an archive in Switzerland, and then visited my mother in a senior living community in Germany. The COVID-19 outbreak seemed first a localized crisis (I thought: “Let’s not worry, I am not travelling to China or Italy…”). But there were indicators that it was more than that: Switzerland (which shares a border with Italy) was taking measures to limit large gatherings of people, like cancelling Basel’s carnival parades and limiting performances to 100 people in concert halls; German grocery stores were already out of toilet paper. The order to selfisolate began in those countries in the second week of March and in the USA a week later, right after I returned home. When the reality of the coronavirus pandemic caught up with Americans, my husband and I were housebound in our home for more than a year, like most people in our city. We all experienced the gradual halting of daily activities and public lives, the slowing down of social demands, the withdrawal of people to their homes, the shift of work to virtual media, the closing of bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues, the widespread fear of losing jobs, and the cascading erosion of economic life. The government was putting out continuous statements about the spread of the pandemic, the newscasts were all about COVID-19 and its impact, and public discourse had been coopted by the spread of the virus and what it does to the psychology of people who follow the recommendation to “socially distance”. I heard from many of my therapist colleagues and friends that everyone they talked to experienced a high level of free-floating anxiety. The reality of the pandemic was brought home to me when a good friend contracted the virus and was on a ventilator in the hospital. His wife and children lived in fear of getting sick as well, especially since one of his young sons has a rare form of leukaemia. In E.-M. Simms (*) Psychology Department, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_1

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April 2020, my husband was hospitalized, unable to breathe and with COVID-like symptoms. By May 2020, the rate of infection in the USA was growing exponentially with some dire warnings from health officials that 50% of the population would likely be infected in the coming months. The Israeli Government was screening people’s cell phone GPS and informing them by email if on such and such a date they were in the vicinity of someone who tested positive with the virus. The following chapters give us glimpses into the social and psychological reality of life during a pandemic from Nigeria, Zambia, and Morocco, to India and the Philippines, to Australia, the Americas, and Europe as the virus ruptured the fabric of daily lives across the globe. In the meantime, we were wearing our masks and hunting for toilet paper and hand sanitizers during our infrequent stops at the grocery store and tried  not to touch anything anyone else had touched.  By the end of June, 2022, the US death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic was  1.01 Million, and worldwide 6.33 Million people. Each person left behind interrupted lives, mourning families, and often orphaned children.

Epi-demos and Pan-demos This personal story and the stories of thousands of other people we hear in the media tell the human story of the pandemic, i.e. the psychological story from the human point of view. However, we can also step back from the personal experience of COVID-19 and look at the event of the pandemic and its impersonal unfolding on the level of larger social organisms. The word epidemic comes from the Greek words epi, which means “above”, and demos, which means “the people” (which we also find in democracy, the rule of the people). Epidemics have a reality on a level above individual lives: they are systemic phenomena. Pan-demics go even further and encompass “all” people and have a global reach. As we saw with AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and Zika, epidemics move through homes, villages, cities, countries, and across borders in unforeseen ways. They “break out” in “hotspots” and “spread” infections exponentially, overwhelm medical systems, and often lead to extreme political measures in the attempt to curb their spread. Epidemics and pandemics are events in the sense that they are occurrences that take over our everyday lives and increasingly determine personal and social realities.

Pandemic as Ereignis/Event For our purposes of investigating the COVID-19 pandemic and exploring the intersection between the personal and the systemic unfolding of this event, I adopt here Dastur’s (2000, 182) definition of event or Ereignis, which seems to speak to the confounding and unpredictable reality of the pandemic:

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The event in the strong sense of the word is therefore always a surprise, something which takes possession of us in an unforeseen manner, without warning, and which brings us towards an unanticipated future. The eventum, which arises in the becoming, constitutes something which is irremediably excessive in comparison to the usual representation of time as flow. It appears as something that dislocates time and gives a new form to it, something that puts the flow of time out of joint and changes its direction.

As an eventum, the COVID-19 outbreaks across the globe have been a surprise in the unanticipated speed of their spread and the far-reaching impact they have had on human social structures. They took possession of us in an unforeseen manner. Before the pandemic, we could go on with our ordinary lives, but after the outbreak  our lives changed, and we were  not sure what the future will hold: Will schools and workplaces open, or will they close again? will we go to the wedding of our nephew next month? will our retirement investments recover? We entered a different reality, which was determined and directed by the pandemic. It owned us, and it possessed our lives in the double sense of the word: it possessed us, and we were possessed by it, i.e., we focused on it obsessively. The future we lived was not anticipated a few years earlier. It became open and unpredictable, and the certainties with which we lived our daily lives pre-pandemic were  shaken. My hands touching the items on the grocery shelf were more hesitant, I scanned myself for every sneeze, and I called friends and family members more often to make sure they were still there and okay. Like many of my friends, I expect another pandemic to take possession of us, if not next year, maybe the year after or in 10 years, and maybe it will not be flu-like, but more like Ebola.  I may be able to control my social distances from other people and get vaccinated, but the whole impersonal, systemic dimension of the pandemic is outside of my individual control: COVID-19 is irremediably excessive. For the event, as such, is upsetting. It does not integrate itself as a specific moment in the flow of time. It changes drastically the whole style of an existence (Husserl 1970, 31). It does not happen in a world—it is, on the contrary, as if a new world opens up through its happening. The event constitutes the critical moment of temporality—a critical moment which neverthelesvs allows the continuity of time. (Dastur 2000, 182)

The word event evokes a region of life and a process of temporal unfolding which moves through humans and is changed by them, but which nevertheless is impersonal, ideal, and systemic, rather than personal. Foundational to Dastur’s description of the event is Heidegger’s notion of the Ereignis (event) which finds its culmination in the discussion of language as event. Speakers always already find themselves inserted to the language event when they make use of language in their speech acts: language speaks through the speakers (Heidegger 1982). Dastur and other French thinkers have widened the application of the concept of the event beyond the phenomenon of language and tie it to the surplus and saturation inherent in phenomena (Marion 2002), its foundational quality of surprise (Nancy 2000), and the future directedness of the event as temporal becoming and systemic proliferation (Deleuze 2004). They issue a challenge to phenomenology: “The difficult task of phenomenology is therefore to think this excess to expectation that is the event” (Dastur 2000, 183).

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Deleuze’s concept of the event in Logic of Sense (2004) brings into focus the systemic impact of events and how they move through and change interconnected systems. Deleuze allows us to think through occurrences in large social or ecological structures which, upon the occurrence of an event, change in a non-linear fashion and impact the reality of past, present, and future in ways that are often not readily discernable. The event in the Deleuzian sense can be described in the following way: Events introduce change and differences within those structures, thus the event of a variation in a social practice draws a society out of line with known and expected patterns; it introduces difference and novelty. (…) For him, an event runs through series in structures, transforming them and altering relations of sense along the series. (…) This event is never simply an occurrence for the mind of a conscious human being. It is rather a set of multiple interactions running through bodies, ideal structures (such as languages or moral codes) and virtual structures (such as relations of emotional investment considered in abstraction from the bodies that carry them – changes in the ratios of the intensities of fear and attraction in a new relationship, for instance). (Williams 2008, 1)

This basic list of the working of events maps closely to the systemic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and illuminates some of its implicit dimensions. The form that our personal life assumed in the shadow of the pandemic event was not anticipated. Moreover, the anxiety that surrounds individual uncertainties is eclipsed only by the fear of the possible cascading decline of our social systems in the future, i.e. excessive changes that spread through the series of economics and politics, but also global health and food systems and even biological ecosystems. The pandemic runs through existing structures transforming them and altering relations of sense along the series. Here are two small examples: before the coronavirus outbreak only criminals and demonstrators wore face masks in public in order to conceal their identities and remain anonymous; today, the sense (meaning/practice/value) of wearing a facemask has been altered: it is a benign signal that the wearer is civic minded—and we overlook the anonymity of the face behind the mask. At the same time, political demagogues, who deny the seriousness of the pandemic, promote the view that not wearing a face mask is a sign of protest against government repression. Both sense practices have far-reaching and different consequences for the spread of the virus and its impact on the socio-political system of the future. The pandemic breaks into our lives by infiltrating the human organism in unforeseen ways and by altering the surrounding social reality of the human species. It is running through bodies and bodily structures in its particular individual and local manifestations but also in the global spread since bodies are the carriers of the virus; some recover easily, while others die. It is excessive in its unforeseen impact on social bodies as it is running through ideal structures: it dominates the public discourse (local and global news), political reality (effectiveness of political leadership, need for public services, marshal laws), and the moral code (doing things for the common good, such as physical distancing and wearing masks). Finally, it alters virtual structures such as the value systems and emotional investments that will determine the social, political, economic, and ecological realities of the future. The pandemic stands as a caesura in the progression of our cultural time: a sharp

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demarcation in the flow of time, a “cutting” of the ordinary rhythm of temporal flows, and an unanticipated pause before a different phrase begins. The COVID-19 pandemic is dislocating time and gives a new form to the future, a future whose direction we cannot predict at this time. It will also alter the way we make sense of the past and how we narrate how we got here.

The Body as Event Before we look more closely at the excessiveness of the pandemic in the more systemic social dimensions, I want to introduce the notion of event into a discussion of the body, for the body is the ground where we encounter the concrete and intimate reality of an epidemic disease. COVID-19 challenges our natural scientific understanding of bodies as manageable machines by revealing a surplus or excess in bodies themselves, and that bodies, as part of larger ecological structures, do not exist in isolation from other bodies and from their environments. We have a long tradition in phenomenology that is critical of the hegemony of natural science and technology and its claim to be the arbiter of what is real (Husserl 1970; Heidegger 1993; Dreyfus 2003; Straus 1966/1980). Parallel to this runs a re-­ conceptualization of the body which grows out of Merleau-Ponty’s work (Merleau-­ Ponty 1962, 1968): understanding the body as an anatomical machine is replaced by  a conception of the body as experienced and lived and deeply woven into its perceptual action field. Merleau-Ponty’s work has had a profound impact on philosophy, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience (Adams 2007; Simms 2008; Olkowski and Morley 1999; Gallagher and Zahavi 2008; Dillon 1997; Abram 1996; Dreyfus 2002; Clark 1998). Phenomenology is not against scientific research, quantification, and technological interventions, but rather tries to hold open the possibility for exploring the qualitative, sense-making dimensions of human life against the hegemony of scientific discourses in contemporary Western societies. A key insight from Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception is summarized in this sentence: “the world is not that which I think but that which I live. I am open to the world, I indubitably communicate with it, but I do not possess it; it is inexhaustible.” (Merleau-Ponty 2009, 16/xvii).1 The shift towards the investigation of human experience, which is a hallmark of phenomenology, led Merleau-Ponty to an understanding that the relationship between body and world is complex, open, and inexhaustible—but so is the relationship between consciousness and the body itself. This body that I am and through which I touch the world in perception and action has a natural and biological history that is larger than my own: “my history is the resumption of a prehistory (…) and my personal existence is the appropriation of a pre-personal tradition” (2009, 234/254). Beyond the conscious subject, there

 The page numbers from Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception refer to the 2009 translation by R. Rojcewicz, with reference to the 1962 translation by Colin Smith. 1

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exists another subject, a body-subject which is “this captive or natural spirit which is the body itself” (234/254) which has already staked out a place in the world before my infant self ever took her first breath. My birth inserted me into biological and social event structures much older and more complex than my personal life. Newborn infants, for example, are well equipped to exist in spatial dimensions that have biological and psychological meaning, such as their ability to see the breast and the face of the mother, to turn to sounds and smells that they recognize, and to pick up on the complex musical structure of language (Simms 2008). However, meaningful spatial experience and the primary access to human language are not cognitive, conscious events but are part of the pre-personal, pre-predicate history of the human species and the result “of a communication with the world more ancient than the one by way of thought”: Space, as well as perception as a whole, are marks, inscribed in the very heart of the subject, of the fact of his birth, of the perpetual contribution offered by his corporeality, and of a communication with the world more ancient than the one by way of thought. That is why space and perception engorge consciousness and are opaque to reflection. (Merleau-Ponty 2009, 234/254)

Prior to reflection, we live with a body that has its own nascent intelligence and communication with the world. In ourselves, we encounter a sphere of generality and anonymity which is the body itself, a body which is “a system of anonymous ‘functions’ which situate every particular bodily concentration in the context of a more general project” (p. 234/254). The “general project” is the body’s adhesion to the world, and, I would say, its function as a member of a species in relation to the equilibrium of the biological ensemble of its own and of all other species. Merleau-­ Ponty recognized that when we grasp the interrelation between the personal life of our bodies with the anonymous, pre-personal life that traverses them and that is opaque to reflection, we can find ourselves with “the vital experience of vertigo and nausea, which is the horrifying consciousness of our own contingency.” (p. 234/254) Merleau-Ponty’s astute analysis of the anonymity of the body and our reaction of vertigo and nausea when we become aware of it also  applies to the anonymous dimension of infectious diseases and how we experience them.  COVID-19 can ravage the body and drown the lungs in their own fluid—or the body knows how to deal with it and you experience no or only mild symptoms. And we do not know how severe the attack will be: there are statistical models that people with compromised immune systems and the elderly are more susceptible, but none of us knows how hard it will hit us personally and how our body will deal with it, no matter if we are 18 or 88 years old. Much of the anxiety that we witnessed during the epidemic came from the vertigo inducing encounter with the anonymous dimension of the body and its contingency—and our inability to control it. Once the pandemic pervaded public spaces, the personal body almost inevitably communicated with COVID-19 and let it enter through mouth and nose. We did not know if we could trust our bodies to keep us alive and heal us from the injuries the virus caused—even with the support of medical interventions that are only as good as the body’s ability to heal itself.

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Healing, on the most fundamental level, is always a gift of the anonymous body which medical treatment can ask for, but not guarantee.

The Event in the Body Politic COVID-19 brings into view the impersonal event structure of the body itself, but also how it is inserted into larger event matrices, i.e. connected systems and processes which open up new fields of meaning (Merleau-Ponty 2010). The centre of our personal lives is determined by the location of the body and its field of perceptions and actions, but the body is also an impersonal, biological event, and as such, it is unpredictable and surprising, it can take possession of us, and it can foreclose our anticipated future and bring something completely new (and often not better…) and excessive “that puts the flow of time out of joint and changes its direction” (Dastur 2000, 182). When the event of the pandemic runs through bodies, and the pre-predicative, anonymous functions of our organisms determine our lives, the “communication with the world more ancient than the one by way of thought” (Merleau-Ponty 2009, 234/254) is also affected. The appearance of the world is changed. On the personal level, illness makes us withdraw from our action spaces, curtails our bodies to the horizontal position, and fades our attention out of the world into daydream, sleep, unconsciousness, or even coma. The world narrows and becomes the pale backdrop to the events taking place in the body. On the social level, the bodily event of the pandemic runs through our ideal structures, where the anonymous bodily activities of the pandemic raise a constant flow of contradictory discourses which either scare the population into isolating bodies from other bodies, or promise that all will be over soon and everyone can get back to their normal lives. This confusion of our public discourses and political practices points to a fundamental flaw in contemporary thinking, which is highlighted by COVID-19. We now live in a time where the illusion of the body as an isolated, anatomical object and as a machine that can be fine-tuned, repaired, and enhanced through technological implements is profoundly challenged. The standard medical practices for dealing with individual malfunctioning bodies are upset by the pandemic and prove to be useless: medical systems are straining under the onslaught of the exponentially increasing number of bodies that succumb to the virus. Larger social measures such as enforcing “social distancing” or quarantining of whole populations become necessary. We suddenly find ourselves in a space where science can only be effective when the larger social-political system participates in medical treatment—or even becomes the medical treatment. We are doing medicine no longer only as doctors and medical researchers on individual bodies, but as political participants responsible for other people’s bodies more susceptible to the ravages of the virus. Medicine is being performed by all of us on the body of our commons.

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Ethics and Pandemic Pandemics are woundings of our physical, but also of our social, ideal/political, and virtual bodies. Steverson’s chapter later in this book lays out the structure of the risk society, which produces an already high level of anxiety in its members, and argues that COVID-19 is a further manifestation of the systemic eco-anxiety that runs through contemporary societies. Many of us wonder if “going back to how it was before the pandemic” and “business as usual” is really what we want and need as members of the human species at this time in our cultural evolution. We live in a fraught time, and the pandemic event holds the future open so that we have the possibility to either patch up past structures or become something new. No matter if we apply Dastur’s, Merleau-Ponty’s, or Deleuze’s insights, the events’ excessiveness, surprise, and dislocation of time bring with it the possibility of new forms which can change the direction of history because they ripple through the whole collective system in unforeseen ways. We live in a time of great promise and great danger. According to Deleuze, when faced with a cataclysmic event morality means nothing more than this: Either morality is senseless, or it means this and nothing more: not to be unworthy of what happens to us. To grasp what happens to us as unjust and unmerited (it is always someone’s fault) is, on the contrary, what makes our wounds repugnant – this is resentment in person, resentment against the event. (Deleuze 2004, 174)

We fail if we resent the event and fall back into blame and self-pity, which have grave consequences for our social bodies. Past pandemics often led to scapegoating of minority groups and a rise of nationalism and dictatorial political structures. The event is a calling from a future we did not anticipate and which even now we can only glimpse darkly. To turn towards the old past, old habits, and old political structures means that we have failed to live up to the possibilities and the gifts inherent in the pandemic. How can we be worthy of the event and not waste the potential for positive transformation? I want to mention only a few ethical calls which arise from the above discussion of the pandemic as event. Events direct our attention away from the individual figure towards a more global, epi-perspective in which the ground of phenomena (to say it phenomenologically) calls for attention. The impersonal perceptual and social field in which individuals are already embedded comes into clearer view and the web of connections between human beings is illuminated. The movement of the event through this network or matrix shakes up habitual structures and opens up new connections and possibilities. On a simple level, we wear face masks not in order to protect ourselves, but to protect the field of others around us. The faces of the others behind their masks belong to people we do not know, and we protect them not because we are attached to them or particularly care for them as individuals, but because we belong to a commons threatened by the virus. We do it for the field that joins us and into which every one of us is inserted. We sacrifice our freedom of movement for what we traditionally have called the common good. The ethics implied in the good of the commons is an ethics of balancing self-interest with care for the whole. The

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COVID pandemic has opened a clearing where the complex matrix of life in ever graduating and overlapping communities comes into view and asks for our response and responsibility. Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the generality and anonymity of the body and the vertigo we experience when we recognize that something impersonal lies at the heart of our existence can also be reframed. The COVID-19 virus (which is a form of nature somewhere between animate/alive and inanimate/material) runs through our bodies and engenders a communication between two natural beings: human bodies and viruses. We should stand in awe before this conversation that nature has with itself in the anonymous folds of the body. This does not mean that we should be passive, but rather understand that our medical interventions are there to support the body’s capacity to maintain its strength and integrity and that healing is ultimately a mystery and a gift of nature. If we begin to understand that we live in networks or matrices that have a non-­ linear spatial and temporal causality, we begin to see that our technological inventions have consequences that go far beyond the immediate effect on individual lives. One reason for the outbreak of a pandemic is the network of global connectedness created by aerospace technologies and the by now habitual practice of humans to travel across the globe. COVID-19 travelled on airplanes from Wuhan to Rome to London to New York, etc. Viruses have a similar impact on human bodies as invasive species have on natural ecosystems: they spread by intensified travel, they insert themselves into a local network, and they destroy the careful balance of mineral, plant, and animal forms because there are no checks against their activity. Humans did not intend to create a pandemic through aerospace technologies, but pandemics—and other invasive species—are an unforeseen consequence of their widespread application and habitual use. The ethical call of the pandemic asks us to become more aware that technologies, as they are inserted into the complex matrices of human and natural occurrences, have unforeseen consequences, sometimes in distant parts of the network, and sometimes on a timeline that does not become visible until years later. We have clear examples in the unforeseen impact of pharma-­ technologies: PCBs were found in the bodies of arctic species far removed from the application of pesticides; birth defects appeared in humans decades after their mothers were prescribed DES (Colborn et al. 1996; Steingraber 2001). When we insert technological implements into nature, they do not simply vanish. There are no “side effects”—only effects. The ethical question becomes how the excess of technological implementation and use is valued, accounted for, and figured into the price of goods that result from these technologies. One unexpected effect of social distancing and the practice of staying in place was the unusually clean air in our cities, the reduction of the human carbon footprint, and the quick return of animal species to urban centres. In 2020, herds of deer roamed through front yards early in the morning; a red-tailed hawk felt at home in my neighbour’s tree; foxes and coyotes were coming more freely out of their dens in the woodland at the end of my street; you could hear the early morning concert of bird calls in the absence of traffic noise. The stay-at-home practice seems like a grand experiment: if we can do this for the coronavirus, perhaps we can also do this

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for the planet. Perhaps we can muster enough of our new-found sense of working for the common good that the other great event which is moving though our systems and which is threatening to become a pandemic without compare, namely global climate change, can still be averted. Perhaps COVID will teach us to be common-­ minded, creative, and more inclusive of the well-being of all species. For we are all in this together. My hope is that as the COVID-19 pandemic runs through our virtual structures, it will change how we see ourselves as the human species: no longer primarily homo economicus, the rational capitalist producer, but perhaps we can become truly homo sapiens, the “wise humans”, who become aware of the interconnection between all animate and inanimate structures on the planet and understand how our species fits into and respects the larger patterns.

References Abram, David. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books. Adams, Will. 2007. The Primacy of Interrelating: Practicing Ecological Psychology with Buber, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 38 (1): 24–61. Clark, Andy. 1998. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Colborn, Theo, Dianne Dumanoski, and John Myers. 1996. Our Stolen Future. New York: Dutton. Dastur, Francoise. 2000. Phenomenology of the Event: Waiting and Surprise. Hypatia 15 (4): 178–189. Deleuze, Gilles. 2004. Logic of Sense. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Dillon, Martin C. 1997. Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Dreyfus, Hubert L. 2002. Intelligence Without Representation  – Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Mental Representation: The Relevance of Phenomenology to Scientific Explanation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (4): 367–383. ———. 2003. Further Reflections on Heidegger, Technology, and the Everyday. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 23 (5): 339–349. Gallagher, Shaun, and Dan Zahavi. 2008. The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. New York: Routledge. Heidegger, Martin. 1982. On the Way to Language. San Francisco: Harper. ———. 1993. The Question Concerning Technology. In Basic Writings, ed. David F. Krell. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Marion, Jean-Luc. 2002. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. ———. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2009. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz. Pittsburgh: Unpublished translation. ———. 2010. Institution and Passivity: Course Notes from the Collège de France (1954–1955). Trans. Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2000. Being Singular Plural. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Olkowski, Dorothea, and James Morley. 1999. Merleau-Ponty: Interiority and Exteriority, Psychic Life and the World. Albany: SUNY Press. Simms, Eva-Maria. 2008. The Child in the World: Embodiment, Time, and Language in Early Childhood. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Steingraber, Sandra. 2001. Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Straus, Erwin. 1966/1980. Phenomenological Psychology. New York: Garland Publishing. Williams, James. 2008. Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Sense : A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Eva-Maria Simms,  PhD, is Distinguished University Professor in the Psychology Department at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Her research group, PlaceLab, develops philosophical concepts and qualitative methods for researching the intersection of community, nature, and place in collaboration with community organizations that steward local neighborhoods and green spaces. Dedicated to community-engaged research, social justice, and recovering the attachment between people and place, PlaceLab is looking for ways of giving voice to children’s and adults’ experiences of their local commons and to develop community features and practices which enhance the connection between people and place. Simms has had her work published widely in the areas of child psychology, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and the phenomenology of nature and place.

Chapter 2

We Breathe; Therefore, We Are: The Gasp of Life Tina Williams

Introduction Breath reveals our immanence and our embodiment, but it also connects us to others, our community, and the environment (Benso 2006). We are living, breathing beings that communicate with others, enabled by the air: gestures, expressions, and even remaining silent (Leder 1990; Merleau-Ponty 1962). Breathing is thus an originary condition of intersubjectivity. This breath is underpinned by nature. As the philosopher Luce Irigaray (1990) says, ‘where else does man reside other than in air?’ We hear what the other is saying not only through their own use of the air, respiration, and the mechanics behind vocal gestures. The air carries the sound waves to our ears, and auditory processing is conditional on the medium of air. This is not merely a functional or biological observation. Here, I show how nature and breath are constitutive of intersubjectivity, making possible being with one another in a way that demands illumination of the primordial role that nature (via breath) plays and that studies of subjectivity often fail to account for. We share this air with others, co-breathing yet never fully owning the air (Škof 2015). The environment—the oxygen-rich air of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Sils Maria, for example, or the toxic fumes of the inner city—thus plays an important role in not only our health (i.e. via harmful particulates causing or aggravating the vocal cords and respiratory system) but also in our ways of being with one another (Merleau-­ Ponty 1962; Nietzsche 1993). I will therefore pay close attention to the revealing nature of the breath in terms of how we understand and conduct ourselves and how with the threat of breathlessness, the world collapses and the boundaries between the mental (psyche) and physical (soma) no longer hold. By examining pathological breathing and how it might offer us illumination via focus on the breath, I also look at the anxious breath of trauma from illness, T. Williams (*) Wellcome Trust “Life of Breath” Project, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_2

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experiences of caring for those with deadly respiratory diseases, and the tortuous experience of being ventilated (McGuire et al. Forthcoming). As previous studies have shown, respiratory diseases such as SARS and MERS frequently cause post-­ traumatic stress disorders (Rogers et al. 2020). Current circumstances emphasize the calls for new models of thought and action to tackle these frightening challenges. Evidence suggests that COVID-19 arose out of man’s continued encroachment upon the natural environment. Eco-anxiety, therefore, as well as many forms of anxiety with existential, psychological, and physiological dimensions, hints at an embodied knowledge at the heart of our being: that the way that we are living is detrimental to not only our own existence, but also the very planet itself (Williams 2020). Drawing upon phenomenology, psychology, medicine, and environmental philosophical insights, this chapter will present an account of breathlessness, trauma, and anxiety (sections “I Can’t Breathe” and “Eco-anxiety and Angst”) that demands we follow Emmanuel Levinas’s insight that the lungs are an ethical organ (section “New Ways of Being and Acting”). This calls for us to go beyond the essence of substance dualism and reductive metaphysical systems. Building upon Heidegger’s (1962) notions together with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with nature, perception, and embodiment, I argue that one must eschew the naturalist worldview to address the anxiety and breathlessness caused by the pandemic and climate change, in order to do justice to the trauma that patients, clinicians, and the planet now faces.

COVID-19 The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spreading throughout the globe is an infectious respiratory disease, contracted through virus particles expended via the exhalation of saliva or mucus (World Health Organisation 2016). Contagion is usually via coughs, sneezes, and even breathing out enough virus to contaminate surfaces (fomites) or remain suspended in the air. Exactly how many viral particles are necessary for infection is unclear: as a novel disease, the full picture of the infection routes, progression of the infection and its damage to the body, is largely based upon data from similar coronavirus diseases and how they behave, in addition to new research into the disease. There is still so much that is unknown and uncertain, including why some infected people do not get sick (ibid.,).1 Symptoms do not always occur, posing obvious challenges for isolating infection and making preventative measures such as social distancing, mask-wearing, and vigilance in hygiene measures extremely important. With those that do show  At the time of writing, it is also unclear whether it is airborne. Rather, common transmission routes are inhaling aerosols expended by the infected or by touching fomites that the virus has been transmitted to. Nonetheless, the threat of inhaling this invisible and sometimes deadly disease is changing how people interact in new and untold ways. 1

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symptoms, fever, cough, breathlessness, and a loss of or change in smell or taste are most commonly reported.2 There exists a wide range of other symptoms, but for the purposes of this paper, I focus on breathlessness. This is to situate the worse symptoms of the virus in the context of one of the worst reported symptoms of patients who undergo pathological breathlessness, whatever the aetiology (Abernathy and Wheeler 2008): a phenomenon that is better thought of as an experience rather than a discrete symptom (Carel 2016; Williams and Carel 2018): In people with respiratory disease, the struggle to breathe is often a mortal threat. Imagine sprinting up several flights of stairs and getting out of breath. Now imagine feeling like that all the time. When you cannot catch your breath terror, panic and a sense of suffocation overcome you. Thus anxiety often accompanies pathological breathlessness, due to a constant sense of threat and bodily betrayal. (Williams and Carel 2018, 147)

Thus, neither the biomedical nor the philosophical traditions of separating the psyche from the soma, the mind from the body, is adequate when capturing breathlessness, anxiety, and human experience (ibid.). It is a unitary, inseparable experience.3 Indeed, recent work in philosophy has utilised phenomenological methodology to describe and understand these experiences of people who suffer from increasing rates of breathlessness (Carel 2016; Williams 2020). This methodology (phenomenology) can supplement our understanding of these experiences and their relationship to anxiety, illness, and lived experience more widely, because it is freed from scientific or dualistic presuppositions dictating that objective, third-person accounts are to be prioritised over first-person experiences (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Indeed, emergent meanings and structures of human experience are revealed through such study, uninhibited by the baggage of metaphysical or reductive worldviews that are obsessed with measurement to the detriment of listening to how people’s lives are impacted or how the world (including everything from healthcare policies to environmental regulations) is structured. As Heidegger argued, anxiety, grief, and sorrow are real and yet such a reality is not always captured via measurement: For science the domain of objects is already pregiven. Research goes forward in the same direction in which the respective areas have already been talked about prescientifically… However it is not the same with being [human existence] … Being cannot be glimpsed by science. (Heidegger 2001, 17)

This requires examining the experience of these illnesses and how they transform the world of the breathless to hopefully foster a deeper knowledge of how to  As a researcher recently awarded their PhD on the phenomenology of breathlessness and anxiety as part of the Wellcome Trust-funded ‘Life of Breath’ project, my expertise is in philosophy, breath, anxiety, and breathless experiences. I argue that studying breath and breathlessness via philosophy gives important insights into the experience of illness as well as informing philosophical thought about embodiment. Shared features related to COVID-19 and eco-anxiety can therefore already be drawn out, although this is a developing phenomenological account as more knowledge emerges in the coming years. 3  Neither when describing the experience or impact of these illnesses on the patient, nor when understanding their social, economic, and environmental causes and consequences. 2

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manage breathlessness (as well as how to understand how human existence is indissoluble from nature, writ large through the struggle to breathe). Through this, we see how themes involving existential, affective, physiological, temporal, and geographical transformations persist with changes to health and well-being, such that breathlessness challenges the individualistic and reductive philosophical worldviews dominating the way that people conceptualise the world, and as a result shaping how they behave in it (see Sims, Chap. 1, this volume). The inherited ‘man as measure of all things’ worldview enabled seeing the world as an endless resource for human exploitation. This can no longer stand. Studying breath can help here, a topic that has been historically underexplored in Western philosophy (Škof 2015). Indeed, the current pandemic rising rates of respiratory illness due to climate change and pollution require that this neglect must be remedied in order to positively transform our damaging and threatening actions upon the planet. Illuminating these themes can help us restore planetary hope, if we stop to breathe and listen to what eco-anxiety, climate change, and this virus uncovers.

I Can’t Breathe At some point, every human being will experience uncomfortable breathlessness. At the end of life, breathlessness is commonly present, regardless of the underlying disease, so much so that it its onset and progression is a reliable indicator of approaching mortality (Johnson 2016). Ordinarily, the struggle to draw breath is most often associated with non-threatening activity such as sport, a lack of fitness or perhaps a cold. It can even be attendant with pleasure, such as dancing, singing, or sex. Yet, with the increase of respiratory illnesses related to air pollution, poverty, and smoking prior to the pandemic, profound alterations to lived experience have often been invisible and stigmatised as diseases of groups that are already marginalised in society. When even movement can cause an acute exacerbation of breathlessness with fatigue and panic striking, these populations become housebound and invisible to society so that they experience a ‘social death’. We ignore this at our peril, as we are now being shown. As creatures dependent on oxygen and a functioning respiratory system to engage in the world, any inhibition of this capability very quickly leads to cognitive impairment, suffering, and death. This is also, of course, a (lack of) social justice condemnation: BAME populations are disproportionately affected by respiratory conditions, expressly the coronavirus. Health inequalities, cramped housing, and living in deprived areas are all a threat to health, to living. With the breath stolen from George Floyd, Eric Garner, and countless others due to racist disregard for the lives of African Americans, those silenced and robbed of breath are increasingly victims of inequality on the social and political spectrums. Already, we see that breathing and breathlessness incorporate far more than physiological explanations could account for. Breathing, as William James noted, means more than mere ‘respiratory movements’ (James 1904/1962).

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Conscious ventilated patients attest to extreme fear, pain, and suffering that correlate with the onset of anxiety disorders and post-traumatic experiences, which similarly have been inadequately attended to (Carel et al. 2015). Here, phenomenology of the breath as co-breath comes into play: I argue that breathing connects us to the world of nature and of others. This is a primordial relationship underpinning human existence, knowledge structures, and the theoretical presuppositions of medical science. It is no longer a case of ‘I think, therefore I am’ (the Cartesian Cogito). Nor a, ‘I’ (self), at all, as Merleau-Ponty showed us how intersubjectivity underpins subjectivity (1962). It is a ‘we breathe, therefore we are’. This disease demonstrates starkly how our existence is dependent on one another and on the natural world. The threat posed by this new disease means that our very way of being with (Mitsein) others is altered profoundly, even without considering experiences of (for example) tortuous ventilation. Levinas was right: the face of the other demands that we attend to their needs (Levinas 1998). Not in a reciprocal co-equal relationship like Buber’s (1923) I-Thou account. Rather, the Levinasian face-to-face encounter has us yielding to the recognition that the other ‘orders and ordains’ to serve them, to help them (Levinas 1985). Nowhere is this more urgent than in the interaction between patient and doctor. When the other is gasping for air, one must attend urgently to this life-­ threatening event.4 However, the very breath itself now poses a threat to these others—to all of us— in the era of COVID-19: the others surrounding the breathless will carry the threat of infection in all the interactions outside of intubation, outside of the clinic. As so many people are unaware of where this disease is located and who has it, mistrust and suspicion are altering our interactions with others and with the world. This is a pervasive and unsettling anxiety that places the threat ‘nowhere and everywhere’ and directly connects us with the thought (recognition?) of death in a threat akin to Heidegger’s description of anxiety and the call of conscience (Heidegger 1962). When communication could be life-threatening, the very co-breathing that we rely on to navigate our lives, relationships, and work, we become alienated from everyday existence in a way that can cause profound distress, anxiety and fear. A pandemic unsettles life, calling us back to the contingency of our existence, to its bodily dependence and fragility, and to our dependence on breathing and on air. Moreover, studies show that breathlessness from COVID-19 is worsened by climate change as areas of high pollution put more and more people at risk. Our very lungs are damaged as the lungs of the planet have been damaged and decimated by human activity on an unprecedented scale. I will now suggest that angst is a direct result of this: both eco-angst and the anxiety of inhabiting a world undergoing mass death due to the pandemic.  Whales and dolphins come to the aid of their injured fellows, supporting them to the surface to help them breathe. If non-human animals recognise this, and clinicians to lay people feel this visceral pull, then the fact that anyone ignores this fundamental call to aid a breathless other is very troubling indeed. It goes against our instincts, suggestive of an active choice to cause harm, at the very least to ignore all knowledge of physiology, police training, and the cries for help (perhaps more indicative of involuntary manslaughter). 4

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Eco-anxiety and Angst Eco-anxiety is an increasing experience of stress, anxiety, hopelessness, and worry in the face of climate change, defined in 2017 by the American Psychiatric Association (hereafter APA) as ‘a chronic fear of environmental doom’, although it is not (yet) listed in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5, 2015) as a mental disorder. Such a classification would require negative impacts upon one’s functioning, cognitions, behaviour, and well-being in terms of irrational or catastrophic thinking, emotional, and physiological typical symptoms and so forth, although of course these could be given (cf. DSM-5, 2015). Yet as this form of anxiety is entirely appropriate under current circumstances, pathologising a natural response to lived experience would be perverse (Heidegger 2001; Szasz 2009; Williams and Carel 2018). If eco-anxiety is not a mental disorder, what is it? I suggest it is an existential, embodied experience. Existential conceptions of anxiety hold that anxiety is an experience structured by being attuned, and open, to a meaningful world (Heidegger 1962). Anxiety is not only a fear of a definite threat: it is an experience that implies that, as being in the world, we always have our being to be. That is, we alone are responsible for our existence, choosing certain possibilities and roles and casting aside others. Hence, eco-anxiety reflects our concerns as an intelligible response to increasing rates of respiratory disease and threat to life from climate change. Thus, we should not only change our actions but also reframe the tendency to pathologise the tsunami of anxiety disorders. They are not to be construed as irrational or unhelpful; distorted or misguided; and hypervigilance or catastrophic thinking (see also Lafontaine, Chap. 4, this volume). Anxiety is a real response to a real but amorphous threat, with the ensuing uncertainty unsettling our being at home in the world (Svenaeus 2000). COVID-19 and climate change have resulted from the way that humans have conceptualised, understood, and acted upon the world as a resource to be pillaged for human gain. The philosophical and theological underpinnings start with the idea that man is atop the ladder of being and nature exists for us to do with as we will. This intersects with neo-liberal capitalism that has no respect for the world. This is also expressed by Heidegger’s notion of angst: these harmful, inauthentic ways of caring for our world increase the sense of not being at home in the world (uncanniness). What the philosopher Fredrick Svenaeus termed as unhomelike-being-in-theworld. Rather than a discrete pathological disorder, angst can also be an eco-anxiety that has developed from the existential feeling that our relationship to the natural world is damaging, harming humans, non-human animals, and the planet itself (Ratcliffe 2008). Thus, a new sort of Heideggerian guilt has arisen, at the core of being (revealed via anxiety and by the stifled breath). The call of conscience is telling us this (Heidegger 1962). It does not explicitly say what is wrong: it is felt as an unease with the way that we are living, manifested by what psychology may term a generalised anxiety: everywhere and nowhere (Williams 2020; Mickey, Chap. 3, this volume).

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New Ways of Being and Acting Substantively preventing further disasters seems a hopeless task. Living with eco-­ anxiety seems to be inevitable, given failures to reduce carbon emissions or prevent environmental destruction. However, we do not need to give up, notwithstanding the corporate and governmental rollbacks of environmental protections spreading throughout the world, riding on the back of populism. Eco-anxiety can be seen as a call to arms (and uncertainty thus embraced): it is an entirely appropriate and timely response that we must heed in order to curtail the worst of humanity’s excesses. I am not a climate change scientist or sustainability policy researcher so I defer to their expertise, but I do think philosophy can reconceptualise what it means to be human in the ways intimated above. With this comes an ethical responsibility to one another, to non-human animals, the environment, and the planet (see Sims, Chap. 1, this volume). This means casting off the inherited tradition of Aristotelian, Cartesian, and reductive ontological worldviews that cast man as the measure of all things, with the subject as an isolated ego that denigrates nature, rules it, and sees it as secondary to the soul, the mind, and the conscious. These worldviews limit our understanding and knowledge of existence as it filters into mainstream ways of thinking and acting. If man has dominion over all things natural, nature is reduced to objects, resources, and things. The philosopher Lenart Skof (2015) writes that an ethics of breath will instead: …open up new grounds for future exchange of mild gestures, such as compassion, patience, and care. While we are all aware of the needs of others (including those of the non-human species, including nature), even acknowledging that they exist through every breath in every single moment of their lives, we still remain caught up in our worlds – in the hands of primal fear that we would lose control. We keep protecting ourselves while piling up more things around us than we actually need … causing others to suffocate, as they do not get enough of the elemental ingredients of life – breath and peace. (Škof 2015, 6)

This requires removing subjectivity from the usual cool, detached ego of the Cartesian worldview and using the space that breath and co-breathing open up to build a conceptual framework receptive to insights that allow thought, nature, and entities within the world to breathe. Coupled with such a respiratory philosophy, one that utilises the phenomenological description of lived experience, we see that life is dependent upon breath, air, others, and the planet. Breathing should no longer be relegated only to physiological studies and meditative practices. If we can synchronise these emphases on the importance of protecting and respecting the environment alongside incorporating insights (in this case) from phenomenological description of the lived experience of breathing and breathlessness, we can begin to rethink how we conceptualise and categorise questions of value, ethics, health, and healthcare, thereby illuminating possibilities that can redress harms conferred upon all of life’s creatures and climate that were heretofore closed off, ignored, or discounted through egotistical and individualistic ideologies that pursued economic growth at any and every cost.

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Conclusion The potential for new and deadly diseases to arise and cross the species barrier was acknowledged many years ago, but the global response by many governments across the world has been poor (Arno-Karlen 1995). The uncertainty, lack of clarity, and variation in response have brought us up close to our vulnerability to future threats. That is, at huge cost, it has shown us that the state-mandated destruction of our environment is reaching its inevitable conclusion. It is thus high time (or, long overdue) to forget the thinking of the idealised cogito and instead embrace ‘I breathe’ in place of ‘I think’ (Škof 2015). After considering the role of breath and breathlessness, and the affective dimension revealed through anxiety at the heart of human existence inextricable from breathless experience, we see that we are dependent on the world to provide clean, (infection-free) air. This implicates others: others that co-breath the air and others that tend to those who become breathless. More properly, I would suggest that the rise of pathological breathlessness, COVID-19, and eco-anxiety shows that at a primordial level, we breathe, and therefore we are is a fundamental structure of existence. Attention to this via phenomenological description demands that we refocus our conceptual frameworks and our ideas of what it means to be.

References Abernathy, A., and J. Wheeler. 2008. Total Dyspnoea. Current Opinion in Supportive and Palliative Care 2: 110–113. Benso, S. 2006. Psyche, Pneuma, and Air: Levinas and Anaximenes in Proximity. Athena 2: 16–27. Carel, H. 2016. Phenomenology of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carel, H., J. Dodd, and J. Macnaughton. 2015. Invisible Suffering: Breathlessness In and Beyond the Clinic. The Lancet Respiratory Medicine 3: 278–279. www.thelancet.com/respiratory. Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row. ———. 2001. Zollikon Seminars. Trans. F.  Mayr and R.  Askay. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Irigaray, L. 1990. The Forgetting Of Air In Martin Heidegger. Austin: University of Texas Press. James, W. 1904/1962. Does; Consciousness’ Exist? In William James: Writings 1902–1910. New York: Library of America. Johnson, M. 2016. Breathlessness in Adults: Epidemiology, Mechanisms and Management. https:// www.ers-­education.org/lrmedia/2016/pdf/298390.pdf Karlen, A. 1995. Plague’s Progress: A Social History of Man and Disease. London: Gollancz. Leder, D. 1990. The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levinas, E. 1985. Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. ———. 1998. Otherwise than Being: Or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. McGuire, C., Virdi, J., Hutton, J.  Unpublished/Forthcoming. Respiratory Technologies and the Co-Production of Breathing in the Twentieth Century. In Patient voices in Britain, 1840–1948: Historical and Policy Perspective. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. New York: Routledge. Nietzsche, F. 1993. Ecce Homo. Penguin Classics. Ratcliffe, M. 2008. Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rogers, J.P. et al. 2020. Psychiatric and neuropsychiatric presentations associated with severe coronavirus infections: a systematic review and meta-analysis with comparison to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet Psychiatry 7 (7): 611–627. Škof, L. 2015. Breath of Proximity: Intersubjectivity, Ethics and Peace. New York: Springer. Svenaeus, F. 2000. The Hermeneutics of Medicine and the Phenomenology of Health: Steps Towards a Philosophy of Medical Practice. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Szasz, T.S. 2009. Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Williams, T. 2020. Invisible Experiences: A Philosophical Investigation of Breathlessness. PhD thesis submitted to the University of Bristol. Williams, T., and H. Carel. 2018. Breathlessness: From Bodily Symptom to Existential Experience. In Existential Medicine: Essays on Health and Illness, ed. Kevin Aho, 145–160. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. World Health Organization. 2016. Chronic Respiratory Diseases: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). https://www.who.int/health-­topics/chronic-­respiratory-­diseases#tab=tab_1

Tina Williams  recently completed her PhD on the phenomenology of breathing and breathlessness in respiratory illness and anxious experiences as part of the Wellcome Trust-funded project “Life of Breath.” Tracing a history of the philosophy of air, breath, respiratory illness, and anxiety from the ancients to contemporary philosophy, she argued for a primacy of the breath to be considered in the clinic, at governmental policy level, and within philosophy more broadly. Using her experience as a primary care mental health practitioner in a charitable setting, her thought is informed by working with survivors of trauma, domestic abuse, and depression in a socio-economically deprived area in the United Kingdom. Approaching anxiety as a mental disorder, rather than an understandable consequence of bodily violation, experience, and existential worries caused through socio-economic and environmental inequalities, demanded more holistic care than the quick fix stepped care models that the United Kingdom implemented. Building upon her master’s thesis on the phenomenology of depression, she approached the comorbid occurrence of respiratory conditions and mental health disorders as being more nuanced, meaningful, and reflective of our social structures than is accorded in current thought. This has led to paper publication, public engagement, and phenomenological event organization.

Chapter 3

Atmospheres of Anxiety: Doing Nothing in an Ecological Emergency Sam Mickey

Between the climate emergency and the respiratory pandemic of COVID-19, it is becoming increasingly difficult for humans to inhabit a safe breathing space. Current atmospheric conditions are an existential threat, a threat that, moreover, is distributed unevenly across the planet. This is acutely evident in a slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement: “I can’t breathe,” which was uttered by two Black men— Eric Garner in 2014 and George Floyd in 2020—while they were being murdered by white police officers. “Antiblackness, in other words, is atmospheric” (Malaklou 2020). As Black communities are disproportionately impacted by the effects of air pollution, climate change, and COVID-19, members of the National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN) hear ecological resonances in the phrase “I can’t breathe” (Ramirez 2020). Unbreathable atmospheric conditions have reached pandemic proportions. Understanding this generalized atmospheric crisis provides some possibilities for responding to the problems to which it gives rise, including the anxiety that it provokes. From the perspective of the philosophical method of phenomenology, these atmospheric conditions are not simply biological or meteorological phenomena. More than that, atmospheres have something to do with moods and emotions, not unlike the way that people speak about a welcoming atmosphere at a party or the values of your corporate climate. A phenomenological interpretation of atmospheres allows us to understand how anxiety is distributed throughout the current global situation, as epidemics like obesity, malnutrition, and climate change are converging with COVID-19, intensifying one another in what some researchers describe as a synergy of epidemics, a “global syndemic,” which also includes the pandemic proportions of racism and inequitable social systems (Adamson and Hartman 2020). S. Mickey (*) Adjunct Professor of Theology and Religious Studies and of Environmental Studies, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_3

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In what follows, I give a phenomenological interpretation of atmosphere and anxiety, and I outline a possible response to our current global situation: doing nothing. Doing nothing is not about passivity or apathy. Rather, it is more about openness and acceptance, in relationship both to oneself and to the sociocultural and ecological place in which one is embedded. Doing nothing is a way of cultivating a safe breathing space for humanity.

Atmosphere Climate is a statistical average of interlocking dynamics of temperature, wind, air pressure, humidity, and precipitation, but climate is also more than that. A changing climate involves more than a change in a long-term average. It is more than a change in Earth’s air conditioning system. The climate scientist Mike Hulme (2017, xiii) describes it like this: climate change as a planetary system of interconnected weather patterns is a part of a more complex whole, which exceeds the limits of definitions articulated in the natural sciences; accordingly, a wider field of inquiry is needed, which includes cultural meanings and understandings of climate along with theories and observations from natural sciences. In the same way that an atmosphere can refer, on one hand, to a mood and, on the other hand, to a system of gases surrounding a planet, a climate has physical and sociocultural dimensions. As part of a whole, Hulme (2015, 897–899) describes climate change as a synecdoche that stands for (1) a modern social system, (2) an economic ideology, (3) a loss of nature, and (4) a new geological epoch. For Hulme, that social system is best described by Ulrich Beck’s (1992) analysis of the “risk society” of modernity, which is based on the management of hazards and uncertainties that society produces through its never-ending pursuit of progress and wealth. Hulme follows Naomi Klein (2014) in identifying capitalism as the economic ideology of climate change. It is an ideology for which the accumulation of wealth for the few happens at the expense of the many, thus producing social and ecological disasters, which then become justification for the further deployment of capitalist tactics, producing yet further disasters in an accelerating loop of what Klein (2007) calls “disaster capitalism.” Liberalism and conservatism are both complicit in disaster capitalism. The liberal face of this ideology is the identity politics that incorporates people of diverse identities (races, ages, abilities, genders, etc.) to participate in the system, as if bringing more people closer to the wealthy top will eventuate in justice for the myriad beings at the disastrously impoverished bottom. Along with the risk society and capitalist ideology, Hulme’s definition of climate change also includes the end of nature, which has been a topic of increasingly frequent discussion among environmental thinkers, with notable contributions like Carolyn Merchant’s (1990) classic ecofeminist text, The Death of Nature, and Bill McKibben’s (2006) book on climate change, The End of Nature, which were first published in 1980 and 1989, respectively. Climate change is part of the loss of the relatively regular, stable, and ordered ground of nature, which is also a loss of ideas

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and fantasies of Nature as a big Other, whether friend or foe, sacred or profane. The regular patterns and ordered systems of nature have gradually become displaced as humans have extended their environmental impacts all around the planet, becoming an Earth-shaping force. The loss of nature is thus entwined with a new geological epoch. As modern humans began adding high amounts of carbon, plutonium, plastic, Styrofoam, and a wide assortment of artificial chemicals to Earth’s crust, the geological epoch of the last 12,000 years (the Holocene) gave way to a new one that bares the indelible stamp of Homo sapiens, the Anthropocene. It is a controversial name, to be sure. It is not clear if this is indeed a new epoch or merely a boundary event between epochs. Furthermore, humans did not all participate equally in facilitating this geological transformation. Humans in WEIRD social locations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) seem particularly responsible, yet that specificity is erased by the general humanity of Anthropos. Regardless of the problem of nomenclature, it is true that the loss of nature marks the end of a natural Earth and the beginning of an Earth where the natural and the artificial have imploded. It is an Earth become artifact, “Eaarth,” as McKibben (2010) puts it. In sum, along with a change in average atmospheric conditions, climate change also stands for the end of nature, a change in geological epochs, and a society that, for the sake of progress and wealth accumulation, is willing to risk unprecedented scales of destructive change. This intertwining of the physical and sociocultural dimensions of climate can be understood in terms of a phenomenological interpretation of atmosphere. “Mood,” “atmosphere,” and “attunement” are all translations of the German noun Stimmung, like the “tuning” of a guitar or the “voice” (Stimme) of a singer. Immanuel Kant (1987, 445) describes aesthetic experience as a Stimmung. An artwork or landscape is a physical presence while also evoking a sense of beauty or a feeling for the sublime. Paying attention to this beautiful or sublime presence is a matter of a human subject fusing with an aesthetic object, tuning with it like a musician playing in tune with another musician. You tune into the mood or attunement of the artwork. This notion of Stimmung is taken further in the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, for whom all experience involves Stimmung, such that mood is an ontologically primordial condition through which humans find themselves in the world. This moody notion of atmosphere is among many important contributions that existentialism can make with regards to eco-anxiety. For Heidegger, humans encounter all phenomena in a mood, which is to say, all appearances show up through an atmosphere. Like an existential affect or feeling, Stimmung is what “makes it possible first of all to direct oneself toward something” (Heidegger 1962, 176). Whether human or nonhuman, natural or artificial, individual or collective, anything whatsoever has its own atmosphere. A grumpy cat, a dark and frightening alley, a hostile work environment, a capitalist society, a new geological epoch, a placid lake, a funny movie, and a human being all have atmospheric dynamics. Humans attune to the tunes of things and, at the same time, are tuned by those things. Drawing on the idea of Stimmung to express his ecological philosophy,

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Timothy Morton (2013, 30) describes a “sticky mesh of viscosity” that entangles humans with massively distributed entities (“hyperobjects”) like the Internet, climate change, global capitalism, and the Milky Way: “I find myself tuned by the object.” Not merely aesthetic, “attunement is the mode in which causality happens” (Morton 2018, 90). Attunement is how all things relate, interacting with each other by resonating with meanings and physical presence of each other’s qualities, meshing with each other’s atmospheres. Being tuned by climate change means being tuned by a changing mood, including feelings of loneliness and competition that come with individualist and capitalist social systems, and feelings of grief, depression, and melancholy that come with the end of the nature and the beginning of the Anthropocene. It means being tuned by atmospheres of anxiety, as the symptoms of climate change evoke an anxiety that is ecologically distributed. Such eco-anxiety is not located primarily inside individuals. It is in the air. Heatwaves, hurricanes, droughts, and other extreme weather events are part of that eco-anxiety, as are social problems like political unrest, economic inequality, systemic racism, and xenophobia. It is in the existential and cultural challenges surrounding the search for meaning in times of destruction and extinction. The anxiety of living on an increasingly uninhabitable planet can be understood phenomenologically by looking at the tool analysis in Heidegger’s interpretation of the way in which human existence (Dasein) is situated in a world and comports itself toward things. When a tool like a hammer is in working order, available for interaction, it is at hand, and it can be used without having to think about it or reflect on it. Heidegger calls that a state of being ready-to-hand (zuhanden), which means the hammer does not show up as overtly present, i.e., present-at-hand (vorhanden) (Heidegger 1962, 99). A hammer can become present, for instance, when it breaks and has to be fixed or replaced, or if it is lost and you have to look for it, but when things are working, things withdraw (zurückzuziehen) from presence, remaining ready and usable while concealed from any direct theoretical or practical concern. Morton (2018, 7) puts it this way: Things are present to us when they stick out, when they are malfunctioning. You’re running through the supermarket hell bent on finishing your shopping trip, when you slip on a slick part of the floor (someone used too much polish). As you slip embarrassingly toward the ground, you notice the floor for the first time, the color, the patterns, the material composition—even though it was supporting you the whole time you were on your grocery mission. Being present is secondary to just sort of happening, which means, argues Heidegger, that being isn’t present, which is why he calls his philosophy deconstruction or destructuring. What he is destructuring is the metaphysics of presence.

Simon Lafontaine explores further connections between Morton and Heidegger elsewhere in this volume. To put it simply, broken atmospheric conditions are like a broken hammer. When atmospheric conditions are working, you do not notice them. They become present when they are not functioning properly, and what becomes present is precisely a reality that withdraws from theoretical or practical control.

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Nothing In the European philosophical tradition, discourse about what is real tends to focus on what is (being) and does not think about what is other than being (nothing) on its own terms. In other words, metaphysics has been a metaphysics of presence. The moments of breakdown described in the tool analysis show that an otherness or nothingness underlies the presence of what is. “Nothing shows itself as essentially belonging to what-is while this is slipping away in totality” (Heidegger 1975, 250). Noticing a broken hammer is not likely to disclose the nothingness at the heart of being. If most things are working smoothly, one does not feel oneself held out into nothingness. When breakdown is happening not just to a single tool but to one’s very existential conditions, one is more likely to feel the totality of being slipping away. This is surely the case when the existential threat is the deterioration of Earth’s atmospheric conditions—our planetary Stimmung. Heidegger uses the term Angst (“dread,” “anxiety”) to describe the fundamental mood that is attuned to the nothing disclosed in existential breakdown. Anxiety is thus not merely an emotion that involves nervousness or fear. It is a way of tuning into the very nature of existence, nothing—the hidden truth underlying all that is. “Only in the clear night of dread’s Nothingness is what-is as such revealed in all its original overtness (Offenheit): that it “is” and is not Nothing” (Heidegger 1975, 251). Claire Arnold-Baker elaborates on this existential anxiety elsewhere in the present volume. It is not only difficult feelings and nervous energy. The clear night of dread is dark, but dark does not simply mean depressing. The clarity in that darkness can be a source of resolve and even joy. Morton (2016, 117) elaborates on this in his dark ecology, as he enjoins the reader to “tunnel down” through the depressing aspects of this dark so that the darkness becomes more mysterious than depressing and finally becomes “dark and sweet like chocolate.” Morton goes on to discuss a series of tunings that move through dark ecology, beginning with guilt and shame. For those who are worried about their catastrophic complicity in our global syndemic, feelings of guilt and shame arise. Accepting that complicity is depressing, leaving you feeling the unbearable imprints of all the human and nonhuman beings enmeshed in this massive problem. The more you grieve and mourn, depression can become increasingly horrifying, even to the point of becoming ridiculous: the sheer absurdity that things can be so bad or that life is so fragile and vulnerable. The ambiguous or absurd strangeness of the situation might elicit laughter, maybe even pathological laughing and crying. As on tunnels down further into the darkness, the strangeness of the situation gives way to fascination. “Fascinated, I begin to laugh with nonhumans, rather than at them (horror, and ridicule), or at and with my fellow humans about them (shame and guilt)” (Morton 2016, 147). Fascination opens onto a deeper sadness, the sadness of beauty, and the sadness of attuning to that which you can never grasp. Within that sadness is a longing, which subtends the “basic anxiety” manifest in guilt, shame, and horror, and ridicule. This is the same Angst that Heidegger describes as an attunement that discloses the fundamental openness of existence.

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“We have anxiety because we care” (Morton 2016, 152). Care is the dark chocolate of dark ecology, the sweet center. Eco-anxiety is uncomfortably uncanny and unnerving, but it is a sign of concern for the humans and nonhumans that make up the vast community of life on Earth. “Ecoanxiety occurs in those who still have an element of concern left in them for ‘the state of the environment’” (Albrecht 2019, 77). If you try getting rid of the anxiety, you get rid of care, but if you accept anxiety, the atmosphere of ongoing frustration and fear can feel playful and free. Care becomes a little careless or carefree. It is a “playful care,” “care with the care/less halo,” a spectral care that indicates not a lack of seriousness but a “playful seriousness,” committed to action while open to the ambiguities and uncertainties or our situation (Morton 2018, 131). There is a “basic effervescence” accompanying the basic anxiety of coexistence (Morton 2016, 155). Accepting the nothing, eco-anxiety can open into eco-joy. To be sure, joy still involves pain, mourning, and unrequited longing, hence the darkness of this joy. Joy can energize ongoing engagements in the tediously local yet massively distributed tasks of coexisting peacefully in the Anthropocene. Where explosive holisms assimilate the plurality of objects, joy is a mood that lets itself be tuned by strangers. Insofar as nonhumans are always already tuning you, joy is always already happening, whether you pay attention or not. Joy is what anxiety feels like when you let it well up and do not try to erase it. It feels like a hospitable atmosphere, like a strange, planetary solidarity. Doing nothing is thus a hopeful response to the eco-anxiety provoked by our atmospheric crisis. Far from being passive, apathetic, or uncommitted, doing nothing is a skill. It can be compared to the skill of solving a Chinese finger trap—a puzzle that you play with by putting a finger from one hand in one end of a small, finger-sized tube, and putting a finger from the other hand in the other end. Once your fingers are inside, you cannot pull them out without the trap tightening around your fingers and thus further entrenching you in the trap. The only way out is through—to let go, to release the fixation on solving a problem. If you let your fingers move further into the trap, the trap relaxes its grip and you can effortlessly free your fingers. Liberation comes from accepting the trap, not reacting against it. Doing nothing is the approach taken by the Asian-American artist and writer Jenny Odell (2019) in her book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell draws out three important aspects of nothing: contemplation, resistance, and place. In terms of contemplation, doing nothing resembles meditative practices from the world’s philosophical and religious traditions, which equip practitioners with strategies and tactics of managing dread and anxiety. Odell cautions against approaches to contemplation that cultivate contempt of the world in favor of otherworldly revelations. Doing nothing does not necessarily entail a lack of engagement in the world. It can be understood as a kind of activity without effort or without any productive use. Doing nothing is a matter of letting beings be, as expressed in the German word Gelassenheit (“releasement” or “letting be”). It is like the effortlessness of a rose that blooms “without why” in the poetry of the seventeenth-­century mystic, Angelus Silesius, whose writings are rooted in Meister Eckhart’s mysticism; and moreover, that rose is not unlike the useless tree discussed

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by the ancient Daoist figure, Zhuangzi, who describes how the knotty, unusable shape of the tree enabled it to flourish and live a long life (Mickey 2019). The contemplative practice of doing nothing is a practice of resistance against an economy that demands not only productivity but even demands attention when you are not productive, attention to advertisements, social media, and the never-ending task of building your brand. Resisting the imperative to be positive and productive is difficult in an economy that is increasingly oriented around the capture and control of attention. By attuning to the withdrawal of beings from human control, eco-­ anxiety facilitates resistance to the economic imperative to be useful and productive. Optimal productivity is impeded by negative or difficult emotions, which means that letting negative emotional states emerge is a way of resisting the rapacious demands of the global economy simply by doing nothing. Doing nothing is not only a contemplative way of life that resists the attention economy. It is also connected to ecological politics. As a response to eco-anxiety, letting go is a way of being less attached to “being right” in discussing controversial issues and more focused on the quality of one’s relationships with others (Ray 2020, 16). For Odell (2019, 122), doing nothing resembles bioregionalism, which is oriented toward intimately inhabiting one’s local place or “bioregion,” not unlike “indigenous cultures’ relationships to land.” Doing nothing happens in simple tasks like gardening, becoming familiar with local species of birds and plants, or learning to maintain a felt sense of cardinal direction, such that north, south, east, and west are lived experiences and not merely coordinates on a map or compass. Bioregionalism teaches us of emergence, interdependence, and the impossibility of absolute boundaries. As physical beings, we are literally open to the world, suffused every second with air from somewhere else; as social beings, we are equally determined by our contexts. If we can embrace that, then we can begin to appreciate our and others’ identities as the emergent and fluid wonders that they are. (Odell 2019, 154)

As one’s sense of self becomes increasingly ecologically extended and embedded in place, a growing sense of solidarity provides a container for feelings of eco-­ anxiety, providing possibilities for atmospheres of solidarity and community to effervesce amid atmospheres of anxiety.

References Adamson, Joni, and Steven Hartman. 2020. From Ecology to Syndemic: Accounting for the Synergy of Epidemics. Bifrost Online June 8. https://bifrostonline.org/joni-­adamson-­and-­ steven-­hartman. Accessed 20 June 2020. Albrecht, Glenn A. 2019. Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Trans. Mark Ritter. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row.

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———. 1975. What is Metaphysics? In Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, Revised and Expanded edition, ed. Walter Kaufmann, 242–264. New York: Penguin Books. Hulme, Mike. 2015. (Still) Disagreeing About Climate Change: Which Way Forward? Zygon 50 (4): 893–905. ———. 2017. Weathered: Cultures of Climate. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Kant, Immanuel. 1987. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett. Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Picador. ———. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster. Malaklou, M. Shadee. 2020. The Revolution Will Not be Humanized. The Conversationalist June 5. https://conversationalist.org/2020/06/05/the-­revolution-­will-­not-­be-­humanized. Accessed 9 June 2020. McKibben, Bill. 2006. The End of Nature. New York: Random House. ———. 2010. Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough Planet. New York: Times Books. Merchant, Carolyn. 1990. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. Mickey, Sam. 2019. Without Why: Useless Plants in Christianity and Daoism. Religions 10 (1): 65–79. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10010065. Accessed 16 June 2020. Morton, Timothy. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2016. Dark Ecology: Toward a Logic of Future Coexistence. New  York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2018. Being Ecological. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Odell, Jenny. 2019. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Brooklyn: Melville House. Ramirez, Rachel. 2020. Black Environmentalists are Organizing to Save the Planet from Injustice. Grist June 16. https://grist.org/justice/theyre-­back-­black-­environmentalists-­are-­rising-­to-­save-­ the-­planet-­from-­injustice. Accessed 17 June 2020. Ray, Sarah Jaquette. 2020. A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sam Mickey, PhD,  is an adjunct professor in the Theology and Religious Studies department and the Environmental Studies program at the University of San Francisco. He has also taught at Dominican University of California, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is a consultant for the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale, and the Reviews Editor for the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology. His teaching and research focus on the integration of philosophical, religious, and scientific perspectives on humanEarth relations. He is an author and editor of several books that explore ecological theories and practices, including On the Verge of a Planetary Civilization: A Philosophy of Integral Ecology (2014), Whole Earth Thinking and Planetary Coexistence: Ecological Wisdom at the Intersection of Religion, Ecology, and Philosophy (2015), Coexistentialism and the Unbearable Intimacy of Ecological Emergency (2016), The Variety of Integral Ecologies: Nature, Culture, and Knowledge in the Planetary Era, edited with Sean Kelly and Adam Robbert (2017), and multiple volumes on ecofeminism edited with Douglas A. Vakoch, including Ecofeminism in Dialogue (2017), Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment (2017), and Literature and Ecofeminism: Intersectional and International Voices (2018).

Chapter 4

Anxiety and the Re-figuration of Action: Living in a Crisis-Shaped Present Simon Lafontaine

Anxiety, Human Action, and the Projection of Risks1 This chapter considers affects that are usually regarded as negative from their positive and constructive side for creating social actions in times of crisis. In the wake of the Affective Turn, we go beyond the common preconception that positive affects, such as joy, hope, and optimism, enable action, whereas negative ones, such as shame, hate, and fear, impinge upon it (Macón 2013). Positive affects may also excerpt paralyzing power over action while negative ones may overcome a problematical situation and open to invaluable yet neglected experiences. Here, the destabilizing and motivational qualities of affects  are no ultimate values. Their breadth varies according to the life of each human actor in time. For that matter, anxiety has received growing attention among cultural and social theorists addressing the dynamics of change in contemporary societies. Yet a concern for anxiety—and indeed an understanding of anxiety as integral to facing critical situations, including epidemics and environmental disasters—had already been inscribed in sociology by the phenomenological tradition. In his famous essay “On Multiple Realities,” Alfred Schutz (1962c, 228) captured the existential sources of subjective orientation in the lifeworld, fleshing out the underlying “system of relevance” which guides actors in their everyday life. This system, he argued, is founded upon the primal experience of fearful awareness that one will eventually die, that is, the “fundamental anxiety [from which] spring the many interrelated systems of

 I am grateful to Martín Zícari for his comments.

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hopes and fears, of wants and satisfactions, of chances and risks which incite man/ woman within the natural attitude to attempt the mastery of the world, to overcome obstacles, to draft projects, and to realize them” (Schutz 1962c, 228). To make an actor change her former assumptions, it needs a “special motivation, such as the irruption of a ‘strange’ experience” (Schutz 1962c, 228–29). As a “primordial anticipation” that the “world and its objects might be otherwise than it appears,” anxiety prompts revision of the taken-for-granted expectations concerted by action, including those which are “socially derived” from warranted traditions and routines within a group or society (Schutz 1962c, 228–29; 1962b, 19). Anxiety may thus be thought of as a spring toward novel and unexpected experiences and the possibilities that stand to one’s own life projects and commitments. In the following pages, I link this notion of anxiety to coping with unfamiliar situations and the (re)-formation of affective bonds with others. Over the past few decades, contemporary sociological theory has addressed  the  phenomenon mainly  as a macro-process within expert institutions, skimming over the subjective experience of projection and action in everyday life. In particular, Giddens (1990, 1991) states that the “risk culture” arising in late modernity involves the routine anticipation of “counterfactual” future possibilities and the “continuous intrusion of expert knowledge in the circumstances of action,” resulting in an increased “awareness of risk.” What generates anxiety, then, is not only the actual predominance of threats to life, but also the continuous and widespread projection of future risks by science and technology at manifold levels and across time-space distances. Beck’s argument on “risk society” is close to Giddens’ in that risk projections are mainly based on techno-scientific expertise and escape common-sense insight. As he clearly states, “risk consciousness is neither a traditional nor a lay person’s consciousness, but is essentially determined by and oriented to science” (Beck 1992, 72). Such reversal of the “experiential logic” of everyday thinking and acting implies that phenomena inaccessible to the five senses are instrumentally made visible by techno-science prior to experiencing them. For instance, radioactivity in Chernobyl, Teflon in water, and DDT in leading brands of tea must be produced as risks to be attended to. The same holds for viral pandemics such as COVID-19, since the coronavirus is insidiously invisible and requires scientific and technical knowledge to be framed and taken care of, though contrary to environment-bound radiation and chemicals, it is more globalized and ubiquitous (Knoblauch and Löw 2020b). While Beck’s view on risk production contributes to explaining viral and environmental crises and the resulting anxiety, his application of reflexivity to institutions and social systems elides the dimension of subjectivity crucial to explaining how the projection of risks  is lived through by an embodied self. To account for the unintended side effects and irreversible threats flowing through “risk society,” Beck considers indispensable to develop a concept of “second” or “reflexive modernity,” in order to move beyond the realm of human agency in favor of the interface between the technological and the social. In Beck’s theory of modernity, the actor is always in motion, both literally and virtually, diffracted into a myriad of human and

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non-­human relations, so that, according to Beck, it makes little sense to refer to her reflexive positing attitude (Lash 2003; see Latour 2005). However, it is often neglected that the subject–object distinction is necessary to tease out in a consistent theoretical approach situations where actors distance themselves from institutionalized expectations and habitual actions, and deliberate reflexively their concerns (Archer  2007;  Mouzelis 2008). In fact, it is not sufficient to point out that, once invisible threats begin to be dealt with and projected as the future of communities, “solidarity from anxiety arises and becomes a political force” (Beck 1992, 49) if no resort is made to any aspect of human subjectivity to explain how actors respond to threats and go about realizing alternative communities together or apart. In this chapter, I distance myself from Giddens’ and Beck’s concepts of reflexivity in modernity, which is limited to the level of institutions and social systems, to focus on human reflexivity and the creation of affective bonds through social action. I argue for re-centering the sociological inquiry on affects and in particular anxiety, by offering phenomenological considerations on the disturbing experience of living in a crisis-shaped present. I articulate two avenues in social and cultural theory in hopes of a richer understanding of the phenomenon of anxiety in the climate crisis and viral pandemics: first, Berlant’s (2012) project of concentrating upon the presentation of emerging events in terms of “affective genres” and, second, the project of analyzing the experiential processes by which individuals navigate through events and encounters in the lifeworld (Schutz 1962c; Berger and Luckmann 1966; Knoblauch 2014; Strassheim 2016, Lafontaine 2020).

Affective Genres as a Kind of Everyday Knowledge As I noted above, the phenomenological tradition had already captured that the taken-for-granted system of relevance which guides us in everyday life springs from anxiety. About our thinking and action in everyday life, Schutz (1962b, 33) went so far as to claim that “we always have to ‘take chances’ and to ‘run risks’” and that “this situation is expressed by our hopes that fears which are merely subjective corollaries of our basic uncertainty as to the outcome of our projected interaction.” From the outset, our knowledge of the world we live in, which is historically given, is typical and expected to remain similar and trustable. In his late philosophy, Husserl (1970, 1973) develops the notion of “type” starting from everyday social experience. A type is an empirical generalization which produces a vague form allowing identification of objects as typical or unique. We all construct types to grasp the characteristic features of various objects of our daily life such as material objects, tools, furniture, and living beings in relation to socio-historically sedimented systems of types. With regard to typicality, one can identify and communicate memories, images, dreams, vernacular expressions, the feel of specific people in particular occasions, of landscapes and atmospheric configurations. Types combine affective, practical, and axiological determinations of social life. Husserl (1970, 31) explains that types

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belong to a distinct sphere from that of scientific thinking, namely to the sphere of the “(merely) approximate.” Types are “practical situational truths” corresponding to the “seeks” and “needs” of “praxis” and stemming from “‘merely subjectiverelative’ intuition” (Husserl 1970, 132). Therefore, their validity never reaches scientific rationality. It is at best an “empirical or presumptive certainty—‘until further notice’—” (Schutz 1962a, 82; Husserl 1973, 306) that “always bears the character of plausibility, that is, of subjective likelihood”  instead of objective probability (Schutz 1962b, 33). In other words, types are “a realm of good verification […] just as secure as is necessary for the practical projects of life” (Husserl 1970, 125). The selective activity of mind makes certain elements “stand out” in connection with fundamental concerns and interests which are rooted in taken-for-granted system of relevance: typifications “select” attractive possibilities while “ignoring” and “forgetting” others (Barber 1988, 36, 96 et seq.). Since they frustrate typical expectations, experiences of actual and potential risks, including climate disasters and viral pandemics, can be strange enough to cause anxiety. These experiences break with the flowing quality of time and urge us to take in and on an inadequate future. The importance of affects as a focal point for research comes at a time when scholars are confronted by analytically challenging crisis constellations produced by translocal capitalist activity. Turning to “affects” provides access to hitherto undiscovered changes that shape the contemporary social and that are symptomatic of an increase in “self-reflexivity” (Clough 2007, 3). For that matter, Berlant’s (2012) remarks on affects and self-reflexivity are significant, since they draw attention to everyday experience as it is disorganized by neoliberal capitalist society and its promises of upward mobility, work security, political satisfaction, social equality, and reliable intimacy. In her book Cruel Optimism, Berlant focuses on what happens to these “conventional good-life fantasies” when the everyday becomes filled with unfolding “crises of life-building” and idealized expectations are so obtrusive that what it means to “have a life” appears to be an unsurmountable challenge (Berlant 2012, 2–3). Facing the erosion of society’s promises of achieving “the good life,” Berlant tracks the emergence of crises through the dissolution of affective genres and the ability people develop to cope with capitalist exploitation in the present. Affective genres are acquired “conventions” by which “emerging events” speak for certain reassuring possibilities in relation to fantasies of “the good life,” while rejecting the threatening possibility of the event taking shape otherwise (Berlant 2012, 6). What is “cruel” about “optimism” is maintaining attachments to the object or scene that once fulfilled a good-life fantasy even though it has become a source of suffering. In optimism, one is disposed to expected promises contained in encountering her objects or scenes of desire, although the conditions of such encounter are compromised: attachment to this object or scene enables the subject, securing a continuous sense of self, while simultaneously being disabling (Berlant 2012, 23–25). According to Berlant, however, access to affective experience as such cannot be immediately grasped  in contemplation but is always permeated by the genres through which it has transited. Although Berlant starts out from literary studies and Schutz from phenomenology, it is fruitful to conceive of affective genres as a

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specific kind of common-sense knowledge, in order to reinvigorate Schutz’ developments on the foundations of knowledge. The “impasse,” the “situation,” the “episode,” the “conversation,” the “travelog,” and so on are various “genres of the emerging event” through which Berlant tracks the sense of the historical present. They provide an “affective expectation of the experience of watching something unfold” (Berlant 2012, 5–6). However, where genres draw attention to the literary presentation of affective experience, the phenomenological approach throws light on the affective experience that lies behind visual, sound, and linguistic conventions (see Carr 1991). I will focus on the “impasse,” since it constitutes the main genre of Cruel Optimism and adverts to anxiety. A stimulating scene for our topic is taken from Gregg Bordowitz’ Habit. The documentary captures the HIV/AIDS epidemic from Bordowitz’ perspective on the deadly threats he and his friends endured. Here, Berlant draws attention to the strange situation in which Bordowitz, his partner Claire Pentecost, and his friends Yvonne Rainer and Zakie Achmat find themselves. The worried expectation that something perhaps critical is unfolding in the present creates “a collective story whose generic is absorptive and experimental, like the lives people live amid crisis” (Berlant 2012, 55). As everyone’s worry narratives resonate with each other, Bordowitz and his friends share their awareness of the finitude of life, that is, of death and its everyday manifestations, such as losing strength to accomplish the most ordinary motions, losing a partner or a friend, witnessing how aging alters the body in unexpected ways, while for a friend, it has to do with the disturbing consequences of AIDS.  Such awareness of death accentuates and stretches the present moment in place of the contextual unity and streaming quality of habitual action: “all must inhabit the shared atmosphere of dehabituation and forced improvisation that an endemic and pandemic health crisis induces” (Berlant 2012, 57). The impasse arises in such moment when actors are affected by their incapacity to manage unfamiliar and startling situations. It is “decompositional,” that is, a “space of time lived without narrative genres” (Berlant 2012, 199). What is key in the present as  impasse, Berlant (2012, 199) argues, is that it “opens up different ways that the interruption of norms and the reproduction of life can be adapted to, felt out, and lived.” Since it breaks from the  conventionality of good-life fantasies and moves toward inventing new rhythms, the impasse can be seen as a “formal figure of transit”: because it does not hold on a secure ground, but “opens out into anxiety, […] one does not know where [his or her activities] are leading” (Berlant 2012, 199). In Bordowitz’ film Habit, such improvisation leads to other genres of emerging event, namely the “conversation” and the “travelog.” These are about making space for grounding oneself with others and mapping a trajectory to look after oneself and work out where one is in life. “Conversation,” to further consider this affective genre, is a “space of time that makes its own rules and boundaries” amid the frenzy of a crisis (Berlant 2012, 57). Solidarity around the awareness of death and the precariousness of life involves the invention of routines for adjusting to the unfolding present. By concerting each other’s perspectives, Bordowitz and his friends contract

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“habits” together, that which springs from the desire to “develop and […] circulate as many idioms of the claim on life as can be imaginatively effective” (Berlant 2012, 57). Moreover, during the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the production and transmission of knowledge were not only mediatized by bodies in localized spaces, but also through various media, material objects, and commodities. Since it was critical to stay well informed to stay alive, conversation through “informal networks of knowledge sharing” became central to access and appropriate expert knowledge (Berlant 2012, 57; see Gould 2009). Understood as a kind of common-sense knowledge, affective genres make certain aspects of experience stand out while others remain irrelevant “until further notice,” to echo what was said earlier about Schutz’ and Husserl’s remarks on the foundations of everyday knowledge. Events such as those evolving around the HIV/ AIDS health crisis may prompt concerns about overlooked experiences to achieve knowledge and habitual action. The unexpected and disquieting character of crisis  events arouses the  insight  that people  might steer their  lives forward into the unknown or that life may take  form as something so far  unconceivable  (Kemple 2019; Lafontaine 2022). “Not to be unworthy of the event,” as Simms discusses elsewhere in this volume, requires living up to the open possibilities inherent to the event of the epidemic and the occasion for transformation.

Anxiety and the Re-figuration of Action Already in 1970, Elias (1978) emphasized the importance of emotions and affects to overcome sociological aporias when conceiving the subjectivity of social actors. At the core of his proposal lies the concept of “figuration,” by which he wanted to avoid reifying concepts and draw attention to “human interdependencies” between individuals, their processuality in time, and their configuration in space by the “fluctuating balance of power” (Elias 1978, 132). In contrast with sociological theories highlighting the power of impersonal structures over individuals, Elias considers essential to turn to the personal experience of actors and their affective bonds. Knoblauch and Löw (2020a) have recently substituted the concept of “re-­figuration” to account for the ongoing restructuring of the social world and accelerated social change while taking up Elias’ ideas on processuality and the balancing of power. The concept of “re-figuration,” then, can explain “how in the process of change not only institutions but also subjects themselves (as identities and singularities), their knowledge (e.g., geographic, climatic), their imaginations, and their affective state (i.e., their sense of security in urban space) are being ‘reformed’” (Knoblauch and Löw 2020a, 266). Each kind of affective states impacts (i.e., excerpt power) in a specific way over ongoing action. As it prompts a shift from “something taken-for-granted” to a “puzzling problem,” anxiety pertains to the class of “problematical moods” discussed in the pragmatic and phenomenological traditions (Silver 2011, 214). As Mickey states elsewhere in this volume, ecological disconnection in global climate change and

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global pandemics indicates a crisis of attunement (Stimmung) to the world which manifests itself in anxiety. Although Schutz sometimes refers to Heidegger’s concept of anxiety as that which manifest one’s own mortality, he is interested above all by its cognitive impact on the everyday situation where human beings find themselves, showing how anxiety can urge the revision of former assumptions concerning the attainability of the projected outcomes of action. This eventuality has pervaded the late modern world, given the increased pace, scope, and depth of change due to environmental disasters, viral pandemics, and other risk-related crisis situations and the heightened sense of uncertainty. No longer do routine and binding tradition seem to form a secure ground, providing wellproven recipes to casually handle things and come by typical solutions to typical problems. This is not to say that the function of habitual action as ground for projects and commitments inexorably disappear, but that it is shaken up by unfamiliar circumstances and has lost some of its power over reflexivity (e.g., rehearsing in imagination, anticipating future possibilities, crafting projects, doubting  and discarding certain attractive possibilities, and defining intrinsic concerns and interests). Even though various “problems” of more or less magnitude can be rationally identified and resolved on the basis of common-sense and expert knowledge, there are still many situations in which actors find themselves confused and anxious, such as amid a sudden climate disaster or the accelerated spreading of a virus. Giddens’ and Beck’s conceptions of risk production discussed earlier suggest that actors are experiencing mounting anxiety in the late modern world. To Giddens, modernity is a “post-traditional” order, that is, an order in which doubt pervades everyday life and forms a structural element of experience. Rather than leading to “certitude” and “control,” the increasing importance of expert knowledge and risk projections “creates a system in which areas of relative security interlace with radical doubt and with disquieting scenarios of risk” (Giddens 1991, 207). Here, the production of idealities at the level of science has profound consequences on the accessibility of knowledge about the world. To Beck (1992, 72), in fact, the reversal of the experiential logic of thinking and acting implies that actors no longer go from personal experience to general proposition, but, quite the opposite, they start from “knowledge devoid of personal experience,” that is, “second-hand non-­ experience,” and attempt to frame their shivery prospects and the unstable events of the world. Introduced in the same essay where he captures anxiety as an existential source of our basic orientation in the lifeworld, Schutz’ (1962c, 229) “epoché of the natural attitude” helps analyze phenomenologically this late modern condition. At the same time when Husserl (1982, 252, 62) highlighted the unshakeable character of our “primal belief (Urdoxa)” in the existence of the world, and developed the phenomenological epoché, a philosophical technique to investigate the positing of existence of objectivities, properties, and mechanisms of invisible chemicals and viruses were disclosed by the expertise and calculations of science and technology, shaping the world we live in as an increasingly problematic and threatening environment (see Sloterdijk 2016). The epoché of the natural attitude, however, is not an achievement of philosophy but of common sense, a realm of experience jeopardized by the

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ongoing climate crises and viral epidemics. By examining the everyday as a correlate of such epoché, Schutz provides a key perspective to analyze how actors can suspend “the doubt that the world and its objects might be otherwise that it appears” (Schutz 1962c, 229), concealing what may disrupt the course of their action and making space for improvising new patterns of action. While Schutz’ brief reflection on anxiety suggests it is cardinal to the actor’s system of relevance, to his basic orientation in the world and his attention to certain possibilities of action over others, scholarship discussing how anxiety interacts with anticipation and shapes “re-figured” action is in its beginnings, showing how anxiety does not merely reflect a fearful awareness of death, but has its “motivational history,” which can prompt actors to perceive “risk” on their own and anticipate “in advance” to not miss their chance (Strassheim 2016, 94). As an intrinsic motivation for being one step ahead in disclosing unforeseen, neglected, or forgotten possibilities, anxiety is key to understand how actors form affective bonds with others and how they secure a ground to imagine and create new actions, from the more circumscribed involvement with their biographies to environmental and life politics.

References Archer, Margaret. 2007. Making Our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barber, Michael. 1988. Social Typifications and the Elusive Other: The Place of Sociology of Knowledge in Alfred Schutz’s Phenomenology. London: Associated University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE. Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Penguin Books. Berlant, Lauren Gail. 2012. Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press. Carr, David. 1991. Time, Narrative, and History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Clough, Patricia T. 2007. Introduction. In The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. Patricia T. Clough and Jean Halley, 1–33. Durham: Duke University Press. Elias, Norbert. 1978. What Is Sociology? London: Hutchinson. Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gould, Deborah B. 2009. Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1973. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. London: Routledge and K. Paul. ———. 1982. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Kemple, Thomas. 2019. Simmel’s Sense of Adventure: Death and Old Age in Philosophy Art and Everyday Life. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 94(2) 163-174.

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Knoblauch, Hubert. 2014. Projection, Imagination, and Novelty: Towards a Theory of Creative Action Based on Schutz. In The Interrelation of Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts, ed. Michael Barber and Jochen Dreher, 31–49. Dordrecht: Springer. Knoblauch, Hubert, and Martina Löw. 2020a. The Re-figuration of Spaces and Refigured Modernity – Concept and Diagnosis. Historical Social Research 45 (2): 263–292. ———. 2020b. “Dichotopia  – The Refiguration of Spaces and the Security Society in Times of the Corona Risk.” Re-figurations of Spaces Collaborative Research Center Blog/Coronavirus Edition #1 (blog). April 2020. https://sfb1265.de/en/blog/ dichotopia-­the-­refiguration-­of-­spaces-­and-­the-­security-­society-­in-­times-­of-­the-­corona-­risk/. Lafontaine, Simon. 2020. The Significance of Mobility in Alfred Schutz’s Theory of Action. Human Studies 43(4) 567-584. Lafontaine, Simon. 2022. Adventure in the Social World: Georg Simmel’s Appeal to a Theory of Creative Action. Journal of Classical Sociology 00(0) 1-22 (Online First). Lash, Scott. 2003. Reflexivity as Non-Linearity. Theory, Culture & Society 20 (2): 49–57. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Re-Assembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Macón, Cecilia. 2013. Sentimus ergo sumus, El surgimiento del ‘giro afectivo’ y su impacto en la filosofía política. Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía Política 2 (6): 1–32. Mouzelis, Nicos P. 2008. Modern and Postmodern Social Theorizing: Bridging the Divide. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Schutz, Alfred. 1962a. Choosing Among Projects of Action. In Collected Papers I. The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson, 67–96. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1962b. Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action. In Collected Papers I. The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson, 3–47. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1962c. On Multiple Realities. In Collected Papers I. The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson, 207–259. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Silver, Daniel. 2011. The Moodiness of Action. Sociological Theory 29 (3): 199–222. Sloterdijk, Peter. 2016. Foams: Spheres. Vol. 3: Plural Spherology. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Strassheim, Jan. 2016. The Problem of ‘Experiencing Transcendence’ in Symbols, Everyday Language and Other Persons. Schutzian Research 8: 75–101.

Simon Lafontaine  is a SSHRC postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Sociology at University of British Columbia. His work evolves around the phenomenological and constructivist traditions in the social sciences, and the development of descriptions and concepts to flesh out the actor’s experience of the social world, whose doing and feeling lies at the base of the whole system. In his dissertation, he revisits Alfred Schutz’s phenomenological sociology and advances an approach to everyday mobility and migration in urban space, elaborating on the living dynamics involved in choosing a line of action, gearing into the world, concerting with others, sometimes moving beyond familiar boundaries to cope with the unexpected challenges that confront us. His current research examines spaces of loneliness and common assumptions surrounding interconnectedness and solitary withdrawal in social networks. His contribution aims at interpreting the meanings people attach to their lonely behaviours and at uncovering what type of self-relation and social relation they involve. The proposed research contributes to overcome the reduction of loneliness to a mere psychological reality by developing a sociological account of both its enforced and voluntary forms in modern societies.

Chapter 5

Authentic Compassion in the Wake of Coronavirus: A Nietzschean Climate Ethics William A. B. Parkhurst and Casey Rentmeester

Friedrich Nietzsche discusses epidemics and plagues in both medical and existential senses. For Nietzsche, plagues and epidemics point to a deeper phenomenon in human psychology. In plagues, we both pity and are repulsed by those who are sick. We fail to attain true compassion because we dehumanize, pity, and blame the sick. However, this reaction points to the more primordial existential phenomenon we are avoiding: disgust [ekel] with human finitude itself. Nietzsche suggests that epidemics and plagues (such as the Black Death pandemic) reveal one’s character and can provide the catalyst to change it. In drafts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it is a plague that triggers Zarathustra to overcome his disgust with human finitude and feel authentic compassion for future generations. The coronavirus crisis today provides us the rare opportunity to prepare for what Nietzsche saw as authentic compassion. New archival evidence has revealed that Nietzsche argued for an extramoral reason to care about future generations in his drafts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Coronavirus, therefore, offers us not only an existential wake-up call, but also the opportunity to foster an authentic compassion. Such authentic compassion would force us to confront how our decisions today negatively impact future generations. Perhaps the most significant issue we would have to address is how our actions contribute to climate change and its destructive effect on future generations.

W. A. B. Parkhurst Department of Philosophy, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, USA C. Rentmeester (*) Department of Philosophy, Bellin College, Green Bay, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_5

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The Problem of Intergenerational Climate Ethics Perhaps the most famous argument with regard to our obligations to future generations was originally put forward by Derek Parfit in his 1984 book Reasons and Persons (Parfit 1984). Essentially, what Parfit argues is that future persons owe their very existence and identity to choices made by present persons. Thus, even if those choices are environmentally destructive, future persons cannot really complain since their very existence is dependent upon those choices. If the present generation acted otherwise, those future persons would not exist. Rather, other non-identical persons would exist. Parfit claimed his unwelcome conclusions undermine our beliefs about our obligations to future generations; moreover, Parfit himself admits that he does not have a solution (Parfit 1984, 451–452). Stephen Gardiner more recently has argued that the intergenerational problem is the central problem of climate ethics (Gardiner 2001, 2003, 2006). Gardiner argues that the intergenerational aspect of climate change is the biggest hurdle in having the current generation respond in any serious manner. He writes that climate change is a substantially deferred phenomenon; that is, “the bad effects of current emissions are likely to fall, or fall disproportionately, on future generations, whereas the benefits of emissions accrue largely to the present” (Gardiner 2006, 403–404). This exacerbates a bias towards the risks and interests of the present generation (Gardiner 2006, 404). Couched in the game theoretic framework of the prisoner's dilemma, Gardiner argues that because future generations do not coexist with present generations, they cannot influence each other's behaviour through coercive actions or mutually beneficial mechanisms of reciprocity (Gardiner 2006, 405). As both Gardiner and Byron Williston have pointed out, the intergenerational problem means that standard solutions to the tragedy of the commons cannot work (Gardiner 2006, 405; Williston 2019, 86–88). Gardiner puts the most basic intergenerational problem as follows: “current populations may not be motivated to establish a fully adequate global regime, since, given the temporal dispersion of effects—and especially backloading and deferral—such a regime is probably not in their interests” (Gardiner 2006, 405). Put simply, there is no reason, based on self-interest and tit-for-tat strategies that present generations will care about future generations. Therefore, there is no reason for them to sacrifice concrete benefits in the present for the avoidance of extreme risk to future generations. We believe that in order to overcome issues with framing climate change merely as an intergenerational problem in the contemporary debate, one live option is to focus on how climate change is devastating for persons living here and now (Rentmeester 2014). This approach not only benefits from its practicality, but also becomes an increasingly stronger argument as time goes on and the damaging effects of climate change multiply in the present. However, given the precariousness of our current situation, it is incumbent upon intellectuals to cull sources from our traditions in order to understand and respond to climate change. Previous chapters in Part I of this volume culled historical

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resources from Deleuze, Husserl, Heidegger, and others. In this chapter, we do something similar with Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche collapsed into madness several years before the ideas surrounding carbon emissions and the greenhouse effect were first discussed in 1896. Thus, observing the damaging effects of climate change as a motivator for action simply was not possible for Nietzsche. However, Nietzsche did think seriously about future generations and our relationship to them. This chapter explicates why Nietzsche thought we ought to care about future generations.

Nietzsche and Environmental Ethics Scholars have claimed that Nietzsche’s philosophy can be interpreted as supporting or advocating a surprisingly large number of mutually exclusive environmental ethics frameworks. He has been called an anthropocentrist (Michael E Zimmerman), a nonanthropocentrist (A.  Nolan Hatley), an anti-anthropocentrist/socio-centrist (Reinhart Maurer), a critical anthropocentrist (David Storey), a humanist (Ralph Acampora), a biocentrist and deep ecologist (Max Hallman), a hyperanthroposcentric forerunner of deep ecology (Robert Causey), an environmental constructivist (Martin Drenthen), an earthist or mundialist (John G. McGraw), an ecological restorationist (Gerard Kuperus), a non-dogmatic relationalist (Sarah Jacob), and an ecocentrist (Graham Parkes) (Zimmerman 2008, 166–167; Hately 2017, 161; Maurer 2003/2004, 17; Storey 2016, 19, 42; Acampora 1994; Hallman 1991; Causey 2014; Drenthen 1999, 2002, 2005; McGraw 1999; Kuperus 2017; Jacob 2020; Parkes 1999, 2005; Swanton 1998, 36). However, none of these have addressed Nietzsche’s arguments regarding future generations. One of the core issues in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is humanity’s relationship towards the future and future generations. In the prologue, Zarathustra states, “I love one who justifies people of the future and redeems those of the past” (Z Pref. 4; cf. KGW VII 1 5[17]).1 While the reasoning for this claim is never explained in the published text, drafts of this text can further explicate the reasoning employed. This essay reconstructs those reasons and applies them to our climate crisis today.

 [Z] Friedrich Nietzsche (2006); [KGW] Nietzsche (1967). As is standard in Nietzsche scholarship, I footnote the first citation and then use the abbreviated title, book number where applicable, and section number. If page numbers are required, it is indicated by a “p.” or “pp.”. My citation of Nietzsche archival documents stored in Goethe and Schiller Archive [GSA] and the Der Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek [HAAB] follows their recommended archival citation. 1

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Reconstructing the Genesis of the Argument In what follows, I give a genetic analysis that tracks the emergence and development of a piece of text (cf. Parkhurst 2020). After months of work and carefully copying his argument about future generations from notebook to notebook, only a single seemingly unimportant line was published. In section 12.12 of Book IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was privately published, we find the following line, “Ask women: one does not give birth because it is enjoyable” [“Fragt die Weiber: man gebiert nicht, weil es Vergnügen macht”] (Z VI 12.12).2 Tracing the genesis of this line will lead us to Nietzsche’s argument for why we should care for future generations. We find this line in one of the first copies publicly available published in 1891 after Nietzsche had fallen into madness and no longer had control over his estate (Fig. 5.1). Although there are several archived proofs, correction copies, and Nietzsche’s personal copy, some that contain Nietzsche’s own corrections, none of them contain any edits or corrections to this line. (GSA 71/25a. Mette E 37 [D 17]; HAAB C 4408; NPB 410).3 Additionally, in the fair copy prepared for the printer, we find this section appears identically (Fig. 5.2): Below, we find a nearly identical draft of this section. However, Nietzsche gives away the conclusion of his argument that is working in the background of the text in one of his notebooks (Fig. 5.3). Transcribed this reads: Ihr rechnet das Glück Aller aus und habt die Zukünftigen dabei vergessen – das Glück d e r M e i s t e n! Fragt doch die Weiber! Man gebiert nicht, weil es Vergnügen macht. (KGW VII 1 22[1])

Translated this reads:

Fig 5.1 (Nietzsche 1891, 83)  A rejection of the inversion of this claim was also publicly published in Book 1 section 9 “Preachers of Death.” 3  [GSA] Goethe and Schiller Archive; [HAAB] Der Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek; [NPB] Nietzsche (2003). 2

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Fig 5.2  (GSA 71/25. Mette: D 17. p. 81)

Fig 5.3  (GSA 71/14. Mette: Z II 3. p. 122)

Fig. 5.4  (GSA 71/205. Mette: N VI 6. p. 69–71) You are figuring out how all people could be happy and in the process you have forgotten future generations – the happiness of most people! Just ask women! Having a good time is not the point of giving birth. (Nietzsche 2019, 22[1]. p. 558).

This argument is itself copied from a previous draft where he further elaborated on the reasons for this conclusion in a notebook entry dated August 1883 (Figs. 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6). Transcribed this reads: [p. 69] ihr rechnet das Glück aus und vergeßt dabei alle Zukünftigen [p. 70] Falsche Rechnung in Betreff des G l ü c k e s – man muß das Unglück w o l l e n. das Glück der Gegenwärtigen zum Opfer bringen für die z u k ü n f t i g e n M e n s c h e n.

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Fig. 5.5  (GSA 71/205. Mette: N VI 6. p. 69–71)

Fig. 5.6  (GSA 71/205. Mette: N VI 6. p. 69–71)

[p.71] Fragt die Frauen: man gebiert nicht, weil es einem Vergnügen macht. (KGW VII 1 17[78])

Translated this reads: You figure out how to be happy and in the process you forget all future generations Miscalculation in regard to happiness – we must want unhappiness. to sacrifice the happiness of contemporaries for future generations. Ask women: having a good time is not the point of giving birth. (Nietzsche 2019, 17[78]. p. 507)

In Nietzsche’s notes and drafts we find an even earlier explanation of how this argument functioned spring-summer 1883. Transcribed this reads: K r i t i k des “G u t e n”, ja des B e s t e n ! Skepsis sehr berechtigt! Meine Gesamtrichtung geht nicht auf M o r a l s – wes ehedem Süden-Bewußtsein, das wende ich augh gegen den Intellekt, die Tugend, das Glück, die Kraft des Menschen.

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Aus einer westlich a u ß e r m o r a l i s c h e n Betrachtungsweise kam ich zur Betrachtung der Moral a u s d e r F e r n e. Die Bedingungen zu errathen, unter denen die zukünftigen Menschen leben  – weil ein solches E r r a t h e n imd V o r w e g n e h m e n die Kraft eines M o t i v s hat: die Z u k u n f t als das, was wir w o l l e n, w i r k t auf unser Jetzt. (KGW VII 1 7[6])

Translated this reads: Critique of “good people,” indeed of the best people! Skepticism is very justified! My entire approach doesn’t involve morality – what was formally consciousness of sin, I also direct these things against the intellect, virtue, happiness, human strength. On the bases of essentially extramoral considerations, I came to consider morality from a distance. To discern the conditions under which future humans will live – because such discernment and anticipation have the force of a motive: the future, as something that we will, acts upon our now. (Nietzsche 2019, 7[6]. p.212)

Here, at the origin of this argument, we find that Nietzsche considers this not to be a moral argument but an extramoral argument. In Beyond Good and Evil 32, Nietzsche uses the term extramoral to define the third epoch in human history (BGE 32).4 The first premoral period was characterized by kind of retroactive utilitarian thinking. We only know if an action had value after the consequences have been assessed. The moral period is then characterized along deontological lines with a focus on the value of the intention at the origin of the action. Nietzsche then calls for a third extramoral period. In Fig. 5.7, Nietzsche gives us a glimpse at what an extramoral period might be. An extramoral kind of thinking would understand the value of the present as a consequent of our magnanimity towards the future.5 In extramoral thinking, it is our anticipation of the future itself that motivates, shapes, and attunes our values today. Nietzsche writes in a note from this period, “To observe pain magnanimously […] Magnanimous in regard to people of the future – and this is the magnanimity of those who create, who love their work more than their today” (KGW VII 1 18[17]; Nietzsche 2019, 18[17]. p.  515). This love of creators towards future generations is a kind of extramoral temporal magnanimity. Our ability to act now in the present is conditional upon our ability to imagine future generations and feel authentic compassion for them. Those actions are done for extramoral reasons: love. According to Nietzsche, “What is done out of love always happens beyond good and evil” (BGE 153).

 [BGE] Friedrich Nietzsche. 2014. Beyond Good and Evil in Beyond Good and Evil/On the Genealogy of Morality. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche Vol 8. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. 32. 5  More on Nietzsche and Virtue ethics see Babette E. Babich, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground of Art and Life (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994), 104; Fink, Eugen. Nietzsche’s Philosophy. Translated by Goetz Richter (New York: Continuum, 2003), 160; Lomax, The Paradox of Philosophical Education: Nietzsche’s New Nobility and Eternal Recurrence in Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Lexington Books, 2003), 108, 117). 4

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Fig 5.7  (GSA 71/131. Mette: M III 4b. p. 181)

Plagues and Eternal Recurrence The drafts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra from 1883 contain a section about a plague [Pest] and Zarathustra’s arrival at a plague city [Pest-Stadt]. The only part of these drafts that were published is the following, “What does this dark cloud want with us? Let’s see to it that it does not bring us a Plague! [Seuche]” (Z III 5.2). In several drafts from 1883, Zarathustra is attacked by a woman, Pana, who has the plague (Nietzsche 2019, 13[3]. p. 400, 16[38]. p. 461, 16[42]. p. 462, 20[10]. p. 537). In one of the last drafts featuring Pana, Zarathustra relates eternal recurrence to her and she tries to kill him. Eternal recurrence is the idea that everything in the universe repeats eternally, even down to its smallest detail including all the smallness and pettiness of human experience and suffering. It is only after this

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interaction with the plague victim that Zarathustra finally grasps the meaning of eternal recurrence (Nietzsche 2019, 20[10]. p. 537). This makes a compelling case that Pana, who has the plague, triggers Zarathustra to realize his great pity and disgust at human finitude (cf. Nietzsche 2019, 16[38]. p.  461). Zarathustra’s new insight into his own misanthropy and disgust for human finitude allows him to overcome his misanthropy through the thought of eternal recurrence. In the penultimate section of the published version of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra encounters his most abysmal thought. Until this point in the text, Zarathustra had been trying, and failing, to think this thought. After he has recovered from his sickness this thought caused, he is finally able to affirm the value of life and existence in the final section of the book and affirms again and again, “For I love you, O Eternity!” (Z III 16). Zarathustra’s most abysmal thought is not eternal recurrence, as scholars sometimes claim, but rather misanthropic disgust (Parkhurst 2019/2020). Zarathustra recalls the encounter with his most abysmal thought stating, “The great disgust6 with man—it choked me and had crept into my throat” (Z III 13.2). In order to feel great compassion for all mankind, one must participate not only in the fates of those who have lived or are living but one must be able to “conceive and to feel the total consciousness of life within himself” (HAH I 33).7 This is precisely what Zarathustra experiences when he collapses. In order to affirm even the smallness in man, he must confront his disgust and aversion (Überdruss) to mankind’s finite nature. As Zarathustra states, Naked I saw them both, the greatest human and the smallest human: all too similar to one another – all too human still even the greatest one! All too small the greatest one! That was my disgust of humans! And eternal recurrence of even the smallest! – That was my disgust of all existence! (Z III 13.2)

Zarathustra does overcome his disgust and misanthropy, and, rather than a pessimistic nihilism, he sees another ideal: the ideal of affirmation that affirms and loves future generations (cf. BGE 56). Zarathustra is not able to do this because of moral considerations or some clever hedonistic calculus, but out of extramoral considerations. It is his love, as a creator, as one who is pregnant with the future, that allows him to overcome his misanthropic disgust and have magnanimous dispositions towards future generations. Precisely, this kind of magnanimous disposition could cause us to act in the present to fight climate change.

6  In the following, I will replace Del Caro’s translation of “Überdruss” as “surfeit” with that of R. J. Hollingdale and Clancy Martin who both translate “Überdruss” as “disgust.” 7  [HAH I] Fredrich Nietzsche (1995).

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Conclusion Although Nietzsche’s mental collapse happened well before the mechanisms of climate change were understood, he still seriously considered why we should care, love, and sacrifice today for future generations. Just as in the drafts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the plague provides him the opportunity to reflect on his finitude and misanthropy, today the coronavirus and the horrifying toll it has had on our world may provide the occasion for an existential wake-up call. If we try to think compassion to its depths and interrogate our values, we must ask ourselves the following question: can human life, not just my life or your life but all past and future human life, be affirmed? Despite the ever more desperate calls of scientists and moral philosophers, climate change is getting exponentially worse day by day. Perhaps we need to entertain a dangerous question: have the classic modalities of morality, as exemplified in the work of Parfit and Gardiner, failed future generations? Perhaps we must actively pursue what Nietzsche saw as authentic compassion beyond classic modalities of morality. If we are to properly respond to this moment of deep crises to save our planet, we must reorient our relationship to future generations. We must extend the bounds of our compassion beyond rationalistic and self-­ interested tit for tat strategies in moral theory. Perhaps it is only extramoral considerations such as authentic existential compassion and genuine love that can generate a motive to change our actions today. As creators love their work or as mothers love their children, we must learn to love future generations beyond the bounds of morality. If we learn to love genuinely and unconditionally in the face of human finitude, we may just leave a habitable planet upon which future generations can flourish.

References Acampora, Ralph R. 1994. Using and Abusing Nietzsche for Environmental Ethics. Environmental Ethics 16 (2): 187–194. Babich, Babette E. 1994. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground of Art and Life. New York: State University of New York Press. Causey, Robert Mark. 2014. Nietzsche’s Hyperanthropos-Centrism. The Trumpeter Journal of Ecosophy 30 (1): 33–48. Drenthen, Martin. 1999. The Paradox of Environmental Ethics: Nietzsche’s View of Nature and the Wild. Environmental Ethics 21 (2): 163–175. ———. 2002. Nietzsche and The Paradox of Environmental Ethics: Nietzsche’s view of Nature and Morality. New Nietzsche Studies 5 (1/2): 12–25. ———. 2005. Wilderness and a Critical Border Concept: Nietzsche and the Debate on Wilderness Restoration. Environmental Values 14 (3): 317–337. Fink, Eugen. 2003. Nietzsche’s Philosophy. Trans. Goetz Richter. New York: Continuum. Gardiner, Stephen M. 2001. The Real Tragedy of the Commons. Philosophy & Public Affairs 30 (4): 387–416. ———. 2003. The Pure Intergenerational Problem. The Monist 86 (3): 481–500.

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———. 2006. A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption. Environmental Values 15 (3): 397–413. Hallman, Max O. 1991. Nietzsche’s Environmental Ethics. Environmental Ethics 13 (2): 99–125. Hately, A. Nolan. 2017. The Early Nietzsche’s Alleged Anthropocentrism. Environmental Ethics 39 (2): 161–173. Jacob, Sarah. 2020. “Can Nietzsche Help Us in the Anthropocene?” (Presentation, Urgent Voices of the Anthropocene: PGSO Annual Conference. April 3–5, 2020). Kuperus, Gerard. 2017. An Ecology of the Future: Nietzsche and Ecological Restoration. In Ontologies of Nature: Continental Perspectives and Environmental Reorientations, ed. Gerard Kuperus and Marjolein Oele, 201–218. Cham: Springer. Lomax, Harvey. 2003. The Paradox of Philosophical Education: Nietzsche’s New Nobility and Eternal Recurrence in Beyond Good and Evil. New York: Lexington Books. Maurer, Reinhart. 2003/2004. “An Ecological Nietzsche? The Will to Power and The Love of Things.” New Nietzsche Studies 5/6 (3/4/1/2): 1-21. McGraw, John G. 1999. Friedrich Nietzsche: Earth-Enthusiast Extraordinaire. Life Scientific Philosophy, Phenomenology of Life and the Sciences of Life. Analecta Husserliana (The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research) 59 (1): 277–306. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1891. Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen. Vierter und letzter Theil. Leipzig: Verlag von C. G. Naumann. [Princeton University Library. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. PT2440.N72 A6 2002 vol.13]. ———. 1967. [KGW] Nietzsche’s Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino. Montinari. 45+ vols. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. ———. 1995. [HAH I] Human, All-Too-Human. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche vol. 3. Trans. Gary Handwerk. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ———. 2003. [NPB] Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek: Supplementa Nietzscheana. Band 6. Edited by Giuliano Campioni, et al. Berlin: De Gruyter. ———. 2006. [Z] Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Trans. Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2014a. [BGE] Beyond Good and Evil in Beyond Good and Evil / On the Genealogy of Morality. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche Vol 8. Trans. Adrian Del Caro. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ———. 2014b. [GM] On the Genealogy of Morality in Beyond Good and Evil/On the Genealogy of Morality. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche vol. 8. Trans. Adrian Del Caro. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ———. 2019. Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Summer 1882-Winter 1883/84). The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche vol. 14. Trans. Paul S. Loeb and David F. Tinsley. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parkes, Graham. 1999. Nietzsche as an Ecological Thinker. In Nietzsche’s Futures, ed. John Lippit, 167–188. London: Macmillan Press. ———. 2005. Nietzsche Environmental Philosophy: A Trans-European Perspective. Environmental Ethics 27 (1): 77–91. Parkhurst, William A. B. 2019/2020. Zarathustra’s Disgust: Rejecting the Foundation of Western Metaphysics. The Agonist. A Nietzsche Circle Journal. Special issue concerning Nietzsche on the Affects XII (1 & 2):92–112. ———. 2020. Does Nietzsche have a Nachlass? Nietzsche-Studien, [Forthcoming]. Rentmeester, Casey. 2014. Do No Harm: A Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Cultural Climate Ethics. De Ethica 1 (2): 5–22. Storey, David E. 2016. Nietzsche and Ecology Revisited: The Biological Basis of Value. Environmental Ethics 38 (1): 19–45. Swanton, Christine. 1998. Outline of a Nietzschean Virtue Ethics. International Studies in Philosophy 30 (3): 29–38. Williston, Byron. 2019. The Ethics of Climate Change: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. Zimmerman, Michael E. 2008. Nietzsche and Ecology: A Critical Inquiry. In Reading Nietzsche at the Margins, ed. Steven V. Hicks and Alan Rosenberg. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.

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William A. B. Parkhurst,  PhD, is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He holds a PhD from the University of South Florida, with his research focusing on the figure Fredrich Nietzsche, BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and MA from San Jose State University, California. He has had nine papers published, including several in specialist journals such as Nietzsche-Studien and SchopenhauerJahrbuch. Dr. Parkhurst has presented 16 papers in 2019 alone. His approach is unique because of his focus on archival resources. Parkhurst’s two archival research fellowships between 2019 and 2021 demonstrate the excitement his projects are generating. His most recent archival fellowship at the Leo Baeck Institute was verifying Nietzsche’s plagiarism of Jewish scholars. During this fellowship, he discovered several of Nietzsche’s draft documents which were never published surrounding the development of an ethical approach to the environment. Nietzsche based this approach upon having an authentic sense of compassion for future generations. However, what Nietzsche makes clear is that until we come to grips with our finitude and overcome our disgust with our embodied existence, an environmental praxis cannot exist. Casey Rentmeester,  PhD, is the Director of Academic Success and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bellin College in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He is author of Heidegger and the Environment (2016), co-editor of Heidegger and Music (2022), and has authored dozens of peerreviewed articles and book chapters on environmental philosophy, social and political philosophy, and biomedical ethics, typically from the lenses of Continental philosophy. He lives with his wife and three children in De Pere, Wisconsin.

Part II

Beyond Birth, Existence, and Environment

Chapter 6

Birth Strike: Holding the Tension Between Existence and Non-existence Claire Arnold-Baker

We are facing a climate emergency1 which has prompted urgent questions regarding the fate of our world and our ways of life. Scientists (Anderegg et al. 2010) acknowledge that this emergency will have a far-reaching impact but what is not certain is how our lives will be affected in concrete terms. These uncertainties regarding our personal futures, the future of humanity, and the future of the planet have prompted continual calls to action. Whilst governments across the world struggle to formulate plans to reduce carbon emissions within the tight time frame needed, individuals are coming together to take direct action. One such group is BirthStrike. Formed in early 2019 in the UK by Blythe Pepino (BirthStrike 2020), BirthStrike unites members from across the globe, concerned with the ensuing ecological crisis, and who want to draw attention to this crisis by declaring to make a personal choice to remain childfree. This response to the climate crisis and how it highlights our mortality, but also our natality is the focus of this chapter. The questions it raises also throw light on our human condition. Climate change is now no longer a theoretical concept but a reality that must be faced. Scientists such as Lenton et  al. (2008) warn that we are reaching a point where the effects of climate change cannot be reversed. The notion of tipping points was introduced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) some years ago, where they sought to highlight how certain thresholds, once breached, would have a knock-on effect on the others. The interconnected ecological system of the planet means that this would have an accelerating effect on the impact of climate change. The resulting ecological crisis would, according to Lenton et  al. (2019), lead to “an existential threat to civilization.” Owen Gaffney is similarly  Declared by UK government in May 2019 (BBC News 2019).

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C. Arnold-Baker (*) DCPsych, New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling (NSPC), London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_6

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quoted as saying, “Without emergency action our children are likely to inherit a dangerously destabilized planet” (Leahy 2019). These very real threats throw our existence into sharp relief. We can no longer live in a way where we can avoid thinking about the possibility of our own death and the deaths of our loved ones due to a destabilized world. The climate emergency has therefore placed awareness of human mortality at the forefront of our existence. This, however, is an uncomfortable place to be, as contemplating our facticity and how we are bound in time causes individuals to experience death anxiety (Yalom 1980). For although the only certainty that we have as human beings is that we will die, the nature and timing of our death are unknown to us. It is this dialectic that propels people to live in ways in which they deny the possibility of their own death so that death is viewed as a distant prospect that will occur at some point in the future rather than an ever-present possibility. Whilst viewing death as something that could happen at any moment may have a crippling effect on people and lead to inaction and a state of paralysis, the counter position is also true—that death becomes such a remote possibility that it does not create an urgency that would enable us to make more active choices. The impact that mortality has on our existence and its effects on our lives has been the subject of much philosophical thought (Kierkegaard 1980; Heidegger 1962; Jaspers 1951; Tillich 1952). Heidegger (1962) in particular observed how human beings try to avoid feelings of existential anxiety which emanate from the human condition—that we must die but also that we have the freedom to choose our lives. Of the two modes of existing in the world, Heidegger noted that we mainly lived in a state of forgetfulness of being. He described how in this mode of being we immerse ourselves in everyday living, and we become ‘fallen in with others’, taking part in ‘idle talk’ and not thinking deeply about our lives and the choices we make. Heidegger describes how people become a ‘they-self’, where they are not making choices or decisions that are good for themselves as individuals but go along with others in an anonymous way. From a Heideggerian perspective, this is an inauthentic mode of being. In this mode, individuals have given up the responsibility of their choices and placed that responsibility on others to carry. When viewed through this lens, it is clear how the climate crisis prompts two opposing responses. It is either denied or avoided, as the reality is too difficult to contemplate and therefore individuals fall into everyday living as a way of tranquilizing them from the oncoming crisis. Or the climate crisis has a disclosing quality, where we can no longer picture our existence as following a similar trajectory as our ancestors, with a certainty that our planet will remain the same and our lives will face similar habitual patterns of living. The boundary that mortality gives our lives has taken on a new perspective. Myers (2014) noted that the anxiety that this provokes makes us question the assumptions we have about our lives, our relationships with others, and how we relate to the natural world in the future. He states that ‘the continuity of social existence is threatened at a collective level’ (ibid. 2014, 55). The existential threat that is incited by the climate crisis causes, as Myers (2014, 63) states, a reactive response where individuals will “attempt to keep one’s world intact by any means”. He suggests that the paralyzing effect of death anxiety accounts for

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the denial of climate change despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. This anxiety also prevents others from making the changes necessary to avert the oncoming ecological disaster. However, there are times when becoming more aware of death as an ever-present possibility can have the effect of shaking individuals out of the tranquillity that they have created in their lives. They move into Heidegger’s second mode of existing, the mindfulness of being. In this mode, Heidegger believes that people begin to make choices that are related to themselves as individuals and are more authentic. But this mode is not reached by mere contemplation; it needs a jolt or a crisis for individuals to be shaken out of their everyday existence. Heidegger states that when individuals enter this more mindful mode of existence they are being towards death and have a sense of their lives in their entirety. This awareness of mortality as a present possibility still causes an experience of anxiety, but this is an existential anxiety or angst (Kierkegaard 1980), which is created when we become aware of our lives and the choices we must make about how we live, without the certainty of knowing the outcome of these choices. Again this angst (explored further in Chaps. 2 and 3, of this volume) can have the crippling effect of inaction but if faced and acknowledged, existential anxiety can become an energy—a driving force—that can place the focus back on living in a creative way and how we want to live our lives. Those moments highlight the most important aspects of life helping individuals to create more meaningful lives. Myers (2014) believed that creative ways in which meaning can be generated collectively in communities were needed if people were going to make the changes needed in the light of this climate crisis, as changes to our lifeworld enable new possibilities to emerge. Whilst existential philosophers have stressed the importance mortality has on our lives and how we live, the climate crisis has demonstrated that it is not just our own mortality that becomes an issue but that of our children and our grandchildren. Human existence is bound at two ends by birth and death, and whilst death shapes the direction in which our lives take, our birth also plays its role; these two are inextricably linked. Death emphasizes that we are moving towards non-existence, yet there is also a period in which we did not exist before we were born. It is this aspect that is highlighted by the BirthStrike movement, as it concerns human existence and non-existence in its entirety and poses some questions around our responsibility as human beings. The BirthStrike movement has two principles, the first is to question the ethics of bringing a child into a world that is heading towards ecological breakdown and the second is to create a new discourse around climate change, to engage people with this ecological crisis in a different way, whilst highlighting the urgency in which it needs attending to. BirthStrike clearly state that they are not anti-natalist, i.e. that it is morally wrong to bring a child into the world because it would expose them to pain and suffering (Benatar 2006), instead they respect the individual choices people make regarding procreation (BirthStrike 2020). Rather the aim of the movement is to enact change in the systems that have created the destruction of the natural world, through activism and discourse, rather than attempting to reduce the size of the population.

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Motherhood or Childfreedom? The first principle concerns the choice of whether to have children, which emphasizes an important facet of human existence concerning how new life is brought into existence. Our own natality has already been assured by the decisions of our parents, but the natality of future generations is a choice still to be made, a point Parkhurst and Rentmeester discuss elsewhere in this volume. Magnus (2020) notes that the choice of motherhood is often shrouded in anxiety. Most women wishing to have a child will consider the timing of conception. It becomes a balancing act between fertility and career progression for many, which women try to navigate without the certainty that they will be able to conceive. Magnus (2020) argues that the fact that fertility is finite and limited in time creates an anxiety and urgency for women as they consider whether to become mothers. Women become acutely aware of their temporality in relation to their fertility. There is a similarity in how one might consider the finitude of fertility and the finitude of the planet brought about by the ecological crisis; both are time-limited and therefore evoke an urgent choice and both concern our ongoing existence. Both arouse anxiety related to the passing of time and the uncertainty of what our future holds. Considering one, whether to have a child, brings the other into perspective, as it involves how we can project ourselves into a possible future, not just for ourselves but also for our children. However, this position suggests that all women are faced with a binary choice between motherhood and their careers. A position also embodied by BirthStrike which places the unborn child at its centre, highlighting what seems a binary choice. This choice Coates-Davies (2020) argues is a presumption of our pro-natal societies and that for many women who remain childfree maternity was never a choice to be made. Childfreedom creates an existential tension between the self and society, as deeply personal ways of living also impact the lives of others. Coates-Davies (2020) argues that childfreedom negates the synonymity of woman and mother and brings the assumptions on which our societies are based into question. If human beings are to survive, we are dependent on new life being born and therefore dependent on the choices of women. Recognition of this shifts the balance of power in societal discourses which historically have viewed women as being for others (de Beauvoir 1997) and to be otherwise is to go against a “natural position.” The choice of conception, therefore, is not a simple selection of one thing over the other but involves a complex interconnection between the personal and the social.

Existential Responsibility These fundamental choices also bring responsibility with them. For most adults, the responsibility that we hold is for ourselves as individuals and the consequences of those choices are ours to bear alone (Sartre 1943; de Beauvoir 1997). However, there are also times when we must make choices for others who are unable to do so

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for themselves. To choose to have a child brings a sense of overwhelming responsibility at times. Garland (2020) showed how women’s early experience of motherhood is defined by the responsibility they feel towards their child. This is not just a responsibility to look after and care for a vulnerable baby, but that responsibility moves forward into the child’s life and concerns how parental choices set children on certain paths (Garland 2020; Arnold-Baker 2020). Mothers become acutely aware of this level of responsibility which can often feel like a burden. They want to do the right thing for their children but do not have the certainty of knowing what that might be. This sense of responsibility towards another begins before the birth or even before pregnancy. It starts in the choice to conceive. Conception, therefore, brings the concepts of maternity and natality together and serves to highlight our choice and responsibilities towards future generations and the potential lives that they will live. Bringing a life into the world involves a projection into an unknown future and a sense of responsibility for that life until the child is old enough to take on responsibility for itself. The climate crisis has added a further dimension of responsibility, and whilst it could be said that every stage in history has had its difficulties to overcome, whether that is war or famine, for example, there has always been the certainty that life on this planet would continue. However, with the current climate crisis, this is now in doubt, leading would-be parents to feel a heightened sense of responsibility towards their unborn child. This creates a powerful tension between the responsibility we have towards the survival of the human race and the responsibility towards our future children both potentially leading to non-existence. Existence and non-existence are also part of the maternal experience where mothers are confronted by the possibility of life and death during birth and in the early months of the baby’s life. Maternity has been shown to have the effect of jolting individuals out of their everyday living, it evokes an existential crisis and creates an awareness of the reality of their existence, where their freedom, choice, and responsibility become more evident (Arnold-Baker 2020). It also causes a change in the experience of temporality, with a focus on the present moment but with a concern for the future. There is, therefore, a disclosing element that emerges from maternity, where parents, but mothers in particular, become more aware of their existence as a whole, as it stretches from birth to death and which colour the choices to be made (ibid. 2020). All these aspects of maternity are evoked by BirthStrike, and would-be parents become aware of how connected they are to something greater than themselves. How we are also a part of the world and the world is part of us and our responsibility, therefore, extends out towards others and that world.

Natality Stone (2019), building on Arendt’s (1958) concept, argues that natality has as much significance to our existence as mortality, and each reveals different elements of our human condition. Mortality reveals how anxiety is evoked by human existence,

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whether that is the anxiety we feel when we contemplate our own death or the existential anxiety that is a part of living and our freedom to choose. Natality on the other hand reveals different aspects of being human, which Stone identifies as being dependency, relationality, situatedness, and embeddedness. Mortality therefore concerns our responsibility towards ourselves, and our individual lives and natality concern our responsibilities towards others. Natality, therefore, shines a light on the relational aspect of human existence that we are not entirely separate entities, but our lives are interconnected with others, as Heidegger noted we exist as Being-with. Birth, or the possibility of new life, exemplifies our human vulnerability. It demonstrates how our lives are dependent on others for our survival, not only at the moment of birth but also continuing throughout our lives. Being dependent on others reveals our need for cooperation and collaboration but also a need to put our trust in others for our joint survival. However, the opposite is also true in that we can lead to an exertion of power over the other. The dependency that human beings have on each other magnifies our human vulnerability and the fragility of life. Realizing that our future is uncertain and unknown causes a sense of anxiety and highlights our responsibility towards each other. We understand that our choices and our actions can have the effect of both harming and helping others.

Existence Is Contextual Natality also illuminates another aspect of our human condition which is our situatedness (Stone 2019). We are always situated in a context; we live at a certain point in time and history and within a particular geographical area. We cannot escape our situatedness or thrownness as Heidegger (1962) termed it, which concerns our place in the world. Where we are born, to whom, in what society, and during which time are all part of our situational context. We have no choice over this, and yet this context is given to us by our parents. The climate crisis is part of the current context into which children are born, and whilst they have no control over this, it colours the choices parents make about their future. In the same way that we are situated in a physical context of time and place, our birth also embeds us into a social context of power relations. This embeddedness (Stone 2019) refers to such things as gender, race, class, economic position, and disability, etc. It is this aspect of natality that most closely connects with the second principle of BirthStrike and how understanding the social embeddedness of natality and maternity can effect a change in the social discourse on climate change. It has become evident in recent years that social reproduction is an important element in maintaining the status quo in our societies. Brown (2019) emphasized the economic turmoil developed countries would face if birth rates fall too low, creating too few consumers and workers in aging populations. This prompts a pro-­ natal approach towards policy decisions aiming to encourage an increase in the birth rate. The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade (2022) in the US is a worrying example of state intervention on reproduction rights and how the criminalisation of abortion

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reduces women’s bodily choices. It is an acknowledgement of this aspect that lies behind BirthStrike. The more control women have over their bodies, the less power governments and corporations have over social reproduction and the more leverage parents have in calling for our societies and economies to change the ways we live and the ways we consume and use natural resources. Birth strikes as with other strike action can be used to bring inequalities to the fore, whether that is workers’ rights, low pay, or other social inequalities. Strikes are effective ways of changing the power balance when new conditions need to be re-­ negotiated. Brown stressed how birth strikes can highlight inequalities that women face as they reveal the value of unpaid work that is largely undertaken by mothers. Interestingly in countries such as the USA and France, women are already inadvertently choosing to birth strike because they find it less desirable to have children where there is little family leave and childcare support available (Brown 2019; Badinter 2010). Birth strikes therefore aim to challenge the status quo and create system change through direct action to engage others in new discourses. Birth strikes by their very nature concern the essence of life: natality, maternity, and mortality. They evoke a more mindful mode of being as individuals are confronted with the reality of existence: of life and death, but also the responsibility they have towards others. This creates a move from individual concerns to those of the masses and from our immediate environment to the whole world. It enables individuals to gain a broader perspective and to contemplate the consequences that our actions may have for our future selves but also those of our children. Mortality has the effect of turning us away from the threat of climate change, due to the anxiety that is provoked by a fear of death. Natality and maternity on the other hand highlight the responsibility that we have towards ourselves and to others, but also to our physical environment. We are interconnected beings, and as Being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1962), we can no longer act as if we are separate from the world that we live in. Climate change and the BirthStrike response elucidate how our human condition is swathed in anxiety but also responsibility. There can be anxiety about dying, which accounts for denial and inaction but also an anxiety of living which allows the status quo to continue. Facing anxiety means choosing to do or be different. Heidegger talks about the ‘call of conscience’, that unsettled feeling that indicates that a choice needs to be made. BirthStrike has become that “call of conscience.” It focuses climate change on natality—if we do not change, then there is no future for us or our children—and it is through natality that a way forward can be found. Those who BirthStrike do so not because they do not want to have children, but precisely because they do. Reflecting on whether to bring a child into the world emphasizes a person’s individual and moral responsibility, but it also highlights that our survival and the survival of our planet is a joint project and one that involves both responsibility and relationality. To overcome the challenges of climate change we must collaborate and cooperate in a global way to find new and meaningful ways of living together. We need to unify under a current purpose, taking both individual and social responsibility for making choices that will ensure that we are creating an environment we wish our children to grow up in. The COVID-19 pandemic has had

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the dramatic effect of changing our lives overnight; we now have the possibility of determining how our lives might change in more permanent ways. Our present call of conscience is that something momentus needs to change and that is the way we live.

References Anderegg, W.R.L., J.W. Prall, J. Harold, and S.H. Schneider. 2010. Expert Credibility in Climate Change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107 (27): 12107–12109. Arendt, H. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Arnold-Baker, C. 2020. Confronting Existence: The Existential Dimensions of Becoming a Mother. In The Existential Crisis of Motherhood, ed. C. Arnold-Baker. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Badinter, E. 2010. The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women. New York: Metropolitan Books. BBC News. 2019. UK Parliament Declares Climate Change Emergency. May 1. https://www.bbc. co.uk/news/uk-­politics-­48126677. Accessed June 2020. Benatar, D. 2006. Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. BirthStrike. 2020. https://www.birthstrikeforfuture.com/faq. Accessed June 2020. Brown, J. 2019. Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work. Michigan: PM Press. Coates-Davies, J. 2020. The Experience of Being a Childfree Woman. In The Existential Crisis of Motherhood, ed. C. Arnold-Baker. London: Palgrave Macmillan. De Beauvoir, S. 1997. The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. London: Vintage. Garland, V. 2020. Existential Responsibility of Motherhood. In The Existential Crisis of Motherhood, ed. C. Arnold-Baker. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. J.  Macquarrie and E.  S. Robinson. New  York: Harper & Row. Jaspers, K. 1951. The Way to Wisdom. Trans. R. Manheim. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kierkegaard, S., 1980. The Sickness unto Death. Trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leahy, Stephen. 2019. “Climate Change Driving Entire Planet to Dangerous ‘Tipping Point.’” National Geographic, November 27. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/ earth-­tipping-­point. Accessed 3/6/2020. Lenton, T., H. Held, E. Kriegler, J.W. Hall, W. Lucht, S. Rahmstorf, and H.J. Schellnhuber. 2008. Tipping Elements in the Earth’s Climate System. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105.6 (February): 1786–1793. Lenton, T., J.  Rockström, O.  Gaffney, S.  Rahmstorf, K.  Richardson, W.  Steffen, and H.J.  Schellnhuber. 2019. Comment: Climate Tipping Points—Too Risky to Bet Against. Nature 575.28 (November): 592–595. Magnus, N. 2020. Trying to ‘Have-it-all’ by 30: Timing Motherhood. In The Existential Crisis of Motherhood, ed. C. Arnold-Baker. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Myers, T.C. 2014. Understanding Climate Change as an Existential Threat: Confronting Climate Denial as a Challenge to Climate Ethics. De Ethica. A Journal of Philosophical, Theological and Applied Ethics 1.1: 53–70. Sartre, J.P. 1943. Being and Nothingness  - An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. H. Barnes. New York: Phil. Library. Stone, A. 2019. Being Born: Birth and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tillich, P. 1952. The Courage to Be. Glasgow: Penguin Classics. Yalom, I. 1980. Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

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Claire Arnold-Baker  is a counselling psychologist and existential therapist who specializes in peri-natal mental health. She is Course Leader of the DCPsych program at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling (NSPC) in London, a joint program with Middlesex University. She is also Academic Director at NSPC, where she also teaches and offers clinical and research supervision to doctoral students. Arnold-Baker earned a master’s degree in Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling from the University of Sheffield and a DCPsych in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy from Middlesex University. She has a small clinical practice where she offers therapy, primarily to mothers and parents, as well as supervision. Her previous publications include a co-edited book Existential Perspectives on Human Issues and a co-authored book Existential Therapy: Distinctive Features, both with Prof. Emmy van Deurzen. More recently  Arnold-­Baker edited The Existential Crisis of Motherhood (2020)  a  Palgrave Macmillan publication.

Chapter 7

Stillbirth Grief, Eco-grief and Corona Grief: Reflections on Denialism Madelaine Hron

August 2019 inaugurated a season of deep grief for me, as I gave birth to my daughter, Sibyl Angélique, still. “Sibby” had been the “happy ending” of fifteen painful, grief-filled fertility cycles to have a second child, especially after an amniotic microarray test confirmed she was perfectly genetically normal. However, a routine ultrasound revealed Sibby had no heartbeat and my nightmare reality began. I was instructed to go home to wait for labour, firstly because research showed such a delay would reduce the trauma of such a birth and, secondly, because at twenty weeks, my child would legally be a stillborn, and have more “rights”. As a scholar of human rights, I was surprised to learn that in Canada, before twenty weeks, the remains of a “foetal demise” are considered “medical waste”; there is no birth/death certificate issued and no special bereavement leave granted. At twenty weeks, a stillborn is deemed more “human”: their birth/death must be legally recorded, their burial/cremation must be arranged at the hospital, and parents may be granted for up to 52 weeks leave depending on their insurance provider. Unfortunately, because of complications, I ended up giving birth two days shy of the legal designation of “stillborn”. During my gestational limbo, and later in my grief, I often found myself echoing Romeo Dallaire’s famous query: “Or are some are more human than others?” (2004, 522). To clarify: after Sibby’s death-birth, my grief for my daughter was exacerbated by the indifference, dismissal and denialism I experienced from others. Many people, including medical practitioners, minimized and relativized my experience as “just another miscarriage”, reminding me that “one in four pregnancies end prematurely” or mistaking my loss as “the expected outcome of fertility treatments”. Others urged me to “just move on” or “get over it”. Religious friends glibly expatiated on God’s will or converted Sibby into an angel. Self-help manuals reframed grief into a narrative of progress, extoling the transformation, resilience or M. Hron (*) Department of English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_7

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“post-traumatic growth” possible after grief. Most people just ignored or avoided me, deflected my sadness or shifted to tangential topics, thus reflecting the discomfort and anxiety about mortality in our grief-avoidant society. This chapter aims to grant significance to Sibby’s life by exploring the grief and denialism of pregnancy and infant loss (PAIL) in conjunction with eco-grief—the grief related to current or anticipated ecological losses—and “corona-grief”, the various griefs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike other chapters in this collection then, this one focuses on grief rather than on anxiety. Notwithstanding, grief is often present in this volume; for instance, in the previous chapter on Birthstrikers (Arnold-Baker, Chap. 6, this volume), there is deep grief associated with the decision to not bear children, which is itself a decision borne from grief about the state of planet. Similarly, in the next chapter, young children grieve the extinction of animal species (Hickman, Chap. 8, this volume), just as in a subsequent chapter, the traumatic grief of the #Metoo movement is related to ecological activism (Juliano, Chap. 10, this volume). Psychologists explain that grief and anxiety often operate in tandem, with anxiety being a common symptom or even “missing link” of the grief process: “while grief anxiety maintains many of the same characteristics as generalized anxiety, there is an underlying situational cause” (Bidwell-Smith 2018, 25). Psychologist Curt Thompson defines grief as an “interpersonal neurobiological reaction to being deprived of something—anything—to which we have a significant emotional attachment, to which we have ascribed salient meaning” (Thompson 2020). Such emotional attachments, or situational causes of grief anxiety, can range from the loss of one’s physical environment and traditional way of life in the case of eco-grief, to a missing sense of safety or routine in the case of COVID-19. With PAIL, grief anxiety can range from mourning the physicality of one’s lost child to mourning the dream of future parenthood. As a scholar of human rights, I am well acquainted with grief in my work, be it the grief of victims of violence or their families, the grief of cultural losses and failed activism efforts or the grief expressed in reconciliation efforts or commemorative practices. After Sibby’s death however, I was captivated by environmental grief, related to environmental rights. Scholars such as Cunsolo and Landman (2017) deliberate the grief all of us are experience in this age of environmental destruction and species extinction and theorize how to mourn non-human entities, from physical landscapes to animal soundscapes. Also, key is how such non-human species might respond to losses in their environment. I was deeply moved by animal grief, the mounting evidence that animals mourn too (King 2014), including beavers lamenting the loss of their habitat (Cunsolo and Landman 2017, 31). Animal maternal grief—among such varied species as elephants, primates, dolphins or orcas— particularly substantiated my own mourning for Sibby, as a “natural” or “normal” reaction, instead of a shameful or deviant one. Eco-grief scholars draw heavily on Judith Butler’s notion of the grievable that “some lives are grievable and others are not; the differential allocation of grievability… maintain certain exclusionary conceptions of…what counts as a livable life and a grievable death” (2004, xvi). Climate change denialism depends heavily on denying certain environmental losses as grievable—be they fragile ecosystems or traditional livelihoods, such as those of the

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Canadian Inuit or the Australian Wheatbelt. Similarly, meat production, which contributes significantly to environmental destruction, obfuscates the mass slaughter or cruel life conditions of livestock, let alone any mourning of these animals’ miserable lives. Maintaining  the status quo of environmental destruction and animal exploitation largely depends on denying eco-grief and its attendant mourning. Much like eco-grief, the griefs associated with COVID-19 are multi-causal. Corona-grief may stem from mundane losses, such the loss of daily routines or rites of passage such as graduation, to more abstract losses, such as the loss of safety or of social connections, and it culminates with deeper, more traumatic losses such as the loss of one’s livelihood or one’s loved ones. As COVID-19 spread, I readily recognized Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief, such as denying the severity the disease; anger with medical experts and politicians; or “bartering” with lockdown measures that, if followed, would bring life back to a pre-COVID normal. I felt great empathy for those experiencing grief symptoms such as hypervigilance, insomnia or exhaustion. As quarantine measures protracted, others were also experiencing some of the cumulative grief I faced cycle after cycle of fertility treatments, be the anxiety of living years in limbo or the anticipatory grief of future losses and disappointment. Yet, as loved ones continued dying in hospital and care facilities, I felt profoundly grateful that Sibby was born six months earlier, before COVID-19 profoundly changed mourning rituals and funeral practices. With current safety precautions, family members of coronavirus patients can generally no longer be present with their dying loved ones, holding their hands or sharing a few words as they die. Similarly, funerals and visitations for COVID victims remain small or are virtual to prevent contagion. Sadly, such practices had been standard until the 1980s as far as prenatal death was concerned—parents were encouraged not to see their deceased children, and memorial services, if held, were closed, private affairs. PAIL grief, eco-grief and corona-grief therefore correlate in many ways. Firstly, all of these events entail an unmooring of individuals’ normal lives and thrust them into a liminal stage of transition and uncertainty, where they are forced to contemplate the fragility of life and the reality of their own mortality. As environmental destruction continues,  grief, losses  and  insecurity associated with it will only become more pervasive, as global pandemics and disasters will also escalate. Moreover, these forms of grief are also often accompanied by anticipatory grief, grief that occurs before a substantive loss, be it dreading the death of a terminally ill child, awaiting a deadlier “second wave” of a pandemic or presaging the ravages of a future ecological disaster. Finally, all of these griefs are all too often dismissed or denied in our current grief-avoidant society. As such, they are “disenfranchised griefs” which psychologist Kenneth Doka defines as grief that is not openly acknowledged or ritualized by social institutions because its accompanying loss is taboo, stigmatized or disdained by the culture (1989). Disenfranchised grief is increasingly apparent in the losses and deaths associated with COVID-19, which disproportionately affect already-marginalized populations more severely, be they the elderly, the medically fragile, African Americans, undocumented migrants, refugees or those in the developing world. Moreover, commentators are already pointing to the “ultimate gaslighting” initiated by the easing of lockdown restrictions

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(Gambuto 2020), as governments and media aim to convince us that everything is back to normal and neutralize our grief and suffering by consumerism or empty choices. When deliberating disenfranchised grief, I could not help but notice to what extent denialism relies on discourses of dehumanization. Such dehumanization is particularly evident when examining the history of stillbirth. Until the 1970s, prenatal loss was largely considered taboo, and as a result, the grief associated with it was minimized or stigmatized. For the longest time, miscarried and stillborn babies were deemed defiled and dangerous liminal entities, who were not fully human. In strict Catholicism, these babies cannot be baptised, buried in consecrated ground and are condemned to Limbo for eternity. Similarly, in strict Islam, prayers are not offered to children under six, just as in orthodox Judaism, shivah is not practiced on babies less than a month old. In Anglo-Saxon cultures, babies born dead were described as non-human, as “uterine moles”, “bloody curds”, “fleshy morsels” or “a foul mass of flesh that comes to no perfection” (Bueno 2019, 9). To cite a German doctor in 1788, “not everything that comes from the birth parts of a woman is a human being” (Duden 1999, 13). There are historical examples of women, such as Mary Taft in 1726, who were tried for giving birth to animal parts, rabbits or mooncalves. Operating in these descriptions is the discourse of disgust. This discourse of disgust has  been  previously addressed  here  alongside Nietzsche’s formulation of pity (Parkhurst and Rentmeester, Chap. 5, this volume). Since Nietzsche, other theorists have also argued that disgust inhibits compassion and instead enables processes of othering and dehumanization (e.g. Nussbaum 2004; Hasan et al. 2018). In the case of miscarried babies, disgust is associated with the monstrous female body with its menses, birth trauma, menopause, etc. Even today, people continue to be squeamish about blood clots and breast milk, let alone at the sight of embryonic bodies, especially ones with physical deformities. Medical researcher Alice Lovell reports that as late as 1983, physicians routinely used words such as “disgusting” or “monsters” to refer to stillborn babies (1983, 756). Until 1980s, there was virtually no research on the emotional impact of miscarriage. Though a paper in the 1970s observed that mothers mourned for their babies even if they were born dead, it was not until 1983 that psychologists Bourne and Lewis advocated for compassionate care for parents experiencing prenatal loss (Bueno 2019). While we have come a long ways in the past 40 years, prenatal loss is not always treated as an emotional emergency, but rather as a common complication. Loved babies are still dismissed with cold, clinical terms such as foetal waste, products of conception and spontaneous abortion. With the advent of reproductive technology, parental attachment to babies happens much earlier today, as do socio-cultural understandings of foetuses as babies— with all the affective attachments of that word. With assisted reproductive technology, it is possible to determine the sex of a five-day blastocyst or watch an embryo dividing from a single cell. Ultrasounds are now ubiquitous and humanize the unborn, and in some abortion clinics, patients are required to view one before the procedure. Yet, because of the difficulties of upholding women’s reproductive rights, including the right to an abortion, prenatal bereavement and the suffering of reproductive loss can be challenging. As feminist Linda Layne explains, “The feat, in the context of

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pregnancy loss, is that if one were to acknowledge that there was something of value lost, something worth grieving in a miscarriage, one would thereby automatically accede the inherent personhood of embryos and fetuses” (2003, 240). However, acknowledging prenatal loss or humanizing prenatal babies does not necessarily entail granting foetuses personhood and rights or advocating for abortion rights. Indeed, salient here is the attachment parents feel to their unborn children—that is why I use the affective terms “baby” or “child”, terms deployed by grieving parents, rather than the clinical term “foetus.” Researchers argue that the intensity of prenatal grief depends on the degree parents considered themselves to have a “baby”— the more attached they are, the deeper their grief (Limbo and Wheeler 1986). Moreover, research shows that complicated grief, or prolonged, unabated grief, occurs when mourners cannot let go of their yearning—as evidenced in MRI imagery of affected yearning centres in the brain (Robinaugh 2016). What interests me here then is the affective connotations of loss, as well as the denial of such loss by discourses of dehumanization and disgust. Dehumanization clearly also plays a significant role in environmental denialism. Opponents to environmentalism regularly dismiss needs of the planet, ecosystems or animal species and only advocate for the rights of the human species and for human economic development. Most notably, in animal rights debates, it is clear that averring the speciest differential—that animals lack sentience, consciousness, rationality or the emotive registers that humans do—maintains the status quo which deprives animals of rights and representation. As a rights scholar, I am fully aware that similar dehumanizing claims have been deployed to divest various groups of rights, be they women, Blacks or the mentally ill. As animal rights scholar Helena Silverstein argues, such “capricious demarcations” lead to a “slippery slope argument” (1996, 50); for instance, the lack of rationality may apply to both animals, but also to comatose patients, the mentally incapacitated, small children or other marginalized groups. Such dehumanizing discourse is currently also at play with COVID-19. It is most overt in dehumanizing comments about the elderly who are most at risk from the disease; they are deemed expendable and therefore “less valuable humans” by various parties. Texas Lt.-Gov. Dan Patrick, for instance, suggested grandparents sacrifice their lives for the economy, just as Brazilian president Jair Bolsanaro suggested that rising elderly deaths would reduce pension costs in his country. Triage situations in epicenters such as Italy or New York furthered the priority of preserving valuable resources for younger patients. Like the elderly, the frail, the poor, the homeless, undocumented immigrants, African Americans or other minority groups are at higher risk of acquiring the coronavirus, but their rights, needs and suffering are regularly downplayed at the expense of safeguarding the illusion of economic prosperity and the semblance of “normal life” for the general population. Disasters magnify social inequalities and further disadvantage those who are already vulnerable. On a global scale for instance, many people lack access to clean water to practice regular handwashing, just as those living in slums and refugee camps can hardly practice social distancing. However, these distant others are even more de-­ individualized and dismissed than those at risk close to us.

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Disgust also plays an important role in both environmental and pandemic discourse. As with prenatal birth, disgust often serves to reaffirm distinctions between humans and non-humans, the latter being disgusting, contaminated or unclean. With COVID-19 for instance, negative rhetoric emphasizes the virus’ zoonotic origin and denigrates Chinese people as “bat eaters” or “dog eaters” and thus the source of the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus”. Associating disease with contaminated, disgusting less-than-human outsiders is common; for instance, the 2009 Mexican swine flu was blamed on “unsanitary” undocumented Mexican workers, just as the AIDS virus was blamed on “unclean” gays or Africans who “ate monkeys”, and the Black plague, on “dirty” Jews. The metaphors of viruses as dangerous alien “invaders” in medical discourse further naturalize this human/non-human distinction. Environmental discussions which dismantle distinctions between humans and non-­ humans may also elicit “animal reminder disgust” or disgust “which serves to avoid uncomfortable reminders of our mortal, animal nature” (Hanna and Sinnott-­ Armstrong 2018, 85). Certain aspects of environmentalism may also be deemed disgusting; for example, some people prefer bottled water because they find tap water or recycled “toilet-to-tap” water, disgusting (Rozin et al. 2015). That being said, eliciting disgust or moral outrage can also serve as an effective rhetoric for environmental conservation or animal rights. For instance, showing the obvious and disgusting cruelty that animals endure in laboratory experiments, product testing, meat or egg production may mobilize viewers to take action against these violations against these non-humans. However, images evoking disgust—such as those displaying animal cruelty—cannot be too graphic because they can “backfire… turn people off and “entrench moral convictions” (May 2018, 162), as much like images of foetuses in the abortion debate. Aside a rhetoric of moral outrage, how to counter grief denialism and its underlying dehumanization? To wrap up this chapter, I offer a couple approaches that helped me deal with my grief for Sibby and invite readers to extrapolate these avenues further in a post-COVID world. According to research, denialism—or the social silence about prenatal loss, the disavowal of its impact and “the difficulty of finding empathetic interlocutors” — are the chief complaints of bereaved parents (Layne 2003, 204). For me, PAIL support groups, both in person and online, were key to finding empathetic listeners. Community is therefore instrumental to addressing loss, just as it has been in various rights situations, be in the AIDS community in the 1980s or climate anxiety groups today. Problematically though, most PAIL groups consist mainly of members who have suffered prenatal or infant loss, unlike other rights communities which also have non-affected allies. This in-group membership dynamic may serve to foster segregation between the bereaved and those unaffected by loss. PAIL groups work counter denialism by granting significance to our grief and value to our lost children, as beloved human beings. Scrolling through online Facebook PAIL groups for instance, one notices the most obvious example of such meaning-making: hundreds upon hundreds of photographs of stillborn and miscarried babies—from embryonic stage to year old infants. Instead of labelling these corpses as disgusting or monstrous, everybody in the group affirms their value as

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cherished persons worth remembering, with such terms as “beautiful”, “precious” or “adorable”—and waxes about details regarding their bodies, posture or clothing. Similarly, the group reaffirms the parents’ role as loving affectionate parents, “sweet mamma” or “doting papa”. Lyrical, sentimental language is thus key in reaffirming these children’s humanity. Such sentimental language heralds back to the Romantics, who believed the miraculous, infinite and sublime were best found in the small, and which continues to be deployed today when beholding babies to denote the preciousness, fragility and the miracle of human life. Reflecting this sentimental language are material keepsakes or memorial items related to our cherished children. Clothing, a signifier of humanness, is particularly important in memorializing lost babies, as are ID bracelets, footprints or handprints, all of which connote humanness. For many bereaved parents, these keepsakes help counter the “realness problem” that their baby actually existed in material terms (Layne 2003, 136). These PAIL mourning practices are applicable in a post-COVID world; instead of being dismissed as mere statistics, COVID-19 victims should be treated as cherished loved ones, in their individuality, humanness and materiality. Sentimental rhetoric might also be similarly effective in countering environmental denialism. During the Australian wildfires for instance, images of dying and rescued koalas provoked much more sympathy or action than satellite images of the geographic spread of the devastation. Also evident in PAIL bereavement groups is the genre of lament, or passionate expressions of mourning often accompanied by tears, moaning or wailing. The lament was a prevalent genre in many traditional societies, but fell into disrepute with the rise of rationality and patriarchy. In Europe, for instance, professional mourners were common until the eighteenth century. These mourners, mostly women, helped communities transition or work through their pain and anger in times of mourning, largely by keening. As historians have shown (Holst-Warhaft 2000; Bourke 1988), these female lamenters became increasingly dangerous for authorities who recognized that the strong emotions provoked by grief could be subversive to the social order, be it the Irish uprisings in the sixteenth century to current riots following racist police murders. Laments are thus not merely expressions of sorrow, but also  precursors to protest, which verbalize anger and decry injustice. In my prenatal groups, lamenting not only offered parents a way to work through their loss, pain and anger, but it also served as a stepping stone to PAIL advocacy or of medical reform. I would argue that similarly, lament stemming from eco-grief or corona-grief has a significant activist role to play in a post-COVID world. To sum up, in this chapter, I have outlined some of the attributes of grief denialism, drawing on similarities between PAIL grief, eco-grief and corona-grief. In closing, I must unequivocally stipulate that such denialism, if untreated, is perniciously dangerous. On an individual level, it causes serious mental health problems for the bereaved, just as on a planetary level, such denialism can lead to very serious policies changes relating to the most “disposable” in our society—be they marginalized people, different species, indigenous ecosystems or, ultimately, our planet itself. In the end, grief is one of the most powerful emotions we will ever experience; it can drive us to the edge of madness. However, denying such grief will not

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change anything—on the contrary, it will only perpetuate a dehumanizing status quo. So let us work to channel our grief into grievance and our private laments into communal action, so as to draw on our grief to transform our broken world.

References Bidwell-Smith, Claire. 2018. Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief. Boston: Da Capo Press. Bourke, Angela. 1988. The Irish Traditional Lament and the Grieving Process. Women’s Studies International Forum 2 (4): 287–291. Bueno, Julia. 2019. The Brink of Being: Talking About Miscarriage. New York: Penguin. Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. Cunsolo, Ashlee and Karen Landman, eds. 2017. Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of. Ecological Loss and Grief. Montreal: McGill University Press. Dallaire, Roméo. 2004. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Toronto: Vintage Canada. Doka, Kenneth. 1989. Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow. Lexington: Lexington Books. Duden, Barbara. 1999. The Fetus on the ‘Farther Shore’: Toward a History of the Unborn. In Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions, ed. Lynn Morgan and Meredith Michaels, 13–43. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gambuto, Julio Vincent. 2020. Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting, April 10. Available from https://forge.medium.com/prepare-­for-­the-­ultimate-­gaslighting-­6a8ce3f0a0e0. Hanna, Eleanor, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. 2018. Disgusting Discrepancies: Threat Compensation. In The Moral Psychology of Disgust, ed. Nina Strohminger, 83–102. London: Rowan & Littlefield. Hasan, Zoya, Aziz Huq, Martha Nussbaum, and Vidhu Verma, eds. 2018. The Empire of Disgust Prejudice, Discrimination, and Policy in India and the US. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Holst-Warhaft, Gail. 2000. The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political Uses. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. King, Barbara. 2014. How Animals Grieve. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Layne, Linda. 2003. Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America. New York: Routledge. Limbo, Rana, and Sara Wheeler. 1986. When a Baby Dies: A Handbook for Healing. La Crosse: Lutheran Hospital Foundation. Lovell, Alice. 1983. Some Questions of Identity: Late Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Perinatal Loss. Social Science & Medicine 17 (11): 755–761. May, Joshua. 2018. The Limits of Appealing to Disgust. In The Moral Psychology of Disgust, ed. Nina Strohminger, 151–170. London: Rowan & Littlefield. Nussbaum, Martha. 2004. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Robinaugh, Donald. 2016. Yearning and Its Measurement in Complicated Grief. Journal of Loss and Trauma 21 (5): 410–420. Rozin, Paul, Brent Haddad, Carol Nemeroff, and Paul Slovic. 2015. Psychological Aspects of the Rejection of Recycled Water: Contamination, Purification and Disgust. Judgment and Decision making 10 (1): 50–63. Silverstein, Helena. 1996. Unleashing Rights: Law, Meaning, and the Animal Rights Movement. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Thompson, Curt. 2020. Inflammation of the Heart, April 21. Available from https://curtthompsonmd.com/inflammation-­of-­the-­heart/.

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Madelaine Hron, PhD,   is an associate professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. She is the author of Translating Pain: Immigrant Suffering in Literature and Culture (2009), and of various articles and chapters related to grief, trauma, human right issues, African literature, and Rwanda post-genocide. She has published in such varied journals as Research in African Literature, Peace Review, Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies, Forum in Modern Language Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, French Literature Studies, and Slavonic and East European Review. Three of Hron’s recent chapters include “Imbabazi, Kwicuza & Christian Testimonials of Forgiveness,” Rwanda After 1994: Stories of Change (2019); “‘Reel’ Refugees: Inside and Outside the Camp,” Refugee Writing: Contemporary Research Across the Humanities (2019); and “Teaching About Torture, or, Reading Between the Lines in the Humanities,” Witnessing Torture: Perspectives of Torture Survivors and Human Rights Workers (2018).

Chapter 8

Saving the Other, Saving the Self: Exploring Children’s and Young People’s Feelings About the Coronavirus, Climate, and Biodiversity Crises Caroline Hickman

‘No, you just don’t get it. I am growing up in a world where I know that there won’t be Polar Bears, they will be gone, can you imagine how that feels?’

His words stopped me. This 10-year-old was cross and frustrated with me because whilst I seemed to understand some of his feelings, I clearly did not fully understand, and how could I? Our reality was different in an important way. I had to acknowledge that I did not know what it was like for a child to know this, and it was hard to imagine. I could take my adult knowledge about these threatened bears and assimilate it with my awareness of the fragility of their environment and their struggle to survive the changes; but this was my adult understanding. I struggled to imagine how it might feel to be a child who had been shown pictures of these wonderful animals, who had been raised on storybooks about bears and kangaroos and whales and bugs and birds, and who was now becoming aware that they were unlikely to survive their lifetime. That their children might have to have books written about Polar Bears that resembled current children’s books about dinosaurs. As creatures from the past, their extinction was witnessed in our lifetime. We frequently use our own experiences of childhood and “growing up” to help us connect with and understand children, and I am wondering if we need to now rethink this given the different world that today’s children and young people are discovering, one of borderlands (Bernstein 2005) between the world we grew up in and the world that they are inhabiting and inheriting. Because of failure to act to prevent the climate and biodiversity crisis, these worlds are both similar and different. Do we need to stretch our imagination to understand what that is doing to children and young people today, not just how this is impacting on their outer world, but also their inner landscape of “eco-anxiety”, of hope and despair, their relationship

C. Hickman (*) Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_8

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with adults, and their imagined futures. This was the work I was immersed in before February 2020 when the coronavirus arrived and changed things. This chapter is the story of how my conversations with children and young people talking about their “eco-anxiety” and feelings about the climate and biodiversity crisis began to transform as we increasingly felt the impact of the coronavirus. It is the story of how they struggled to find ways to try to make me understand their increased despair and frustration as the Western world seemed to suddenly leap into action in response to the immediate threat from COVID-19 and as the climate and biodiversity crisis appeared to be pushed into the shadows and off the front page. Not that the climate and biodiversity crisis has ever received much front-page attention. It is the story of how for many young people disbelief and despair at the adult world’s inaction in tackling climate change became crystallised, deepened, and worsened. For some, their hopes of COP26 were dashed. For others, watching the continued deliberate destruction of rainforests even as the links between biodiversity loss and the risk from pandemics was discussed in the press, and melting ice from record temperatures in the arctic reinforced their disillusionment and hopelessness that the adult world could make the necessary links between the coronavirus, biodiversity loss, and climate change, or be able to ever care enough about their futures to change the story from one of short-term to long-term response to these global threats. Some of these conversations have been research interviews, others are discussions with young people about activism, and some extracts from therapy sessions used with permission (and encouragement) from the young people are concerned. All are presented anonymously. We are living in a time in which more and more people are waking up and speaking out about the pain of our disconnection, loneliness, and fragmentation, and also recognising our longing for reconnection to self and other, imagined and heard through other pained voices in this volume, including Juliano. We are living in times where systemic “othering” (Duncan 2018) through seeing the non-human natural world as the enemy to be controlled or dominated or exploited contrasts with the longing to “save” it, and ourselves. There are increasingly desperate warnings about the climate and biodiversity crisis; daily. We have known of this crisis for decades and failed to take action, “ours is the last generation that will have the choice of wilderness, clear air, abundant wildlife, and expansive forests. The crisis is that severe” (Foreman 1991, ix). The difference now, however, is that as more and more people are waking up, at the same time many of the children and young people today are speaking out and asking the painful question why have we not acted before now? How people in the global west and northern industrial nations perceive and emotionally respond to climate change has been clearly detailed by Pihkala in the introduction to this volume, further discussed by Weintrobe (2013), Hamilton (2013), Randall (2009), Lertzman (2015), Norgaard (2011), and Albrecht (2019). Emotions including anger, anxiety, guilt, grief, shame, fear, helplessness, trauma, and solastalgia have all been documented. There has been less research on how children feel about the climate crisis with most research focused on the impact of climate change “on” children rather than asking them how they feel about it. This exposes an

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approach to children’s participation in these debates underpinned by an attitude of “othering”, reductively labelling them as different. Any “othering” narrative splits “us” from “them”, and at its most extreme, “they” are stripped of humanity (Dalal 2006). So, whilst children and young people have historically often been marginalised or left out of discussions about climate change, in fact “they ought to be central to these debates because they, as well as future generations—have a much larger stake in the outcome than we do” (Currie and Deschenes 2016, 4). This is being challenged increasingly as youth climate strikers strive to be heard. I have been interviewing children and young people about their feelings about the climate and biodiversity crisis since 2015, speaking with young people in the UK, the Maldives, Nigeria, and Bangladesh. One thing is striking to me from these conversations; whilst their circumstances and geography may be very different, their stories and feelings are similar, often arguing that they see and experience the climate and biodiversity crisis differently to many adult narratives and that this is understood is important to them. These conversations have mostly preceded the emergence of the youth climate strikes and Greta Thunberg school strikes, inspiring children and young people globally to speak out and take action. I say this only to note that one of the criticisms of the youth climate strikers is that they are frightening children and that other children may be copying their fear-based narratives. Greta Thunberg in particular has been accused of “doom mongering” as she challenges adults on their lack of action. As many of the conversations outlined here are dated before, this time I would argue that they represent children and young people’s autonomously developed views. I would also reframe the criticism of Greta and the youth climate strikers as possibly stemming from a conscious desire to silence young people who are speaking uncomfortable or unbearable truths, or an unconscious desire to silence them in order to reduce the anxiety in adults generated by their honest emotional expression and challenge. In these interviews young people often talk about how the climate and biodiversity crisis affects their futures directly but to simply focus on age differences would be to oversimplify the debate and also would risk disallowing adults’ own complex emotions, outlined above and throughout this volume. What all the voices I have been listening to and throughout this volume share might be framed as a longing to be heard and understood. I had identified and started to analyse two main themes from this research, children’s empathetic relationship with (non-human) nature and climate change personified as a destructive vengeful force (Hickman 2019, 41–59). Most children interviewed responded spontaneously to a general question about climate change by connecting it relationally to the impact on the non-human natural world: “it’s not good, animals are dying”, “I’m sad, my friends the fish are dying”, and “it’s the adults who are doing this to children and animals, we are being hurt by them together”. These children expressed a strong empathy and concern beyond that of fear for their own survival through showing care for animals and an awareness that this vulnerability of “others” was connected directly to the fate of humanity. The impact of relationship with the natural world on adult and children’s mental health and well-being has been extensively written about by Abram (1996), Louv (2008, 2019), Duncan (2018), Arvay (2018), Monbiot (2017), Macfarlane (2015),

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and Griffiths (2013), but this immediate empathy and identification from children were striking. For them, this relationship was intact, alive, and embodied. It reminded me of Foreman (1991, viii): “We live in perilous times. The peril is of our own making, and many of us probably deserve it. But the children, and the native peoples of this world, and, most important, all the other species sashaying around in this great dance of life don’t deserve the peril we have created”; Zegers (2019) argues that we need to find a way to think of human/nature relatedness in relation to climate change, and Duncan (2018, 2) talks about how humans have “fallen out of the dance with nature” as he argues that humans seem to be continuously out of step with the rest of nature. Climate change personified as a destructive vengeful force has also been something of a surprise (or unwelcome shock) to some parents who sat listening during research interviews with their child. I was met by one parent as I arrived to interview their 10-year old with the comment “I don’t think he even knows much about climate change, let alone worries about it, only to shortly afterwards watch the same parents face change from one of uncertainty to horror as they listened to their child (happily) describe climate change as resembling a continent-sized lizard that was crawling across the earth, eating endlessly, whilst rotting from the inside out so the horrible flesh was falling away and scales were being left trodden into the earth as it rotted and died but kept eating and eating until there was nothing left for people or other animals to eat. From which, I concluded that children could perfectly well construct an understanding of climate change in relation to consumption, destruction, and greed using a metaphor of the rotting lizard. And that this could equally be applied back to their own precarious position, with another young person describing climate change as like Thanos in the Avengers End Game film “the ideology is to kill off half the planet so that the other half can thrive, but the problem is, we are the half being killed off”. These children seem to me to be very much “in step” with both nature and the continued destruction of the planet that they cannot turn away from; this causes them considerable “eco-anxiety” as they often feel powerless to stop this from happening. The age for taking the environment for granted is long past, it all now needs to be about the future, you need to listen to us young people.

My experience was that these young people were uncompromisingly clear sighted and under few illusions about the different shapes their future would be taking. They were well informed about the warming planet, rising sea levels, deforestation, melting ice, and biodiversity loss and clearly saw how this would impact in turn on their lives. This is from a 15-year old who does not identify as a climate activist, and he lives in a country in which such activism would not be tolerated, so he holds these views but cannot take action on these concerns: We always create what we are afraid of, and we always fear death, so we have created our own death and the apocalypse.

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Or this is from a UK-based self-identified climate crisis-aware young person who is free to protest I almost don’t dare protest any longer, it leaves me feeling such despair. I get my hopes up that people will listen to the science, that the facts will have an impact and change people’s behaviour, but then…. no, nothing changes, and I have to face my despair again, only worse.

So, it is clear to me that we are culpable in causing distress and despair in children and young people, not just in the face of the realities of the climate and biodiversity crisis, whilst this of course causes sadness and anger. But there is greater distress directly caused by the denial, disavowal, and disinformation (Lertzman 2015) that they see being perpetuated by the adult world around them. This is from a UK-based 10-year old: It’s the adults who have ruined this world for the children.

We can argue in Europe and the USA about whether talking with children about climate change is causing them greater anxiety and debate how we should be talking with and teaching children about climate change in our schools; but I would argue that we need to also remember that young people are online, they are finding out for themselves, and many do not need us to educate them about this. We also need to be aware that many young people do not have the option of taking action as their culture would not tolerate it, or it may simply be too high a risk for black and minority ethnic young people to face arrest and confrontation with authorities. So, when thinking about talking with children about climate change we need to remember that these differences, and for some, often those children facing the immediate threat of climate change in the global south, it could be an academic or theoretical dilemma. It may be too dangerous for them to speak out. I had thought it was tough enough to listen to what young people were telling me they felt about the climate crisis… and then it got a lot worse…. Since February 2020, I have also been talking about the coronavirus in relation to climate change with children and young people, raising some powerful differences in how children and young people as opposed to many adults are perceiving the coronavirus, in comparison with that posed by climate change. Worryingly, I have noticed that the response to the threat of the coronavirus in rapid mobilisation of public concern, social change, and resources, economic shut down (if only temporary) and the capacity to engage in rapid adjustments have led to increased despair in many of the children and young people I have been speaking with because they ask why this cannot be acted on in relation to the climate and biodiversity crisis which they see poses a greater urgent long term threat. This despair is hard to listen to, harder to hear, and even worse for them to bear, and it provides a mirror to adults that can be difficult to look into. What struck me immediately in February was that many young people I was speaking with had a good understanding of the interconnection between the coronavirus and climate change and biodiversity loss, but I did not see this connection being made as readily in many adults. It is possible of course that adults’ concerns about the climate crisis were being overshadowed in the short term by a shift in

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priorities to economic survival with loss of work, anxiety about furlough arrangements, closure of many public events and arts and hospitality industries, rapidly rising numbers of illness and deaths, school closures, and trying to home school your children whilst working from home and a need to take care of vulnerable relatives. So yes, it could be argued that children and young people may not have been shouldering the complexities of this need to respond to the coronavirus and perhaps also were more sheltered from the economic stress and anxiety about survival felt by adults. However, public perception of the more immediate threat of COVID-19 had shifted attention away from the climate crisis, and many of the young people I spoke with understood this: The virus is scary and needs to be taken seriously, but it still frustrates me that suddenly everyone seems to be leaping into action to deal with this, when there has been such little action over the much greater threat in the longer term of the climate crisis.

I think it would be too simplistic, defensive, and pejorative an argument to suggest that these young people were less afraid of COVID-19 because it seemed (at least initially) to be far more threatening to older populations and less serious a threat to children and younger people, and they often raised this issue with me unprompted: I’m worried for myself, my friends, my family and especially my grandparents, of course it’s scary, but it is nothing compared to the enormous threat of the climate crisis, that’s much bigger, and I just don’t get why people can’t see this, that’s what’s driving me crazy.

Notably, some young people had facts and figures researched and immediately to hand to help make sense of their arguments, to try to articulate this greater distress. I could not fact check everything some of them told me, possibly because of the sheer quantity of the data, my own inability to deal with the quantification of human suffering, or possibly because part of me was also brought up against my own struggle to listen to their pain. This emphasis on facts seemed to me to be a form of desperately returning to a logical and rational need to try to make sense of “why” such urgent action could be taken over the coronavirus as opposed to the climate crisis. But rational argument just did not square with the facts, nor reduce their distress, if anything it increased it: Do you know that many more people die every year of air pollution than of COVID? That’s why I am so frustrated, why can’t people see that air pollution is so much more of a threat.

And if I failed to convey a deep enough empathetic response or show understanding, I was reminded by being brought back from the facts to the personal repeatedly: I could live to see a day when there are more dead species than living. I could live to see hundreds of millions of people die annually, and yet be completely ignored. Disasters surpassing the scale of mythology in real time, be normalised.

A 14-year-old boy trying to find the words to describe his distress and suicidal feelings that had been made significantly worse from watching the world’s response to COVID-19, just could not find a way to bridge the lack of logic and rationale with what he was seeing. Left with his confusion and hurt he struggled with the

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problem—he felt he either had to accept that other people just did not care, or were fundamentally stupid, or that his feelings just did not make any sense, or were simply wrong. Desperate to be understood and to find understanding for himself he told me I’ve tried to raise alarm in my family, and with others, I’ve tried to usher them out of complacency, but I appear to still be the only one that is afraid of numbers, or reacting to what’s happened, what’s happening, and what would happen. Because I’m just petrified of what I could live to see.

The world is currently like an embodied horror film for this young man, but he is far from alone, and his fears were echoed to me by other young people What I don’t understand is why people are not running around screaming when we are told to prepare for 4 degrees of warming this week, how do you prepare for that!? It’s impossible. And yet people are just carrying on as usual and think that recycling will make a difference. Not to 4 degrees of warming it won’t.

Alongside the fears and frustration that the climate crisis is being side-lined, I also hear some faint hope still that perhaps the response to the coronavirus might also show people what can be done in a crisis, that this level of change is possible, and that perhaps the clear waters in Venice, clean skies in India, and other images from around the world might inspire people to re-evaluate what is important and make longer term changes more permanent. But in the next breath, I also hear them say “but the climate crisis is the silent omnipresent enemy to deal with, and I heard that people are shooting wolves by helicopter and giving the virus to remote tribes in the Amazon, so it’s hard to have hope”. This movement between hope and despair is exhausting and dispiriting and ultimately perhaps a false dichotomy. Neither hope nor despair fundamentally offers refuge from the uncertainty that the climate and biodiversity crisis engenders for humanity. What strikes me is through the coronavirus these climate crisis-aware young people are being left to hold increasingly complex feelings of frustration and despair as they see the climate emergency takes second place in people’s minds “I can feel more alone than ever before, I need to talk with others who haven’t forgotten”. So, we need to understand this, and them, and get alongside them urgently to help create different stories and alternative futures to the “let’s get back to normal and build back better” narrative that alienates them still further from what they perceive to be the greater threats being faced. In trying to talk about his logical and rational conclusion that suicide would be the only solution he can turn to in order to get some sense of agency or control over his future if nothing else starts to change externally in the world he said to me “That is how it feels. To live among those who don’t make sense”. In this volume, Juliano talks powerfully about containing and coalescing into a culture of care, maybe imagine ourselves moving closer to these children’s experiences could support that. Just as Silent Spring (Carson 1962) woke up many of us to the urgent need to change, perhaps the coronavirus could catalyse an awakening for many more now. We need to find more imaginal pathways to help make sense of these problems both “with” and “for” these children and young people, to “stretch our hearts wide

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enough” to accept their despair, learn to listen to them, not try to fix them because their frustration makes perfect sense, and make sure they are not alone with their painful awareness. This child needs to not be left feeling this way “that is how it feels. To live among those who don’t make sense”.

References Abram, David. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books. Albrecht, Glenn A. 2019. Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press. Arvay, Clemens G. 2018. The Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature. Boulder: Sounds True. Bernstein, Jerome. 2005. Living in the Borderland: The Evolution of Consciousness and the Challenge of Healing Trauma. London/New York: Routledge. Carson, Rachel. 1962. Silent Spring. London: Penguin Books. Currie, Janet, and Oliver Deschenes. 2016. Children and Climate Change: Introducing the Issue. The Future of Children 26 (1): 3–9. Dalal, Farhad. 2006. Racism: Processes of Detachment, Dehumanisation, and Hatred. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 75: 131–161. Duncan, Roger. 2018. Nature in Mind: Systemic Thinking and Imagination in Ecopsychology and Mental Health. London/New York: Routledge. Foreman, Dave. 1991. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks. Griffiths, Jay. 2013. Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape. London: Penguin Books. Hamilton, Clive. 2013. What History Can Teach Us About Climate Change Denial. In Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Sally Weintrobe, 16–32. London: Routledge. Hickman, Caroline. 2019. Children and Climate Change: Exploring Children’s Feelings About Climate Change Using Free Association Narrative Interview Methodology. In Climate Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster, ed. Paul Hoggett, 41–59. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lertzman, Renee. 2015. Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement. London: Routledge. Louv, Richard. 2008. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books. ———. 2019. Our Wold Calling: How Connecting with Animals Can Transform Our Lives—And Save Theirs. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books. Macfarlane, Robert. 2015. Landmarks. London: Penguin Books. Monbiot, George. 2017. Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. London: Verso. Norgaard, Kari M. 2011. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Randall, Rosemary. 2009. Loss and Climate Change: The Cost of Parallel Narratives. Ecopsychology 1 (3): 118–129. Weintrobe, Sally. 2013. Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London/New York: Routledge. Zegers, Rembrandt. 2019. Leading with Nature in Mind. In Climate Psychology: On Indifference to Disaster, ed. Paul Hoggett, 177–193. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Caroline Hickman  is an integrative psychosynthesis psychotherapist and a lecturer at the University of Bath, UK. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA), for which she has been developing an o­ utreach program of trainings and workshops for schools and counsellors supporting people dealing with eco-anxiety. Caroline is also creating a series of podcasts on climate psychology and eco-anxiety called Climate Crisis Conversations: Catastrophe or Transformation. She researches children’s and young people’s feelings about the climate and biodiversity crises, including eco-anxiety and eco-grief, using a psychosocial free association methodology to uncover and explore different stories, narratives and images around our defenses against the difficult truths of the climate and bio-diversity crises, as well as hidden and less conscious feelings about.

Chapter 9

Participating in the Wound of the World: A Matrixial Rethinking of Eco-anxiety Christoph Solstreif-Pirker

Eyes, world-blind, in the fissure of dying: I come, callous growth in my heart. I come. Moon-mirror rock-face. Down. (Shine spotted with breath. Blood in streaks.) Soul forming clouds, close to the true shape once more. Ten-finger shadow, clamped. Eyes world-blind, eyes in the fissure of dying, eyes, eyes: The snow-bed under us both, the snow-bed. Crystal on crystal, meshed deep as time, we fall, we fall and lie there and fall. And fall: We were. We are. We are one flesh with the night. In the passages. Passages. (Celan 1995, 123)

C. Solstreif-Pirker (*) Professor for Aesthetic Education, Independent Artist, Psychotherapist-in-Training, Department of Art and Media Education, University College of Teacher Education Styria, Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected]

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In this Darkest Hour In her statement at a symposium on the involvement of artists in the Climate Justice Movement,1 the desperation of a young climate activist burst forth with all of its force: anxiety prevented her from falling asleep while she saw the existential orientation toward planetary destruction as the only reality of the present. In this darkest hour, where she and other fellow humans felt themselves being exposed to an indefinite threat of the future, it was high time for her to initiate a radical, irrevocable change, based on the narratives of loss, separation, hopelessness, sacrifice, and death. Her gaze was fixed on “the fissure of dying” and her urgent desire for the collective fall from the world’s night-black “rock-face” (Celan 1995, 123) became all too apparent. Fears of planetary extinction and imminent doom, coupled with dimensions of intangible anxiety, however, are not only an issue for activists. The prevailing discourse on nature, the environment and ecology, and the current anthropocenic epoch in general, manifests itself in various dimensions of threat, invasion, violence, and destruction. Timothy Morton (2016) even observed that “the Anthropocene is Nature in its toxic nightmare form” (59). According to him, the anthropocenic entanglement of human and geological scales creates nothing less than a “dark-ecological loop: a strange loop (…) in which two levels that appear utterly separate flip into one another” (7). However, this view of the threatening “strangeness” (92) of the planetary environment is by no means Morton’s invention. Rather, it is the continuation of a millennia-old philosophical legacy, which set-in with the establishment of the first cultural landscapes in the Middle East and was inscribed in the tradition of Western thought by Kant’s Noumenon (Kant 2000): the phenomenon of an inaccessible and incomprehensible Other existing outside of any human understanding. While until some time ago, this Other was separated from the homocentric interior space by an imaginary borderline, such a dualism ceased to exist since the middle of the last century. Today, humanity finds itself in an “ecological age in which we know full well that there is no ‘away’ (…) Nor is there Nature as opposed to the human world” (Morton 2016, 78). However, it would be a fallacy to believe that the anthropocene has abolished established dichotomies or even reconciled them. What better characterizes the contemporary eco-political situation is an intensified polarity between human and nonhuman agencies, as the negative dynamics of otherness have completely saturated the planetary reality. Claire Arnold-Baker (Chap. 6, this volume) accurately describes the contemporary planetary state when she highlights that “the climate emergency has therefore placed awareness of human mortality at the forefront of our existence.” In this intensified polarity, an equally condensed anxiety about the unknown and deadly invasion of a cosmic catastrophe unfolds, which for Morton even has an “ontological” (77) dimension. Here, Morton’s existential-ecological view refers to the Heideggerian ontology that understands human existence in the exclusiveness of its “temporality”  “Barricading the Ice Sheets: Conference on Artists in the Climate Justice Movement,” Camera Austria, Graz, Austria, February 28–29, 2020. 1

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(Heidegger 1996, 15). By introducing this term, Heidegger clarifies that “being” can only be understood as a whole when it is viewed in its orientation toward its end. For Heidegger, “being” denotes a “being-toward-death” (233), which characterizes the essence of “being-in-the-world” (49). To him, dwelling in the world means the confrontation with the characteristics of the world, namely the temporal progression toward the end, which humans have to accept in order to exist. This lifelong confrontation with the death-bearing world implies that in the face of this “threatening” (174) and intangible otherness, each subject develops a form of existential “Angst” [anxiety] (174). “That about which one has Angst is being-in-the-world as such (…) what Angst is about is the world as such” (174–175) is an axiom that also applies to the present view of the planetary environment. Therefore, it is little surprise when Morton (2016) speaks of an all-encompassing “dark ecology” and of “anxiety” as “the basic mode of ecological awareness” (130), which determine thinking and acting with and on this planet. A crucial point in this philosophical overview now is the hypothesis that anxiety about the threatening otherness of the world implies the exclusive maintenance of one’s being. The temporal “facticity” (Heidegger 1996, 52) of being toward her/his own end is linked to the fact that “mortality (…) concerns our responsibility towards ourselves and our individual lives” (Arnold-Baker, Chap. 6, this volume). Emmanuel Levinas (1990) goes so far as to argue that this egocentrism leads to war, suffering, and destruction. Precisely because of “being-­ thrown-­into-the-world” (Heidegger 1996, 320), the eyes of human beings are “world-blind” (Celan 1995, 123) and their thoughts and actions are “clamped” (123) in the darkness of their “ten-finger shadow” (123), which revolves around themselves. Essentially, Heidegger’s (1996) ontological theories, like Morton’s (2016) ecological theories, exclude any possibility of a decentration and opening of human subjectivity. They remain linked to the death-oriented narratives of homocentric anxiety, which result in an eco-anxious and “callous growth” (Celan 1995, 123) of the human “heart.” In this entanglement, the question arises: Could a re-­ positioning of the correlation of being/anxiety/otherness lead human feeling and acting into manifold, hopeful, world-open paths beyond egocentric narratives of doom? Is the planetary Other possibly much less alien and destructive than currently postulated? (Fig. 9.1).

Weaving Threads, Weaving Threats Bracha Ettinger (2011), within the framework of her Matrixial Theory, presents an alternative view of the concept of anxiety. She based her approach upon an etymological observation: There is this human condition described in Hebrew by the word ‘de’aga’ with its verb ‘lid’og’ (and its root ‘d.a.g’) that means to worry and have concern for, to take care for and about. I am concerned and involved as I take care, I care for your needs while I worry about you. (Ettinger 2011, 3)

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Fig. 9.1  Exulting Matters: On the Spatial Doxology of Alpine Sounds. (Performance, Monte Croce di Comelico, Veneto, Italy, 2017. © Christoph Solstreif-Pirker)

Anxiety, in Ettinger’s concept, is not situated within a threatening framework that builds on the power of a destructive and invading cosmos and the seclusion of the self. Instead, what she suggests is anxiety as “concerned arousal,” which “calls me to transgress my subjective boundaries” (Ettinger 2011, 4). Here, anxiety is meant as the actualization of a state of mutual concern when care shifts from one’s own being to “an outside that entered my limits” (11). Thus, being expands from a mere being-for-itself and within-itself into a permeable subjectivity that opens itself to the Other in its otherness. Transferred to a planetary view, this consequently means that the world no longer constitutes the transcendental background, against which the “thrownness” (Heidegger 1996, 127) of being takes place. Instead, the world is one that is incessantly forming in interaction with the human subject. Ettinger (2011) illustrates this by referring to the procedures of “co-naissance” (7), in which traces of subjects and objects become “trans-scribed and cross-scribed” (7) into one another. Anxiety as “thinking-feeling in the worrying-caring wondering-admiring” (12) means nothing less than the awareness of these plural processes of inscription and constitution, which are based on mutual care, dependence, and trust. This awareness manifests itself in incessantly occurring encounters, which only represent “a choice, an option, a gift” (7) and demand an ever new decision for them. In affirmative moments, they can transform into fragile movements of psycho-­ planetary plurality: “we fall and lie there and fall” (Celan 1995, 123). Such trans-­ subjective and trans-objective communality suggests that the Other consists of traces of my “I”, just as my “I” is constituted by traces of the Other. The

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abandonment of the Other involves the abandonment of the “I”, just as the devotion to the Other initiates the emergence of my “I”: “once you carry, you are carried too” (Ettinger 2015b, 355). With this relational paradigm, the Heideggerian “being-­ towards-­death” can be transferred to a “being-toward-birthing with being-towards-­ birth” (Ettinger 2019). For Ettinger, this paradigm does not imply a mere reversal of the concepts of death and birth, but a reference to the profound relational constitution of human subjectivity. A specifically feminine perspective on being and becoming is expressed here, which Ettinger (1992) calls “matrix” or “the matrixial.” Matrix refers to the Latin noun matrix, which means mother, but also uterus and womb. With the Matrixial Theory, Ettinger questions “several basic assumptions in psychoanalytic theory about (…) the differences between the sexes and the characterization of the feminine and the masculine” (Ettinger 1992, 176–177), by making use of the prenatal connection between the unborn child and the mother in the womb-space as constitutive of any subjectivity. Matrixial theory does not deal with the distant, threatening, and totalitarian Other, but with “a network of subject and Other in transformation linked in special ways in subjectivity” (195). The equation, anxiety = Other, is transformed from a male-phallic schema centered on death and destructive anxiety into a trans-subjective and trans-objective network of vibrant responsibility. This manifold feminine fabric links to the facilitation and affirmation of an ever-new “encounter-event” (Ettinger 2015b, 357) and mutual resonance in the present. The temporal orientation toward one’s end is abolished, as one’s end is primarily dependent on the present relational encounter with the Other. Instead of following a teleological narrative, there is a condensation and knotting of thread-­ like relations in the present and a focus on the becoming, creating, and birthing of alternative ethical forms of thought and praxis. Anxiety, anchored in the light of the matrixial “worry-caring wonder arousal” (Ettinger 2011, 6), means to live in and with the joys and traumas of “the [O]ther, nature, and the cosmos” (Ettinger 2019, 200), and to be alive only when the “gift” (Ettinger 2011, 7) to “carry without sacrificing” (Ettinger 2015b, 365) has been accepted and unfolded. Here, anxiety is “metramorphosing” (Ettinger 1999a, 92) the narratives of death into living processes of mutual becoming and emergence (Fig. 9.2).

Towards the Psycho-planetary Bracha Ettinger’s Matrixial Theory, with its alternative reading of anxiety, sheds entirely new light on the phenomenon of current eco-anxiety. Anxiety is deprived of its invasive, destructive, and death-centered connotation and, instead, is understood as a positive, hopeful phenomenon of mutual compassion and concern. Anxiety as “worry-caring wonder arousal” (Ettinger 2011, 6) underlines the importance of the present encounter with the Other and the mutual opening and “self-fragilization” (Ettinger 2015a, 345) aiming to inscribe me to the Other and have the Other inscribed in me. The trauma of the Other is not to be understood individually, but collectively, as it also represents my trauma. This view opens the proto-ethical

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Fig. 9.2  Exulting Matters: On the Spatial Doxology of Alpine Sounds. (Performance, Monte Croce di Comelico, Veneto, Italy, 2017. © Christoph Solstreif-Pirker)

possibility of carrying the trauma of the Other and traversing it in a caring way. Formulating such a proto-ethical interplay includes in the realization that “anxiety can become an energy – a driving force – that can place the focus back on living in a creative way and how we want to live our lives” (Arnold-Baker, Chap. 6, this volume). Departing from these structural aspects, the Matrixial unfolds and motivates an innovative stance as to how to approach the anthropocenic environment and its traumatized ecological layers. Finally, this also offers treatment approaches that, beyond established clinical applications, focus on the coexistence and mutual interconnectedness of psychic and planetary spheres, thus lending the Matrixial a significant ethical and political relevance. But how, consequently, might such a new psycho-planetary paradigm be represented and applied in the context of the anthropocenic discourses of planetary downfall? Celan (1995) proposes the concept of unbounded devotion to an unknown communality: “The snow-bed under us both (…) Crystal on crystal, meshed deep as time, we fall, we fall and lie there and fall” (123). In Celan’s poem, the matrixial communality takes place due to the awareness of an interdependent entanglement and participation in the emergence of the present. Through the realization of always having been (em-)bedded on a nonhuman “snow-bed” and to not only “fall” into ruin but also “lie (…) crystal on crystal” (123), subjectivity can be understood as a plural, trans-human “we” in a space “meshed deep as time.” Such a view bears aspects of the performative, when performance means “to complete a more or less involved process rather than do a single deed or act” (Turner 1992, 91). Indeed, Ettinger also points at this performative character of involvement when she defines the matrixial “worry-caring wonder arousal” (Ettinger 2011, 6) as “direct contacting with the wounds and the scars of the world, with the traces of the outside when they scarify me and I sense the

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overwhelmedness of the Other and the Cosmos in their difference from me, while circumventing my narcissistic investment in my-self (…) I am con-cerned, ‘do’eget’: interested, involved, affected, connected, related, implicated, solicitous, caring, attentive to, considerate of and also worried, anxious, upset, perturbed, troubled, distressed, uneasy, apprehensive, not passive but aroused” (13). This multifaceted involvement and devotion to the traumatic present is based on a significant feminine analogy, between involvement and the emergence of the child during pregnancy, and entails a radical redefinition of the relationship between humans and nature, which presents itself as a literal participation in fragile processes of individuation. Deleuze and Guattari see such relatedness in the concept of “becoming-molecular” (Deleuze and Guattari 2005, 233). The Ettingerian idea of anxiety, however, assumes a mutation of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s antioedipal vitalism. Instead of essentialist molecularity, it focuses on the fragility of cosmic cycles and trans-subjective and trans-objective transitions, in a manner that one might describe as becoming-­crystal. “The Subreal breath crystal is invisible (…) Suddenly – I breathe with the crystal’s breath. Suddenly – I am seen by it” (Ettinger 2015a, b, 360). Anxiety is not negated in these procedures but merges as awing, interdependent, and interflowing processuality into new forms of thought and action with/in the anthropocenic present. In such a crystallizing process of mutual transition of psychic and physical states of matter, the performative moment is key to the explanation of the matrixial eco-­ anxiety. Performance expands from an artistic act into a radical political and therapeutic project that, with the involved view of eco-anxiety, transfers ossified and separatist narratives into an all-embracing present plurality, “We were. We are” (Celan 1995, 123). This matrixial reading of eco-anxiety, correlating with the procedures of becoming-crystal, even makes it possible to initiate a performative walking “in the passages.” Such a passage, such a view from “the snow-bed under us both,” can lead to previously unknown horizons “meshed deep as time.” (Fig. 9.3)

Snowcomfort: Embracing the Night The matrixial “(self-) fragilization” (Ettinger 2015a, 345) of one’s subjectivity in processes of becoming-crystal enables eco-anxiety to be applied as communal, trusting, and concerned planetary hope. The Matrixial is not seeking to suppress eco-anxiety nor does it negate the dimensions of anxiety in any way. Initiating a “movement between hope and despair” (Hickman, Chap. 8, this volume), it focuses, instead, on the recognition and affirmation of anxiety in its archaic meaning of relationality and care, and on the proto-ethical possibility of being actively involved in the world’s trauma by trying to find curing and hopeful answers for the subjective, social, and ecological present. Ettinger (1999b, 22) summarizes this common ground as follows, “Unknowingly and as fragmented, we participate in the wound of the world.” Such compassionate participation is reflected in Solstreif-Pirker’s (2019, 69) formulation of a “feminine-based performative praxis,” which proposes a new paradigm for the encounter between humans and nature and a transitive form

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Fig. 9.3  Exulting Matters: On the Spatial Doxology of Alpine Sounds. (Performance, Monte Croce di Comelico, Veneto, Italy, 2017. © Christoph Solstreif-Pirker)

of trauma processing: “such an approach is (…) attempting to understand our present and future thinking as being fragile – movable, spatial, loving, compassionate, and eco-logical.” The feminine-based performative praxis is based on the methodologies of artistic performance which suggests an inclusive “Being-Together-With” (69) and is oriented toward the observation “that art has a vital role to play in curing

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our environmental ills” (Roszak 2002, 260). Structuring subjectivity performatively not only allows to carry the trauma of the Other anchored in oneself, but it also makes it possible to find a new praxis that goes beyond established dualisms and can formulate proposals of planetary hope through the crystalline joining of the human I with the planetary non-I (Ettinger 1999b, 2011, 2015b, 2019). This merging primarily includes the performative entering into a passage, or more precisely, the consciousness of never having left such passage since one’s participation in the archaic womb-space. In such passages lie both “direct contacting with the wounds and the scars of the world” (Ettinger 2011, 13) and physical involvement in the trauma of the Other: “We are one flesh with the night. In the passages” (Celan 1995, 123). A matrixial view of eco-anxiety may at first appear as the darkest hour of a global downfall. Far away from world-blind eyes, however, it fixes its gaze on the relational dimensions of this dark passage and shows that such a gaze cannot be directed solely at the darkness of an impending abyss. Occurring simultaneously – analogous to the dark otherness in the womb space – there is also a “worry-caring wonder arousal” (Ettinger 2011, 6), an incarnation “with the night” (Celan 1995, 123), which is not directed toward death, but toward birth. In this birth-oriented passage, Ettinger (2015a, b) sees both a “feminine-maternal interior-pregnance-­passage space” (354), and a “sacred wound-space full of non-sacrificial joy-sorrow” (354). The affirmative recognition and fragile involvement in this passage space require and enable a continuous transitive intertwining of human and nonhuman threads, which are revealed in an open, mutually carrying fabric of the world. To actualize these entanglements on an ethical, political, and therapeutic level, it is necessary to “breathe with the crystal’s breath” (360) and initiate different forms of thought and praxis than those of power and dominance oriented toward death. In the discourse of the sixth mass extinction, the challenge lies precisely in allying oneself with the darkness of the present night, only to make aware with/in it forms of psycho-­ planetary dependence, care, and responsibility. In fact, such an approach would not be conceivable without the agency of eco-anxiety. The performative praxis of becoming-crystal as an encounter with oneself in the Other requires addressing and traversing eco-anxiety lest the human gaze and human heart are to become “worldblind” and “callous” (Celan 1995, 123). Participation in the traumatic state of planet Earth through an affirmative recognition of anxiety as a proto-­ethical instrument means the recognition of mutual care and a mutually intensifying “carriance” (Ettinger 2015b, 353), which consists in “containing each other” (Juliano, Chap. 10, this volume) and each other’s wounds and traumas. Such a mutually carrying view of human and planetary subjectivity also means “to overcome” typologies “of primitive conceptualization” and a turn toward a feminine recognizing of “the fractal nature of complex systems,” which have the power to “revise our thinking accordingly” (Juliano, Chap. 10, this volume). Eco-anxiety in its matrixial reading, thus, forms a basic requirement for a communal, trusting, hopeful, loving, and caring togetherness, which is indeed “coalescing into a culture of care” (Juliano, Chap. 10, this volume). Lying on the snow bed, becoming-crystal, performing in the corridor, becoming flesh with the night, worry-caring – they all serve as analogies for the emergence of an event that – as depicted by Celan (2014) in another poem (439) – is

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Fig. 9.4  Exulting Matters: On the Spatial Doxology of Alpine Sounds. (Performance, Monte Croce di Comelico, Veneto, Italy, 2017. © Christoph Solstreif-Pirker)

communal solace but, likewise, communal duty. The emergence of a “snowcomfort” which he (441) directly addresses in its life- and hope-giving agency – “you lay us free.” (Fig. 9.4).

References Celan, Paul. 1995. Paul Celan: Selected Poems. Trans. Michael Hamburger. London: Penguin Books. ———. 2014. Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry. Trans. Pierre Joris. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari Felix. 2005. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ettinger, Bracha L. 1992. Matrix and Metramorphosis. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 4: 176–208. ———. 1999a. Traumatic Wit(h)ness: Thing and Matrixial Co/in-habit(u)ating. Parallax 5: 89–98. ———. 1999b. Trauma and Beauty: Trans-Subjectivity in Art. n.paradoxa: International Feminist Art Journal 3: 15–23. ———. 2011. Uncanny Awe, Uncanny Compassion and Matrixial Transjectivity Beyond Uncanny Anxiety. French Literature Series 38: 1–30. ———. 2015a. Carriance, Copoiesis and the Subreal. In And My Heart–Wound Space, ed. Bracha L. Ettinger, 343–351. Leeds: The Wild Pansy Press. ———. 2015b. And My Heart, Wound-Space With-In Me: The Space of Carriance. In And My Heart–Wound Space, ed. Bracha L. Ettinger, 353–366. Leeds: The Wild Pansy Press.

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———. 2019. Beyond the Death-Drive, Beyond the Live-Drive  – Being-Toward-Birthing with Being-Toward-Birth: Copoiesis and the Matrixial Eros  – Metafeminist Notes. In Aberrant Nuptials: Deleuze and Artistic Research, ed. Paolo de Assis and Paolo Giudici, 183–214. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1996. Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York. Kant, Immanuel. 2000. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and Ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1990. Liebesweisheit: Emmanuel Levinas, Denker des Anderen. Directed by Henning Burk and Christoph von Wolzogen. WDR. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wHqYY9Ckmlg. Morton, Timothy. 2016. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press. Roszak, Theodore. 2002. The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology. Grand Rapids: Phanes Press. Solstreif-Pirker, Christoph. 2019. Being-Together-with the World-Without-Us: Performative Investigations into the Traumatized Planetary Space. PhD dissertation, Graz University of Technology. Turner, Victor. 1992. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications. Christoph Solstreif-Pirker  is an architect, researcher, theorist, pedagogue, psychotherapist-­intraining, and a practicing artist working on performance, performative research, encounter-­ investigations, painting, drawing, sound, and text. After studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Graz University of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in artistic research and contemporary art under the supervision of Milica Tomić and Henk Slager in 2019, followed by a second MA in philosophy and psychoanalysis supervised by Bracha L.  Ettinger. Between 2017 and 2021, Christoph served as Assistant Professor and Deputy Head of the Institute of Architecture and Landscape, TU Graz, and is currently Professor for Aesthetic Education at University College of Teacher Education Styria, Graz, Austria. His research interests include (post-)anthropocenic subjectivity, trauma, political ecology, performative research, non-philosophy, ecofeminism, copoiesis, psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, art theory, and their connection to architecture and the wider planetary space. Christoph’s work has been widely received and appeared in GAM – Graz Architecture Magazine, Ruukku: Studies in Artistic Research, JAR: Journal for Artistic Research, PCS – Psychoanalysis, Culture, Society, and Comparative Literature Studies. He is preparing his first monograph on Matrixial Breath and Ettingerian Environmental Ethics, to be published in 2023.

Chapter 10

From Oppression to Love as Mother Earth Joins the Time’s Up and #MeToo Movements Merritt Juliano

At the core of our society’s treatment of both women and the ecosystem is an oppressive construct that enslaves all humanity in compulsory cycles of abuse. Deeper investigation reveals maladaptive relational dynamics still pervasive between man and woman. Embedded in our social and political cultures, these same relational dynamics exist between humans and the nonhuman world, offering potential insight into the climate crisis. Correlations between human development and the functioning of civilization implicate a neurosis of society (Freud 1927, 1930). Mindfulness, combined with mentalization may offer a path away from primitive conceptualizations of the man–woman, human–nonhuman, and oppressor–oppressee dichotomies, allowing for acknowledgment and acceptance of interdependence, as well as the creation of the conditions necessary for love, care, and compassion for the Other as opposed to instincts of domination and control.

The Liberation of Women and the Ecosystem are Linked Rich discussions on the parallels that exist between the oppression of women and the destruction of our ecosystem have taken place within the fields of ecofeminism, ecopsychology, and feminist theology. Recent attempts to liberate women with the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements are certainly laudable, but as Eric Otto (2012) argues, it may not be possible to liberate members of our own species without also liberating nature. Otto further posits that attempts to liberate women and the nonhuman world may fail absent widespread efforts to eradicate domination at all levels of human society (Otto 2012). M. Juliano (*) Climate Psychology Alliance North America (CPA-NA), Westport, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_10

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Oppressive elements of course exist within our social, economic, and political systems. This story of domination and control of the Other is a byproduct of intergenerational transmission of intra- and inter-psychic patterns of thought, and stems from what amounts to a pathological relational disorder in that the human species perceives the Other as separate and exploitable. What is projected onto the Other is a defense against what exists within one’s self (Dodds 2011; Shepard 1982; Weintrobe 2013). It follows that to eradicate the systems of oppression so pervasive in our society and culture—and ultimately liberate nature and women—we must first liberate the oppressed within the self.

Sociocultural Parallels of Oppression in Binary Oppositions Parallels between the domination of women and the ecosystem have been traced to cultural ideology and social structures that persist today (Ruether 1989). Attempts to promote the woman-nature connection by bestowing value over characteristically feminine qualities such as nurturing and interdependence—and identifying the destructive male characteristics of individualism and rationalism—is a strategy that fails to dismantle the more complex systems in which we live (Otto 2012). References to the phrase “Mother Earth” along with current movements to love and protect “her”, although perhaps well intentioned, have the potential to undermine the ultimate goal as it can lead to an over idealization of nature that fails to encompass the systematic and complex nature of life, as well as the more difficult realities of our existence, such as disease and death (Dodds 2011; Teodorescu 2018). COVID-19 serves as a stark reminder in this regard. Moreover, idealization of femininity is illusory as women are certainly not immune from oppressive behavior (Arikan 2017). Categorizing the masculine and feminine in absolute binaries reinforces an oppressive hierarchical structure, thereby reinforcing puerile notions of domination and control as a mechanism to contain the chaos of life (Dodds 2011). For example, in Chap. 6 of this volume, Arnold-Baker highlights what is perceived as a binary choice for many women of motherhood or career. While the U.S. system reinforces this oppressive binary through its lack of social support for mothers and families, women in more egalitarian societies (e.g., Finland) are not faced with such a limiting choice to the same degree.

 ven the “Word of God” Validates Man’s Subjugation E of Women Female menstruation and lactation are ready reminders of the animal nature of women (Otto 2012). This imbalance is magnified by man’s reliance on woman to procreate. A directive by God to be fruitful and multiply contributes to a view of women as a natural resource and functionary (Valera 2018). Christianity further

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encourages man’s separation from the more-than-human world in so far as it discourages giving into one’s animal impulses (Searles 1960). Rather than accept vulnerability, man subjugates the Other to mask dependency (Gentile 2018). This domination is conveniently justified through Judeo-Christian convictions as part of the “natural order” and/or as the will of a male monotheistic God (Ruether 1989, 3). In the Old Testament, Eve is portrayed as a dangerous and chaotic emotional being, irrationally succumbing to her desires. Like the Earth, she is complicated. Her wildness must be domesticated and thereby destroyed (Arikan 2017). Man’s complete dependence on the environmental system in which we live, however, renders their destruction of it pathological (Dodds 2011; Lehtonen and Valimaki 2013). Patriarchy, therefore, serves as the dominant culture’s psychological defense to its animalistic inclinations and, ultimately, its dependence (Otto 2018). Watterson (2019) argues that thinking within the masculine–feminine binary is destructive and incomplete in that it reduces the species to reproductive organs, failing to capture life in its entirety. Similarly, as Dodds (2011) points out, we maintain an inadequate “relationship to nature based on a master-slave system of absolute binaries” (32). This is notably distinct from Samoan Fa’afafine culture that embraces the notion of the individual embodying both masculine- and feminine-gender traits. In the west, the current gender fluid movement is both timely and essential in terms of liberating the species from the male–female binary. Life is vastly more complex than what absolute binaries can offer. If we are to overcome this type of primitive conceptualization, we must come to recognize the fractal nature of complex systems and revise our thinking accordingly (Dodds 2011). Dodds (2011) argues that our current ecological crisis is one rooted in our failure to recognize the complex and interconnected nature of life. Deleuze and Guattari (2009) summarize this succinctly: “We make no distinction between man and nature…man and nature are not like two opposite terms confronting each other…rather they are one and the same essential reality, the producer-product”(4–5). The dominant Christian narrative casting Mary Magdalene as prostitute—rather than a trusted friend and beloved companion of Jesus—further reiterates the idea of woman as property. Recent discoveries and interpretations of the gospel of Mary Magdalene, however, suggest a vastly different story, one in which love favors hierarchical structures of domination and control, and interconnectedness over separation (Watterson 2019). In the pages that were discovered (the first seven remain missing), the gospel begins with, “Every nature, every modeled form, every creature, exists in and with each other” (Watterson 2019). As Watterson so eloquently puts it, “There is no hierarchy in the spiritual world. There’s just this circle where the first becomes the last, and the last becomes the first” (Watterson 2019). Mary Magdalene’s gospel normalizes dependency in light of interconnectedness. It is evident that a drive to control the Other exists within the longstanding dynamics that exist within the circle of life (Keene 2013; Ruether 1989). Per Watterson (2019), envy over Mary Magdalene’s relationship with Jesus may have clouded Peter’s perception of reality because it imperiled his own demi-god status. Mary Magdalene’s gospel is specifically threatening because it suggests that the so-­ called Kingdom of God is within the self, rather than an external destination to be

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reached through domination, control, and power over the Other (Watterson 2019). The concept of going within the self to find the Kingdom of God is strikingly similar to the Buddhist principle of nirvana. Like Buddhism, Mary Magdalene’s Kingdom of God may offer opportunities for the human species to realize its full potential through the realization that we are but a small interconnected microcosm in a much larger universe. The subjective experience of walking the path to enlightenment through mindfulness—regardless of whether one believes it to be based in reality or merely a defense against existential death anxiety—is a means toward establishing the neurological conditions necessary for meaningful community and, potentially, interspecies cohabitation (Kabat-Zinn 2005). Mindfulness alone, however, may be inadequate to address the inner conflicts that exist within the self because the experience of oneness may be perceived as absolute dependence and, ultimately, an annihilation of the self (Green 2001). As Arnold-Baker notes elsewhere in this volume, this “existential angst” has the potential to become a transformational force for change so long as it is faced, acknowledged, and reflected upon. In the context of early maternal–infant relational dynamics, Andre Green (2001) wrote, “The destiny of the One is to live in conjunction with and/or separation from the other.” True interconnectedness allows space for the self and the Other as separate and as one whole.

 arly Human Relational Dynamics and Erotics E in the Container The conceptual systems we live by are more than intellectual attempts to make sense of the world through language (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). According to Dodds (2011), the phrase “Mother Earth” may be a mechanism by which humans express feelings of being cared for and held by our physical environment, coinciding with early maternal–infant attachment studies. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) highlight the common metaphor of “life as a container” which is useful to understand Donald Winnicott’s concept of the holding environment in human development (51). Winnicott (1965) believed human development consisted of a trajectory of holding environments as one progresses through life beginning with the microlevel holding environment of mother and family, and widening out to mezzo and macrolevels of society that include the physical environment (Dodds 2011). These experience-based categorical systems determine how we think and behave on multiple levels because they arise mainly in the body, and are so deeply embedded within the more primitive structures of the mind (Holmes and Slade 2018; Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Thus, early relational dynamics can play a significant part in the development of oppressive human behaviors. Keene (2013) references the distinction between the sensitive and attuned mother, and the mother who fails to provide “good enough” care. In the latter case, the infant may experience overwhelming frustration and anxiety, resulting in a fearful attitude toward the outside world, including the physical environment (Keene 2013).

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Ruether (1989) delineates the root of the social and cultural conflict around male and female biology, implicating early childhood as a place to explore these natural conflicts (Winnicott 1999). Exploring the conflicts within our innate instincts around dependence and desire is essential (Deleuze and Guattari 2009; Dodds 2011; Lasch 1979; Winnicott 1999). Suckling the breast is likely our first erotic desire, and making feces is our first solid creation. Planetary life remains deeply dependent upon Mother Earth for sustenance as does the human infant upon his mother (Dodds 2011; Keene 2013; Valera 2018). Like the infant’s desire for infinite suckling, the human maintains an unlimited desire to extract the Earth’s resources (Dodds 2011; Keene 2013). Citing Winnicott (1965), Keene (2013) explores our delusional perception of the planet as an “unlimited toilet mother capable of absorbing our toxic products to infinity” (146).

 ur Relationship to the More-Than-Human World Exists O on Two Levels Searles believed that man relates to the more-than-human world on two levels: (1) subjectively, by displacing and projecting one’s own unconscious feelings onto the nonhuman object; and (2) objectively, by relating to the nonhuman environment as inanimate, lacking in subjectivity  (Searles 1960). According to Searles (1960), understanding this dual-level anthropomorphic relationship in its entirety is essential. Part One: Displacement and Projection  Valera (2018) argues that maternal dependence is often repaid by the adult child with abuse or indifference, reasoning that such abuse is grounded in gender conflicts that have encouraged male entitlement to subjugate the Other. This is deeply correlated with varying degrees of narcissistic injury depending on the intersection of a number of factors including the inherent disposition of the infant/child, the quality of the early mother–infant dyadic relationship, and the unconscious psychic embeddedness of the maternal–child framework (Green 1997). It is frequently said that boys are encouraged far earlier than girls to separate from the mother, forcing identification with the father and prematurely encouraging the development of autonomy and independence (Roszak 1995). While some degree of separation from the parental figure must occur to make room for individuation, progressing from “absolute dependence to mature dependence” is more consistent with ecosystemic interdependence (Dodds 2011, 58). A premature separation has the potential to leave a void, leading to disavowal of man’s dependence, giving rise to feelings of hate underlying grief over the object-loss, and leading to covert attempts to destroy the lost object (Green 2001; Shepard 1982). Drawing upon Winnicott’s Playing and Reality, Green (1997) describes the separation as the “non-­ presence of the object,” which can serve as a negative transitional object created

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within the human mind (1082). It then becomes the negative and nonexistence of something that becomes what is real to the individual (Green 1997). Thus man remains caught in repetitive compulsory attempts to not fill such voids through sublimation or acts of subjugation and control of the Other (Green 1997; 1995). Nonsatisfaction of desire being preferred over satisfaction to avoid dependence on the object (Green 2001). Omnipotence, a kind of narcissistic delusional state common throughout the general population, is not limited to those identified as suffering from a pathological personality disorder (Mollon 2020; Weintrobe 2013). I am referring here to, man’s anthropocentrism, which is viewed as a level of narcissism that remains normalized and valued as essential within the human species, despite its degree of psychosis (Kohut 1966; Mollon 2020). Omnipotence delusions can manifest in response to the psychological trauma of varying degrees of parental inadequacy (Novick and Novick 2003). Narcissistic modes of thinking, to which we are all susceptible, are relational failures in that one must maintain the grandiose self-image at the expense of self-reflection (Mollon 2020). Novick and Novick (2003) define omnipotence as “a conscious or unconscious belief in magical power to transcend all the limitations of reality in order to control others, to hurt them, to force them to submit to one’s desires, ultimately probably to force the mother to be a ‘good enough,’ competent, protective, and loving parent” (2). The objectively good enough mother may never be good enough for the infant as she has her own limits, and remains the first lost erotic object, leaving room for the development of some degree of narcissism (Green 1995, 2001). Omnipotence, essentially a defense against helplessness, is problematic in that it functions as a closed system that remains resistant to change, and incompatible with the complexity of life (Dodds 2011; Novick and Novick 2003). In order to connect the early relational experience to the destruction of the ecosystem, it might be helpful to refer back to Freud (1950) where he attempts to make sense of the evolution of man’s understanding of the universe. In Totem and Taboo, Freud identifies three evolutionary stages: animism, religious, and scientific (Freud 1950). Man is believed to be responsible for his own omnipotence in the animistic stage (Freud 1950). In the religious stage, Christianity attempts to subdue grandiosity and omnipotence in the individual, but leaves open the possibility of a merger with an omnipotent God in the afterlife (Kohut 1972). The scientific view, on the other hand, forbids overt omnipotence, but this too fails to address the underlying conflicts within the self as man ultimately asserts such omnipotent power in even greater intensity through his so-called greatest asset: the human mind (Freud 1950). Bottled-up narcissistic psychic energy inevitably breaks though in full pursuit of grandiose and omnipotent desires (Holmes 2020; Kohut 1972). Rather than suppress or pathologize what likely stems from an innate energy to desire and produce, accepting and finding meaning in the reality of our human existence allow for a more cohesive and integrated self. Expanding on this further, acceptance of grief and mourning the many disappointments and losses inevitable in life become an essential part of the work (Hron, Chap. 7, this volume). Contemplating the relational interplay of life in its entirety may be the missing key to restoring the human–nonhuman relationship, allowing for the creation of a

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new story that is based on acceptance of our dependence and interconnectedness. This interplay may be best understood through reflective functioning or mentalization, a key social skill used to treat a variety of human relational disorders. Reflective functioning offers a more evolved means of being in the world within a human developmental context (Holmes and Slade 2018). Bateman and Fonagy (2006) define mentalization as the ability to imagine the chemistry of one’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences as it relates to oneself, as well as another. This attitude allows one to be curious, and accept one’s limitations in not being fully able to know the Other while simultaneously making space for another’s experience. If we can use mentalization techniques to explore our desires for, and dependency on the Other, then perhaps we can move past the inclination to cure, and instead, to acceptance, reflection, and shared meaning (Deleuze and Guattari 2009; Valera 2018). Holding the mother in mind calls us to be curious about her experience. What is the experience of the woman as breast mother? The Dormition of the Blessed Virgin (Greek 1392) gives image to a shift in containment from child to mother (Hermes 2020). Gretchen Hermes (2020) writes that “the image represents a shift in the Oedipal configurations of lover and beloved with the child making a space in or near his body for his mother.” Might this be a foreboding of our capacity to transform infantile sexuality to a mature love of the Other? Here we are called to reflect upon the human experience to understand the subjective nature of being human, and to harness the power it has to cloud our experiences of the outside world. The dominant approach in governing human action through rationalism fails to consider the emotional experience through which males and females interpret the world of experience (Deleuze and Guattari 2009; Valera 2018). This failure plays itself out at the political level through utilitarian capitalism and, more recently, through the rise of neoliberalism, which tends to regard the Other as a resource to be exploited, and is ultimately, driving the current climate breakdown (Valera 2018; Parr 2014). According to Valera (2018), it is within this unity that “rationality and instinct, feelings and logic, fruitfully co-exist,” which has the potential to expand human ethics from “the rationalist analysis of a mere risk/ benefit calculation,” to one that is “nurtured by human emotions and passions,” leading to a flourishing interspecies coexistence (20). Part Two: Human to Nonhuman  Searles’ (1960) second level of relating to the nonhuman world requires an expansion of the concepts of environmental influence and interspecies relationality. Expanding the infant’s experience of the environmental space beyond the mother is required if we view the child as connected to all living things (Roszak 1995; Searles 1960). Exploration of the ecological self is, therefore, imperative for relating to the nonhuman world. We might ask, what is our experience of air on skin? What is it like to hear the birdsong? As this level of reflection occurs, one can begin to mentalize the experience of the nonhuman world. To be curious about the experience of the tree being cut down, or of the bird which must fly through polluted skies. It is through the marriage of our acknowledgment of interbeing, as well as our ability to hold the Other in mind that we may find our capacity to evolve as a

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species. I need not argue that the experience of life is a difficult one for all; perhaps, in understanding this, as well as the space between us, we might find a more peaceful coexistence. The mentalizing process in everyday relationships may give us the skills and strength to contain each other, coalescing into a culture of care. In Chap. 8 of this volume, Solstreif-Pirker explores a similar concept as a “state of mutual concern,” shifting care of self to care of the Other through what she calls our “permeable subjectivity.”

References Arikan, Seda. 2017. Domination over Nature and/or Domination over Women? The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 9 (2): 36–44. Bateman, Anthony, and Peter Fonagy. 2006. Mentalization-Based Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 2009. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York: Penguin Classic Books. Dodds, Joseph. 2011. Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos. New York: Routledge. Freud, Sigmund. 1927. The Future of an Illusion. In The Standard Edition [SE] of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XXI.  Trans. J.  Strachey, 1–56. London: Hogarth Press. ———. 1930. Civilization and Its Discontents. SE, Vol. XXI, 59–145. London: Hogarth Press. ———. 1950. Totem and Taboo. New York: W. W. Norton. Gentile, Katie. 2018. Animals as the Symptom of Psychoanalysis or, The Potential for Interspecies Co-emergence in Psychoanalysis. Studies in Gender and Sexuality 19 (1): 7–13. Green, Andre. 1995. Has Sexuality Anything to Do With Psychoanalysis? International Journal of Psychoanalysis 76 (5): 871–883. ———. 1997. The Intuition of the Negative in Playing and Reality. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 78: 1071–1084. ———. 2001. Life Narcissism Death Narcissism. London: Free Association Books. Hermes, Gretchen. 2020. Discussion from WNEPS Scientific Meeting: Response to ‘The Erotics of the Container’ presented by Christopher Lovett, PhD. New Haven: Western New England Psychoanalytic Society. January 25. Holmes, Jeremy. 2020. The Brain has a Mind of its Own: Attachment, Neurobiology, and the New Science of Psychotherapy. London: Confer Books. Holmes, Jeremy, and Arietta Slade. 2018. Attachment in Therapeutic Practice. London: Sage. Kabat-Zinn, Jon. 2005. Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness. New York: Hyperion. Keene, John. 2013. Unconscious Obstacles to Caring for the Planet. In Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Sally Weintrobe, 144–159. London: Routledge. Kohut, Heinz. 1966. Forms and Transformations of Narcissism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 14 (2): 243–272. ———. 1972. Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 27 (1): 360–400. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago. Lasch, Christopher. 1979. The Culture of Narcissism. New York: W.W. Norton.

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Lehtonen, Johannes, and Jukka Valimaki. 2013. Discussion: The Difficult Problem of Anxiety in Thinking about Climate Change. In Engaging with Climate Change, ed. Sally Weintrobe, 48–51. Sussex: Routledge. Mollon, Phil. 2020. Pathologies of the Self: Exploring Narcissistic and Borderline States of Mind. London: Confer Books. Novick, Kerry K., and Jack Novick. 2003. Two Systems of Self-Regulation and the Differential Application of Psychoanalytic Technique. American Journal of Psychoanalysis 63 (1): 1–20. Otto, Eric. 2012. Ecofeminist Theories of Liberation in the Science Fiction of Sally Miller Gearhart, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Joan Slonczewski. In Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women and Literature, ed. Douglas Vakoch, 13–37. Lanham: Lexington Books. Parr, Adrian. 2014. The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Roszak, Theodore. 1995. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Ruether, Rosemary R. 1989. Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing. New York: HarperCollins. Searles, Harold. 1960. The Nonhuman Environment: In Normal Development and in Schizophrenia. Madison: International Universities Press. Shepard, Paul. 1982. Nature and Madness. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Teodorescu, Adriana. 2018. The Women-Nature Connection as a Key Element in the Social Construction of Western Contemporary Motherhood. In Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment, ed. Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, 77–95. New York: Routledge. Valera, Luca. 2018. Francoise d’Eaubonne and Ecofeminism: Rediscovering the Link between Women and Nature. In Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment, ed. Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey, 10–23. New York: Routledge. Watterson, Meggan. 2019. Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet. Carlsbad: Hay House. Weintrobe, Sally. 2013. The Difficult Problem of Anxiety in Thinking about Climate Change. In Engaging with Climate Change, ed. Sally Weintrobe, 33–47. Sussex: Routledge. Winnicott, Donald. 1965. The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth. ———. 1999. Playing and Reality. London: Routledge. Merritt Juliano, JD, LCSW,  serves as co-president and is a board member of Climate Psychology Alliance North America (CPA-NA). Juliano is also the founder of Regenerative Psychotherapy PLLC (website: https://regenerativepsychotherapy.com), a private psychotherapy practice in Westport, Connecticut, where she specializes in maternal mental health, infant/childparent psychotherapy, reflective ­parenting, stress management, resilience, and building ecological intelligence in children and families. Juliano previously served as a Minding the Baby™ (MTB) clinician at Family Centers in Fairfield County, Connecticut. MTB is an interdisciplinary program for at-risk mothers developed through the Yale Child Study Center and Yale School of Nursing to promote positive parent-infant attachments and encourage parental reflective functioning. Juliano has also worked with both individuals and couples as a psychotherapist in Manhattan. Juliano has presented workshops on cultivating positive infant-parent attachments for parents of premature infants, and she has facilitated and co-facilitated workshops on climate action and climate psychology. Juliano has also been interviewed by several news media outlets, including NPR and Shondaland.com on the topics of eco-anxiety and talking to children about the climate crisis. Juliano is a member of Postpartum Support International, the Connecticut Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and Climate Psychology Alliance International. Prior to her clinical career, Juliano worked as an attorney.

Part III

Eco-Poetry and Creative Writing

Chapter 11

Ecoprogramming the Vulnerable Bodies Om Prakash Dwivedi

Queneau Raymond’s novel, One World Classics (2009), forcefully highlights the eco-anxiety of the modern world. It is a novel that captures the problematics of the progressive human world. The novel points to a future world marked by an absence of humans’ ability to relate themselves to the environment  – a moment of acute imaginative crisis where man may grope in darkness in search of elemental forms of life, or even worse to comprehend anything that is natural – such a heightened confused stage and the concomitant failure to relate itself to earthly constituents, according to Raymond, is what awaits humanity: Perhaps that is how it will be for all of us, one day. We won’t have any more skies. We will become environmentalists in search of skies. The environment will perhaps not be dead, but it won’t have skies in it any more. Difficult to imagine, an environment without skies. But isn’t all progress, if progress exists, difficult to imagine? (Raymond 2009, 308)

What comes out vividly in the passage is the need to recalibrate our relationship with nature, stoked by sense of emotional contents and responsibility. Arnold Claire-Baker points out elsewhere in this volume that such an awareness of death as a perennial possibility “can have the effects of shaking individuals out of tranquility.” This chapter projects the condition of human vulnerability in context to the ongoing environmental degradation. It critiques the present crisis of global warming. I prefer the term “global warming” instead of “climate change” as the latter has its own shortcoming and, hence be mistaken for betterment as well. The chapter attempts to show human vulnerability connected  to ecological disasters and suggests that new narratives or what Nicole Anae terms as “ecological realization” (in this volume) are needed to sustain and cultivate life on earth. We live in an increasingly globalized world demarcated by an unprecedented rise of cities and technologies across the globe. This further heightens and complicates O. P. Dwivedi (*) Head, School of Liberal Arts, Bennett University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_11

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the environment crises. No wonder why Mike Davis (2017) rightly views cities as “the planet of slums”, whereas the metaphor of the slum could be seen to indicate multiple and acute problems that cities give birth to, thus rendering environment precarious. The lurking threats to environment have made us more vulnerable than ever in the history  of human civilization. “Ecoprecarity”, a term I borrow from Pramod Nayar’s excellent book, Ecoprecarity: Vulnerable Lives in Literature and Culture (2019), is a concept that suggests our vulnerability and threats directly linked to the ongoing global warming. Nayar theorizes “ecoprecarity” as a phenomenon that includes ecological disasters and climate apocalypse. In a way, the concept of “ecoprecarity” could be related to Molly Wallace’s idea of “risk criticism”, which pivots around the imminent risks from plastic, radiation, fossil-fuel, waste materials, among others. Wallace’s conceptualization of ecoprecarity or the “risk criticism” is based on the “relationship between the speculative and the real, the risk, the hazard, and the catastrophe.” (2010, 18–19). Take for example, one such poem titled “Expert Testimony (Perrine v. DuPont, 2008),” published in a poem collection by Ryan Walsh (2019, 22): We all know something will kill you People should consider cancers could be failures Nature children adults exposed Get it on the skin ingest it Breathe it in drink it Through careful study we know how much children breathe Risk published in the air The milligrams and cubic feet In the air Time concentration in your house Your lungs The kidneys The pathways and probabilities It’s a standard methodology And I didn’t include Lead Or zinc

These lines reflect man’s vulnerability to intoxicated environment and its horrifying consequences. The poem is deeply dystopian in the way that it refers to a pervasive sense of death and transgenerational trauma. This dystopic image makes us realize that it is increasingly vital to preserve the earth for future generations. Our bond of understanding the environment should be based on the notion of interconnectedness and not on simply a guest–host relationship  that we exhibit. We are increasingly vulnerable to global warming, though in varying degrees, directly and through our connections to one another. Vulnerability includes not only an experience of suffering but also an awareness of the possibility of such experience. Anthony Wrigley incisively points out that most accounts of vulnerability are “futile” as they will “fail to generate any sort of additional ethical duty to protect those classified as vulnerable” (2015, 482). Undoubtedly, the journey of human beings on earth has been a very self-centered one, with no or almost very little space for nonhumans and the

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environment. This has pushed the entire humanity into a state of vulnerability. Vulnerability is perceived as an individualistic condition and hence a flawed one. I argue that such conceptualization of vulnerability needs to be relooked into and hence reformulated. Rather, vulnerability should be seen as relational, emanating from society, state, and institutions due to the collapse in our sociological thinking and ecological approaches. In a way, it can be argued that the grammar of vulnerability needs to accommodate and examine the social relations of an individual. And the “social” needs to give space to ecological relations as well since man cannot survive without ecology. Seen in this context, Nigel Clarke pushes for a line of thought that links “earthily volatility to bodily vulnerability” (2010, xx). Ulrich Beck situates this “bodily vulnerability” within the degraded environment sphere, punctuated and accelerated by hyper-capitalism, and emanating new forms of catastrophes periodically, thus giving rise to modern “risk society”: Threats from civilization are bringing about a kind of new “shadow kingdom,” comparable to the realm of the gods and demons in antiquity, which is hidden behind the visible world and threatens human life on their Earth. People no longer correspond today with spirits residing in things but find themselves exposed to “radiation,” ingest “toxic levels,” and are pursued into their very dreams by the anxiety of a “nuclear holocaust” …. Dangerous, hostile substances lie concealed behind the harmless facades. Everything must be viewed with a double gaze, and can only be correctly understood and judged through this doubling. The world of the visible must be investigated, relativized with respect to a second reality, only existent in thought and concealed in the world. (1992, 72)

Beck points to the visible and invisible threats that humans have increasingly exposed themselves to, an argument thoughtfully explored by Leonard A Steverson elsewhere in this volume. He reminds us that ecological disharmony will create a havoc on human life. Humans need to remember that the sustainability of the human world depends on the sustainability of the environment and hence we need to nurture it with utmost love and care, failing which we would not only threaten our lives, but also the future life on earth. One could look at Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (2007), a novel which highlights the horrifying conditions of human lives as a result of the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984. Words seem to follow and capture the flows and leakages of gases all over Bhopal, thus projecting the “slow violence” of the contaminated environment. This could be seen when an old Indian woman accuses the lawyer thus: “you told us you were making medicine for the fields. You were making poisons to kill insects, but you killed us instead. I would like to ask, was there ever much difference, to you.” (306). The novel exposes the hypocrisy of the utilitarian nature of globalization, and thus broadens the multiple levels of vulnerability of humans to the environment. In one such scene, the Animal points to the “wonderful poisons… so good it’s impossible to get rid of them, after all these years they’re still doing their work.” (306). Animal’s careful observance of the changes around makes him register the things that are no longer present, “Listen, how quiet,…No bird song. No hopes in the grass. No bee hum. Insects can’t survive here.” (30). In a way, Sinha makes readers see the impending risks that await humans due to the dilution and also killing of natural things. As rightly argued by Jedediah Purdy, “The natural and the artificial have merged at every scale. Climate change makes the

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global atmosphere, its chemistry and weather systems, into Frankenstein’s monster – part natural, part made.” (2015, 15). The curses brought about by such disturbing phenomena are plenty and one could easily make a case that these find their roots in human greed and desire for excess and a more comfortable life. This, in turn, leads to crisis of resources as rightly argued by Jacques Derrida, that our materialist ideas are always underpinned with lurking threats of injustice and irresponsibility: “Left to itself, the incalculable and giving idea of justice is always very close to the bad, even to the worst for it can always be reappropriated by the most perverse calculation” (1992, 28). The priority given to materialist culture, aided and abetted by hyperconsumerism is a case in point of modern world’s “perverse calculation.” One only has to throw a cursory glance at the history of human civilization to record the casual encounters of man with natural resources. Polish journalist, Ryzsrd Kapuscinski, pictures the relentless greed of human beings in his book, The Shah of Shahs (2006), wherein he points out the way “oil creates illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free, it expresses the eternal human dream of wealth achieved through a lucky accident…in this sense it is a fairy tale and like all fairy tales a bit of a lie.” (1982, 25). One could already see the usual “fairy tale” of progress linked to the materialist culture, which does not have any concern for ecological imbalances. Kapuscinski marvellously registers the problematics of the progressive history of human civilization and thus exposes the hypocrisy of the supposedly utopian project of mankind. In our greed for adding more value to our lives, the boundary between the man and the environment has become distinctively blurred. Man has invaded the environmental resources and continues to exploit them in unforeseen ways, which have only exposed humans to a heightened state of vulnerability. One may look at the global crisis of the COVID-19 disease as a direct result of the environment degradation. Business-Standard, an international magazine, reports as on 21st June, 2020, the virus has already resulted in the loss of “466,848 people across the globe and infected 8,921,385” lives (2020, online). Elsewhere, I have linked this global tragedy to the element of greed in humans: “[W]e live in an age of achievement and progress; the lack of it, therefore, entails panic and depression. The present pandemic crisis of COVID-19 disease could be a direct result of man’s desire to walk away with deepened pockets.” (2020, online). Viruses and the environment may be perceived as two different things, but even a cursory look at the human history is enough to suggest a pattern: the more rapid the progress, the bigger the environmental crisis. It is in this context that Sarah Sierra makes a valid point “[I]n fact, many theorists now identify that modern technology imposes a perceptual blindness on causal processes in the natural world. This blindness is particularly alarming as it hinders the ability to see the effects of human activity on the biosphere.” (2019, 42). Sierra forcefully makes us see our resolute blindness to the deteriorating earth’s ecosystem. She is undoubtedly critical of the ways humans perceive progression, which is embedded in an unthoughtful parade of “slow violence” – to borrow a term from Rob Nixon’s monumental work, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011)  – against the environment. It is our collective failure and hence demands collective responsibility and ethical measures to negate the lurking

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environmental threats. To downplay the lurking threats from the environment degradation, Sam Mickey demands elsewhere in this volume for “[a] phenomenological interpretation of atmosphere.” A failure to do so will result in more pandemics in future. Advocating a need for the corrective measures to be taken, Rob Nixon makes us look at how humans have increasingly risked their lives as well as the life of other species, including the planet earth. One needs to examine the way this ongoing human progress has unfolded since 1751 to the present moment – “a period that encompasses the entire Anthropocene to date, a mere ninety corporations, primarily oil and coal companies, have generated two-thirds of humanity’s CO2 emissions. That’s a very high concentration of earth-altering power.” (2014, online). Nixon makes us see that it is not a singular event, but the attritional forces that have rendered environment precarious. These forces, over a period of time, have blurred and weakened both the human and the environment species, marking a new shift from normal to precarious futures awaiting humankind, or what von Mossner terms as “end-time scenario and global human tragedy” (2015, 164) – a kind of future from which no return to normalcy would be feasible. It is exactly for this palpable threat that Naomi Oreskes (2007) and Dipesh Chakrabarty (2009) view these attritional forces increasingly capable of transforming the very geology of the planet, and hence the conditions for future life upon it. Werz and Conley situate these alarming forces with a space they term as “arc of tension” (2012, 12). The arc, though unable to point to any singular event or enemy posing threat to the environment, remarkably captures our journey of uncertainties and vulnerabilities arising therefrom. The accelerated exposure of human bodies to the environmental threats arising out of the dire working conditions is also one of the major challenges of the modern world. Elsewhere, Andreas Wansbrough and I have discussed  this failure of the state-capital nexus to offer humanitarian relief to individuals who had been hit hard by the Covid-19. In fact, the rising vulnerabilities in the form of loss of jobs and social security belie “the hope that the virus would accelerate a political turn towards socialism, or a more benevolent, emancipatory postcapitalism, or even a more caring form of capitalism.” (2022, 149). Unfortunately, the capitalist world does not allow any space for social codifications, rather as the Covid-19 crisis has also shown, it makes use of the human crisis  to exacerbate  their  uncertainties, bodily vulnerabilities, and precariousness. The accumulating ideology of the capitalist has led us to a point where everything turns out to be a resource for them. We are well aware that bios cannot be thought of without food, but even here lies a problem. David N Pellow astutely points to the ecological imbalance resulting out of our food habits and exacerbated by the draconian capitalistic functioning: “the global food industry uses and kills more than 60 billion land animals each year, a number that would have been unthinkable a generation ago and that fails conspicuously to reflect the pain and suffering of our nonhuman relations ensnared in that machine of mass death.” (2020, online). Capitalism has certainly resulted in ecocide; it has punctured our lifeforms, contaminated our values, and eroded our social space. However, to pass the blame on to the capitalists would be to deprive human beings of any social responsibility. The present point can be seen as a pinnacle of human failure since it

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reflects not only our own moral decline to imagine collective lives but also breach of laws of nature.

Ecoprogramming: Toward an Ecotopian Future The journey from vulnerability to ecotopian future  – a term used by Matthew Schneider- Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy to project “how to adapt and flourish in the face of socioecological adversity” (2019, 2) – could be charted out on the scale of our consciousness about the environment. This new journey of ecological awareness is what I term as “Ecoprogramming”, which needs to be embedded in the very networks of human consciousness, and connected to planetary hope. I take this recourse to programming as applicable to the softwares used in the computer to ensure the everyday preservation acts of environment. The inability to operate the softwares eventually leads to a wrong output and the concomitant failure of a particular project. In the same way, “ecoprogramming” is essentially needed to downplay the emerging risks from the environmental degradation, and nourish the project of planetary habitability. Ecoprogramming assumes that the environment should be at the center of all human discourses on development and progress. It should not be understood as a methodology since the problem that underpins all methodologies is that they are inevitably linked to rationality. The entire history of human evolution suggests that rationality has not done any good to the environment; in fact, it has heaped attack after attack on it, making both the environment and humans more vulnerable. Hence, I argue that it is increasingly difficult to arrive at any understanding through a method alone. What needs to be activated is human psyche of interconnectedness. It could have diverse set of codification to accommodate different paths to oneness. The program must be underlined with a related framework of interconnectedness that gives ontological equality to nonhumans. Any methodology that runs only on rationality and lacks emotions, empathy, and sense of oneness can only exacerbate the ecological conditions. Ecoprogramming does not point to the way environment is to be regulated, rather it lays down a path of computability of ecological preservation that human should tread on, taking into consideration a set of ecological balancing rules, driven by a sense of empathy and solidarity to the humans and more-than-humans. Such a programming makes us see the notion of interconnectedness of life, a point also raised by Abhik Gupta elsewhere in this volume. We have all been programmed to live in society, and hence cannot survive in isolation. No humans can. Therefore, ecoprogramming keeps humans at the center by making them culpable for the environment injustices and demand for a set of redemptive steps to protect it. In a way, this ecoprogramming could be seen as a churning out from an “ecological thought” advanced by Timothy Morton. Morton views “ecology thought” “as love, loss, despair, and compassion…It has to do with capitalism and what might exist after capitalism. It has to do with amazement, open-mindedness and wonder…It has to do with society. It has to do with coexistence.” (2010, 2). Clearly, Morton restores

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and in fact heightens the need to evolve our consciousness, our psyche with no place for any preconditioning. He rather advocates an openness, a sense of “wonder” driven by the ethics of co-existence and interconnectedness. One such text that reverberates with ecological themes pertinently locates the interconnectedness of all forms of life, as the character Adam One is found advocating in Atwood’s The Year of the Flood: When next you hold a handful of moist compost, say a silent prayer of thanks to all of Earth’s previous Creatures. Picture your fingers giving each and every one of them a loving squeeze. For they are surely here with us, ever present in that nourishing matrix. (2010, 193)

This is the kind of codification that needs to systematize ecoprogramming – a programming that keeps updating itself in line with the notion of evolutionary mind so that our way to approach the earthly contents is always coded with the language of love and empathy. In demand for excess of things, humans have convincingly demonstrated their sense of loss with everything earthly. It is completely immersed with itself and the ever-multiplying greed, ambition, pride, and hence a failure to reposition its relationship with the environment. Hence I argue that ecoprogramming must be able to deprogram the bug of governmentality and replace it with carementality – a requisite feature of planetary hope for a better world. This takes us back to the notion of “interconnectedness” of life as incisively advocated by the prominent Indian philosopher, J Krishnamurty when he points out that: “[A]nd in that state of communion – if you inquire more deeply – you will find that you are not only in communion with nature, with the world, with everything about you, but also in communion with yourself.” (1983, online).

References Atwood, Margaret. 2010. The Year of the Flood. London: Virago. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Business Standard. 2020. Are We Ready to Deal with Coronavirus. Business Standard. http://wap. business-­standard.com/amp/about/what-­is-­coronavirus. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry 35 (2): 197–222. Clark, Nigel. 2010. Volatile Worlds, Vulnerable Bodies: Confronting Abrupt Climate Change. Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2–3): 31–53. Davis, Mike. 2017. Planet of Slums. London: Verso. Derrida, Jacques. 1992. Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority. In Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld, and D.G. Carlson, 3–6. New York/ London: Routledge. Dwivedi, Om Prakash. 2020. Coronavirus and the Animal Within Us. The Massachusetts Review. https://www.massreview.org/node/8743. Accessed 15 June 2020. Dwivedi, Om Prakash and Aleks Andreas Wansbrough. 2022. Living in Dystopia: Fractured Identities and COVID-19. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 58(2): 147–155. Kapuscinski, Ryszard. 1982. Shah of Shahs. London: Penguin. Krishnamurty, J. 1983. If You Lose Relationship with Nature, You Lose Relationship with Humanity. https://kfoundation.org/what-­is-­our-­relationship-­with-­nature. Accessed 20 June 2020. Morton, Timothy. 2010. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Nayar, Pramod K. 2019. Ecoprecarity: Vulnerable Lives in Literature and Culture. New  York: Routledge. Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2014. The Great Acceleration and the Great Divergence: Vunerability in the Anthropocene. https://profession.mla.org/the-great-acceleration-and-the-great-divergencevulnerability-in-the-anthropocene/ Oreskes, Naomi. 2007. The scientific consensus on climate change: How do we know we’re not wrong? In Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren, ed. Joseph F.C. Dimento and Pamela Doughman, 105–148. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pellow, David N. 2020 From Social Distancing to Environmental Justice in the Time of COVID19. Biofrost. https://bifrostonline.org/david-­n-­pellow/. Accessed 22 June 2020 Purdy, Jedidiah. 2015. After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Raymond, Queneau. 2009. The Flight of Icarus Translated by Barbara Wright. London: One World Classics. Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew, and Brent Ryan Bellamy. 2019. An Ecoptopian Lexcion. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Sierra, Sarah. 2019. Time and the Environment: “Slow Violence” in Benito Pérez Galdós’s Doña Perfecta and Marianela. Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura. 35 (1): 41–56. Sinha, Indra. 2007. Animal People. London: Pocket Books-Simon and Schuster. von Mossner, Alexa Weik. 2015. Love in the times of ecocide: Environmental trauma and comic relief in Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E.  In Eco-Trauma Cinema, ed. Anil Narine, 164–179. New York/London: Routledge. Wallace, Molly. 2010. Risk Criticism: Precautionary Reading in An Age of Environmental Uncertainty. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Walsh, Ryan. 2019. Expert testimony (Perrine v. DuPont, 2008). In Reckonings, 22. Reno: Baobab Press. Werz, Michael, and Laura Conley. 2012. Climate Change, Migration and Conflict: Addressing Complex Crisis Scenarios in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. Wrigley, Anthony. 2015. An eliminativist approach to vulnerability. Bioethics 29 (7): 478–487. Om Prakash Dwivedi, PhD,  is Associate Professor in English Literature in the School of Liberal Arts at Bennett University, India. He is also the deputy chair of the international research network Challenging Precarity: A Global Network. He sits on the advisory board of the international journal Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Dwivedi is the author of Re-orientalism and Indian Writing in English (Palgrave, UK), Human Rights and Postcolonial India and Indian Writing in English and the Global Literary Market (Palgrave, UK). He earned his DPhil from the University of Allahabad in 2008. Prior to joining Bennett University, he had taught at universities in India and the Middle East.

Chapter 12

Anxiety in Isolation: Anointing with Ecocentrism Abhik Gupta

The Challenges of Eco-Anxiety Today, multiple stressors affect both inanimate nature and humans. These stressors such as the apprehension of climate change and its attendant natural disasters, the anxiety of living in polluted cities, the sad feeling of knowing about species of plants and animals facing extinction, and more recently, the dread of COVID-19 that looms large in many parts of the world, also impact the tranquility and homeostatic mechanisms of the psychological realm. Such a condition is often termed as “eco-anxiety”, although it is not yet formally recognized as a medical condition. The American Psychological Association (APA) defines eco-anxiety as a “chronic fear of environmental doom” (Arcanjo 2019, p. 3). Some people may experience it on a daily basis, while others may have recurrent episodes of anxiety at intervals. Climate change is among the most important stress-causing environmental phenomenon at the present time. However, climate change may cause anxiety in different ways in different countries and communities. For example, in the developed countries of the north, climate change may mainly cause anxiety because of the sense of uncertainty that it generates in the minds of the people, and not so much because of its direct effects. Uncertainty gives rise to a sense of loss of control of the situation, which in turn causes anxiety. Many people are trying to take corrective action at individual levels, such as shifting to a vegetarian or even vegan diet, avoidance of flights, reduction of waste, etc., but they have less faith in the efficacy of government action. This creates a sense of helplessness, which also transmits itself to children and youth. Adults are apprehensive of a societal collapse within a few

A. Gupta (*) Professor in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Assam University, Silchar, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_12

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decades, in spite of scientific evidence indicating that such a predicament may be unlikely, at least for Western Europe (Nugent 2019). The nature and magnitude of stress also vary among countries. For instance, incidences of anxiety and stress have been found to be very high among the Greenland population. However, even in the developed north, indigenous communities are bearing the brunt of psychological stress in the face of climate change. This is illustrated by the increase in anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies in the Sami, which is a traditional reindeer-herding tribe in the Arctic belt of Northern Europe. Increased incidences of drug and alcohol abuse have been observed in the Inuits of Canada (Arcanjo 2019, p. 3–4). In the developing countries, natural disasters like floods and landslides, which are being exacerbated by climate change, are becoming major stressors affecting more and more people. Kerala in India was devastated by flood and landslides in 2018. It also resulted in an increase in the number of people suffering from anxiety. Many are scared when they hear even the sound of rain. They have suffered acute stress reaction which has given rise to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Rajendran 2019). Several adults have committed suicide; children have become depressed, and are suffering from fear and anxiety (Ameerudheen 2018). Watching the media coverage of the disastrous effects of Kerala floods gave rise to anxiety disorders in some individuals (Uvais 2020). People living in industrial areas in several countries reported more about psychobiological stress and anxiety than those residing in residential areas (Saksena 2011). A study in China revealed that air pollution had adverse effects on mental health status. Poor air quality increased depressive symptoms, and reduced happiness (Zhang et  al. 2017). Not only climate change and natural disasters, COVID-19 is also causing anxiety disorders among many people. The fear of contagion, stress of physical isolation, and lack of socialization are bearing down on many, and especially pose risks to persons already suffering from mental depression (Cler 2020). As Simms in this volume expresses it, people now exist in a new reality controlled by the pandemic, and it is not easy to cope with such an existence. Besides, the more vulnerable sections of population, such as the elderly, people having underlying health conditions, their family, children, health workers such as doctors, nurses, and other paramedical staff, caregivers, persons living in congested conditions, and people facing financial difficulties, are experiencing more stress during the COVID-19 pandemic (CDC 2020). Fear of strict quarantine and spread of false alarming information in social media are also responsible for generating apprehensions in the minds of people (Farmer 2020). A study conducted in different districts of China, as well as Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan revealed that nearly 30% of the respondents reported mild to moderate psychological distress, while around 5% suffered severe distress during the COVID-19 pandemic (Qiu et al. 2020).

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Nature in a Therapeutic Role Among the many strategies and measures advanced for management of eco-anxiety, proximity to nature and connecting with nature—for example, by visiting green or wilderness areas or getting engaged in protecting and nurturing green spaces—have emerged as a possible approach in many climate change psychotherapy advisories (Macglip 2019; Sarchet 2019). It is not necessarily associated with “spirituality,” and could simply involve spending time in natural settings (reviewed in Ingulli and Lindbloom 2013). However, a factor that is of overriding importance in this psycho-­ restorative approach is the feeling of a connection with the natural environment. Many ecologists and ecopsychologists had been pointing this out, albeit with largely nonempirical evidence (Mayer and Frantz 2004). Leopold’s (1949, p. 2) belief that “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect…” can be said to have laid the basis for an ecocentric approach to land and nature. Roszak (1993) and Roszak et al. (1995) put forward the idea that the health of the human mind was intricately related to the health of the natural ecosystems and the whole biosphere, a concept that laid the foundation of the subject-field of ecopsychology. The feeling of connectedness to nature in humans could be analyzed in the light of empathy-altruism. Cialdini et al. (1997) reviewed previous work to show that the generation of empathic concern in the mind of the altruist (giver) for another individual (recipient) leads to an act of benevolence. Empathic concern in the form of compassion and other similar feelings could be brought about by “perspective taking”, where one person takes the point of view of another. Thus, when an altruistic person takes the perspective of another who is suffering, an altruistic act could follow. In this context, the subject of “close-relationship” is important, because partners in such relationship perceive that any benefit accruing to a partner means benefit to self in the long run. In other words, there is an extension of the “self” to include the “other”, or merging into each other. Thus, an image of “overlapping selves” emerges from the phenomenon of close-relationship (reviewed by Aron et al. 1991). If this concept can be extended to human-nature relationship, then an extension of human self can include nature and its various entities such as plants, animals or even entire ecosystems. However, while such human-nature overlapping selves are envisaged in many religions of the world (Gupta 2013), attempts to provide empirical evidence for a connectedness to nature have been made by several researchers (Dunlap et al. 2000; Mayer and Frantz 2004; Nisbet et al. 2009; Perkins 2010; Navarro et al. 2017; Pasca et  al. 2017). These studies generated empirical data gathered from a large variety of respondents that included college and university students, tourists spending leisure time in nature, and members of different communities in USA, Australia, Spain, France, and Canada. Though these studies employed different scales or different versions of the same scale to measure the feeling of love and care or connectedness or relatedness to nature, they generally validated the concept that such

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feelings contributed to environmental concern and influenced behavior, and enhanced altruistic feelings for nature.

The Curative Spell of Ecocentrism and Eco-Poetry The studies cited in the previous section of this chapter indicate—some with empirical data—that the curative efficacy of visiting green spaces and wilderness could be increased if individuals developed a connectedness with nature. Connection with the earth is at the core of eco-psychotherapy. This connection may not develop by mere visits to wilderness areas, but may even sprout from a mere glimpse or whiff of Nature. The primary requirement is to increase the self-nature overlap which modern life—largely detached from nature—has reduced (Mayer and Frantz 2004). A question arises here that whether humans can develop a dialogue with Nature, a dialogue that goes inward, and would be instrumental in building connections with nature. If humans and nature could develop a close-relationship, then the overlapping of human self and nature could take place, and individuals developing this relationship or “dialogue” could benefit more from their stints in natural surroundings, than those who did not. The philosopher Martin Buber had said that there could be different spheres where the “world of relation” could arise. In human-nature relations, “the relation sways in gloom, beneath the level of speech …. words cling to the threshold of speech”. On the other hand, in relations among humans, the “relation is open and in the form of speech” (Buber 1923, p. 13). This absence of speech often acts as a barrier for developing a relation with nature. However, Buber has also said that “for a conversation no sound is necessary, not even a gesture” (Buber 1947, p  3). Our predominantly Cartesian convictions of denying moral standing and intrinsic value to nature prevent us from developing a connection that is likely to have therapeutic value not only in eco-anxiety, but also in many other forms of psychological maladies. Identifying with Nature might enable people to emerge from the stranglehold of loneliness and move into the tranquil realm of solitude. Thus, one would still remain alone, but with a difference. But how do we move into this twilight world of our conversation with Nature? Can a reading of ecocentric poetry remove our hesitation of linking with nature? I choose here a few poems of four poets writing in two different languages to suggest that reading such poetry could aid in extending our self to include nature. The first poet and transcendentalist philosopher I have studied for this article is Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). In the introduction section of his book “Nature”, Emerson says that “Nature never becomes a toy to a wise spirit …. The flowers, the animals, the mountains” mirror “the wisdom of his best hour” and “the simplicity of his childhood.” Emerson says that such a view of Nature is essentially poetic in nature, which recognizes a “tree” in a forest, and not just a “stick of timber of the wood-cutter.” However, very few adults can really “see Nature.” People who can carry their childhood view of Nature into their adult lives can actually

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understand Nature. It is this understanding which is likely to have therapeutic value in managing eco-anxiety, because in Emerson’s words, Natural objects can be kin “when the mind is open to their influence”. In other words, a person can never be alone when she can adopt Nature into her life (Emerson 1849, p. 3). In his poem “The River”, which he wrote in 1827, though it was first published in 1903, Emerson writes “…. Oh, call not Nature dumb; / These trees and stones are audible to me, / These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind, / I understand their faery syllables, / And all their sad significance. The wind, / That rustles down the well-known forest road - / It hath a sound more eloquent than speech. / The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind, / All of them utter sounds of ’monishment / And grave parental love. / …… I feel as I were welcome to these trees / After long months of weary wandering, / Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs; / They know me as their son, for side by side, / They were coeval with my ancestors,” (Emerson 1904). The verses of Emerson remind us of Martin Buber, who said that a dialogue could grow in silence. The second poet I have chosen is Walt Whitman (1819–1892), the celebrated American visionary. Whitman sent his first book of poems “The Leaves of Grass” to Emerson, who hailed the work in effusive terms. I quote from his “We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d”: “We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return, / We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark, / …. We are oaks, …. / We are two fishes swimming in the sea together, / …. We are two predatory hawks, … / We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again…”. This poem was revised several times after its first publication in 1860. The poem is said to be celebrating male-female or even male-male attraction, mixing some images of nature. While accepting this analysis, we could also recognize the clear ecocentric message in the poem, where the two become Nature, not only in an abstract way, but also in the form of oaks, other plants, plant parts, animals including predators, and then suns, comets, snow, rain … to sum up, almost every component of Nature. In “Passage to India”, Whitman not only hailed the feats of technology in the Suez Canal and the railroads, and the great traditions and legends of India, but was also convinced that “Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more, / The true son of God (the poet – italics mine) shall absolutely fuse them.” In “Spontaneous me”, friendship, poetry, and nature mingle together when he writes “Spontaneous me, Nature, / The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, / …… The hillside whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, / The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green, / The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, / ….. The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,) / The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me, …” (Whitman 1855–1892, p.61, 63–64, 235). Whitman observes “at my ease …. a spear of summer grass” (Whitman 1855–1892, p. 17), and asks his soul to be with him on the grass. Elsewhere a child’s question about grass makes him to think of the child as grass, the “babe of the vegetation” (Whitman 1855–1892, p. 20). Continuing from here, I go to Jibanananda Das (1899–1954), a very widely read Bengali poet from India, who is considered as one of the pioneers of modern Bengali poetry. In his poem “grass”, Das wants to

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savor the flavor of grass like some heady green wine, and even take birth as a grass, descending from the dark, delicious womb of a grass-mother. In his other poems, he gets transformed into a wood duck or a deer with ease, to eventually become the target of a hunter’s bullet, because to some humans, they are just pieces of meat. The last poet in this chapter is the Nobel Laureate Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), who wrote poems, songs, novels, plays, short stories, essays, and others. I will cite some of his songs – he wrote close to two thousand - that clearly reflect his ecocentric philosophy. Tagore often got answers to many of his existential questions not from any human, but from Nature. And he did not get them from any charismatic species, but from the less spectacular, hidden forms of life such as a wildflower. In one of his songs he writes: “I train my ears upon the murmur of the river / my heart quivering at the rustling of leaves / If the words of flowers I could unravel / I am sure I would trace the path that goes beyond the evening star”. In another song he says: “I know that my doubts will be gone / if I can read the soft, subtle hints in the fragrance of / flowers that bloom by the verge of the road”. Again, Tagore bequeaths his songs to Nature in a song: “By the side of the bustling road, my days have been spent singing / at the time of departure, my heart cries out: to whom do I give them away? / Their melodies I would split among the many-hued splendor of flowers / the gliding notes I would blend along the gold-lined edges of clouds” (Gupta 2016, 242–243).

Conclusion Extending one’s self to include the other humans could lead one into an altruistic world less troubled by anxiety and uncertainty. Empirical data have also been generated to show that extending the circle of partnerships to include nonhuman organisms and entire ecosystems, landscapes, and finally the biosphere - the enchanting Gaia - could bring more lasting and soothing therapeutic benefits. Such an approach has already become an integral part of many eco-psychotherapy modules for treating eco-anxiety, and is likely to be effective for dealing with anxiety caused by COVID-19. However, a question arises as to what could be the practical methods to enhance one’s connectedness with Nature? Green and ecocentric reading of poetry that recognizes intrinsic values in Nature could be one of these. We need not make a journey into wilderness, if we do not wish to or do not have the time or means to do so. Moreover, Hewson in this volume shows in his eco-poem that long and expensive trips into the wilderness can leave anthropogenic scars to degrade it further. On the other hand, we can have nature peep at us and comfort us in the form of a wildflower that has bloomed in the vacant lot beside our house, or on the roadside of our afternoon stroll. We can hear them in the chirping of not so rare birds around us, or in the potted plants of our balcony. What we have to do is to extend our soul to cover another soul, to mingle a part of us in the other, and perhaps we will not be alone, anxious or afraid anymore. We have companions in our journey: the numerous leaves of grass that Whitman and

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Jibanananda watched growing and perishing and yet getting replaced and replenished by new blades sprouting up; the wildflowers that never failed to reveal the correct path to Tagore, or the trees that recognized Emerson as their successor. And these are just a few examples to illustrate our faith in Nature. We have to delve into our vast ecocentric literature in numerous world languages and in colorful oral traditions to make a more complete assessment. Using the words of Naess (1973), we can say that as we move from “the shallow” to the “Deep”, and build intrinsic relations with Nature, a “Deep” healing will anoint us from within.

References Ameerudheen, T.A. 2018. Kerala Floods: As Kerala Adjusts to Life After Floods, Health Officials Race to Tackle Mental Health Problems. Scroll.in, September 29. https://scroll.in/article/895023/as-­kerala-­adjusts-­to-­life-­after-­floods-­health-­officials-­race-­to-­tackle-­mental-­health-­ problems#:~:text=The%20floods%20in%20August%20affected,with%20grief%2C%20 stress%20and%20anxiety. Accessed 24 June 2020. Arcanjo, M. 2019. Eco-Anxiety: Mental Health Impacts of Environmental Disasters and Climate Change. Washington, DC: A Climate Institute Publication. http://climate.org/eco-­anxiety-­ mental-­health-­impacts-­of-­environmental-­disasters-­and-­climate-­change/. Accessed 24 June 2020. Aron, A., E.N. Aron, M. Tudor, and G. Nelson. 1991. Close relationships as including other in the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60 (2): 241–253. Buber, M. 1923. I and Thou (Ich und Du). Trans. Ronald Gregor-Smith. London: Continuum. First South Asian Edition 2005. ———. 1947. Between Man and Man. Trans. Ronald Gregor-Smith. London: Routledge. First Indian Reprint 2013. CDC. 2020. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Coping with Stress  – Pandemics Can Be Stressful. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-­ ncov/daily-­life-­coping/managing-­stress-­anxiety.html. Accessed 21 June 2020. Cialdini, R.B., S.L.  Brown, B.P.  Lewis, C.  Luce, and S.L.  Neuberg. 1997. Reinterpreting the empathy-­altruism relationship: When one into one equals oneness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73 (3): 481–494. Cler, N. 2020. COVID-19 Lockdown: Isolation Is Taking a Toll on My Mental Health. https://www. shethepeople.tv/blog/covid-­19-­lockdown-­toll-­mental-­health. Accessed 10 April 2020. Dunlap, R.E., K.D. Van Liere, A.G. Mertig, and R.E. Jones. 2000. Measuring endorsement of the new ecological paradigm: A revised NEP scale. Journal of Social Issues 56 (3): 425–442. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1849. Nature. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nature, 2009. ———. 1903. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cambridge: Riverside Press. ———.1904. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Poems [Vol. 9]. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, The Riverside Press, Cambridge. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative, 1996. http://name.umdl.umich.edu/ BAD1982.0001.001 Farmer, B. 2020. The Covid-19 Mental Health Crisis: Expect Depression, Anxiety and Stress Disorders, Researchers Warn. The Telegraph, 25 March. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-­ health/science-­and-­disease/covid-­19-­mental-­health-­crisis-­expect-­depression-­anxiety-­stress/. Accessed 10 April 2020. Gupta, A. 2013. Altruism in Indian religions: embracing the biosphere. In Altruism in Crosscultural Perspective, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch, 101–112. New York: Springer.

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———. 2016. Ecocentric Thoughts in the Writings of Rabindranath Tagore: An Illustrative Study. In The Idea of Surplus: Tagore and Contemporary Human Sciences, ed. Mrinal Miri, 235–248. New Delhi: Routledge. Ingulli, K., and G.  Lindbloom. 2013. Connection to nature and psychological resilience. Ecopsychology 5 (1): 52–55. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2012.0042. Leopold, A. 1949. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Macglip, R. 2019. How to Beat Eco-Anxiety? https://compareethics.com/how-­to-­overcome-­eco-­ anxiety/. Accessed 27 June 2020. Mayer, F.S., and C.M. Frantz. 2004. The connectedness to nature scale: A measure of individuals’ feeling in community with nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology 24: 503–515. Naess, A. 1973. The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement. A summary. Inquiry 16 (1–4): 95–100. Navarro, O., P. Olivos, and G. Fleury-Bahi. 2017. “Connectedness to nature scale”: Validity and reliability in the French Context. Frontiers in Psychology 8: Article 2180. https://doi. org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02180 Nisbet, E.K., J.M. Zelenski, and S.A. Murphy. 2009. The nature relatedness scale: Linking individuals’ connection with nature to environmental concern and behavior. Environment and Behavior 41 (5): 715–740. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916508318748 Nugent, C. 2019. Terrified of Climate Change? You Might Have Eco-Anxiety. Time, November 21. https://time.com/5735388/climate-­change-­eco-­anxiety/. Accessed 24 June 2020. Pasca, L., J.I. Aragonés, and M.T. Coello. 2017. An analysis of the connectedness to nature scale based on item response theory. Frontiers in Psychology 8: Article 1330. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2017.01330 Perkins, H.E. 2010. Measuring love and care for nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (4): 455–463. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.05.004 Qiu, J., B. Shen, M. Zhao, Z. Wang, B. Xie, and Y. Xu. 2020. A nationwide survey of psychological distress among Chinese people in the COVID-19 epidemic: Implications and policy recommendations. General Psychiatry 33: e100213. https://doi.org/10.1136/gpsych-­2020-­100213. Rajendran, K. 2019. Painful Memory: A Year After Kerala Floods, Many Survivors Are Even ‘Afraid to Hear the Sound of Rain’. Thomson Reuters Foundation. https://scroll.in/article/934222/a-­year-­after-­kerala-­floods-­many-­survivors-­are-­even-­afraid-­to-­hear-­the-­sound-­of-­rain. Accessed 24 June 2020. Roszak, T. 1993. The Voice of the Earth. New York: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster. Roszak, T., M.E.  Gomes, and A.D.  Kanner, eds. 1995. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Saksena, S. 2011. Public perceptions of urban air pollution risks. Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy 2 (1): Article 2. https://doi.org/10.2202/1944-­4079.1075. http://www.psocommons.org/ rhcpp/vol2/iss1/art2. Sarchet, P. 2019. Stressed About Climate Change? Eight Tips for Managing Eco-Anxiety. New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2220561-­stressed-­about-­climate-­change-­eight-­ tips-­for-­managing-­eco-­anxiety/. Accessed 21 June 2020 Uvais, N.A. 2020. Disaster-related media exposure and its impact on mental health. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care 9 (1): 448–449. Whitman, Walt. 1855–1892. Leaves of Grass. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leaves of Grass, 1998. Zhang, Xin, Xiaobo Zhang, and Xi Chen. 2017. Happiness in the air: How does a dirty sky affect mental health and subjective well-being? Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 85: 81–94.

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Abhik Gupta  is a  retired professor and pro vice-chancellor, Assam University, Silchar, India. With a master’s and a PhD degree in Zoology, the subject areas of his interest are freshwater ecology and pollution, behavioral ecology, and environmental policy and ethics, in which he has had over 50 research articles published in international journals and over 60 book chapters. He has also presented papers in over 100 international, national and regional seminars and conferences in India and 14 other countries. He was the recipient of the “Water Voice Award” from the World Water Council; fellow of the National Institute of Ecology, India; recipient of the Erasmus Mundus Senior Scholarship and Erasmus Mundus IndiaNAMASTE Academic Staff Grant at the Netherlands and Spain, in 2008 and 2014. He has delivered invited lectures at different universities and research institutes in Australia, Spain, the United States, the Netherlands, Japan, and India. He has successfully guided 27 PhD and 8 MPhil scholars. He has also completed five projects, including two international projects. He was the vice-president (India) of the Asian Bioethics Association, and he is on the board of directors of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International. Gupta has served as the team leader in several environmental impact assessment (EIA) projects, and he was the resource person and narrator in several educational telefilms.

Chapter 13

“Narrative Medicine” in the Age of COVID-19: The Power of Creative Writing to Reimagine Environmental Crisis Nicole Anae

Narrative Medicine In the clinical context, “the concept of narrative medicine holds that by becoming more-insightful consumers of the stories we hear and see—through the written word, the stage, visual art, or other sources—we become more-empathic listeners to the stories our patients tell, and, by extension, more reflective, trustworthy, and effective practitioners of our profession” (Leopold 2018, 2105). Rita Charon (2000) structures narrative medicine’s practical triad in “movements” each in reciprocal relationship with/to the other: the capacity for and the states of attention; the acts of and power of representation, and the states of affiliation. Each movement suggests a spiral; spirals of attention, spirals of representation, and spirals of affiliation. The latter movement, affiliation, culminates in the central aim of narrative medicine: to establish connections between the seemingly disparate entities or to recognize the unrecognized entity and engender empathy. Drawing on Heiserman and Spiegel’s work on narrative permeability—turning attention away “from how the story works to how it works on us” (2006, 464)—Charon claims that in the act of spectator, specifically with respect to observing pain or distress; We, the viewers, are mobilized in witnessing others’ suffering, be it in an intensive care unit or a darkened movie house, not only to comprehend what that suffering might mean to the patient or the subject of the film, but also to witness and comprehend what such suffering might mean or might have meant to ourselves. And so the interpenetration of self and other—the goal of affiliation—is seen within the very seat of the observation. (2007, 1267)

N. Anae (*) Central Queensland University, Adelaide, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_13

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Eco-anxiety Suffering plays a unique role in climate change debates and mental health concerns focusing on ecological fears. Conceptual terms such as solastalgia (Albrecht 2005), ecoangst (Goleman 2009), and eco-anxiety (Clayton et al. 2017), each encompasses the associated mental distress caused by a knowledge of dire changing environmental conditions in decline. Issues of ecoangst, solastalgia, and eco-anxiety are also subject to rigorous critical question in the work of Tina Williams, Christoph Solstreif-Pirker, and Michael Hewson, respectively (Chaps. 2, 9, and 14, this volume). Although eco-anxiety is not currently regarded by the American Psychological Association (APA) as a medical condition, the Association has identified eco-­ anxiety as a “chronic fear of environmental doom” (2017). According to Usher et al. “eco-anxiety is a specific form of anxiety relating to stress or distress caused by environmental changes and our knowledge of them. There is no specific diagnosis of ‘eco-anxiety’” (2019, 1233). Some theorists view eco-anxiety as a form of eco-­ grief, in which an individual’s emotional and physical pain is directly related to ecological/environmental realities (Buzzell 2009, 52). In fact, Pihkala (2020, 9) claims that the more pressing concern with respect to eco-anxiety is “the need to recognize the various forms and definitions of eco-anxiety” espoused by various scholars, including, but not limited to, “Ecological anxiety disorder” (Robbins and  Moore 2013), “Anthropocene disorders” (Bladow and Ladino 2018), and “Anthropocene disorder” and “Anthropocene Horror” (Clark 2020). How best to respond creatively to contemporary environmental crisis is a concurrent question underlying emergent scholarship drawing together ecology, ecocriticism, and poetics—that is, what Lynn Keller in Recomposing Ecopoetics (2018) terms “poetry of the self-conscious Anthropocene.” Keller, for instance, seeks to explore ecocritical poetry mirroring twin intellectual spheres, suggesting that, not only has “ecocriticism been evolving in its response to debates among literary critics and in poetry circles concerning language, referentiality, accessibility, and poetic form,” but also that, “ecocriticism has responded to further changes in view of nature itself” (11). The term “ecopoetry” identifies not only verse forms indicating a “protest stance” about environmental concerns, to coin Timothy Clark (2019, 57), but also a collective term describing the profusion of written verse interrogating questions around “what poetry is or can be” (57). Ecopoetry as both adopting traditional conventions of “nature poetry” while simultaneously taking on distinct and contemporary environmental concerns (Bryson 2005, 2) converges in mental health approaches addressing what Evelyn Reilly describes as “the linking of a uniquely disastrous moment to a call for uniquely interrupted or disrupted responses” (2020). Indeed, various practitioners have espoused and developed creative writing methodologies to cope with climate change (Laininen 2017) and “climate emotions” generally (Gabriel and Garrard 2012; Kelsey 2014) from the standpoint of ecotherapy. “Climate emotions” refers to the negative emotions associated with climate change; fear, trauma, grief, guilt, shame, anger, and helplessness, among others (Pihkala 2019). Here, creative expression and the term “sublimation”—commonly understood as the transference of

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instinctual energies/desires into socially acceptable activities (Renisson 2001, 89)—holds relevance to the contemporary outpouring of “corona writing.” Like the artist, the creative writer in lockdown must first endure the pain of this loss of the original integrity of the lost object (in this case, a world before plague) because, as claimed by psychoanalytical theorist Hanna Segal; “It is only when the loss has been acknowledged and the mourning experienced that recreation can take place” (1952, 199). From this perspective, corona-poetry is not so much the redirection of longing for a forbidden object, as sublimation, but rather, the poet’s “recreation of that loved object internally and as an artistic object in outer reality” (Sperber 2014, 512).

Corona Writing as Narrative Medicine It is more than coincidental that New York Times contributor Emma Smith asserted that amidst the COVID-19 pandemic reading William Shakespeare’s work “is narrative vaccine” (Smith 2020). The allusion to consuming literature as somehow curative bears more than a little coincidence to writing as somehow therapeutic, and as such, analogues to a curious inversion of the narrative medicine paradigm. Issues of how best to deal with environmental change and crisis via creative writing techniques and narrative forms of story-telling are also concerns subject to detailed ecocritical attention in the work of Caroline Hickman, Om Prakash Dwivedi, and Abhik Gupta, respectively (Chaps. 8, 11, and 12, this volume). The central impulse inspiring the vast surge in “corona writing,” even amongst uninfected and/or asymptomatic writers, appears to be a written account of an experience with/of the coronavirus pandemic: much like a patient narrating an experience of illness. Hans Loewald argues that writing makes the immaterial, material—thus giving the viewer power and offering the representer the ability to recognize, realize or at least confront the real, that which happens, that which matters despite all the forces that collude to keep them invisible (1988, 47). From the lens of narrative medicine, “readers have an intimate and urgent role to play in response. Neither casual nor coy, these texts are asking something of their readers—asking for witness, for presence, for answer” (Charon 2007, 1266). Charon suggests that the “literary practices” underlying some literary works, such as those of Henry James, provide potential to understand illness through the “textual moves” enacted between a fictional character and the author, as well as between the author and the reader “in what amounts to a therapeutic transference created in the reading transaction” (2006, 42). The operation of an analogous form of “therapeutic transference” is evident in some examples of “corona writing.” Take, for example, Kitty O’Meara’s poem, “And the People Stayed Home” (2020): And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

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And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal. And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

From the position of narrative medicine, it is possible to read O’Meara’s poem as an experience of, and response to, environmental illness. The “textual moves” (Charon 2006, 42) O’Meara enacts as both artist as well as between herself and the reader, is highly illustrative of a “therapeutic transference.” O’Meara encourages the reader to mediate on freedom and isolation and how these disparate states of spontaneity and inhibition shape and determine everyday life behind the literally and symbolically locked door. Deprived of the world outside, the interiority of the human self within the domicile space takes on new meaning. People “learned new ways of being,” they “listened more deeply,” “met their shadows”, and “began to think differently.” Isolation offers “the people” potential for change; to reconnect with self and others as much as to learn important lessons about and for humanity from the context and circumstances of isolation. O’Meara’s vision of seclusion is optimistically bright. In her textual manoeuvres extolling newly dreamed images and newly created ways to live, O’Meara envisions a hopeful bid for “the people’s” time well-spent in isolation. People will learn a valuable lesson about humanity and environment. Isolation as curative extends therefore, perhaps more importantly, to the exteriority of the world beyond that literal and symbolically locked door. For O’Meara, “in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.” In this vision, human exclusion from the natural world is mutually beneficial, offering both  humanity and ecology alike a remedial, albeit temporary, restorative to prevailing environmental threat. When O’Meara calls the people to “heal the earth fully, as they had been healed,” in so doing, she hearalds an emotive futurity attempting to ease eco-anxiety by encouraging constructive action on both a personal and social level. In many ways, O’Meara’s poem tracks the stages of ecological realization Sarah Anne Edwards and Linda Buzzell discuss in their article “The Waking Up Syndrome” (2009). Theirs is a form of ecotherapy representing “the therapeutic outcome of ecopsychology which attempts to remedy ‘eco-anxiety’” (Morrall 2020, 203). For Edwards and Buzzell, individuals can experience a stage-by-stage process of growing ecological threat awareness. With respect to O’Meara herself, for instance, she admitted that the impulse for the poem originated from her own feelings of pain and powerlessness: “I was getting kind of sad. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t help my friends. I was very worried about them” (Nicolaou 2020). The first stage, denial, while not explicit in O’Meara’s poem, effective sets its context, one in which “the people” have long avoid truly acknowledging the existence of an ecological threat. The second stage, semi-consciousness, emerges in confronting “shadows” and thinking differently; a state of awareness comparable to “waking-up,” or stage three: realization. The realization stage precipitates stage four: a point of no return. While a profound and inescapable sense of seclusion and detachment permeates the poem’s undertone, the world is one which the people no longer truly recognize. Isolation prohibits physical interaction and frustrates direct interpersonal

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communication. It is a world in which business is no longer usual, for anyone. Everyone has become suddenly aware of the unpleasant new reality. No-one can simply “act ‘as if’ nothing has changed just to get along,” with the only option being “to withdraw from life as we’ve known it and turn into a hermit” (Edwards and Buzzell 2011). Thus, stage five initiates grief. While in O’Meara’s poem, the people “grieved their losses,” and determine new ways of thinking, this optimistic homily masks a much more confronting reality; one likening the effects of the pandemic to the process of accepting a chronically degenerative disease. In this sense, O’Meara parlays a strategy of “resilience,” such as the kind examined by Pihkala (in the Introduction to this volume), into a creative writing form constructing “an ecoresilient landscape of consciousness for [her] personal experiences” (Audley, Stein and Ginsburg 2020, 454). She has, quite literally, crafted a poetical response in a time of ongoing stress, and indeed, has flourished even despite the fact that simply making “new choices” and dreaming “new images” cannot hide the gruesome reality that the environmental issue is not only on-going, but also likely to deteriorate and become more problematical in the future. Indeed, when O’Meara’s poem was republished alongside an interview with Oprahmag on March 19, 2020 (Nicolaou 2020), data collected by Johns Hopkins University indicated 243, 084 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide (Johns Hopkins University 2020) yet, according to statistical data collected by Johns Hopkins University as of the afternoon of Sunday, June 28, 2020, there were 10,063,319 confirmed cases worldwide and 500,108 deaths globally (Treisman 2020). “Thoughts in Time of Plague” by Poet Laureate of Toronto A. F. Moritz (2020) is similarly concerned with both the domicile space and the external boundaries extending beyond it—a mediation on the back-and-forthness of life in insolation— what Moritz identities as a kind of displacement; “between being on the road, a wanderer, and being at home, a householder, and how, in a way, strangely, they can almost be the same thing or two sides of the same coin” (Dundas 2020): When we set out, we knew many would die on the way. And yet, the journey was joyous. When we made our home we knew many would die there. And yet we loved that house. All the views from its windows we named “beauty”. When we went down the road, the light was different every mile. What could be behind those mute windows with sometimes a peering eye, what pleasure in those almost empty gardens, what unknown work in the factories, birds in the dense wood? When dawn came in our bedroom or we woke too late in the old shattered kitchen amid food scraps, empty bottles, didn’t our memory burn deeper?—the same old scar, flaming anew, shifting, unmoved.

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And when we were trembling by the sick that we loved and feared—so many—was it different? Whether on the road with nowhere to lay them down, or in the room with nowhere else to take them… When we had to watch the threatened breathing or leave it to go to work. When we had to hear they had died without us—was it different? No. No different. Except that we saw something we always knew in the dark. Failure was not and success had never been the end. The end was care. (Dundas 2020)

From the viewpoint of narrative medicine, it is possible to read the motif of “home” and all allusions to the domicile space—house, windows, rooms—as a metaphor for placeness. It is the pervading sense of “place attachment,” to coin Albrecht (2019, 27), that draws the threads of solastalgia interwoven throughout “Thoughts in Time of Plague” clearly into view. Albrecht (2019, 38) defines “solastalgia” as “the pain or distress caused by the ongoing loss of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory. It is the existential and lived experience of negative environmental change, manifest as an attack on one's sense of place.” Place in “Thoughts in Time of Plague” is an environmentally rich ground upon which to make a home; a house of which “All the views from its windows we named ‘beauty’.” Our memory burns deeper with the breaking dawn, symbolic for realization. Our memory of what burns deeper awaking late in the room most associated with replenishment—“the old/shattered kitchen”—as much as the domestic space most symbolic of our own waste and rampant consumerism “amid food scraps, empty bottles.” Here are the sentiments best realizing solastalgia as, quite literally, “The homesickness you have at home” (Albrecht 2019, 27). Moritz’s “textual moves” (Charon 2006, 42) attempting to separate the inside of the house and the outside of the home define paradoxically delineated spaces of attending—to “the sick/that we loved and feared.” This is where the theme of eco-­ anxiety fully reveals itself: “on the road with nowhere/to lay them down, or in the room with nowhere/else to take them.” The lament for placeness—contemporary with commemorative writing about the COVID-19 crisis—connects the motif of the road with time as much as evokes a feeling of gloomy foreboding. Moritz is expressing the very definition of solastalgia: “the idea of a place-based emotion that captures the feeling of distress when an external force, one that we are powerless to prevent, enters the biophysical location or ‘life-space’ within which one lives out life [the home] … and chronically desolates it” (Albrecht 2019, 37). As Moritz asks “When we had to watch/the threatened breathing or leave it/to go to work. When we had to hear they had died/without us,” his rhetoric brings the journey to an apparent impasse: “No. No different.” This open indifference transforms the house into an image of futurity, a place-holder for the potential for a new realization: “Except that we saw something we always knew/in the dark. Failure was not/and success had never been/the end.” Here, the motif of time equates to progress, a chance to change

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our situation rather than being trapped in an unalterably terrible fate: “Failure was not/and success had never been/the end.” Moritz’s final line “The end was care” is both irrevocably commemorative and distinct in tracing a movement to stage six of Edwards and Buzzell’s stages of ecological realization: acceptance, empowerment, action (2011). From the perspective of narrative medicine and a reading of “Thoughts in Time of Plague” as a response to eco-anxiety, acceptance of, rather than resistance to, the current and emerging environmental reality is key. “The end was care” encourages an acceptance of the limits of general powerlessness in order to better identify the parameters of ecological action possible in this strange new reality.

Conclusion Ecocritical concerns debating environmental issues have traditionally mapped themselves against creative forms of poetical expression (Keller 2018, 11). While earning for O’Meara the honorific, “the poet laureate of the pandemic” (IrishCentral 2020a), the trend to attach the term “viral” to a poem about a viral pandemic, such as “And The People Stayed Home,” effectively demonstrates not only the convergence of the actual and virtual social interactions between individuals during a “viral” event (e.g., the coronavirus pandemic), but also the extent to which both “context” (the pandemic) and online sharing behaviors increase the likelihood of poetry “going viral” (Nahon and Hemsley 2013, 140). As we see in the poetry of Moritz and O’Meara, although neither align themselves specifically as “eco-poets,” their work is directly related to the ecological. Other “viral” works, such as Lynn Unger’s “Pandemic” (Schmich 2020), Tom Roberts’ “The Great Realisation” (Carson and Ty 2020), Jaime Ragsdale’s “What If Instead Of Behind These Kids Are Ahead” (Selinger-Morris 2020), and Capuchin Franciscan Brother Richard Hendrick’s poem “Lockdown” (IrishCentral 2020b), among many others, link the wellbeing implications of “corona writing” at the intersection of trauma, environmental crisis, exposure, and personal vulnerability. Here, just as the writer sees and tells, so too do they evoke into existence an imagined audience (e.g., the reader); one whom accepts or bears witness to their “textual moves” and narrative acts. This nexus is the foundation upon which to establish “a tripartite relation among the seen, the seer/teller, and the receiver” (Charon 2006, 43). If, as ecocritic Timothy Clark once speculated, “certain limits of the human imagination, artistic representation and the capacity of understanding [are] now being reached” (2015, 25), “viral” writing in the form of ecopoetry represents a potent cultural narrative responding to the environmental, social, and geographical scales involved in the growing coronavirus pandemic. Although “narrative medicine” is a clinical approach to patient care, its premise to “acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others” (Charon 2001, 1897) holds relevance beyond an exclusively clinical setting and context. In fact, when Charon wrote, “Together with medicine, literature looks forward to a future when illness

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calls forth, in witness and in helpers, recognition instead of anonymity, communion instead of isolation, and shared meanings instead of insignificance” (2000, 23–27), she could well have been writing about corona-poetry specifically. The emergent anxiety underlying the topical interest and themes of verse writing in the age of COVID-19 are both reaching and exceeding currency, particularly across many technological platforms and applications precisely because this form of writing casts an eye toward an ecological future when environmental concerns call forth acknowledgment rather than indifference, unity rather than detachment, and collective agreement rather than mutual exclusion. At the same time, that the disciplinary field of ecocriticism itself is viewing the digital environmental humanities with greater interest, signals a particularly significant alignment between creative literary expression and new ways of engaging with the imaginative and psychological challenges of the Anthropocene.

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———. 2007. What to Do with Stories. Canadian Family Physician 53 (8): 1265–1267. Accessed 28 June 2020. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1949238/. Clark, Timothy. 2015. Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept. London/New York: Bloomsbury. ———. 2019. The Value of Ecocriticism. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2020. Ecological Grief and Anthropocene Horror. American Imago 77 (1): 61–80. Accessed 27 June 2022. https://doi.org/10.1353/aim.2020.0003. Clayton, Susan, Christie Manning, Kirra Krygsman, and Meighen Speiser. 2017. Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance. Washington: American Psychological Association/ecoAmerica. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.apa.org/news/ press/releases/2017/03/mentalhealth-­climate.pdf. Dundas, Deborah. 2020. Poetry of a Pandemic: Toronto’s Poet Laureate Explains How He Approached Writing About COVID-19 Crisis. The Star (Toronto), March 31. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2020/03/31/can-­you-­capture-­a-­pandemic-­ in-­a-­poem-­torontos-­poet-­laureate-­explains-­how-­he-­a pproached-­writing-­about-­covid-­19-­ crisis.html. Edwards, Sarah Anne, and Linda Buzzell. 2011. The Waking Up Syndrome. ResilienceCircles, March 11. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://localcircles.org/2011/03/11/ the-­waking-­up-­syndrome-­by-­sarah-­anne-­edwards-­and-­linda-­buzzell/. Gabriel, Hayden, and Greg Garrard. 2012. Reading and Writing Climate Change. In Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies, ed. Greg Garrard, 117–129. Houndmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Goleman, Daniel. 2009. The Age of Eco-angst. The New York Times, September 27. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/the-­age-­of-­eco-­angst/. Heiserman, Arthur, and Maura Spiegel. 2006. Narrative Permeability: Crossing the Dissociative Barrier In and Out of Films. Literature and Medicine 25 (2): 463–474. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/216433/pdf. IrishCentral. 2020a. Irish American Teacher’s Poem on COVID-19 Outbreak Goes Viral. IrishCentral, April 22. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/ irish-­american-­teachers-­poem-­COVID-­19-­outbreak. ———. 2020b. Priest in Ireland Pens Touching Poem About Coronavirus Lockdown. IrishCentral, May 22. Accessed 3 July 2020. https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/ coronavirus-­lockdown-­poem. Johns Hopkins University. 2020. COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. Coronavirus Resource Center. Accessed 29 June 2020. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html. Keller, Lynn. 2018. Recomposing Ecopoetics: North American Poetry of the Self-Conscious Anthropocene. Charlottesville/London: University of Virginia Press. Kelsey, Elin, ed. 2014. Beyond Doom and Gloom: An Exploration Through Letters. Munich: Rachel Carson Center. Laininen, Henna. 2017. Guide to Experimental Life—Communal Creative Writing as an Answer to the Environmental Crises. PhD thesis, University of the Arts, Helsinki, Academy of Fine Arts. Accessed 30 June 2020. http://hennalaininen.net/?page_id=359. Leopold, Seth S. 2018. What Is Narrative Medicine, and Why Should We Use It in Orthopaedic Practice? Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research 476 (11): 2105–2107. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://doi.org/10.1097/CORR.0000000000000504. Loewald, Hans W. 1988. Sublimation: Inquiries into Theoretical Psychoanalysis. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hans. Moritz, Albert F. 2020. Thoughts in a Time of Plague. The Toronto Star, April 1. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.afmoritz.com/thoughts-­in-­time-­of-­plague-­in-­the-­toronto-­star/. Morrall, Peter. 2020. Insane Society: A Sociology of Mental Health. Oxon/New York: Routledge. Nahon, Karine, and Jeff Hemsley. 2013. Going Viral. Cambridge, MA/Malden: Polity Press.

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Nicolaou, Elena. 2020. Kitty O’Meara, Author of ‘And the People Stayed Home,’ Opens Up About Writing That Viral Poem. Oprahmag, March 19. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.oprahmag. com/entertainment/a31747557/and-­the-­people-­stayed-­home-­poem-­kitty-­omeara-­interview/. Pihkala, Panu. 2019. Climate Anxiety. Helsinki: MIELI Mental Health Finland. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://mieli.fi/sites/default/files/inline/Yhteiskunta/lausunnot/mieli_climate_anxiety_30_10_2019.pdf. ———. 2020. Anxiety and the Ecological Crisis: An Analysis of Eco-Anxiety and Climate Anxiety. Sustainability 12 (19): 7836. Accessed 23 June 2022. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12197836. Reilly, Evelyn. 2020. Environmental Dreamscapes and Ecopoetic Grief. OmniVerse 32, June 2013. Accessed 3 July 2020. http://omniverse.us/evelyn-­reilly-­environmental-­dreamscapes-­ and-­ecopoetic-­grief/#:~:text=Evelyn%20Reilly%3A%20%E2%80%9CEnvironmental%20 Dreamscapes%20and%20Ecopoetic%20Grief%E2%80%9D%20This,were%20Jed%20 Rasula%2C%20Brian%20Teare%2C%20and%20Nathan%20Brown. Rennison, Nick. 2001. Freud and Psychoanalysis. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials. Robbins, Paul and Sarah A. Moore. 2013. Ecological anxiety disorder: Diagnosing the politics of the Anthropocene. Cultural Geography 20 (1): 3–19. Accessed 27 June 2022. https://doi. org/10.1177/1474474012469887. Schmich, Mary. 2020. ‘Pandemic,’ a Little-Known Poet’s Poem About the Coronavirus, Goes Viral. Chicago Tribune, March 13. Accessed 3 July 2020. https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/ mary-­schmich/ct-­met-­schmich-­pandemic-­poem-­20200314-­yywfy7th2nbc5cufvnbb7qhvfm-­ story.html. Segal, Hanna. 1952. A Psycho-Analytical Approach to Aesthetics. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 33: 196–207. Selinger-Morris, Samantha. 2020. A Viral Poem Is Helping Parents Through COVID-19. But Some Disagree. Sydney Morning Herald, April 28. Accessed 3 July 2020. https://www.smh. com.au/lifestyle/life-­and-­relationships/a-­viral-­poem-­is-­helping-­parents-­through-­covid-­19-­but-­ some-­disagree-­20200424-­p54n24.html. Smith, Emma. 2020. What Shakespeare Tell Us About Living with Pandemics. New York Times, March 28. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/opinion/coronavirus-­ shakespeare.html. Sperber, Esther. 2014. Sublimation: Building or Dwelling? Loewald, Freud, and Architecture. Psychoanalytic Psychology 31 (4): 507–524. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0038079. Treisman, Rachel. 2020. The Coronavirus Crisis. Global COVID-19 Deaths Top 500,000. National Public Radio (NPR), June 28. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.npr.org/sections/ coronavirus-­live-­updates/2020/06/28/884419951/covid-­19-­cases-­top-­10-­million-­worldwide. Usher, Kim, Joanne Durkin, and Navjot Bhullar. 2019. Eco-anxiety: How Thinking About Climate Change-Related Environmental Decline Is Affecting Our Mental Health. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing 28: 1233–1234. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/ inm.12673. Nicole Anae, PhD,  is senior lecturer in literary and cultural studies at Cetnral Queensland University, Australia, where she holds the position as Head of Course for the Master of Creative Writing degree. Nicole publishes regularly on literary and creative writing practice, ecocriticsm and ecofeminism. Her published work appears in a variety of refereed journals and edited collections,  including, but not limited to, The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature (2022), Dystopias and Utopias on Earth and Beyond: Feminist Ecocriticism of Science Fiction (2021), and Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature (2020), edited by Douglas A. Vakoch, Literature and Ecofeminism: Intersectional and International Voices (2018) edited by Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey, and The Ecopolitics of Consumption: The Food Trade (Ecocritical Theory and Practice) edited by H. Louise Davis and Karyn Pilgrim (2015).

Chapter 14

Solastalgia and Soul Suffrage: A Narrative Eco-Poem Michael Hewson

As Anae explains in this volume, solastalgia is an emotional well-being term to describe how a person or society might suffer some form of existential trauma as a result of changes to the environment. Indeed the solastalgia condition has been included as a climate change impact on human well-being (Wang and Horton 2015). Other solastalgia triggers include a visceral reaction to development activity such as mining or multi-generation farming families experiencing a prolonged drought (Fig. 14.1). On some public policy evidence, science writing per se does not often sway political decision making on environmental or health issues. Perhaps, artistic endeavour can inspire an environmental ethos in this Age of the Anthropocene. Indeed, precedents exist. Furthermore, no one single piece of art will lay down a lasting neurological path-way on the scale of society. A continuous drip-feed of images, music and writing may be needed to deluge the debate. This narrative eco-poem charts a dialogue-less discussion between a pair of summer hikers in the Swiss Alps. The walkers unravel in the natural wonders and the summer fields of alpine flowers. They come across an old plaque that entreats walkers to make sure the vista stays natural. However, in all directions, are winter skiing infrastructure and bovine summer pasture plots—a natural landscape with anthropogenic signatures. Dichotomies surface that seeks resolution as the discursive reflection develops. The act of writing this inward dialogue, as Gupta in this volume notes; ‘to let nature peep at us’, has assisted the author (at least) reflect on their relationship with nature.

M. Hewson (*) Senior Lecturer in Geography, School of Education and the Arts, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7_14

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Fig. 14.1  A vista of the Wetterhorn: a summer walk in Switzerland

If human health is enhanced by immersion in nature as posited by the health science literature, the questions for the poem are: What then is natural? What will be the future natural? What are the outcomes for this thing called solastalgia? I Two birds of feather, resplendent in green, adjust and yank packs strapped high to each back, adjust acrylic armour, pause to preen. Thus homed like turtles, strike out on the track, to see landscape, savour some air, to be. To marvel at mountains, boogie with birds, to satellites tied and seemingly free, to let sights alpine clear the inner curds. The air so cool and crisp and clean-glassed clear, the wind whispers calm and benevolence. All good for now, although hikers know fear when mountains with dark malevolence, whip up a tempest to tangle, tear and trip. When snow and ice rocks rifle from the sky to cut clear through the layered fleece and chip chunks of skin – wild weather; prepare or die.

14  Solastalgia and Soul Suffrage: A Narrative Eco-Poem Swiss summer brochures set expectations that glaciers glide to bubbly lakes blue, where the old town slate, stone and pine sections staved off wars by flying a neutral hue. Song and wine, sun-glasses and fedoras, art and fondue meet, embrace, kiss and dance rigid like watches, precise yet smooth as sixth generation hosts honour their chance. This Swiss solace comes at a high bar fee, skiing or sailing, hiking or training, so it’s been since the sixteenth century. Ripened when Victoria went claiming her soul had repaired from vistas en bloc. The English came ogling, sliding, scaling the peaks Eiger, the Monch, the Jungfraujoch, inventing the slalom, a winter fling. And so we went too, to lose much money, in lodging and food and transport benign. Shunning Rolex and fifty Franc coffee, we sought the flowers above the snow-line, to clear the dross and toss the clamorous. Two weeks of bliss in natural wonder, to find the Swiss alps movies made famous in brochures, books and related bluster. II Unwound at Walden, Thoreau wrote well on the joys of living simply in the woods on a pond, to dwell as nature’s add-on, reliant on resource, bereft of goods. All well if the population is thin, and carrying capacity endures. Hardly possible if the concrete skin of our cities turns valleys to sewers. It’s why we go to lay eyes on the crag, to reflect on the glacier’s powers to plough great valleys, carve out cliffs that flag the last ice-age built benches of flowers. But the cost, the money, moolah and means in getting planes, trains and a gondola! Thoreau shelved and simplicity careens off the carbon cliff so spectacular. Wild places are where the wild embraces the run, the chase, the bold, the hard hidden. Diversity and myriad faces each cycle essential, each cog bidden to function in the service of the scheme. Wilderness depends on differences, society circles in the same meme, if - if our structures come to their senses.

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142 Damned if you do, deficient if you don’t, the soul fights the body and fights the mind. Go, toss a coin - some will reflect, some won’t, on impact, intent and grudgingly find the shifting sand in which to draw the line. Compelled to trade the tower for wildness, for a moment in time, to cap the mine and lift the spirit and sort out the stress. You would not trust canny real estate guys, you should not then trust a malicious mind. It leads, breeds and feeds in strangely dark sties, the mind bends your dreams, it seeks out to find your attic archived of boxed liveliness. Then health loses plot and pride and plunges to low places. But walking wilderness says the science, a neuron re-sponges. III With Wengen way down right, Grindelwald left, the path twisting towards a grassy knoll. At two thousand metres high, off to cleft the next high horizon of many. Stroll to the tune that holds soaring eagles high, steer past the shelter of the brown bird’s birth. Stare at snow-capped peaks, so swig on the sigh urging us on – walking the roof of earth. With care, compose scenes captured by cam’ra, let light paint both dark hills dank and bright blooms. Bend binos to catch feathered ephem’ra, optics throttle welled up thoughts from the glooms of a life’s work left behind - the measure brings solace, peace and restorative joy. This, this we do, to travel, to treasure the mind rewind and distracted decoy. Space and place mean more than mere location, tied notions of culture, clan and Country, clash and clamour for our scarce attention. For the first custodians of Country, land is bound and wound to heart, mind and soul. They and Country express connectedness such that land, life and love lap in one bowl, while we invaders walk oblivious. Yet even pale people sense a land-send, prised places where soil and skin stir combined. The Celts know Annam Cara, a soul friend, a place of peace, priorities defined. Even Chernobyl torched by the atom, where hazards will sour dwell for centuries, would not exclude friends who could not fathom the fate of motherland fires and furies.

M. Hewson

14  Solastalgia and Soul Suffrage: A Narrative Eco-Poem The city chatter and clatter of cars, swapped to the soft whistling and whining wind. Boxing norms and forms that spawn social spars, swamped by the vista where worries get skinned. Canyons of powers, the money towers switched off by ranges of ice-etched high hills. Piles of possessions, PC screen glowers, swipe from memory as the soul refills. IV The path-way winds on and a foot follows, pausing to perch on an up-mountain mound. The gaze gathers in the swage that swallows rainbow dressed flowers carpeting the ground and cloud blouses vista voluptuous. Rounding a corner, boots kick at a plaque, some Swiss-German prose etched and unctuous, urging walkers to declare nature’s mark. Agree! We see the theoretical need to ward of an economic crawl. Closer we look, and so heretical, horizon to horizon, wall to wall, ski lifts sitting idle, still warmer yet. Wheeled wires strung on poles, an empty steel chair, waiting for winter’s vast quilting reset, and clothes hungry cold, the watery air. One of us skis, but the other dares not, walking in summer, skiing in winter. Switch the boots, switch clothes, switch the poles that got over gravity when bodies splinter. But skis maul the mountain with menaces! But how much? In winter, birds rush downhill! And flowers retire to cracked crevices, to hide from the people seeking their thrill. Ah worse, hear the sound, bells clunking of cows upwind from plains and plateaus much lower. Again we look, fences here show the hours that bovines spend munching like a mower. These! These massacres of fields of flower. Weight on heavy hooves, cow pat overlays choc’late and cheese, Swiss icons don’t cower but redefines wildness as belled chalets. What of the plaque? That irksome injunction? Landscape virgin virtues to be free kept? Surrender and shrug? Ignore the function of nature to mend minds that soundly slept on the beds of mountain and waterfall? Can much money and mountain coexist? Given Gaia changes both charge and crawl the answer is yes - but stop now – desist!

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144 V We pause to drink and drain our liquid load, lost in our thoughts, lost to time, lost in awe. Inspecting each rock scree crevice, the mode on which Edelweis will grow. But we saw no sight nor sign of an Austrian song, strongly suggesting the hills are alive. Scarce now - because of the cow? Or the throng? An icon gone, where weedy species thrive. Hills have been bent at a glacier’s whim, solid rock spewed sediment spewed to soil as water grates and grinds the sludge so slim to feed farms that make food and farmer’s toil. Thus the cycle goes on and mountains wear clothes for a time; until weather disrobes and deposits the outer garment-ware over aeons, gifting marvelled microbes. Diversity is key to Gaian gains, the self-regulating earth system needs eyes and ears, safety valves and water mains, Gaia needs its communication feeds. Take out a species and the system loss diminishes nature’s health as a whole. Remember the plaque – agree not to gloss over the wisdom, the knowledge, the goal. What cost the walking on earth’s wild places, because we have the money and the time? What is the impact of many faces? More than the cows and their once a year crime? Given the salve of the wild, the simple sum is more concerted conservation of wilderness expanse, so that ample space exists for the mind restoration. Recent internet news noted the strength of a middle-aged woman’s bid to flee toxic times, walked New Zealand’s languid length, having never walked on mountainous scree. Rough times, worried times and times of danger, spawned a new self, new sinews, new resolve. Soul sealed, the mind no longer a stranger, new vision to re-connect and involve. VI Not just the cows chasing summer flowers, also the age of the Anthropocene. Merchant emissions to air empower a chemical cauldron heating the green house aloft. Rainfall patterns then falter, birds follow the plants that follow the rain. Once, over epochs such sojourns alter, this change too quick for evolution’s gain.

M. Hewson

14  Solastalgia and Soul Suffrage: A Narrative Eco-Poem Sages and prophets have sewed the suture. Von Humboldt noted some serious signs. Bill McKibben coined the end of nature. This changes everything, Naomi Klein’s conflation, following Rachel Carsen, who like David Suzuki and Bob Brown hold fire hoses to industry’s arson. A pre-aged angst is Greta Thunberg’s frown. Point the bone, it’s a matter of goodwill for all Presidents and Prime Ministers, to read plaques, Thoreau and sages that spill sound science on white pages like spinsters knitting quilt stories till the cows come home. Meetings, forums that dismiss and digress, the clear choice to retune the climate tome and trade short-term wealth for Gaia distress. Nature-based solutions seem laudable, maybe they are mere swings and roundabouts? Choices and decisions are feasible, sound sustainable solutions get shouts from many lamenting luminaries. In Washington State, the salmon returns to restructured streams when concrete varies on dams to nothing and rivers re-churn. Can we keep a cake – and devour it too? Make money on or because of a tree? When the wild and money wear the same shoe, when honey returns where once it was free. Whence came notions that money advances? Why does an economy have to grow? Would not a measure with wildness stances be a far better outcome seed to sow. VII On the high trail, we walkers deep in thought, trudge towards the top of a steep descent. We argue conservation and so sought to define what wild should be, it’s intent. Unleash eight billion like so many flies? Like crisscrossing clouds, the airborne contrail of aeroplanes layered in crowded skies? The wilderness tamed - so set up to fail? Science seeks to char carbon in sink-ware, schemes like space umbrellas or volcano proxies by sluicing sulphates into air. Mitigate gases - not limit the flow is the mad mantra of those in power. Yet under our noses, back from the brink, a simple solution – plant a flower, because a tree is the best carbon sink!

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146 Whatever is done, one moment suppose science finds carbon is not the climate chaff on which the community repose, as odd, unlikely, as silly that fate sounds to those of ninety-seven per cent. What will have been done? Clean air, clean water? A net benefit to age and ferment some sweet wine instead of wreaking slaughter. Alpine flowers tap water deep-rooted survive both good times and bad times in turn. Resilience built as nature mooted, short-changed by the sheer scale of weather burn. If left alone, nature retunes issues and problems that populations impair. Unless infrastructure mass makes tissues of reduce, reuse, recycle, repair. Time is of the essence, as lawyers say. Two degrees, three degrees or maybe six, a target unclear as law-makers sway to and fro, with short-term cocktails to mix. Whatever is done, humans need respite from the suffocating city-scapes tiled with wilderness real, a majestic sight of mountains where flowers bend in the wild. VIII The waltz across the roof was rewarded with two minds set at rest. Ted Roosevelt too, having walked the wild at length, lauded us to cherish how nature sacred felt. To wet-nurse Gaia’s healthy heritage, to safeguard the souls of children’s children, to conserve capacity to manage Country to salve the soul and save mind’s yen. What will become nature’s diversity? A pastel dry barren monoculture? How long will a memory need to be to recall a wild and feral future? A museum? A media image? This sixth extinction – will it be the last time that Gaia welcomes any vestige of human wrought wrongs furiously fast? Horde some snow-cones, post-cards and store mixtures of mirrors that reflect spaces that slake mind’s thirst, but now - are just pretty pictures. Cardboard replicas of what was to make Gaia’s gratuitous and gracious gift. To walk, to wander, to dream, to ponder the weather and water cycles that sift sand and sink soil in the valley yonder.

M. Hewson

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The cows they come as clanging bells construct their way - winter’s valley to summer field. On the horizon, devout to destruct the salad that far flower-filled fields yield. A few short weeks and the petals will go to cud, and then to cheese and chocolate. Be quick fields, reproduce or go and stow away under a rock – a sexless fate. We walk to lunch, descending the hillside, wind-song and flowers and birds behind us. With sustenance stemming the clock chimed tide of body rhythms and the first world fuss. Yet arrives an umpteenth train, teeming with tourists flocking to views like flighty birds that come, click and flick with an Alpine myth. We spurn the train - and tread home through cow turds.

Reference Wang, Helena, and Richard Horton. 2015. Tackling climate change: the greatest opportunity for global health. The Lancet 386 (10006): 1798–1799. Michael Hewson  graduated from Murdoch University with a BSc and gained an MGIS (Geographic Information Science) and a PhD (Geography) from the University of Queensland. As an environmental geographer at Central Queensland University, his research interests include the application of GIS, satellite remote sensing and weather models for the spatial analysis of the atmosphere. Current research revolves around satellite image analysis of threatened species habitat health. Via a Magister Litterarum, Hewson is exploring environmental humanities as a public policy voice for concerns of the Anthropocene: biodiversity, climate change and sustainability.

Index

A Adults, 60, 77–79, 81, 82, 103, 112, 119, 120, 122 Air pollution, 18, 25, 82, 120 Angst, 19, 20, 29, 59, 89, 102, 145 Anthropocene, 27, 28, 30, 88, 115, 130, 136, 139, 144 Attunement, 27–29, 39 B Berlant, L.G., 35–38 Bioregionalism, 31 Birth, 8, 11, 46–48, 57, 59, 61–63, 67, 70, 72, 91, 95, 112, 124, 142 Body, 6–11, 16, 17, 37, 38, 70, 73, 102, 105, 111–117, 142, 143, 147 Breath, 8, 15–22, 83, 87, 93, 95 C Capitalism, 20, 26, 28, 105, 115, 116 Children, 3, 52, 58–63, 67–73, 77–84, 91, 93, 103, 105, 112, 119, 120, 123, 146 Choice, 34, 44, 57–62, 70, 78, 90, 100, 132, 133, 145 Climate ethics, 43–52 Compassion, 21, 43–52, 70, 91, 99, 116, 121 Contemplation, 30, 59 COVID-19, 3–12, 16–20, 22, 25, 34, 68, 69, 71–73, 78, 82, 100, 114, 119, 120, 124, 129–136 Creative writing, 129–136

Crisis, 3, 25, 30, 33–37, 39, 40, 43, 45, 52, 57–62, 77–84, 99, 101, 111, 112, 114, 129–136 D Death, 18, 19, 26, 37, 40, 43, 46, 58, 59, 61–63, 67–69, 71, 80, 82, 88, 91, 95, 100, 102, 111, 115, 133 Dehumanization, 70–72 Deleuze, G., 3–12, 45, 93, 101, 103, 105 Denial, 59, 71, 81, 132 Disgust, 43, 51, 70–72 E Ecocentrism, 119–125 Ecocriticism, 130, 136 Ecopoetry, 130, 135 Ecoprecarity, 112 Ecopsychology, 99, 121, 132 Ecotopia, xiv, 116–117 Environmental loss, 68 Ethics, 10–12, 21, 45, 59, 105, 117 Ettinger, B.L., 89–93, 95 Event, 3–12, 19, 27, 28, 35–38, 69, 82, 95, 115, 135 Existential, 16, 18, 20, 25, 27–29, 33, 39, 43, 52, 57–62, 88, 89, 102, 124, 139 Existentialism, 27 Extramoral, 43, 49, 51, 52

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. A. Vakoch, S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08431-7

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150 F Fear, 3, 6, 19–21, 29, 30, 33–35, 63, 78–80, 83, 88, 119, 120, 130, 140 Feelings, 17, 20, 27–29, 31, 58, 77–84, 89, 102, 103, 105, 119, 121, 122, 132, 134 Feminist psychology, xiii Future generations, 43–49, 51, 52, 60, 61, 79, 112 G Grief, 17, 28, 67–74, 78, 103, 104, 130, 133 H Heidegger, M., 5, 7, 17, 19, 20, 27–29, 39, 45, 58, 59, 62, 63, 89, 90 Hope, 12, 18, 33–35, 77, 78, 81, 83, 93, 95, 113, 116, 117 Human health, 140 I Individuation, 93, 103 Infant loss, 68, 72 Intergenerational ethics, 44–45 Irigaray, L., 15 L Levinas, E., 16, 19, 89 Literature, 112, 125, 131, 135, 140 Loneliness, 28, 78, 122 M Mentalization, 99, 105 Merleau-Ponty, M., 3–12, 15–17, 19 N Narcissism, 104 Narrative, 37, 67, 79, 83, 88, 89, 91, 93, 101, 111, 129–136, 139–147 Natality, 57, 60–63 Nature, 11, 15, 16, 18–21, 26–29, 51, 58, 63, 72, 79, 80, 88, 91, 93, 95, 99–101,

Index 105, 111–113, 116, 117, 119–125, 130, 139–141, 143–146 Nietzsche, F., 15, 43, 45–52, 70 Nothingness, 29 P Pandemic, 3–12, 16, 18, 19, 25, 34–37, 39, 43, 68, 69, 72, 78, 114, 115, 120, 131, 133, 135 Phenomenology, 5, 7, 16, 17, 19, 25, 27, 36 Planetary unconscious, xiii Poetry, 30, 122–124, 130, 135 Pregnancy, 61, 67, 68, 71, 93 Q Quarantine, 69, 120 R Relationality, 62, 93, 105 Responsibility, 11, 21, 58–63, 89, 91, 95, 111, 114, 115 Risk, 10, 19, 26, 27, 33–36, 39, 40, 44, 69, 71, 78, 79, 81, 105, 112, 113, 116, 120 S Schutz, A., 33–36, 38–40 Solastalgia, 78, 130, 134, 139, 140 Solitude, 122 Stress, 16, 20, 39, 82, 120, 130, 133, 142 V Vulnerability, 22, 62, 79, 101, 111–116, 135 W Women, 46–48, 50, 60, 61, 63, 70, 71, 73, 99–102, 105, 113, 144 Y Youth, 79, 119