Living in Denial

"Norgaard did an ethnographic study of a remote town in Norway that was affected by climate change. The people of “Bygdaby” (her fictitious name for the town) hold a solid national image of themselves as a humanitarian, egalitarian, nature-loving people who love their snow. They see that the snow is disappearing, curtailing the ski season, which they rely on both for tourism and recreation. Yet they fail to think coherently about climate change. Living in Denial asks why people with knowledge about climate change often fail to translate that knowledge into action. It’s a parallel question to the one I raise about gender. Why do people who recognise the absurdity of gender stereotypes that portray men as rational and women as emotional, implying that men don’t feel and women don’t think – why do they perpetuate these stereotypes and fail to see what is right before their eyes? Like the disappearing snow in Norway, the sensitivity of boys and the intelligence of girls are obvious to anyone who lives with children and takes the trouble to listen to them. Living in Denial describes the many kinds of denial we can engage in. It also underscores a point that is central to the shift in the paradigm of the human sciences – namely, emotion is key to seeing things accurately and to acting on what we see. It’s not that the people in Norway don’t know what’s happening. But their actions are disconnected from what they know, so they act as if they don’t know. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter When we separate thought from emotion, we begin not to know what we know. Many people in the human and social sciences now recognise this. What is often not recognised is the role gender plays in dividing reason from emotion, mind from body, self from relationships, and how powerful a lever gender is in enforcing these splits. The initiation into masculinity and femininity is enforced by shaming and exclusion. Challenges to manhood often provoke violence as a means of establishing or reclaiming masculinity and honour, and this in turn leads to self-silencing among women. Thus we become bound to false stories about ourselves that keep us from knowing and acting on what we know. The resistance I urge everyone to join is a resistance to losing our humanity. New knowledge within the human sciences reveals many stereotypes about gender to be myths. Research on development shows that resisting gender myths is linked with psychological resilience as well as with academic achievement, health and longevity. As a healthy body resists disease, so a healthy psyche resists fragmentation. That this resistance is grounded not in ideology but in our humanity – our human nature – is grounds for optimism. A potential for transformation resides within all of us. Given the challenges we collectively face, it is imperative to join this resistance. As I say in concluding my book, “The time to act is now.”"

"In some ways this book is a good answer to your comments about us knowing what needs to be done but not actually doing anything to change the situation. That is the question that Norgaard addresses. She did ethnographic research in a Norwegian village for about a year and a half. Norway is a country with very high literacy and high formal awareness of climate change. The climate there is already changing dramatically. She was in a skiing village where there was no snow and she lived through an abnormally warm winter, and yet the villagers were all pretty much in denial about it. They didn’t talk about it or do anything about it or press their government to do anything about it. So Norgaard examines the ways in which nothing happens. There was the idea that “Norway is a small country so there is nothing we can do”. Or they would excuse themselves by saying they were a green people who were close to nature. There were a variety of rationalisations that they used to try to continue along the same path. Absolutely – people are very much habituated to ways of life and don’t have imagination for something different. And the kind of change we are talking about is deep and profound. The Norwegians were stuck in ways that many of us in other wealthy countries are stuck in as well. Her book is not necessarily an answer but, by analysing why we are stuck, it points to some of the ways in which we might move forward. I do think the younger generation is much more attuned to these things and will live in different ways but they are also going to be faced with far more difficult impacts from climate change. So they are going to have fewer opportunities to live in the ways that other generations have lived in. They are going to live with much more resource scarcity and materially they are going to have to devote many more resources to protecting themselves from that angry beast that Dumanoski is talking about. Some people still believe there is a way to land that jet plane fairly gradually. Dumanoski is saying, prepare yourself for a lot of harsh unpredictable scary stuff. I am not sure we know. One of the things that we are learning year by year is how much more quickly climate is changing than anyone predicted."