I attended a wonderfully thought provoking event hosted by WWF yesterday. It leads on from Tom Crompton's work on challenging the whole consumerist value system and doing so from a psychologically sophisticated position. His blog at valuing nature is a treasure trove of such stuff, although you will find it tough reading in places if you are a fellow marketer. And that actually is a microcosm of the whole knot we got onto discussing yesterday (one of many such questions, just the one which most caught me). The question is this:
HOW DO TO RESPOND TO (NOT JUST A CRISIS BUT) A CRIME, WHEN WE 'WEDUNNIT'?
There were a number of psychotherapists there and this really is their territory par excellence. Oedipus being one of the few detective stories in history, where the detective discovers he is the murderer (and that he f***ed his mother to boot).
Leading on from that there was a discussion about creating safe spaces for people to confront 'the enemy within'.
Another aspect of which being that much of the damaging sort of consumerism is born out of escaping from inward pain. So you could almost start to see a kind of 'consumers anonymous' playing some role.
2 comments:
Interesting post.
Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like to live in Nazi Germany and to be aware of the holocaust taking place. How would you feel (completely powerless, perhaps?), what, realistically, could you do?
Might there be any parrallel to the times we are now living through - except that the crime is against other life and the earth itself. Ecocide or Geocide, as it has been called. When you realise that crime on this scale is going on (and it is crime, because many leaders are taking actions with full knowledge of the science) how do you feel and what can you do?
Ella
yes that's a very telling comparison, it certainly raises the emotional stakes
the retrospective judgement by history is key in all this - when we are known as the eco criminals in a way which may not be clear right now
at the wwf meeting when someone was talking about taking a quaker approach i was remembering that many slavers in the colonies were from this sort of religious background - they tended to be the 'better' ones, who treated people a little better. but being 'a good slaver' (or a good nazi')...?
it's not about applying other times' standards to our own (say if in future the rights of women were not respected) but sometimes looking forward and looking back throws things in starker relief?
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