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| <back | home Why is it so Difficult to Speak about Peak Oil? by Steve Wohlrab Over the past several months, I’ve had the opportunity to make several brief presentations about Peak Oil. As a member of the planning committee for the recent North Bay Energy Vulnerability Summit [see his report in this issue], I’ve been privileged to speak before local city and county officials and hoped that they would attend our event. Although the turnout was less then initially anticipated, we nonetheless felt the event was very successful. However, I’m left with mixed feelings. Since I did a lot of the initial outreach, I guess I took it a little personally that so few local leaders actually showed up. Recent frustrating attempts to communicate with friends about Peak Oil have also left me wondering about my communication and presentation skills. It has also led to my questioning the response of the listeners. In particular, to what extent is their response a “projection” based on their bias? To what extent am I, as the presenter, unconsciously responsible for contributing to the difficulty. On Understanding According to interpretation theory, to the extent that authentic understanding is possible, the presenter must first examine and then bracket out his/her own hidden biases, assumptions, and motivations. Presenters must also look at their own emotional context. The message can be easily distorted or corrupted by the messenger unless great care is taken to separate out one’s prejudices and emotional baggage beforehand. This process is never complete; there is always more “stuff” to look at. However, the better we’re able to confront these biases, the less likely we will contaminate the presentation. Authentic understanding occurs when both the listener and presenter each try to bracket their hidden biases, etc., and a fusion of horizons begins to take place. Presenter Bias/Context There is some part of my psyche that’s drawn to tragedy. Despite this, I don’t believe that my interest in Peak Oil simply reflects a convenient theory that happens to fit nicely with my particular neurotic style. I do my homework. Unfortunately, I must rely heavily on “experts” as my sources for “facts” about this subject. I don’t really know to what extent these experts ask themselves the same hard questions or to what extent they bracket out and examine their own deep motivations? So much of what we experience is an unconscious projection. Things are usually not what they seem; ulterior motives, hidden agendas, unconscious neurotic styles and sometimes serious pathology play out before our eyes. Yet why can’t we get more people to believe what seems so obvious to a growing number of us? It’s important that we learn to listen without judgment and to communicate in more open and supportive ways. Reasonable, sincere people have been warning us for years now about a number of serious issues. Collectively, we should have been listening and begun mitigation efforts sooner. Why isn’t a well crafted, thoughtful, reasonable presentation enough to convince people to take action? Grieving and Denial To more fully understand, we must also look at the non-rational forces at play. Those that both help and hinder us should not be quickly dismissed or their power underestimated. Fear, ignorance and our deeply held beliefs about the world are all difficult obstacles to overcome. One of the non-rational forces that hinders us is our collective inability to grieve. Or perhaps, stated differently, we’re a culture locked in a stage of grief known as denial. How does a species grieve the loss of its progeny, it’s future? While I’m not a parent, my guess is this might be similar to the experience of losing a child — a horrible thing to think about and exactly why we don’t. I’m suggesting that the mere contemplation of such an event is so emotionally overwhelming that our innate defense mechanisms refuse to allow us to experience it emotionally. The possibility of severe, dramatic, global catastrophe is not only emotionally numbing but the socio-economic and cultural transformation required to prevent such a disaster inhibits the necessary behavioral changes required to avert it (to many people the cure might seem worse then the disease). A more proactive cultural transformation may only be possible once we’ve begun to recognize how deeply sad and scary our collective future looks. The more we ignore that future, the worse it will get. Unfortunately, we must first overcome our denial, at least some degree of it. How do we “bracket out” our denial? As I come to terms with my own grief about the future, experiencing its different stages, I’m starting to recognize how we each react differently, at different times, to the reality of looming crisis. Collective Grief Thus, from the perspective of a psychologist, I’ve come to view much of our collective response to current events as analogous to grieving. Grieving involves well documented “stages” (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) which can occur at different times, not always sequentially. We might even “re-experience” a stage and/or experience several at the same time. Denial is one of the more common stages where people can often become “delayed.” Its unconscious effects may be difficult for us to recognize and its power easily underestimated. This fact, more than any other, causes me to worry, to lose confidence in our collective ability to turn things around in time, to figure out how to “midwife the transition,” re-localizing away from fossil fuels in an eco-friendly manner. Along with profound lifestyle changes, our collective future on this little planet might require an equally profound spiritual and emotional transformation, a supporting and respecting of each other through this unprecedented time. Therefore, we might want to cut each other a little slack, not expect perfection and be more ready to forgive imperfection in ourselves and others. Hope and Denial For many people who are just starting to understand our current global predicament, all the dire predictions must seem overwhelming and hopeless. Therefore, it’s too frightening for most folks to consider the possibility of a worst-case-scenario actually occurring. Have compassion for those who aren’t able to take in all the ramifications of your message. However, urgency requires us to move on to a more receptive audience. The reality may be accepted but not the conclusion or remedy (“technology will save us” — a rationalization, another stage of grieving?). Telling people in denial that they’re in denial doesn’t cut it. It’s like confronting paranoid patients about their delusion; the delusion is not rational. (That’s why, to our rational minds, the delusion seem “crazy.”) By definition, someone who is in denial is not consciously aware of the experience. Awakening from our collective and individual denial tends to be a gradual process. Unfortunately, an actual traumatic event can also serve as a wake up call. But if Katrina didn’t sound a loud enough alarm bell one wonders (and dreads) what it might take. To some extent we’re all in denial, how could we be otherwise? For many of us, the threats to our species are so great (for we have no reference for the scope and scale of the crisis unfolding) that we’re unable to permit ourselves to be emotionally effected by it. We would be quickly overwhelmed. Nature’s adverse feedback mechanisms are often too subtle for us to notice. Denial along with day to day distractions and rationalizations help to keep us “deaf, dumb and blind.” The way I dealt with my grief was to let go of hope. This does not mean I gave in to hopelessness and despair, rather this reflects a deep spiritual insight. For me it’s about surrender, faith and humility and letting go of outcomes. For me, this wisdom has led to some degree of acceptance of whatever comes my way. Of course, I still intend to persevere and help organize my community. Whether we survive as a species or not (no guarantees) there’s no doubt that the earth will go on, with or without us. Conclusions Offer your truth with humility and integrity; let go of outcomes and lighten up — it’s only life. Don’t expect the information you share to “convince” others quickly. At best you may be able to plant a few seeds. Qualify remarks by sharing some of your own biases as presenter. Visualize the future you want as if it already existed and also wisely prepare for an emergency (perhaps even a “long emergency”). Steve Wohlrab combines his time in volunteering and working in the financial, nursing and psychlogy worlds having earned degrees in all three. Currently a member of Sustainable Petaluma, he lives in Petaluma, Sonoma County. He can be reached at stevewohlrab@hotmail.com. <back | top^ |