How Climate Anxiety is Useful
Søren Kierkegaard said that by realizing the truth about our condition we can transcend ourselves. And that anxiety this may cause is not the end, but merely the beginning. Hiding for or ignoring things is never going to present a solution like the ‘deus ex machina’ in medieval plays that magically create an all ends well scenario.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Ernest Becker agrees in his brilliant book The Denial of Death with the Danish philosopher that fear is rather a school that provides man with the ultimate education and helps us become mature.
Kierkegaard continues to say that “anxiety is a better teacher than reality, because reality can be lied about, twisted, and tamed by tricks of cultural perception.” Anxiety, however, cannot be lied about, observed Becker.
Although it sounds dreadful, it is optimistic. To quote Kierkegaard, who has come up with theories and explanations that are more relevant than ever before, “He who is educated by dread (anxiety) is educated by possibility… When such a person, therefore, goes out from the school of possibility, and knows more thoroughly than a child knows the alphabet, that he demands of life absolutely nothing, and that terror, perdition, annihilation, dwell next door to every man, and has learned the profitable lesson that every dread which alarms may the next instant become a fact, he will then interpret reality differently…” [Kierkegaard, Dread, p. 140].
This last quote by Kierkegaard seems challenging to fathom, but after reading it a few times its significance is undeniably breathtaking. Fear is real. Predictions are too, but can be denied, avoided or played down. As long as it does not immediately affect us, there’s no need to get into action mode.
But change is here. No matter how much we like it to believe, not everything is going to go up forever. Now there’s no avoiding the truth of what has happened and of what is to come.
If we embrace that fear, as if danger is imminent, which it is and isn’t simultaneously, we can reconsider how we spend our days, the way we treat each other, and how we can create a better world.
Fear is good. Let’s make use of it and start changing now.
Michel Porro is a photographer and a lifelong volunteer for environmental causes. He is a member of The Carbon Almanac Network. Learn more at thecarbonalmanac.org.
