How Can Art Move Us Beyond Eco-Despair? An Article in the Current Issue of American Scientist Magazine
Cover Art by Dominique Navarro
Grim news about climate change easily triggers a sense of helplessness. Art can help redirect that feeling into one of active engagement.
https://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/how-can-art-move-us-beyond-eco-despair
A June 2014 study by social scientists charts the ill effects of climate change on people���s emotional states. Beyond Storms and Droughts: the Psychological Impacts of Climate Change , a 50-page report by the American Psychological Association (APA), gauges human reactions to environmental disturbance and catastrophe. At the community level, it finds climate change causing a loss of social cohesion, as well as increased violence, crime, social instability, aggression, and domestic violence. This bleak catalogue of ills mainly afflicts people whose communities have been devastated by climate change���induced fire or flood or hurricane, even more so for the poor and alienated. Feeling beset upon and hopeless, their very identity and autonomy become threatened, with manifestations of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Our planetary disturbance infiltrates our inner lives, with alarming and often unacknowledged effects.
These social ills have been with us for a long time. But today, for those of us who are fully aware of���who are dreading���the seemingly inevitable unfolding of climate change, the consequences may be even more personal and interior. The APA report refers to this condition as ���ecoanxiety��� and cites a trio of disastrous symptoms: helplessness, fatalism, and resignation. This is what a lot of us feel. We may not put a name to it, but a sure sign of ecoanxiety is the humorless tone of environmental discourse. I would label this state as eco-depression, or more dramatically, eco-despair. I suspect anyone paying close attention to ecological effects feels it.
Eco-despair presents an interesting challenge. We want to remain engaged in actions that work to understand and communicate, as well as to reverse or slow climate change���but taking action requires excitement, and often a sense of mission. Keeping up protracted, often fractious connections to others can drain a lot of energy. Depression of any sort can sap motivation and leave one isolated with a triumvirate of mental pains: that ���helplessness, fatalism, and resignation��� that can leave one overwhelmed, bitter, and cynical. How might we treat eco-depression?
Art can help here���specifically, a certain kind of art that deliberately depicts and imaginatively confronts us with climate change. Ecologically aware art, presented in many places and across multiple media, can shift our perspective. It can pose fresh, liberating questions and connect us to the inner consciousness of another fully engaged, sensitive human viewer of our shared problem.
Read the whole article: https://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/how-can-art-move-us-beyond-eco-despair
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