“Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort” Erich Fromm.
The quote above by Fromm really just emphasizes how much of our lives are part of a conditioned conformity. To break out of this mindset is simple but not easy since conditioning has become our self-identity. While I have talked about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (e.g., Spirituality 2 and Personal Sovereignty 3) Fromm has a different set of basic needs that we have to satisfy for a fulfilling life: Relatedness (the desire to feel loved, connected to others, and meaningfully involved with the broader social world), Rootedness (emotionally and well-grounded in a place), Transcendence (feeling or sense of something beyond physical needs and realities), Sense of Identity (knowing who you are, what you value, and how you see yourself in society), and Frame of Orientation (the need of a person to develop and synthesize their major assumptions, beliefs, values and ideas into a coherent view of the world – a worldview).
Fromm has also famously said, “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence” Eric Fromm. And by love, he means unconditional Love for all of life and even the apparently inert planet we call Gaia. Therefore, we come back to another favorite topic of mine, beliefs (e.g., Beliefs, Knowledge, Definitions). Our behaviors and actions directly reflect the beliefs we use, even if we think we feel that we believe differently. Fromm’s opening quote alludes to this – this usually manifests as cognitive dissonance (the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change – despite what we know we still act inconsistently).
Nothing we do is random. Our Beliefs, values, and emotional manifestations from them set up thought patterns, which are then expressed as behaviors and actions. If you are experiencing dissonance, then understand that our beliefs are the core of life itself, and you may be acting in accordance with conditioned beliefs instead of what you ‘know’ from the core of your being. By analyzing your feelings you can quickly identify your conditioned core beliefs from your true core beliefs. Ask yourself, “what do I believe is true, to feel the way I do that explains what I am experiencing?” If you experience passion, joy, and excitement in what you do everyday, then you are self-actualized and doing what brings you fulfilment in this life. Suffering in any form comes from deep conditioned core beliefs that arise out of victimhood.
Going back to my unpublished Worldview Book, we can identify the conditioned beliefs of whole populations. Despite a century of conservationism and then environmentalism, we are only marginally closer to actually solving our global ecological problems. In reviewing the efforts of America in solving environmental issues since the early 1900s, journalist Harold Evans, identified interactions with the environment as one of America’s two greatest failures (the other was race relations). Speaking of the environment, Evans said “[Conservationist President – 1901-1909] Teddy Roosevelt would be horrified to see what we’re still doing to our natural resources.”
Much of the problem lies in our didactic thinking of good (environmentalists) versus evil (industrialists). In all their permutations and combinations, the environmentalists of the 1990s were textbook examples of individuals and groups self-righteously pitting themselves wholeheartedly against what they saw as evil. They demanded drastic changes in the activities of business, industry, and government, but not acknowledging the tyrannies of limits (not acknowledging inherent societal dogmas and warped norms). At the same time, opponents of environmentalism were just as didactic. What about the public?
If ‘the environment’ had been a major public concern during many political elections the results didn’t show it. While some countries did create ‘green’ parties that were big enough to interfere with regular governmental thinking, It appeared either that voters were satisfied with the way things were or that they were not convinced that a change would bring improvement. A third possibility is that the public derived a satisfaction, perhaps perverse, in keeping the executive and legislative branches of the federal governments in opposing hands, forcing both sides to expend their energies hassling one another rather than having the opportunity to focus on making substantive changes in anything – political, social, economic, or environmental.
Citizen support for the environment apparently is subject to an ‘issue attention cycle.’ This is because most people suffer the consequences of environmental problems extensively rather than intensively – that is, pervasive environmental concerns generally are less likely to be as dramatic or to be perceived to be as serious on a day-to-day basis as are high-profile events – crime, drug abuse, international crises, terrorism, etc. Because solutions to environmental problems are complex and time-consuming, public attention is more readily focused on other, more obviously black-vs.-white issues. Public support for environmentalism is greater when there are specific, dramatic events to focus on – oil spills, suffering polar bears, climate change, etc.
While a ‘green party’ may espouse environmental ideas, and even have successes in enacting environmental policies, the environment is politically a “second-order” issue that more often manifests itself locally rather than nationally. The reality is that economic and national security issues are likely to receive far greater attention with a mainstream economy driven by profit and a worldview rooted in scarcity that always dominate political discourse. The willingness to discuss environmental and ecological issues is a crucial component in trying to enact solutions.
When viewing worldviews towards the natural world, the emphasis has always changed through the various historic periods. They have been embedded in a human interaction with growing industrial action for resources and manufacturing. Different parts of the historic narrative – different stories – have been interpreted in different ways at different times by different people, because those people viewed the events and outcomes of the stories, the parts of the narrative, differently through personal and societal worldviews of the period. We see “truth” in certain ways because we filter the information that comes to us through our senses and intellects, through our perceptions of reality, and through our value systems. What strikes some of us as ‘right’ or ‘reasonable’ or ‘intelligent’ may seem to others ‘wrong’ or ‘unreasonable’ or ‘unintelligent’, even ‘fanatical.’ We and they perceive things differently, and always have.
But that is what makes a society. To make change that is effective we must be willing to listen and discuss things in a rational manner. We may one day (hopefully sooner than later) have a worldview that espouses the natural world and each other with Love and Compassion. But for now, our global society has achieved no consensus as to which worldview, or set of worldviews, defines “the one right, reasonable, intelligent relationship between humans and environment. We do have several catastrophe narratives playing out right now that are driving people to side with polarized worldviews. This is causing members of our society to continue to see, and value, things differently from one another. This has become especially evident since the beginning of the industrial revolution, that created a rush to acquire resources to create more technological lifestyles that emphasize comfort and luxury, and more ease from physical labor and hardships through labor saving devices and products.
One of our problems is that old worldviews no longer applicable to our modern world are still influencing us. Old worldviews that influenced the worldviews and actions of the peoples of their own times are showing up as modified perceptions, and still influencing the present time. For instance, the frontier mentality with its belief in endless resources has not gone away, despite a century and more of utilitarian conservation policies around the world. While the U.S. had a psychic schism with the closing of the frontier in 1890, the world is still arguing in 2023, whether ecological limits have been reached, or even exceeded. While we see limits locally, it is still hard for people to acknowledge limits are occurring globally. Indeed, most scientific data indicates that not only are worldwide resources becoming scarcer (because of conspicuous consumption in the developed countries), but that many ecosystem services are on the verge of collapse. Doomsday metaphors abound, like global economic institutions ignoring ecological problems, which has been equated to the idea of Nero fiddling as Rome burned.
And then we have policies to push global economic equity, but without ecological considerations. This is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to allow steerage passengers on to the first-class promenade decks as the ship unwittingly speeds towards the iceberg. At what point we as individuals and societies see ourselves as participants in an ongoing narrative, depends on many factors, not the least of which are our understandings of what has happened to bring the narrative to its present point in time. Developed countries with smaller populations in a simpler technological age have had their time feeding at the trough of misconstrued capitalism. Now less developed countries would like their turn. But now world populations living old worldviews cannot bring them the abundance that rampant resource use once could to a small set of developed countries. There is abundance for all, but it cannot occur without the change to a new worldview.
To Be Continued …….
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