29 June 2015
I just watched this short clip in the hope of hearing something positive. Not really.
Instead, I have been carrying this quote below inside of me like a heavy dark stone:
In a recent interview the Nobel prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the leading scholar of cognitive biases, was asked about our brains’ limitations when it comes to understanding the dangers of climate change. “I’m not very optimistic about that,” Kahneman replies, despondently sipping tomato soup. “No amount of psychological awareness will overcome people’s reluctance to lower their standard of living. So that’s my bottom line: there is not much hope. I’m thoroughly pessimistic. I’m sorry.”
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I'm thoroughly pessimistic too. I wish there was something I could feel hopeful about, in terms of our human presence on this planet. I appreciated the short video clip of Obama with Attenborough. It made me see that he does really get what's going on globally.
ReplyDeleteA long time ago a hippie named Stephen Gaskin created a commune and they decided to live as voluntary peasants in the belief that if we all did that, there would be plenty to go around. And then they formed an organization called "Plenty" and they did amazing things.
ReplyDeleteBut something like that is so very rare.
Sadly, I don't think most of us are capable of it.
When I feel pessimistic, I listen to the Native voices from the United States and Canada who have so much to teach us about surviving and thriving under impossible odds and about sustaining hope and resistance and a sense of humor:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-2j32P-t10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iZaYbqF6yc
"Our activism is a 500-year resistance."
(Sweetwater Nannauck -- May 2015)