The notion of “eco-anxiety” has been growing quite a bit lately, the notion that we are Doomed from a tiny increase in carbon dioxide. Since ‘climate change’ has almost nothing to do with the environment/ecology, perhaps “climate distress” works better. Climate insanity would be unfair to people with actual mental illness. How about climate nutbaggery?
When climate distress becomes too much, the philosophy of eternalism can provide perspective
The first time Heidi Edmonds felt this type of anxiety creep up, she became teary and had to go into the bathroom for a cry.
“I was looking at my nieces … and worrying about their future,” she says, “not feeling like everything was going to be OK.”
Dr Edmonds — who holds a PhD from Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute — is a co-founder of Australian Parents for Climate Action, a national volunteer campaign group.
She has two young daughters and like many young parents, manages sleep deprivation and parenting stress with all of her other responsibilities at work and with friends.
Over the last year she’s noticed another kind of pressure weighing on her — climate anxiety.
Our ancestors would have a good laugh at the expense of these nutters, noting that Mankind does much better during the Holocene warm periods, and worse during the cool ones, and that these modern buffoons are freaking out over nothing. Oh, and not making their own lives match their talking points
Dr Edmonds first came across a passage in a self-help book that incorporated eternalism over a decade ago — and says it has stuck with her since then.
“If we think about time as a tapestry, it allows us to focus on giving our children bright moments now … so that no matter what the future holds, they’ll have had these wonderful moments,” she says.
This reference to a tapestry of time resonates with eternalism — a theory that joins the past, present and future in a single block of time.
Kristie Miller, the joint director of the Centre for Time at Sydney University, uses the idea of a Persian rug to explain the concept.
When you look down at a rug, she says, “you can see the whole thing”.
“None of the rug is any more special than any other bit of the rug. The whole thing creates the entire picture, which is the universe.”
So a person’s life in 2019 doesn’t take precedence over another person’s life in 1519 — because there is no objective present moment.
So, seems to be going into a hippy-dippy kind if crazy. But, I guess this is better than the annoying protests where they glue themselves to things, or getting violent, like Progressive protests often seem to include.
Read: Philosophy Of Eternalism Can Help With Climate Distress Or Something »
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