QuoteIn the short term, living in a state of peak denial helps us cope. In the long run, it will be our undoing. Because the danger here is desensitization: that we meet this unprecedented litany of "wicked problems," from climate change to the rise of fascism, with passive acceptance rather than urgent collective action.
Key Points.
- A common strategy to neutralize a social problem is to make knowing about it hard.
- Another tactic is minimization. How we describe and measure things shapes how we feel about them. Which is why it's important to notice when neutralizing language enters the chat.
- Shoring up collective denial, we often do more than revise the present. We rewrite the past.
- Truth tellers are the Achilles heel of collective denial because they call attention to what's swept under the rug. A playbook tactic is to hush them up. Painting them as subversives or deviants.