Anthropocene Psychology

[K-Dog]

Rachel is interviewing some important doom people some of us have known about for a while.  Somebody gave her a list so I'm on a Rachel Binge.

Sheldon is one who has exceptional insight into the denial that keeps us impotent and unable to save our species.

Sheldon is not widely known in the doom community, but Sheldon is someone who more doomers should know about.  I read a book a few years ago.  The Denial of Death - By Ernest Becker.  Sheldon expanded the work and I discovered him.

The Role of Death Denial in Culture and Consciousness - Independent lines of theoretical inquiry in evolutionary psychology and existential psychodynamic psychology propose that the awareness of the inevitability of one's death would undermine the viability of consciousness as an adaptive form mental organization in the absence of death-denying cultural and psychological affectations. In accord with this view, empirical research derived from terror management theory demonstrates that intimations of mortality have a pervasive effect on a wide range of human beliefs and behaviors.

Links to more of Sheldon's work.  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sheldon-Solomon

If you are interested in why our society ignores doom, watch Sheldon.

The beginning of the Industrial Revolution really did make life better for everybody.  I tell myself and my students you're sitting in a chair.  You have a
metal skillet and stuff, all of our modern conveniences.  Stuff  the results of stuff that happend a couple hundred years ago.

But then Weber says, at first this kind of industrialized and globalized economy worked for humans.  Then something happened.  We became imprisoned in our own gilded cage, and now we are as Karl Marx put it.  "Fleshly cogs in a ginormous metal machine" where whether we know it or not, we're like inebriated hamsters on methamphetamine.  Sprinting aimlessly on the hamster wheel of life in mindless pursuit of money and stuff.  Mistaking that for genuine meaningful activity, and Weber said: I don't think we will stop until the last lump of fossilized coal has been burned, and I was like holy crap!

[K-Dog]

At the risk of deviating from my current deep dive into dialectical materialism here is a video where James Rowe is interviewed.  Sheldon Solomon suggested that Rachel interview him at the end of the previous video.

This two year old video deserves far more than the 72 views it had when I found it.

Nina Simone - Ain't Got No, I Got Life