The Insane Society: Climate Change and the Media

The Insane Society

Climate Change and the Media
by David Edwards
December 14, 2005

In his classic book, The Sane Society, published in 1955, psychologist Erich Fromm proposed that, not just individuals, but entire societies "may be lacking in sanity". Fromm argued that one of the most deceptive features of social life involves "consensual validation":"It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth... Just as there is a 'folie a deux' there is a 'folie a millions.' The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane." (Fromm, The Sane Society, Routledge, 1955, pp.14-15)

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The editors concluded:
"But it is not just governments that have a responsibility. Individuals must act too. By opting to cycle or walk, instead of driving everywhere, we can all do something to reduce emissions. If more of us turned off electrical devices when not in use and recycled our waste properly, our societies would be hugely less energy inefficient... A failure to act now will not be forgiven by future generations."

As though these words had not appeared, the rest of the paper returned to adverts, consumer advice and financial news ("bet on easyJet to fly higher"). The Independent's holiday supplement, The Traveller, urged readers to climb on fossil fuel burning planes and visit Paris, Brussels, Syria, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Aspen, Chamonix, Mallorca, Australia, Dubai, New Zealand, Lapland, Spain, North America, Austria, Germany, the Maldives, and on and on.

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The point is that the media are structurally obliged to remain on square one. What is a corporate business like the Independent to say about the impact of its own corporate advertising on environmental collapse? What is it to say about the remorseless activities of its business allies working to bend the public mind to their will over decades? What is to say about their determination to destroy all attempts to subordinate short-term profits to action on climate change? What is it to say about the historical potency of people power in challenging systems of entrenched and irresponsible power of this kind, of which it is itself a part?

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=9330

. . .lacking in sanity." Not much of a stretch is it?

Thanks for the article.

Thanks for posting. Cheers.

The fourth quote is pertinent:

http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11072/Shepard/#quotes

I agree with Dr Shepard, the Pleistocene is our home.

a classic. Thanks for the reminder. Exactly what I thought of when I came across this article.

"The history of Western man has been a progressive peeling back of the psyche, as if the earliest agriculture may have addressed itself to extenuation of adolescent concerns while the most modern era seeks to evoke in society at large some of the fixations of early natality rationalized, symbolized, and disguised as need be. The individual growth curve, as described by Bruno Bettelheim, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and others, is a biological heritage of the deep past. It is everyman's tree of life, now pruned by civic gardeners as the outer branches and twigs become incompatible with the landscaped order. The reader may extend that metaphor as he wishes, but I shall move to an animal image to suggest that the only society more frightful than one run by children, as in Golding's Lord of the Flies, might be one run by childish adults." 
Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness

The last line here has stayed with me through the years and it has become increasingly evident that we are experiencing that "one run by childish adults". And they are vicious