Denial

“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair

It should no longer be deniable that climate change is manmade and is the consequence of decades of profit driven decisions regarding energy production and management.

Yet, not long ago a conservative friend of mine vehemently refused to acknowledge what had already become incontrovertible.

He’s not alone. A recent poll revealed that only about a third of all Americans believe the climate catastrophe that is unfolding right before their eyes is a “crisis.” Leading the way among people who still fail to acknowledge it is man-made are, no big surprise, Republicans and their staunchest bloc, evangelical Christians. Like my friend, these people parrot the Republican line that Earth has warmed and cooled many times over the eons so there’s no proof the cause this time around is human activity. It’s just an act of God. I doubt many of them are aware that the petroleum industry itself had, since the 1970s, gathered and suppressed evidence that current climate change is manmade. It’s a safe bet not many or them have seen Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth” either.

We can write off these deniers as stupid, but they can’t be that stupid. That’s certainly not the case with my friend. This highly intelligent and otherwise well informed person is in denial. He is so invested in unbridled capitalism and the huge profits it yields to the wealthy, he is blind to the absurdity of his position.

Denial is powerful enough to conceal the obvious from him, because it is motivated by an animal instinct that, like the denial itself, he is scarcely consciously aware of. In fact, the power of denial is so great that once when we discussed climate, he said, “I don’t care about what happens to the animals. I only care about people.”

I reminded him homo sapiens is a member of the animal kingdom The balance of nature and our survival depend on all species, down to the smallest members, continuing to thrive. That was the end of that conversation.

My friend is typical in his tendency to perceive humans as something separate and apart from the rest of the natural world. We overestimate the degree to which we are driven by reason and we severely underestimate the power instinct exerts over our behavior.

The instinct that is the driving factor in greed and self interest is one we share with all living things. Territoriality. (See Robert Ardrey’s book, “The Territorial Imperative.”)

Territoriality is a universal law of nature that impels organisms from the most simple to the most complex to carve out a personal space within the ecosphere in which they can safely feed themselves and reproduce. This is what drives conflict and competition. It is hardwired into all living things. It is the essence of the life force and a fundamental driving force in all human relationships, systems and institutions. It is so ingrained that if we are consciously aware of it at all, we take it for granted as a necessary and inevitable component of our existence. So it has been since the emergence of our species; since the emergence of life on this planet. I doubt we would know who we are or what the point of life is if competition did not continue to be a key element of the human experience.

Not all competition is bad. In fact it’s good until it becomes excessive. Territoriality and competition become evil when people, nations or institutions practice them ruthlessly. The pursuit of power at the expense of the species is the crux of many world problems, not only global warming.

Paradoxically, it’s not unusual to hear people like my friend indirectly admit they are territorially driven, rationalizing that, since it’s the basis of capitalism and capitalism works for them, greed is good. If someone is less successful than themselves, they attribute it to lower intelligence or laziness. As it was with the explorers who sailed to the New World wishing to exploit its resources, this attitude justifies laying claim to territory (resources, wealth, power, and, not least of all, access to the most desirable mates) by dehumanizing and brutalizing those who would otherwise stand in their way.

My friend sees the less fortunate as freeloaders who want to rob him of part of his massive wealth. Such thinking is employed to justify the strivings of institutions and nations to oppress, suppress and exploit others whom they choose to view as inferior to themselves. It plays out in racial stereotyping and nationalist hubris. It justifies wars.

Reactionary forces at work in society drive many forms of denial including denial of the negative aspects of our history. This has led to the movement to purge historic facts from school curricula and books from library shelves. This is simply about one group striving to maintain the territory they seized from others. Extreme gerrymandering that disempowers voters and protects the interests of the wealthy is all about how territory is divided up. Conflicts between religious groups is likewise, at base, territorial. Congressional dysfunction is simply one big, self defeating, turf war.

The struggle between the left and the right today can be understood partly as the struggle between acknowledging facts in the service of what is good for people as a whole and denial of these facts in the service of what is “good” (meaning profitable) for certain advantaged and powerful individuals and groups. These groups permit, even encourage, raw animal nature to operate unacknowledged and unchecked in our social, political and economic systems. Territoriality clearly underlies their ideologies and policies.

Those who wish to moderate greed for the general good face a daunting struggle. To prevail, they must find a way to counteract a fundamental and powerful component of animal nature, one that can’t easily be moderated as long as it goes on unacknowledged.

Upton Sinclair reminded us that when Satan tried to entice Jesus with a promise of worldly gain. Jesus sent him packing. Yet, within no more than a few centuries of his death, the church that was founded on his teachings became a corrupt institution dedicated to its own enrichment and power. “Thus,” said Sinclair, “the Devil finally prevailed.”

The Devil is simply a personification of the worst of our animal nature, the driving forces behind greed and self-interest and the cruelty they spawn. Satan has enjoyed a long winning streak by simply encouraging us to give in to our territorial instincts, and, as long as we continue in denial of them, he’s likely to go on winning for a long time to come.