'Despair-Induced Climate Burnout' Has Now Been Studied and Utopian Thinking May Be the Problem!
This morning I saw a link to a study titled “Thinking About the Future: Examining the Exacerbating and Attenuating Factors of Despair-Induced Climate Burnout.” Having long observed there is a whole lot of despair and very little joy in the climate cult, I was immediately drawn into perusing the 13-page finer-print document. Published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, it’s a humdinger of a report filled with extraneous material of every sort intended to convey the impression of real science.
Whether real science is involved or not can be left to the reader. I just got such huge laughs out of the thing I had to share a few excerpts (minus most citations and with emphasis added) with the goal of spreading my joy around a bit. I have also added paragraphing to eliminate any despair of the reader with the tendency of academics to write in absurdly long ones:
What are the factors that predict or explain climate burnout (exhaustion and disengagement)? We suggest that people are more likely to experience burnout when they feel despair about climate change and the lack of action being taken to address it. That is, climate despair is likely to be an exacerbating factor of burnout.
Given the urgent need to address the climate crisis, it is important to protect people from experiencing despair induced burnout and disengaging from the climate movement: because as stated above, “there's no place for burnout in a burning world.” In the current research we examine whether despair the climate crisis is associated with experiencing burnout.
Moreover, part of the solution to continued engagement in the climate movement may lie in mitigating the association between feeling despair and exhaustion, and/or despair and disengagement. Therefore, we also consider ways to attenuate those links so that people can continue to engage in action for climate justice. We take an experimental approach to investigate the conditions under which people who are high in despair may report lower burnout, as this should lead to better outcomes for individuals and society.
Our pre-registered approach is underpinned by the propositions that imagining a positive future (utopian thinking) and the steps necessary (pragmatism) to achieve this future may buffer against burnout for those who support the climate movement. Namely, people should feel better in themselves (lower exhaustion) but should also maintain their willingness to support the climate movement (lower disengagement) when they imagine a positive future regarding climate change, and the practical steps that are needed to achieve climate justice. To test these propositions, it was necessary to develop a reliable and valid measure of climate burnout….
Utopian thinking may reduce people's levels of exhaustion because positive visions of the future can feel good. Consistent with this proposition, utopian thinking (in isolation) had an attenuating effect on the despair-exhaustion relationship in Study 1, although we did not observe the same pattern in Study 2. As such, utopias can (but may not uniformly) provide a “feel good” response that people can “escape” to. Based on the work by Fernando et al. (2018), there are two potential reasons why utopian thinking may not consistently reduce exhaustion as expected.
First, utopian thinking may automatically compel people to mentally contrast reality with their imagined utopia. Noticing discrepancies between the desired future and reality could mean the participants did not get the satisfaction that utopian thinking can be associated with.
Moreover, people may ‘escape’ to their utopias more when the utopia is considered distant, that is, when it appears very different to, and far removed from, reality. However, people may recognize that their climate-focused utopia does not necessarily need to be distant given that the technologies already exist, and the ability to attain the utopian future is possible (though difficult).
That is, the utopia does not appear distant and instead appears to be ‘within-grasp’. As such, people do not escape to the utopia and instead feel exhausted about the immense amount of work that is required to reach their utopia that they see as within their grasp.
However, another explanation may be that utopian thinking does indeed lead to escapism, but that escapism can be considered both a form of avoidance and a form of emotional regulation. Avoidance has been found to be related to poorer well-being, whereas emotion-focused coping can be beneficial. As such, the emotion-focused coping and avoidance tendencies that utopian thinking can promote, may be counteracting each other.
Furthermore, utopias may distract people and act as a form of emotional regulation and coping, but without actually improving emotional regulation or promoting engagement per se. Therefore, future research could further investigate the mixed and potentially counteracting effects of utopian thinking on climate despair-induced exhaustion.
Moreover, there is some literature that indicates that only imagining positive futures may sap energy. Given that utopian thinking appears to be a limited and conditional means of reducing climate burnout, we also considered the direct and combined effects of pragmatism.
Get it? Climate utopianism is basically escapism. Who would have thought? And, this escapism is destined to disappoint when it comes up against reality. And, worse, to the extent any of the dreams are remotely achievable, they require more than virtue signaling. Real work is demanded and who among the spoiled child members of the climate cult want any part of that? Well, now we have the answer as to why they’re all so darned miserable don’t we?
#Psychology #EnvironmentalPsychology #Despair #Climate #ClimateCrisis #Utopianism
When in panic, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Instead of trying figure out why they are so miserable, just let them follow the WEF to reduce the population by taking action on their miserable self.