Adapting Deeply
What is your relationship with the unfolding climate situation? How are you processing the constant stream of extreme weather stories and apocalyptic predictions? Time spent in nature often provides me with insights that I don’t imagine getting otherwise, which is ironic given the battering the planet is receiving right now. Away from the mediated, on-line carnage there is a sort of peaceful wisdom in trees and fields that seems to inspire creativity in a very visceral way.
Recently, on a coaching retreat at the beautiful Hazel Hill Wood in Salisbury, this diagram came to me as a model for how I experience human reaction to the climate emergency. I shared it with the group using a pair of sticks shaped as a cross
As with most four-box models, the aspirational place to be is the top right quadrant. I’ve described this as adapting deeply. The expression is inspired by professor Jem Bendell’s work on deep adaptation, that I’ve written about before. Simply put, it is the work needed to accept that irrevocable changes to the way we live are coming as a result of climate change, and our work is to be able to fully own this and adapt, both internally and in our external lives. Bendell describes what is coming as ‘societal collapse’. I’m a little more optimistic (it’s in my nature), but nevertheless am fully on board with the idea that the most useful thing we can do right now is to prepare for fundamental, systemic change.
The quadrant I often find myself defaulting to is the acting of numbing out. I accept that climate change is with us and it won’t end well, but I distract myself from this reality, because to accept it is too painful. My own tools for numbing out include sport, puzzles and box sets on TV. It’s a version of denial really, in which we do the equivalent of sticking our fingers in our ears and saying ‘la la la’ very loudly so we can’t hear all the bad news. Some have a more active denial going on, which might involve attacking the messenger or publicising conspiracy theories.
The top left quadrant is where I wanted to be when I joined the Green Party in the late 80s. I want to be clear that I believe there is much merit in some of the climate activism we have witnessed over the past decades (I’m still a member of the Green Party), which visually would be on the border of the top two quadrants in the diagram. But too much ‘save the planet’ is actually really about preserving the status quo, or the way things were, even though this is what has caused the problem in the first place. So something new is required, which will require a transformation of energy from resistance to creativity.
Finally the bottom left quadrant is the one I struggled to name. I ended up with ‘being a victim’ because it reminded of a recent article I wrote on mindset. This is a place of ineffective avoidance and suffering. A place for people who have given up and are in states of hopelessness and helplessness. I know this place, I call it my dark side. Nothing good comes from long periods here. I’m feeling a cold chill just writing about it. And yet, it’s completely reasonable that sane people find themselves here. I read once that it is only the deeply psychopathic who could witness fully what is happening in the world right now and not become at least a little depressed. So feelings of fear, sadness, anger, anxiety, dread are normal and serve as a stark reminder (at least to me) of where the inner work of deeply adapting starts.
It struck me afterwards that adapting deeply could be viewed as a resilience practice, whereas the other three quadrants are more about stress-based endurance, or fight, flight freeze responses. Rage against the machine would be fight, numbing out is like flight and being a victim is I guess similar to freeze. This might be just a neat happenstance that I’m attempting to create meaning with, but I thought I’d chuck it in anyway.
I’m hoping this model is as helpful to you as it was to me and my colleagues. It’s something I plan to continue to work with and on, as I continue to explore what it is to be an eco-citizen. I’ve already realised that I can occupy different places on the grid, depending on my mood and what I’m up to. For example, writing this has given me a tour of all four quadrants. Where are you right now? And how might you move toward deeply adapting?