By E. Sassen
Climate change is here, whether you are into ice ages or global warming. It is a burden on mankind and the planet, like many burdens we face. Yet climate change is selected as the chosen one, to be our guilty pleasure. We are not taught anything else but expressing the worlds activity in its estimated C02 equivalent. We have obtained a world view that sees the very expressions of life as something life-degrading. It is true to the core, people feel guilty about having babies because their godly miracle will be a little C02 generator for 90+ years.
Green people love guilt. They claim that ‘‘it works’’. ‘‘When I feel guilty about enjoying my holidays that I had this year in South America, Pakistan and Antarctica, I know the climate gods respond and forgive me for the emitted C02, you just feel that portion of C02 being removed from the atmosphere again.’’ ‘’It is because I traveled for my personal development that I was forgiven, not just for the enjoyment.’’ ‘’But no, I do not take the car during a blizzard, I rather freeze to death on the train station, praying for NS to come and save me with their wind energy.’’
The clichés… What is going on here? People seem to mix up reasoning, abstraction, emotions and self-entitlement. They blend it for five minutes at high speed and then pour the mixture into their subconscious mind, for the program to be executed. This program is portrayed schematically below and explained afterwards. It might be a bit chewy if you are not into inner climate dynamics.
The program consists of two cooperating systems: guilt generation and guilt release. The level of generated guilt reflects the level of perceived climate burden that a person declares him or her to be accountable for. The amount of released guilt is perceived as the amount of work done to improve the climate situation. Note that this program is formed and executed in the subconscious, which is not based on rationality, but rather on emotions, symbolism, images and things of that nature.
The program starts somewhere in the guilt generation cycle. For example, an event happens, let’s say you go by car to Amsterdam. You immediately think about the C02 you are going to emit. Next, you abstract this emitting of C02 to the level of climate change. Then, you realize you are also responsible for climate change, and feed this thought and feeling of responsibility for global catastrophe into your emotional system. The rationally formed concept of climate change and the irrational emotional system (subconscious) are not compatible. The emotional system has no idea what climate change is. Yet it feels responsible for it, yet it can’t solve it by itself, producing internally irresolvable guilt. Tada, this program loops, and its process has become nearly superconductive since the Paris Climate Agreement, producing all kinds of guilt.
The guilty person seeks for solvation of his/her unpleasant feelings, to make up for his/her unworthy existence. His/her climate guilt perception increases, and after numbers of guilt generation loops the level of accumulated climate guilt passes a tipping point. The person evolves his/her ego into the green ego, entitling itself as ‘green beaver of the first ray of the aurora beamers’, which comes with highly valued powers. Green beavers are described as being ‘inspirational’, ‘possessing guru-like qualities’, ‘transformative’ and ‘a blessing to be in presence with’.
The powers of green beavers – who are also named greébeé’s or bean eaters – are guilt-release-based. The first power they will find born inside themselves is the ability to dismiss guilt from emitted C02 through the ‘Idealistic Circuit’. Whenever involved in a C02 releasing object or event that is seen as beneficial for the green ego’s subjective ideals, its additional guilt can be dismissed. These ideals can be hidden under various emitting actions. Roasting chicken on coal can be done guilt free, in case ‘the nurturing of the inner primal for optimization of the survival chakra’ is idealized, for example. Another green beaver mechanism of guilt release is through (e)missionary work, which aims to increase climate awareness (guilt) levels in others and subsequently initiate them to the beaver principle. Herein the green beaver transmits part of its climate guilt to its followers, to start up the climate guilt generation cycle within those new greenies. This creates the so called auroral snowball effect, in which the collective packs up more and more guilt mass. When the pursued critical guilt mass has been achieved, the earth will be so guilt-heavy that its orbit will change, putting it further away from the sun, which will drop the average temperature by ~73°C. ´´It might seem like a ridiculous temperature drop, but we just like to be on the safe side.’’ Last but not least, the status quo, oil companies and politics can be opposed and rebelled against for some nice guilt discharge, even online on the go.
Anyways, green beavers aside, guilt is not a magical emotion that removes C02 from the atmosphere. Neither is it necessary or sustainable to use guilt as fuel for climate improving measures. Guilt is a duality enhancer. In the climate guilt perspective one divides the world into two opposites, climate-good and climate-bad, with people and its actions associated with one of the sides. This creates a static ‘us versus them’ perspective, in which you can only understand and agree with your own point of view and limit yourself from truly understanding other perspectives. One also limits itself to solutions only found in the associated narrowed state of consciousness, excluding solutions found in alternative states. Besides, your ability to negotiate with more climate reluctant people and corporations will be less effective when you cannot relate to the person sitting opposite to you. They might think you are some kind of freak of beaverly origin.
A bottleneck in daring to let go of climate guilt is the feeling that you are letting go of caring about the world. But is this so? Wouldn’t nature thrive more under joy and optimism? Perhaps you will lose your status in the green scene, but the climate is not bothered with that. There is really no need to feel guilty. Only some changes are needed: don’t feel guilty for emissions you are making anyhow, don’t take responsibility for others who you cannot positively influence, and maybe don’t over restrain yourself in your lifestyle. This will prevent you from becoming a green beaver, while not excessively impacting the climate negatively. If you happen to be a bean eater already, don’t worry, the process is reversible. Burning 10 liters of crude oil during a climate march usually does the trick. In order to make ‘sustainability’ a success we need those ‘future generations’, so let’s honor babies and clean up the collective subconscious!
This article has been previously published in the Jester (paper edition), didn’t you see it already? Go check it out