[BigTex]

This topic has come up a couple of times in other threads and it is fascinating because it probably comes as close to addressing the frustrated feelings many of us have about peak oil and trying to figure out why so few people seem to be aware of it, much less concerned about it.

I think gg3 said something about it shutting down rat brains just like human brains. This is amazing to me that some kind of logical dilemma could completely thwart the fight or flight response (maybe I'm not thinking about that in the right way).

I hope we have some double-bind experts who will jump in.

[steam_cannon]

I think Anosognosia is a better fit. Anosognosia not only causes
stroke patients to deny their disability, but also affects people
suffering from cognitive dissonance such as believing that world
population can grow to infinity...

Anosognosia and belief in infinite growth

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('steam_cannon', 'S')omething else to consider... Their problem may be simply due to cognitive dissonance similar to anosognosia.

The Problem of Denial
http://www.greatchange.org/ov-catton,denial.html

Anosognosia
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')lt;clip>

DENYING REALITY

There are others who deny the whole idea that carrying capacity has now been, or ever will be, exceeded by the human load...

...I happened to en­counter in Discover magazine an unexpectedly suggestive article. It described research by a neuroscientist and physician at the University of California at San Diego. He studies a rather amazing form of denial. The researcher's name is Vilayanur Ramachandran, and the form of denial he has been studying is called anosognosia. "One of the best-known victims of the condition was Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas, who suffered a right-hemisphere stroke in 1974 that paralyzed his left side and eventually forced his retirement. He initially dismissed the paralysis as a myth, and weeks later was still inviting reporters to go on hiking expeditions with him. When one visitor asked about his left leg, he claimed he had recently been kicking 40-yard field goals with it" (Shreeve, 1995).

As Dr. Ramachandran describes it, anosognosia is a condition in which the patient does not just ignore his or her paralysis, but actively denies it "in spite of... complete inability to move." To explain away the real condition, the patient often concocts "elaborate stories or chillingly unreal rationalizations." (Confabulations is the term for these stories.)

Simon's notion that the existing contents of libraries ensure perpetual growth and progress for 7 billion years certainly resembles a confabulation (see Berlyne, 1972; Mercer et al., 1977; and Shapiro et al., 1981). The resemblance seems all the more striking the more one reads about anosognosia and its effects.9 Ramachandran's explanation for anosognosia says that this form of denial is a way of coping with an insufferable contradiction that confronts stroke patients; their paralysis is an incompatible, identity-threatening anomaly that contradicts their prior experience of themselves and their milieu.

Ramachandran has begun trying to use this unusual "window into the brain" to understand new aspects of the functioning circuitry of that truly remarkable but vulnerable organ. He postulates what he calls an "anomaly detector" as a kind of decision-making center somewhere in the brain. He has not located it specifically, but feels it must be in a part of the brain that usually interacts with the part affected by the stroke his patients have suffered, i.e., the right hemisphere. Anosognosia involves a breakdown of anomaly detection, so the patient is truly unaware of his paralysis and consequent disabilities.

In a Dictionary of Medical Syndromes (Magalini et al., 1990, 54) there is this description of anosognosia:
Inability of the patient to recognize a body or functional defect.... Denies the existence of the condition and attempts to disprove it by going through psychic process that lets him convince himself that what is said by the physician is false.

Here, of course, there is no mention of an "anomaly detector" in the patient's brain. But the reference to a "process that lets him convince himself" of the falsity of what is said by the physician (ordinarily a trusted authority) seemed a close parallel to the case of Simon and Kahn having convinced themselves the things said not only in the Global 2000 Report but by other knowledgeable writers before and since are false.

It is not the intention of the present paper to impute neurological or psychological aberration to Simon, or Kahn, or Wattenberg, or anyone else writing denials of global ecological peril. If the insights derived from accounts of anosognosia are to shed real light on the Simon-Kahn type of denials, we have to suppose there are sociocultural, interpersonal processes of "anomaly detection," not just organic ones within the individual brain. We must also suppose these interpersonal processes are subject to deflection, and that the deflective influences are discoverable sociocultural forces.

Reading a description of anosognosia (and other related forms of denial or "neglect") coupled with suggestions for care of the patient by family members (Caplan et al., 1994, 214-221) caused me to recall a long forgotten instance of denial in my own extended family. It did not have to do with stroke or paralysis, but it did indeed suggest "anomaly detection" may be sometimes a fallible interpersonal process, not just a neural function in the patient's own brain.

The example that came to mind was a memory of my mother sadly telling of a visit with her elderly parents when her father, my grandfather, a retired physician, was dying (in effect, of old age). He had had a fall which broke a hip. Bedridden, he developed gangrene in his feet. My mother forlornly described the way her mother had turned back the blankets to show my mother the condition of my grandfather's feet, while pathetically insisting my mother must confirm my grandmother's wishful perception of (nonexistent) signs of improvement. Denial by solicited agreement.10

There are indeed social psychological patterns that resemble anosognosia, and they are not simply manifestations of neurological impairment. This is clearly evident in the case of Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States, who suffered a stroke on October 2,1919, while winding up a nationwide speaking tour to raise public support for the proposed League of Nations. Despite paralysis of the left side of his body, he remained "under the illusion, persistently fostered by those around him, that he was on the way to recovery" (Hecksher, 1991,632-633. emphasis added; see also Hoover, 1958; Walworth, 1965; Grayson, 1977). Both Mrs. Wilson and the president's doctor. Rear Admiral Grayson, are said to have feared Wilson would "fall back into his post stroke depression" if told the plain truth about his disability.

In the aftermath of World War I, Wilson's supreme mission was to ensure future world peace by establishing the League of Nations. Led by those close to him to believe his infirmity was abating, he meant to continue campaigning for the League's establishment "Undated rough notes in longhand reveal that at some time during [the spring of 1920] Wilson drafted a document entitled '3rd Inaugural'" (Hecksher, 1991, 633). Third term candidacy was his imagined way of bringing to ultimate fruition the presumed public support for his League by overcoming the growing opposition in the Senate. Neither his wife nor his physician would tell him, during that spring, that it was an "utter impossibility" for him to run for a third presidential term.

This tragedy of Woodrow Wilson helps clarify what stroke patients with anosognosia and writers who deny global ecological peril have in common: a compulsion to overcome what social psychologists call cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). According to theory, cognitive dissonance can be strongly aversive. A person will attempt to reduce or eliminate such dissonance between two or more cognitions. The person will act to avoid events or stimuli that would increase it. The severity or intensity of cognitive dissonance depends on the importance to the individual ( ...and to his peers? ...to his reference group?) of the cognitions involved. New cognitions that will add weight to one side of the aversive contradiction can reduce the intolerable dissonance — either by diminishing the contradiction or by reducing its perceived importance (Zajonc, 1968, 360-361).

Now let us imagine a scholar who happens to be deeply committed to what Murray (1972, 219) called "the American economic model." Our scholar then encounters "cognitions" like the following:

[This model, which] values increasing growth, waste (non-recycling of essential materials), and competition [clearly violates] ecological principles that have been established by observations: Competition results in elimination of competitors; continually growing populations eventually collapse; and ecosystems whose essential materials are not recycled cannot be sustained.

There is no reason to believe that economic systems based on principles that bring collapse to ecological systems are immune to a similar fate.

These statements are certainly dissonant with his prior convictions. It should be no surprise if this committed scholar tries to reduce dissonance by amassing additional "cognitions" supporting his adherence to "the American economic model."

CONCLUSION

By thinking of denial as a defense against intolerable anomalous information, we come back to the classic assertion by Paul Sears (1964,11) that ecology "if taken seriously as an instrument for the long-run welfare of mankind, would ... endanger the assumptions and practices accepted by modern societies...." Ecology, he said, affords by its very nature a continuing critique of human operations within the ecosystem. He agreed with F. Fraser Darling that we humans are an integral part of the ecosystem, albeit the most dominant species. Without resorting to Barry Commoner's military metaphor, Sears was already expressing concern about that clash between technosphere and ecosphere later named, described, and deplored by Commoner as a "suicidal war."

Ecological understanding of nature's limits and man's place in nature contradicts deeply entrenched cultural expectations of endless material progress. This fact has been expressed repeatedly by assorted writers who came to it from various directions. In his important but too-seldom-read book on the relation between societal forms and the kinds of energy converters used, Cottrell (1955, 2)" wrote forty years ago that clear understanding of that relation was "likely to raise questions about the reliability of certain propositions which are basic to the policies of both the Communist and the Free World. Some of the makers of these policies will be unwilling to accept its implications," especially if, as Garrett Hardin (1985, 469) contended three decades later, ecology "demands that our current political, social, economic, and moral order be stood on its head."

Simple inability to do that, or committed reluctance to consider how that might happen, seem widespread. Perhaps that is what motivates men like Simon and Kahn to scorn such views and information as were presented in the Global 2000 Report. It challenged beliefs and attitudes that were central to their very identity as humans made in the Western industrial mold. In the same way, and just as fundamentally, it must challenge the beliefs and attitudes crucial to the identities of members of the 104th Congress of the United States. Is it possible that for them, "downsizing" government (to "balance the budget" by 2002 A.D.) has a "latent function"? — it has helped divert attention from humanity's involvement in that "suicidal war" on the ecosphere. If surviving that conflict requires downsizing industrial civilization, rather than just the federal government, how long can the world afford such diversion of those who purport to shape the course of history? When will evidence (or social pressure) suffice to emancipate them from habits of denial?
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[BigTex]

steam_cannon, I like Catton's thoughts on the denial issue, but it seems like that's a slightly different issue.

The double bind situation seems to be where a person understands the situation, and sees that there is no satisfactory choice or outcome....

But then that may just really be the precursor to what Catton is describing--i.e., the double bind presents itself and the reaction is the pathological denial.

It's interesting stuff.

[s0cks]

I thought double blind was something to do with both the informer/administer and the informee/reciever unaware as to what was really going on? Or something like that.

Anyway I think its fairly obvious why most people don't see it. And for those who do but don't appear concerned I would imagine its more to do with the fact that they don't think there is anything they can do about it (even to save themselves) which in many cases may be true.

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 's')team_cannon, I like Catton's thoughts on the denial issue, but it seems like that's a slightly different issue.

The double bind situation seems to be where a person understands the situation, and sees that there is no satisfactory choice or outcome....

But then that may just really be the precursor to what Catton is describing--i.e., the double bind presents itself and the reaction is the pathological denial.

It's interesting stuff.