If all climate activists are “living up in a tree,” then Arthur Waterbridge (Letters, 9/26) must be living in a cave.
In Fox News fashion, his two-minute, sow-the-doubt “sound bite” letter is meant to put the onus on others to dignify his denial by having to respond to his uninformed, alternative reality. As if Exxon’s secret, science-based knowledge, 50 years ago, of the impending disasters to come, or the CIA/military/intelligence complex’s own “quietly” held, science-based plans for the impending wars and calamity based upon “the evidence,” aren’t enough! Let’s call them “profits in denial.”
Years ago, the self-help author and speaker John Bradshaw used the simple metaphor of a hanging mobile to describe how easily, in an extremely dysfunctional family, those most affected by the primary perpetrators are conditioned to react and “revolve around” their every word and/or action.
In the same way, though, when one has the courage to escape the “sway” and chaos — from being one of the “brainwashed children” — and become a more evolved and healthier “informed” self, the same response happens when returning to confront, and challenge, the family dysfunction.
Not surprisingly, one is met with contempt by those threatened by an entrenched fear of change and control, having been conditioned by the dysfunctional status quo.
Those who do nothing about the climate catastrophe, choosing to remain as “brainwashed children” of a dysfunctional system, are not, and will not be, immune to the current and inevitable consequences.
Sean S. Doyle
Corvallis