How do we account for the “crazy” these days, both in our politics and in our society at large? Most of us can see it and feel it. Many of us call it out saying, “Wow, that’s just crazy.” But where did it come from? What’s driving the divisiveness, the anger, the steady rise of the irrational both in politics and in our daily life?
British psychiatrist Sally Weintrobe attributes the rise of the crazy to two things: a mindset that refuses to recognize limits (and the legitimate needs of others) and a view of the economy that turns critically important decision making over to unregulated markets and the pursuit of short term profit. Markets always know best, from this perspective, and government is always the problem. Her recent book, The Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis, has been the Green Gettysburg Book Club’s focus for January and February, and Weintrobe has taught us some new words—often her creations—and some new ways to think about the times we are living through.
The concept of the “exception”—probably the most intriguing of her newly minted words—is central to what Weintrobe has to say. We’ve all got what she describes as an “inner exception,” a gut feeling that the rules that apply to others don’t really apply to us, but normally that feeling is kept in check by the caring part of our psyche and does only minimal damage. Unchecked, however, this feeling of being exempt from rules and limits can do major damage, in particular when an Exception takes on a capital E and rises to political power.
Exceptions are able to perceive only an idealized version of themselves. They tend to feel entitled to have whatever it is they happen to want and to engage in magical thinking to remove any hint of moral heartburn they might be disposed to feeling on account of their own bad behavior. The more troublesome parts of themselves they tend to project onto a stigmatized other of one sort or another. Exceptions rise to political power by appealing to the inner exception within each of us, feeding it a fantasy that satisfies us emotionally but “deregulates” our ability to think critically.
The goal, for Weintrobe, should be a very different kind of self, one that is comfortably many selves in dialogue with one another, and where our own narcissistic tendencies are kept in check by our concern for others. This self is also—quite unlike the Exception—one that knows that it will never know itself fully and is therefore open to listening to what others might have to say.
Unfortunately, however, “we are living in Exceptionalism’s golden age,” according to Weintrobe, and it’s driving a kind of “mental deregulation” that has made our politics a little crazy. Neoliberalism—a new word for many of us—argues that unregulated markets always know best and that government is always the problem. This view became mainstream in the early 1980s with Ronald Reagan and accompanied the globalization of the world economy. It drove a lot of economic growth and created a lot of wealth, especially for a few, but was unable to come to terms with the harm done by under-regulated markets. Hiding the extensive environmental and human damage done by this global expansion has required the creation of what Weintrobe calls “fraud bubbles inside of which limits can be ignored and greed liberated.” The struggle against our weakness for fraud bubbles is ongoing, she says.
What to do? For Weintrobe all this becomes a battle between caring and not caring, between sharply different mindsets and the frameworks that support or undermine these contrasting states of mind. “Not caring” is not just an individual matter; for Weintrobe the psychological state of not caring also supports an economy that delivers unjustified entitlements to some while depriving others of the basics and damaging the natural systems we all depend on for clean air and water and a relatively stable climate.
We need to build new frameworks of care and of containment, according to Weintrobe, and creating these frameworks will require good leaders. Good leaders, she says, contain the “exception” in us by taking all of us seriously and listening to our concerns, by giving us “scope” to be socially responsible, and by restraining us only “when our uncaring part gets out of hand.” Whenever possible, they will solve problems through dialogue rather than by unilaterally imposing a solution.
The search for these new frameworks of care is powered by a sense of “lively entitlement,” potentially present in each of us. Lively entitlement demands basic rights for oneself but also for others. In addition, it recognizes the limits inherent in living on Planet Earth. The entitlement of the Exception, however, is based on “omniscient thinking,” on the satisfaction of a self that is perceived as ideal. Other human beings and nature exist only to satisfy this misperceived ideal self whose sense of entitlement does not recognize limits of any kind. For this to make sense, the Exception must live within one of those “fraud bubbles” mentioned above.
Will we Americans bust out of our fraud bubbles, embrace a sense of lively entitlement, and face up to the challenges of climate change? Only time will tell.
Will Lane, a founding member of Green Gettysburg and the Green Gettysburg Book Club, is a Lecturer in English and Affiliated Faculty Member with Environmental Studies at Gettysburg College.