Solastalgia by Paul Bogard

Author:Paul Bogard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Virginia Press

A New Word to Describe New Feelings

Susan Clayton

I became interested in the psychology of environmental issues because of the emotions I heard when people talked about the natural environment. It started with their descriptions of pride in their home territory and love for specific trees. As I, and other people, focused more on current environmental crises, a wide range of negative emotions became apparent (in my own reactions as well as those of others). Fear and anxiety, yes. Sadness and grief. Guilt and anger. But positive emotions remained as well: pride, appreciation, and let’s not forget hope, the emotion at the bottom of Pandora’s box.

As a psychologist, I’m intrigued by the ways in which people respond to environmental topics. I’m even, though this feels a little inappropriate, excited by the fact that my work in conservation psychology is more relevant than it has ever been. These emotions, however, coexist against a backdrop of my own anxiety, fear, and grief, emotions that I am usually able to tamp down but that occasionally take me off guard and set my heart pounding. My experience is consistent with the emotions that I have seen among climate scientists: they, too, report feeling sad, angry, afraid; hopeful and optimistic; and excited by the opportunity to investigate the issue and the chance to do research that would really matter.

Emotions are fascinating and complex. They’re both personal and communicative; genuine experience and performance. Although the feelings are real, we can talk ourselves into or out of experiencing many of them and even be unaware of our own emotional state. And this matters because they’re contagious. If I feel fear, and express that fear, people around me are likely to feel at least a bit uneasy—to look around for a threat. If I talk myself out of that fear and express only calm or boredom, the people around me will take that as a signal that there is nothing to fear. This social communication that there is nothing to fear probably plays a big part in our collectively muted response to climate change. Some people who might be inclined to worry look around and see that most people are ignoring the issue, acting as if it’s not a big deal. Since we only see what they communicate, we don’t know that, in fact, many of them are scared and anxious. The observable response suggests that society is not concerned.

So, the way we talk about emotions is significant. The emotion experienced in response to environmental change isn’t the end of the process but a part of an ongoing system: learning about a threat to nature, having an initial reaction, maybe discussing it with others or hearing about how others have responded, maybe modifying the initial emotional reaction, determining a behavioral reaction (including inaction), maybe doing something that modifies the threat, interpreting our own behavior, interpreting the behavior of others. . . .

And because the way we talk about emotions has an impact on our own experience of those emotions, the language we use matters.

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