The Great Humbling S2E1: 'State of Alert'

We call these conversations the Great Humbling because we start from a sense that this is a time of being humbled, brought down to earth, and we want to ask what happens if we approach the moment we’re in on those terms?

In this second season each week we’ll be taking a state of mind that seems to be part of the mix of being alive just now.

So this is the Great Humbling: Season Two – Altered States - States of being, states of consciousness and of course the literal alteration of our nation states.

And this is episode 1 - 'State of Alert'

Dougald introduces some of his summer reading: a critique of Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation paper and a piece from the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective that was published under the title ‘Preparing for the end of the world as we know it’

Ed reflects on a 'Guide to Eco Anxiety' that he wrote the foreword for, Nick Hayes 'Book of Tresspass' and Martin Shaw's 'Wolferland'

We explore the meaning of a 'state of alert', quoting Susie Orbach on these times: “How the outside impacts on the inside is something that people like me think about all the time. But now we are seeing it on a grand scale. The pandemic has been a prolonged assault from outside on our community. The state of uncertainty and unsafety it has created is new and utterly unfamiliar. Unless you are a refugee who has risked their life to get here, or a survivor of childhood abuse that could not be escaped, there is simply nothing to compare it to.”

We compare the Anglo and Swedish experiences on the pandemic and the big impacts e.g. ‘NYC Is Dead Forever. Here’s Why’

We relate a constant state of alert to a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and hypervigilance and all the negative behavioural aspects that entails, referencing David Morris's book 'The Evil Hours'

We make the PTSD connection with climate change via Kari Norgaard's, Living in Denial –  ‘In some sense, not wanting to know was connected to not knowing how to know' and a piece Dougald  wrote about that last winter in one of the Notes from Underground

We hope you enjoy our conversation and thanks for listening.