From “On the psychic costs of climate collapse” – (hairball rather than pill)

Arena is an Australian radical/left/sorta-Marxist publication, often very interesting and insightful.

This from an article by a chap called Mark Furlong caught my eye.

“Because climate collapse is a hyper-object, recognition promises to ‘do your head in’. It suggests a disturbance so holistic, so total – of every aspect of life, now and forever – that it can’t be countenanced. Taking in a fact like climate collapse is not like swallowing a single pill, however big and bitter. Rather, recognition will be an ongoing confrontation better likened to swallowing a hairball: a restless nasty that flexes perennially and sticks in one’s throat, producing a semi-continuous gag reflex and an ongoing feeling of suffocation. It is no wonder climate collapse provokes disbelief. Threatening to impel a jagged new totality, this prospect endangers consciousness. how can one take in the fact that eh very conditions of life are metastasising? It is unfathomable that much of what we take for normality is imploding.”

(Furlong, 2023, p.77)

Furlong, M. (2023) On the psychic costs of climate collapse. Arena 13, Autumn. pp. 71-77.