The picture, above, comes from an online article titled, "Leading the Public Into Emergency Mode: Introducing the Climate Emergency Movement."
Margaret Klein Salamon, PhD wrote the article. If you click the link to her name, you will be escorted to her blog on Medium.
I recommend that you do read Salamon's article. That means clicking the link in the first paragraph, above. Salamon's article focuses on "psychology" more than anything else, and her main point, which I think is incontestable, is that we face a global crisis of such great consequence that we simply must respond.
I know this - and you know it, too - but we actually feel compelled to turn our face away. We feel certain, somehow, that we can't do what needs to be done. It is too much. It it too daunting.
In fact, though, the real word to use isn't "can't." It's "won't." We won't do what needs to be done unless we move to "Emergency Mode."
"Emergency Mode" does not, in the end, mean marching in the street - though that can help us, and help others, to understand that there is, in fact, an "Emergency."
More to the point, we need to recognize that dealing with the global crisis we face must now be our first priority. Other ideas about what we need to do in the future have been overtaken by events. Our plans for our lives - whatever they may have been - must now be set aside. A later posting by Salamon, "Facing the Climate Emergency: Grieving The Future You Thought you Had," puts this truth at the center of her message.
In her article urging us to move to "Emergency Mode" Salamon says this:
In this paper, I will introduce the psychological concept of “emergency mode” which is how individuals and groups function optimally during an existential or moral crisis — often achieving great feats through intensely focused motivation. I will argue that the goal of the climate movement must be to lead the public out of “normal” mode and into emergency mode (emphasis added).
Salamon's article on how to move to "Emergency Mode" was published in 2019. I believe that she would agree that we haven't made it to "Emergency Mode" quite yet.
Are we ready to change our lives? Are we ready to focus our motivation on what we need to do, and so "achieve great feats"? Consider what Salamon has to say about this.
And then.... you decide!
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