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Denial and Delusion Eric R. Pianka ans Laurie J. Vitt "Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love." -- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1879) Humans are extremely good at denial and self deception, so good in
fact that these behaviors must have provided a selective advantage to
early humans to be so deeply ingrained in our psyches. Denial is a form of massive self delusion, akin to
mass movements (Hoffer 2010) that have invaded our politics and spread
misinformation. For example, many Americans do not
"believe" in evolution and are convinced that climate change is a hoax. An even
better example is our inability to confront overpopulation which has actually
become politically incorrect. Evolution, climate change and overpopulation are
nevertheless quite real. Denial is a "human construct" because we have a word for it, but the concept could be
applied to other animals. Malthus couldn't cut the strings to
denial of human overpopulation, William Vogt couldn't do it in 1948, Paul
Ehrlich tried again in 1968 but failed, and humans probably will never confront
it. As hard-core university ecologists, we 1) understand the problem, 2)
recognize that it has gotten steadily worse (our population now stands at 7.7
billion people), and 3) for those who say "we should start having a serious
discussion of the issue" - That is exactly what ecologists have been saying for
at least the past 50+ years, and 4). We can say we tried -- what will our
politicians say when people can't get enough food (impending famines are a real
threat.), energy grids and the
internet go down (cell phones will stop working), or availability of drinkable fresh
water becomes a huge industry so that people can't afford water? Earth's
estimated carrying capacity is about half of our current population (Vitousek
et al 1986; Wackernagel et al
2002; Haberl et al. 2004). When should this discussion finally begin -- will it be when our
population reaches 15 billion, 100 billion -- of course, that won't happen,
because as all ecologists know and all of the existing data show, we are
heading for a massive population crash. We should take drastic proactive but
educated measures now to reduce future impacts, but the public is simply not
educated on this topic and the political imperative to do something is not
there. Hopefully, the education process that should have taken place in the
late 1700s will slowly begin to occur. Varki and Brower (2013) considered
denial to be unique to humans. They argue that our ability to avoid reality provides
humans with many valuable attributes, such as optimism, confidence, courage,
and willful ignorance of our own inevitable deaths in the face of long odds.
However, dangers are inherent in our remarkable ability to ignore reality: our ability to go
into denial could be considered an asset in the short term, but it will lead to our
downfall if we continue to ignore overpopulation and
climate change. Catton (1994) suggested that denial is a way of "coping with an insufferable
contradiction between past convictions and present circumstances, as a defense
against intolerable anomalous information." Denial could be a mechanism humans use to avoid
paralyzing anxiety (if, for example, you share a big cave system with
cave lions and cave bears). Delusion (Trivers 2011) and denial are
opposite sides of the same coin. Self deception involves believing something
that is demonstrably false is real (i.e. an "alternate reality"). In contrast,
denial is not believing something that is in fact real. Believing that chem
trails are poisons being dropped on us by Monsanto is self deception and easily
falsified, which doesn't seem to matter to conspiracy theorists because they are
so firmly entrenched in a delusion of an alternate reality. Climate change, evolution,
and overpopulation are real natural phenomena that operate independently from humans.
Claiming that one does not "believe" in climate change, evolution, or overpopulation
constitutes denial. All three have occurred in the past, are occurring now, and
will continue to occur as long as life exists on Earth. Self deception and denial
are closely linked. Delusion is often exploited to reinforce denial. For example,
the delusional belief that climate change is a "hoax" facilitates denial of
its reality. References Catton, W. R. 1994. The Problem of Denial.
Ehrlich, P. 1968. The Population Bomb. Ballantine Haberl et al. 2004. Ecological footprints and human appropriation of net primary production: a comparison. Land Use Policy 21 (2004) 279-288. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.661.7319&rep=rep1&type=pdf Hoekstra, A. Y. 2008. Human appropriation of natural
capital: A comparison of ecological footprint and water footprint analysis. Hoffer, E. 1951. The True Believer. Thoughts on the
Nature of Mass Movements, Harper & Brothers. Trivers, R.
2011. Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool
Others Varki, A. and D. Brower. 2013. Denial:
Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind. Twelve.
Link:
denial-self-deception-false-beliefs-and-origins-human-mind Vitousek, P. M., P. Ehrlich,
A. Ehrlich, and P. A. Matson. 1986. Human appropriation of the products of
photosynthesis. BioScience, 36, 368-373.Download Vituosek_et_al_1986.pdf Download: Denial and Delusion |