The merchants of doubt are back in business. Just as I wrote about denial in public controversies this weekend, London’s Daily Mail charged yet another climate science data conspiracy. The Daily Mail isn’t new to the game of “If you can’t lie, obfuscate,” but the public’s comprehension of and trust in climate science isn’t a […]
Denial and opinions
There are two films called “Denial” out this year. One, a documentary, features climate change and the US energy system. I watched the other, a quiet drama based on a book about Emory professor Deborah Lipstadt’s legal confrontation with Holocaust denier David Irving. In 1994, Lipstadt was traveling around the US speaking about her recent book, Denying […]
The Movement Moment: Change, Denial, and the Fall of Empire
A director at one of the organizations I support recently asked me what I thought “the movement moment” was. What’s the spirit of this time? What’s rising up? The movement, I said, is life. The system demands we assimilate, and teaches us resistance is futile. The movement is not about the right to assimilate. The system calls […]
Embracing Denial and Starting Again
The first stage of grief and the first step toward health are both denial. Yet if we’re to heal, however long it takes, we can’t live in either. I’m reclaiming denial as a stage that honors the stakes of our situation. Perhaps we risk physical death. Perhaps we risk losing our sense of common identity […]