The Exceptional American Denial - 3

Louise, What did those signs say?

I. About

This series has focused primarily on a complaint (The Exceptional American Denial, 2) instead of a code-red warning. 

But after I read several papers I changed my tune, because one of those papers pointed out that:

"The term dementia derives from the Latin root demens, which means being out of one's mind."

(The Dangerous Impact of Denial, emphasis added). In today's "out of its mind" world, according to some influential sources, denialism is not a form of dementia.

But since:

"Denial is a pathological rewrite of reality, it is a kind of deception that plays with other people’s minds and the cost to those other people is significant. They are seeing and experiencing one reality around them but told that it doesn’t exist, that they got it wrong, that what they see, sense and know isn’t true. They are invited or more usually intimidated into adopting the distorted point of view of another person whose needs to deny and distort are intensely personal. They are caught in someone else’s web (on a good day) or inside another person’s nightmare (on a bad one).

...

In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person’s choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Living inside of someone else’s need to distort reality because they find it too distressing to live with is crazy making and eventually undermines your ability to think for yourself."

(The Dangerous Impact of Denial, emphasis added). So, I must disagree with those who think denialism is not pathological or a part of or form of or indication of dementia.

II. What Goes Around Comes Around

Once denialism makes its way around a civilization it can lead to something that has happened over and over down through history:

"But always TCS [the creep state] is primarily the population segment diagnosed as a despotic minority which the once most-often-quoted historian, Toynbee, fingered as one of the members of the trinity of extinction that he found in all civilizations that were about to become very successful at becoming extinct:

That something is the dementia that produces and ends up in suicide:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). There is no cure for the final symptom of that group dementia, there is only prevention by way of avoiding it altogether in the first place.

The components of that group dementia were pointed out in an encyclopedia piece concerning that historian quoted above:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority."

(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). The show stopper, in terms of remedy, in this type of group dementia is that it is a contagious dementia.

(Etiology of Social Dementia - 18). That particular "minority" is not a racial or ethnic minority, rather, it is primarily composed of a destructive suicidal trance (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)."

(How To Enjoy The End Of Bad Choices). Global warming induced climate change denial is far too widespread within our despotic minority, a minority that can bring down our civilization if not cured.

III. Closing Comments

Dr. James Hansen has been writing about "scientific reticence" for a long time (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction - 8).

He seems to have come to the end of an era, and now seems to be going full force against that reticence (End of An Era).

The previous post in this series is here.

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