Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

166 S farther horizons
persons, believes itself to be highly moral, has little capacity for
critical thinking, and is plagued by hypocrisy and double standards
(Altemeyer, 1996 and 2004).
From the work of psychologist Erik Erickson (1963) and others,
we know that childhood matters. Many personality traits,
including willingness to trust, openness to experience, creativity,
and problem-solving skills, are formed early in life. A society
shortchanges child raising at its peril. We know that exposure to
violence early in life can wither the parts of the mind associated
with compassion and empathy. Harvard professor Martin Teicher’s
research shows, for example, that:
Stress sculpts the brain to exhibit various antisocial, though adaptive,
behaviors. Whether it comes in the form of physical, emotional
or sexual trauma or through exposure to warfare, famine
or pestilence, stress can set off a ripple of hormonal changes
that permanently wire a child’s brain to cope with a malevolent
world. Through this chain of events, violence and abuse pass
from generation to generation as well as from one society to the
next . . . once these key brain alterations occur, there may be no
going back. (Teicher, 2002, p. 75)
Humanist psychologists like Carl Rogers (1961), Abraham
Maslow (1971), and Erich Fromm (1981) have shown that emotion
and rationality are not separate things but are so intertwined
as to be parts of a larger whole. In the absence of emotion, pure
rationality can lead to outcomes such as Auschwitz, while pure
emotion without a measure of rationality is ineffective (Damasio,
1994). But there is a strong tendency in Western culture to stifl
e the expression of emotion only to have it erupt dangerously
elsewhere. At some level, we understand the distinction between
emotion and rationality to be false. It is emotion that causes a
scientist to stay late to check the data one more time. And if we
need medical attention or a good lawyer, we aren’t likely to seek
out professionals with no emotional commitment to health and