“The same argument can still be heard today in a modified form: without hope, however illusory it may be, we would stop fighting for a better world, and indeed stop acting at all.
I think this is a dangerous mistake. Illusions are not sustainable, they provide short-term relief and paralyze in the long term. The almost total collapse of the climate movement shows this in all its brutality. Sigmund Freud described this as early as 1924 in his groundbreaking essay “Mourning and Melancholy”: Where there is no mourning in order to avoid feelings of guilt, the lost object nests itself in the soul and paralyzes it. Or as it was said at the time: loss without mourning produces melancholy.
It is therefore essential that the left-liberal and green public comes to a halt and admits that it has been defeated across the board, that it has lost everything it has believed in all these years. There is no more Paris Agreement, no Kyoto Agreement, no “Fridays for Future”, no climate stickers, no measures against dwindling biodiversity and so on and so forth. And democracy itself, as the Merz case makes abundantly clear, has largely surrendered to the far right.
What is needed now is a period of genuine, illusion-free mourning, with all the phases described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. No phase should be skipped: We are still in the middle of denial, now anger is the order of the day.”
A great summary. Regarding your guest post by James Dyke of U of Exeter, he co-authored this very insightful paper/(read podcast) on the Net-Zero 2050 being a dangerous trap: https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368
You have a sharp voice here painting a detailed picture of the challenges we all face.
Here’s an (German language) article that may interest you: https://www.republik.ch/2025/02/11/strassberg-die-unfaehigkeit-zu-trauern
“The same argument can still be heard today in a modified form: without hope, however illusory it may be, we would stop fighting for a better world, and indeed stop acting at all.
I think this is a dangerous mistake. Illusions are not sustainable, they provide short-term relief and paralyze in the long term. The almost total collapse of the climate movement shows this in all its brutality. Sigmund Freud described this as early as 1924 in his groundbreaking essay “Mourning and Melancholy”: Where there is no mourning in order to avoid feelings of guilt, the lost object nests itself in the soul and paralyzes it. Or as it was said at the time: loss without mourning produces melancholy.
It is therefore essential that the left-liberal and green public comes to a halt and admits that it has been defeated across the board, that it has lost everything it has believed in all these years. There is no more Paris Agreement, no Kyoto Agreement, no “Fridays for Future”, no climate stickers, no measures against dwindling biodiversity and so on and so forth. And democracy itself, as the Merz case makes abundantly clear, has largely surrendered to the far right.
What is needed now is a period of genuine, illusion-free mourning, with all the phases described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. No phase should be skipped: We are still in the middle of denial, now anger is the order of the day.”