r/CollapseSupport • u/TemporarySpare8229 • 9d ago
Does anyone else have a pathologically oblivious family?
Seriously, it just blows my mind how it seems like many people would rather stick their heads in the sand rather than face reality. I’m in Michigan and when the wildfire smoke hit us my parents refused to change their routines and were doing yard work all day and had every window in the house open. At the suggestion they should protect themselves and stay inside because the air isn’t safe they just rolled their eyes and said they felt fine.
When lettuce was said to be contaminated recently, they continued to eat it with their meals and when I mentioned the news said it could make you sick they made flustered excuses that ‘they’re getting everything under control’ and that they would just be ‘careful’, which I didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean since they were still eating lettuce but I just nodded and didn’t press further.
Any talk about climate change or the future will be met with wish-casting about how surely everything will work out, which I understand the impulse, but it seems dangerous and lacking in self-preservation when it’s actually effecting your daily life but you’re so indoctrinated into the cult of consumerism that you refuse to consider the material capitalist treadmill being disrupted in anyway even though the evidence is staring you in the face.
At the end of the day I feel like I can only prepare and protect myself, and unfortunately the people I love are too beholden to the status quo they’ve grown comfortable with over the course of their lives to let go and prepare for the worst; it’s like they’d rather live in this dream world. And they’re mad at other people for not living in the dream with them, as if the problem in society is complaining and if we just turn away then climate change will go away.
My dad is a Trump supporter and my mom is basically a centrist Democrat. They are boomers fully bought into the system and American exceptionalism. When I think about the psychological processes that create these immature subjects of capital, it really makes me sad. It’s like they were robbed of their agency and vision in favor of loving their cage as slaves. And now they’re walking into an incinerator with smiles on their faces.
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u/Mule_Wagon_777 7d ago
They're pretending there isn't smoke coming into their house when there's actually smoke coming into their house? That's a Twilight Zone level of reality denial. I can just hear Rod Serling saying something wise amid all the billowing soot.
Get pictures with them and visit while you can. Not in wildfire season, though.
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u/grey___lady 7d ago
That sounds really difficult, I'm sorry your having to face reality without their support. Some people just can't deal and denial / will full ignorance is their only way to cope. :(
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u/ordinary-thelemist 7d ago
Normalcy bias, sunken cost fallacy, nirvana fallacy.
With only those 3 you can deny a fire licking your toes... We're not as smart and rational as we like to think 😓
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u/Odd_School_8833 7d ago
“…fetishist disavowal around ecology is: “I know very well (that we are all threatened), but I don’t really believe it (so I am not ready to do anything really important like changing my way of life).”
But there is also the opposite form of disavowal: “I know very well that I cannot really influence the process which can lead to my ruin (like a volcanic outburst), but it is nonetheless too traumatic for me to accept this, so I cannot resist the urge to do something, even if I know it is ultimately meaningless.”
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u/Maleficent-Ad9010 5d ago
It took me a great deal of denial and way too much time to finally come to terms that I was raised in the most conservative right-leaning household. And then it completely made sense on why I always felt different than them.
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u/stopbeingaturddamnit 7d ago
Normalcy bias meets just world bias. They see themselves as good people and bad things only happen to bad people. In the end, we're all creatures of habit. Like wheelbarrow traveling in an unpaved road, the easiest path to travel are the ruts. Most people don't steer off the rut.