Author Archives: klaibe

Creating My Own “Skin” In This Weird Game

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A bird house hung on a tree in the quad

For years now, I’ve felt disconnected from the world around me. The hyper-individualization of the climate crisis led to internalized guilt, shame, and frustration, which manifested into defensive, nihilistic-like apathy. I knew composting one cup wouldn’t change the rate at which the oceans were heating, so why bother? I didn’t feel like I had agency, and more than that, I felt I didn’t have “skin in the game.” This is a concept taken from Britt Wray’s book, “Generation Dread” which has continued to resonate with me. I kept questioning: if we don’t feel that we have “skin” in the game, what inspires us to dream of and fight for a better future? 

Two deer eating grass I spotted on a drive.

Among many other lessons, this course taught me that while we may not be able to stop death, we do have agency and with it, the power to create our own “skin.” We have pathways towards managing death anxiety (TMT), we have resources to help us move forward (“Active Hope”), and most impactful (and cliche) of all, we have each other to help solve this problem. We inherited the sins of our progenitors, and while it’s unfair, we have to be the ones to fix them. I won’t lie that this is a daunting task, but it is powerful to realize that we are an agentic collective. While my action project felt disjointed, limiting, and generally not generative, it did help me recognize that despite a lot of outward apathy, all of my peers were dreaming of a better future, we were just worried our hopes would lead to disappointment. Moreover, the group project reminded me of group agency (our ability to do something together, even if it felt semi insignificant) and our shared purpose.

An owl in the tree spotted on my daily walk.

It’s also powerful to recognize that I have individual agency, that doesn’t detract from, but strengthens collective action. This was most inspired by systems thinking, which has allowed me to develop a greater understanding of the world’s complex integration systems and the importance of purpose. I have realized that to be part of collective solutions, I have to create my own purpose first. So, I began that process this quarter. I spent time everyday creating my own “skin” by taking photos of things that reminded me of why I had an incentive to continue fighting, hoping, and dreaming of a better future, which has been incredibly empowering. For the first time, I not only feel connected to the world, but able to do something to ensure its future – both by myself and collectively. 

“I am not my body. My body is not me”

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CW: Sickness/illness

I refuse to be the sum of my parts.

Monday, November 13th was a day like any other. I went to class, drank one too many coffees, procrastinated my homework. I fell asleep curled around a book.

Tuesday, November 14th, I woke feverish, teary-eyed, shaking. I fell asleep clutching a thermometer that read 103 degrees. 

I can’t remember November 15th, or 16th, or 17th, or 18th. I know my partner helped me write emails to my Professors explaining absences. I know my fever did not break 103 degrees until Friday night. I know I received three rounds of treatment. I know, almost a month later, I am still recovering.

It’s in moments like these, I find myself aligned with death apathy. In the obliterating pain and sadness, I become resigned to the prospect of death, probably because it feels so intimately close. In moments like these, it is extremely hard to remind myself I am more than the body that is making me feel this way. 

The awareness icon for my disease.

Our conversation last week regarding what we conceptualized as our “I” continues to resonate with me. My classmate, Ryan’s, comment about the view of their body and mind being inherently linked struck me. Why did my body so viscerally reject this statement? Why did I feel so disconnected from so many of my peers? Why didn’t I feel the connection between my body and my Self? 

Because my disability lives in my body, whatever form it chooses to manifest in is physical. While it continues to facilitate the degeneration of my body, it cannot touch my mind, my spirit, my soul. These aspects of me – despite feeling physically exhausted – feel so alive. If we were truly just our bodies, this would be incompatible – at least, to me it would be. 

Despite the yearly, monthly, weekly breakdown of my body, I feel stronger than ever. I frequently combat anger, frustration, and feelings of unfairness due to my disability, but that does not hinder my ability to feel generative, creative, and as I said before, alive. I don’t write this post to try to change anyone’s mind, but write it to explore how our lived experiences and identities shape how we talk about ourselves and relatedly, our future deaths. How do you think our  conceptualization of our “I” fosters death anxiety/death apathy? Do our personal identities and experiences help us create our conceptualization of our “I”? 

“Wait, You Mean To Tell Me Course Material Actually Affects My Mental Health?”

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“Depression” by Disability Arts Online

On October 13th, Professor Litfin prompted us to “scan” our bodies during a contemplative practice. When I got to my chest, I felt a vast heaviness, taking the form of a dark hole near my heart. With each beat, I visualized the darkness “leaking out” into my veins, seeping throughout my body, carrying waves of what felt like grief and guilt. The more focused I became on the darkness, the more class images flashed through my mind – specifically, bits and pieces of the movie we had watched the Tuesday before (The Anthropocene). Abruptly, I realized I had internalized course materials, such as the feelings of climate guilt, without even realizing how much they were affecting my physical or mental state. 

One of my favorite books, “Untethered Soul”, stresses the importance of “untethering” yourself from negative emotions/experiences so that your body does not harbor (and build) upon them. While I felt I had mastered this practice, I was violently surprised to learn that I was internalizing feelings directly related to what I was learning in my classes. In my conceptualization of mindfulness and wellbeing, I had divorced education from my personal well-being, despite the fact that everyday I was learning about environmental degradation, crimes against humanity, war atrocities, and the psychological consequences of the death-penalty. 

“Untethered Soul” by Michael Singer

Since this realization, my notes post-contemplative practice have continued to illuminate the intersections between course materials and personal quandaries, which have allowed me to more deeply engage in both. While October 13th brought me insight to guilt and grief related to living in a capitalist society and trying to preserve the environment, contemplative practices on October 18th and 25th indicated that I was really struggling with the idea of death anxiety and was more aligned with the idea of death apathy. This facilitated my interest in nihilistic-like attitudes (especially for younger generations), which is an idea that has made an entrance into each one of my blog posts and usually at least one comment in each class. 

As I reflect on the use of contemplative practices in the classroom, I am astounded at the insight they have brought me. It seems so obvious that students internalize the psychologically “weighty” lessons they learn in class, but for the past three years, I’ve been oblivious. It prompts me to wonder what my education (and personal self-awareness) would have looked like if I had been practicing in classrooms before this quarter. 

“A Turn Towards Apathy”

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Content Warning: Nihilism/nihilistic ideation

Immortality is divisive; there are those who chase it with projects and aspirations to leave a legacy behind, and there are those who are struggling to live life as is. For the former, theories like Terror Management help to explain how immortality projects help us live a life that is meaningfully generative. This group actively looks for a contribution to life that lives beyond us as a way of immortalizing ourselves and thus, placating their death anxiety (Worm at the Core).

While Terror Management seems to explain this population well, I question its

Thred’s, “Nihilism”

applicability to the other group, a population that seems to be turning increasingly nihilistic. Class last week affirmed this idea when multiple peers agreed that chasing immortality isn’t of interest because many of us are struggling to want to live now. My extrapolation comes from a non representative population, so I outsourced to see if this feeling of struggling to engage with current life (let alone immortality) is reciprocated amongst others. 

Thred, a social change website/art platform (see image to right and below), published an article in May 2022 that observes this same phenomena. They write that, “climate change, political turmoil, growing wealth inequality, and many more knock-on capitalist trends have caused a rise in nihilistic attitudes” especially amongst young people.

Thred’s, “Nihilism”

Overwhelmed with caring about so many devastating things, nihilism (at its most extreme) points to not caring at all. It seems as though the sentiment of my last blog post is relevant here too: I struggle to think about the future when I am drowning in the present. It seems extreme, but walk across any corner of the UW campus, and I can almost guarantee students parroting the phrases “I don’t care anymore”, “I’m tired”, “I’ve given up”, “I just can’t”, “There’s too much”. 

So what implications does many’s turn towards nihilistic-like behaviors/attitudes have for TMT/death anxiety? Well, as I said last week, I’m still baking this thought (and thus, encourage others to test it/push back if it does not resonate). For right now, I’ve conceptualized it like this: it appears that for individuals (especially youth) turning towards nihilistic-like attitudes, death anxiety is disrupted by numbness. Instead of death anxiety, it more closely resembles death apathy. If this is true, I also wonder whether or not this manifests in physical consequences (becoming more risk-acceptant/engaging in less generative behaviors).

Image Description (first): A neon green background with varying neon pink skulls centered around one larger gray skull. There are yellow motion lines around skulls, signifying movement.

Image Description (second): A spiral background made of light and dark green. In the middle is a hand holding a skull, shaded and outlined in red. There are also red squiggles around the skull.

“Struggling to See the Future When I can Barely Live in the Present”

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Last class, I started thinking about how present bias, especially in Westernized “wellness” movements, disrupts and discourages looking towards the future. I thought about how dominant narratives of “living in the moment” invisibilize the future. For example, when I worry about the future, I attempt to ground myself back in this moment, which is a practice that has been reified by guided meditation and therapy sessions. Thus, after years of subscribing to “living in the moment”, I’ve found it harder to look into the future and oftentimes discourage myself from doing so. 

Moreover, as my peer Ryan remarked, it can feel impossible to look towards the future when the present feels suffocating and ever changing. There’s an image I think about (to the right with image description below)that represents the magnitude of circumstances many find themselves thinking about in the present, let alone the future.

A blue-faced individual, wearing a white mask, in front of a dripping blue and green earth. Surrounding the earth is plastic waste represented by forks/food/containers and waste of resources represented by dripping tubes. 

Art by Mushroomhead

For instance, when dealing with a global pandemic, food insecurity, housing/school payments, bodily autonomy, and mental health, it can seem impossible (for me, at least) to think about future-oriented issues. While “future-oriented” issues have an immense stake in the present (such as climate change), they seem less tangible and therefore, more likely to be relegated to the back of the mind while more “pressing” concerns take the frontal space in the brain.

[Image description of second image]: An image taken from Nature’s landmark survey of climate anxiety. At the top is a sliding bar measuring respondent’s climate anxiety from “extremely worried to not worried”. The statistics read, “extremely worried: 27%, very worried: 32%, moderately worried: 25%, a little worried: 11%, not worried: 5%”. Below the bar, is a phrase that reads “climate change makes me feel…” with a series of different emotions and represented percentage in bars. The varying emotions and related percentages read, “sad: 68%, afraid: 68%, anxious: 63%, angry: 58%, powerless: 57%, guilty: 51%, optimistic: 32%, indifferent: 30%”

Reference 1 in Survey regarding Youth and Climate Anxiety (Nature)

Granted, while looking towards the future is something I struggle with, it is not as though these issues are completely absent from mine — or others’ — minds. In a 2021 landmark survey, researchers found that amongst thousands of 15 to 25 year olds, “nearly 60% [said] they felt ‘worried’ or ‘extremely worried’” about climate change (Nature 1). Moreover, “many associated negative emotions with climate change”, which is represented in the graph to the left (image description below). 

While I do think about climate change when provoked, my positionality and privilege have allowed me a large reprieve from constant climate anxiety, compounded with my inability to cope with my “present”. This is a privileged position, as those with different positionalities/experiences are forced into contemplation of the future by means of survival. As I move throughout this course, I hope to integrate more future-oriented thinking without diagnosing it as a “negative practice”. Additionally, I hope to challenge my traditional labels of “present” and “future” in order to engage in systems thinking and holistic consideration of the planet and the issues it is facing.

 

Image Descriptions and Citations Below:

[Image description of first image]: A blue-faced individual, wearing a white mask, in front of a dripping blue and green earth. Surrounding the earth is plastic waste represented by forks/food/containers and waste of resources represented by dripping tubes. 

[Image description of second image]: An image taken from Nature’s landmark survey of climate anxiety. At the top is a sliding bar measuring respondent’s climate anxiety from “extremely worried to not worried”. The statistics read, “extremely worried: 27%, very worried: 32%, moderately worried: 25%, a little worried: 11%, not worried: 5%”. Below the bar, is a phrase that reads “climate change makes me feel…” with a series of different emotions and represented percentage in bars. The varying emotions and related percentages read, “sad: 68%, afraid: 68%, anxious: 63%, angry: 58%, powerless: 57%, guilty: 51%, optimistic: 32%, indifferent: 30%”

 

Image Citations:

Depiction of Climate/Present Anxiety: Mushroomhead. (06/28/2021.). Climate and Other World Anxiety. https://www.psd.gov.sg/challenge/ideas/trends/eco-anxiety-the-psychological-impact-of-climate-change

Graph: Reference 1 (09/22/2021). Young people’s climate anxiety revealed in landmark survey. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02582-8 

Source Citations:

Thompson, T. (2021, September 22). Young People’s Climate Anxiety revealed in landmark survey. Nature News. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02582-8