Today’s Ecological Consequences are just Natural Consequences of our Sociopathic Behaviour

Today’s Ecological Consequences are just Natural Consequences of our Sociopathic Behaviour

As ye reap, so shall ye sow. – Book of Proverbs

Today we ask: why is that we seem so disconnected from “Reality”? [by that I mean reality outside the human social construct] I was brought to consider this question when, a couple of days ago the Ottawa Carleton Schoolboard, my former employer, proposed the following:

The proposed policy change would allow students who don’t get their secondary school diploma

to walk across the stage with their peers who are graduating.

In other words, if you do not pass enough courses to earn a High School Diploma, you get to walk the stage with those who did because this means we are being more “inclusive” – and who could possibly be so nasty as to be against that? Furthermore, in a move George Orwell would not be surprised by, the new policy would also rename the proceedings “commencement ceremonies” and ‘tweak’ the board’s approach to awards. I am not here to argue about the merits of the policy directly, but what this news did was make me wondour if our Canadian society has lost all connection with “Reality” [yes, a loaded word, sorry] and now considers “Reality” only a social construct independent of the non human physical world and the Laws of Nature. [ie. Gravity] To reinforce this possibility consider this second news event from the past week which has a similar disconnect from facing hard choices and hard consequences:

To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your [key] fobs at your front door because they’re breaking into your home to steal your car. They don’t want anything else. – quote from a Toronto police officer

The writer of the articles response is kinda funny: “It is, however, the sort of advice you’d expect from a well-meaning parent or spouse. Hearing it come out of the mouths of the very people whose taxpayer-funded, gun-toting job it is to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the first place, however, is arguably less OK and frankly kind of crazy.”

As I reflected upon these and other similar responses which choose the easy way out a comment from a psychologist friend of mine came to my mind: “Lack of natural consequences is a major contributing factor to sociopathic behaviour”. Well, that loaded statement got me thinking. So lets unravel sociopathic behaviour and the theory of natural consequences in light of our inability as a society to cooperate at a national level to combat the clear threats that the climate crisis, microplastics etc. are to our very existence.

Some people may use the term sociopath to describe what a mental health professional would diagnose as antisocial personality disorder. Symptoms may include disregard for others, a lack of empathy, and dishonest behavior. People with the condition might seem charming and charismatic at first, at least on the surface, but they generally find it difficult to understand other people’s feelings. They often: break rules or laws, behave aggressively or impulsively, feel little guilt for harm they cause others, use manipulation, deceit, and controlling behavior.

It seems to me that, given that the likes of Donald Trump have risen to the top, our society rewards this kind of behaviour. Now although it is not known what creates a sociopath, it is hypothesized that culture plays a significant role. I propose, because of what my friend the psychologist said, that our lack of allowing natural consequences to happen contributes to sociopathic behaviour. Aspects of this relationship include the fact that we may fail to develop the insight we do not experience how our behaviours and successes and failure are intimately linked to others. I cannot succeed alone. When I fail it is not only me who fails, often others around me are also hurt. In other words, natural consequences are THE most powerful force for me to encounter “Reality” outside of my self created bubble, the fiction, that we all create. I did not succeed because “I did it my way” without the support of others – in other words I do not exist in a vacuum, just like the human species and our economic system do not exist apart from Nature and the Earth.

Natural consequences occur naturally in a cause-effect relationship. They are the results that inevitably happen because of a person’s actions. The consequences are not administered by an outside force (e.g., parent), and they are clearly a direct result of the person’s actions. For example, despite encouraging your teen to save his money, he spends all of his weekly allowance on a new video game. The natural consequence is that he doesn’t have any money left to go to the movies with his friends that weekend. Your son’s choice directly affects the resulting consequence. Natural consequences are wonderful because it mimics “real world” circumstances. However, natural consequences are not advisable if the natural consequence Can cause serious physical harm or Is too far in the future that there’s no real connection to it.

Did you catch the problems with using natural consequences as a way to react to ecological overshoot listed in the last line of the above quote? Ecological collapse will cause serious physical harm and for most who see it as a future event they feel no real connection to it – does this mean natural consequences are not going to help us? So what do we do? We try to reduce the serious physical harm by helping people prepare for disasters and other changes happening and see that nature’s consequences are happening NOW – it’s not a future event. Perhaps then we can learn from the natural consequences and stop behaving like a sociopath.

What I am presuming is that we clearly live in the age of Natural Consequences: Nature is imposing consequences upon us. But are we learning? Are we changing our behaviours? Not a chance. We’re enjoying our short term pleasures or too over whelmed just surviving to consider anything past our nose. Some of us are too afraid and anxious so see what’s really going on. Whatever the reason, it looks like the natural consequences are going to get nastier before we “clean up our room and the mess we made there”. I wish and hope and had once thought humanity was smart enough to see what is coming our way before Nature imposes her natural consequences upon us – but now I have to admit that all the evidence points to the fact, in spite of the heroic efforts of the few, that we are not cleaning up our room and that we as a society are behaving like a sociopath; a specific kind of sociopath – a “species sociopath” in that we give no value to other species, as a normal sociopath gives no value to other people.

I leave you with this story about tax evasion. I hope it reinforces the point that we in Canada seem to be consistently choosing the easy way out and avoiding the tough love of making natural consequences happen to those in our society you are only thinking of themselves. In other words, we seem to be unwittingly but actively supporting the growth sociopathic behaviours, like tax evasion and car theft, and thus reducing people’s trust in the government and the Law and “the system”. The real clincher is that this inability translates into our complete inability to both admit to and do something about the current path we are on that is creating ecological collapse. If we can’t even try to stop car thieves how are going to change our growth based economic paradigm that is destroying us?

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has identified more than $76 million in taxes owed by Canadians named in the Panama and Paradise Papers leaks of offshore accounts. But the agency can’t — or won’t — say whether it has collected a cent of it.”I would say the answers from the CRA are shocking,” said NDP revenue critic Niki Ashton. “It really speaks to the way in which the Canadian government … is not going after the ultra-rich who are getting away with tax evasion and avoiding their taxes.” [from 2022]

So, what can you do? The next time you want to “nice” let natural consequences take their course, including in your own life. Help people become the best they can by letting them “skin their knee” and learn from their mistakes so that they can feel better about their skills and abilities and thus develop pride in themselves. What we in Canada seem to need is a dose of tough love and we can begin that at home and, if you are one of the lucky few, in your workplace. I leave with this cute quote told to me by a friend yesterday:

Nothing in life is free – you have to pay attention.