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[...] After years of viewing the crisis through the lens of cultural trauma, it finally dawned on me that we are making a grave mistake by relegating trauma theory to the “symptom box” in our analysis of the climate crisis, rather than seeing the crisis itself as a new form of trauma. In other words, the climate crisis does not just induce trauma under certain circumstances—it is a new form of trauma that pervades the circumstances of our life.
[...] Of more pressing relevance than latency in considering the implications of Climate Trauma is the idea of dissociation in the face of emotional overwhelm. “Dissociation is the human capacity to mentally escape an insufferable reality” (White[1], 2015, p. 194). Could this natural human capacity be both the understandable response to Climate Trauma—the most insufferable reality we could possibly impose on our world or our children—as well as a potentially salutary explanation for the lack of any cogent moral or spiritual responsiveness?