The elephant in the room

Jamie Wrench explores the attractiveness of the spinach tart

Two emails caught my eye this week: the first, an article about what we mean by a ‘one in a 1,000-year event’ and, the second, an invitation to a workshop on ‘Speaking Out for Climate Justice’… and, already, half of my readership has gone. Here’s why.

Once upon a time, senior academic and climate campaigner Mayer Hillman was at a dinner party with retired liberal professionals like himself. People were talking about the holidays they had enjoyed and the places they intended to visit. Mayer Hillman could not resist commenting upon the effect such trips – usually involving many hours of flying – were having upon the climate and the impact upon future generations. The room went very quiet. Then one of the guests spoke. ‘My word,’ she said, ‘what a lovely spinach tart’. The next ten minutes was taken up with discussions about the virtues of fresh spinach and the recipe that had produced this culinary masterpiece.

There are academic terms for this phenomenon and its attendant behaviour. The term is ‘meta-silence’, and the behaviour involved is called ‘dis-attention’. We don’t talk about the elephant in the room – and we don’t talk about the fact that we don’t talk about it. Some subjects don’t arise because they simply don’t come up in the conversation. Other subjects – and climate change is one of these – are actively avoided. The inability to talk about the issue, or even verbalise the reasons for not talking about it, is a meta-silence.

Quakers, above all, should be able to recognise meta-silence. I suspect we can all remember occasions when a gathered Meeting receives several pieces of ministry, each of which builds upon the other, and then a particularly inappropriate observation is thrown in. Advices & queries 12 and 13 notwithstanding, the best way to receive such interventions is sometimes to let them sink without trace.

But what if what is offered is not so much inappropriate as deeply discomforting? Perhaps it’s easier to let it pass without receiving it in a tender and creative spirit, or indeed receiving it at all. What if the Friend involved falls into the category of one who speaks ‘predictably or too often’ (Advices & queries 13)? And who is to make that judgement?

Last March, another ‘unprecedented’ weather event caused me to postpone a shared lunch and elders’ session until the following week. I was tempted to add a postscript: ‘PS. These weather patterns are due to the degradation of the Northern Polar Vortex. This is a circular band of weather in the stratosphere that essentially keeps the very cold air spinning around the North Pole. The warming of the planet has forced warmer air north over the USA and Canada with the result that the vortex has become unstable and irregular, with temperatures at the North Pole rising above freezing, and cold air escaping over Siberia and westwards across to Britain. This sort of thing will get worse in future years, and will go on getting worse and worse unless everyone can somehow reduce their carbon emissions markedly. Yes, everyone, including you and me.’

I didn’t. First, it sounded like a lecture, and no one likes a smarty-pants. Second, it risked a meta-silence. There are four stages in response to global warming: ‘It’s not happening’; ‘It’s happening, but it’s not as bad as They say’; ‘It’s happening, it’s bad but not our fault’; and, finally, ‘It’s happening, it’s our fault and we don’t want to even think about it, thank you.’

So, I wimped out; and everyone discussed how irritating it was, and how wonderful the emergency services were, and how much we’d had to turn up the heating.

Spinach tart, anyone?

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Comments

Thank you for this Jamie. And for introducing us to ‘meta-silence’ and ‘dis-attention’. It was a relief to me to find our frequent non-discourse over the climate/biodiversity crisis anslysed so helpfully.
  ‘Disavowal’ is another useful term to describe the ‘one eye open (acknowledging climate breakdown), one eye shut (as we book that mini-break in Rome)’ response I find in myself: I dis-avow the truth I know about climate breakdown in order to remain ‘normal’ to myself and others.
Part of our way through this is finding ways to respond in ways that allow us to do something usefully different to our usual guilt and dis-attention. I’ve been wondering about whether Quakers could celebrate the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes in some ways:  perhaps having themed meetings on the closest Sunday that celebrate the fact that at the equinox the light and the dark fall equally on all things, that the light falls just as it rises. Perhaps this happens already? Or perhaps you know of other ways to lift us out of meta-silence?

By Paul H on 1st November 2018 - 12:47

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