Pen's Nest

In the summer of 2024, when I first drove across the country, I stopped in Moab to visit a cousin of mine - well, technically a first cousin, once removed (her mom was my cousin). It was a short visit, but a good and powerful one; she's on my dad's side of the family and we're close in age, so we had a lot of ground to cover in talking about the deaths of my dad and her mom. As a parting gift, she gave me a copy of a book called The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, by Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté.

Things about the book, before discussing its contents: the book is physically large, which made it cumbersome to read, especially factoring in cats that want to snuggle and get head scritches while I read.

The book's appearance had me a little nervous about woo-woo new-age pop psychology, so I put off reading it until after finishing a couple other books. But accepting the book was a promise to read it, so.

Actually reading it: my overall assessment as a person who reads a decent amount of nonfiction, is that the name-dropping and the use of the royal "we" were irritating. If the book had been heavily edited (I suspect the authors are the type to resist efforts to heavily edit), it might have been more impactful. I say this but meanwhile the book declares itself a NYT bestseller, and there have been occasions where I have appreciated NYT nonfiction bestsellers, so I wouldn't completely throw out the book, I'll just give it the side-eye. And other people might find it interesting and helpful for its central thesis about how profoundly macro- and micro-traumas can shape human behavior and health.

The challenge I have with books of this sort is that they do contain some useful ideas and information, the gems are just buried in a bunch of other words. And life is short.

In any case, I have finished reading it, and it was fine, so I can say as much to my cousin someday.

In the meantime, I have a bit of fiction I might read next. But also, for the sustainability teaching workshop last week, we were given a couple of reading assignments that convinced me to add at least one of the two entire (nonfiction) books to my List of Books to Read. Both books were published in 2024, although my sustainability colleague tells me that's somewhat coincidental; they are both more updated versions of the discourse within sustainability that has developed over the past decade or so*.

In any case, the two books are:
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, by Hannah Ritchie

and
What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures, by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (bought the ebook for this one).

The excerpts we read both make the point that Doomerism is unproductive (and in some cases counterproductive), and that people need to think about and do things other than stew in their climate or other anxieties. The works then did set us up well in the workshop for productive learning and discussion about what sustainability is and how we can work to incorporate sustainability competencies into our courses. I needed to hear all this, because in General Biology I teach about the sixth mass extinction, global climate change broadly writ, and ocean acidification, and in teaching about these things I do feel compelled to do more than just declare the state of emergency.

I do hope to write more specifically about more aspects of the workshop, but this is at least a starting point for doing so. The workshop was multifaceted and covered a LOT of ground in 2 days, both literally and metaphorically, so I have a lot to unpack for myself and I might not do all of that unpacking here on my blog.

But meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I just keep thinking, "Just say NO to Doomerism and Boomerism!!!!" heh.




*For me a big goal of the workshop was to gain an updated understanding of the contemporary discourse in sustainability; definitely do not assume that you are up-to-date in the field unless you are currently going to conferences and interacting with experts in this field, because a lot of what happens in this arena is very much misrepresented in popular media, and that's one of the points made by both books.