Does Humanity Need a Collective Mental Health Evaluation?
Mental Capacity is Not a Given, Especially when We Neglect It
Over and over, the best scientists around the world en mass have ominously warned that human-caused climate destruction—the real term we should be using instead of “global warming”—is upon us.
More and more, we have been warned that, without extremely urgent and potent action, climate destruction may well make human civilization as we know it no longer possible by the end of this century!
The current consensus is that we have already passed the tipping point, in that our planet’s environmental situation is now going to deteriorate seriously, no matter what we do. But what the scientists are now urgently advising us, actually pleading with us, is that if we take very bold and immediate actions, we may at least be able to lessen the impact of climate destruction to levels we might be able to manage and quite literally survive.
Yet the leading governments of our world that collectively control human destiny are refusing truly to join together and to take the actions that are imperative to our continued survival. And although the United Nations (UN) officials, including the secretary-general, have themselves been speaking up with apocalyptic warnings about the course we are on, the UN as an institution is essentially paralyzed and powerless to have much consequence. Furthermore, we Americans need to acknowledge and confess that the single country most responsible for this state of affairs is in fact the host country of the UN, our own.
The most current example of the utter failures of the UN is that it has allowed the 28th Climate Conference, COP28, to take place in Dubai, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the world’s most profligate producers and exploiters of climate-destroying oil and gas, as well as one of the greatest violators of human rights, especially for nearly 90 percent of the UAE population, who are primarily imported manual laborers and servants. Indeed, it is the tremendous fossil fuels revenue flowing into the otherwise small and minor UAE, that it is financing the conference and exploiting it for even further financial and political gain.
Unbelievably, the UAE anointed the CEO of its own mega oil company to be the president of COP28! Even more egregiously, documents have been leaked that President Sultan al-Jaber, clearly under instruction from his own government and the state-owned energy company he heads, planned for months to use the Dubai gathering to bring together representatives from some 200 nations, along with major oil companies and lobbyists from around the world, to make deals that will actually increase oil production and UAE profiteering! Furthermore, al-Jaber was overheard, when provoked in a recent discussion, asserting that there is “no science” behind the “claim” that turning away from oil and gas energy would change the dire situation we face!
Just before COP28 began on November 30, 2023, a large group of scientists in great desperation tried to speak up, but American media are focused much more on war and Washington politics, along with current affairs, including inflation, borders, and elections. The impending and foreseeable fate of humanity is apparently not important enough to get much attention! And to make matters worse, President Joe Biden will not even be dropping in on the conference during its two-week proceedings.
The tragic situation, as a scientific study released at the onset of the conference showed, is that two billion people “are expected to be displaced within the next 25 years because of severe impacts from climate change.” Another group of highly respected scientists just a few days ago also desperately tried to ring the alarm bells, publishing a report that global warming has reached “multiple tipping points” that could unleash a “domino effect of irreversible catastrophes across the planet.” Even so, this extremely dire situation continues not to be fully addressed, despite all the rhetoric about how much the U.S. government recognizes, what it still calls “global warming,” to be arguably the most important issue facing humanity,
Biden is too busy, so we are told, managing the wars in Europe and the Middle East, and the brewing one in the Pacific, to deal with the impending climate disaster. Indeed, on December 8, 2023, despite the UN secretary-general’s rare invocation of an emergency session for the Security Council to address a grave matter threatening world peace, the U.S. singularly vetoed what was essentially a desperately urgent worldwide call for a cease-fire resolution in Gaza, where close to 7000 children are dead, where more civilians have been killed in two months than in twenty years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and where some two million have been made homeless and totally destitute.
Now, let me explain why I have titled this newsletter as I have.
Psychiatrists, especially forensic psychiatrists, such as myself are trained to assess mental capacity, which is the basis for mental fitness. It refers to the ability of the decision maker to take in new information, facts, or advice, to process that information, and to consider consequences before making a decision. Also, one must not be a danger to oneself or to others, which by definition makes one unfit. In the United States, mental fitness is presumed until there are signs that indicate otherwise. Other than elected office, mental fitness is a requirement for every job and every task. In this context, the field of psychiatry needs to be speaking out more in public forums, not less. It needs to educate the public on matters of mental fitness, especially if electorate awareness is the only means by which elected officials will be vetted, and they continue not to subject themselves to the same standard system that guides every other job and every other task in the country.
If leaders continue never to apply a minimal mental health standard to their own positions, which have the potential to prevent 90 percent of atrocities if applied worldwide, then the public must be fully educated and fully informed of this extraordinary exception. Otherwise, the combination of a refusal to be subject to mental fitness standards, along with control of information that gets to the public—such as having the American Psychiatric Association function as an agent of the state, when it silenced all mental health experts in exchange for federal funding—truncates the public’s ability to engage in informed consent. The result is that we now have a nation that has led the world in a direction of losing our collective mental capacity to make “sane” decisions for ourselves. As for COP28, we already know that, when it concludes, there will be gushing statements of accomplishment and self-applause among world leaders, but the actual, dire catastrophes will be even worse from these hijacked meetings, and dire scientific predictions take place faster and sooner before our very eyes.
Bandy, I confess to being pre-occupied since the 10/7 criminal atrocities committed by the terrorist group, Hamas, and since the criminal, heinous killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli government.
I appreciate your telling us that "...the UN has allowed the 28th Climate Conference, COP28, to take place in Dubai, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the world’s most profligate producers and exploiters of climate-destroying oil and gas...and unbelievably, the UAE anointed the CEO of its own mega oil company to be the president of COP28!"
Personally, I can understand President Biden's distraction with two regions in terrifying conflict, each of which could escalate in lethality or spread further geographically. But will no one be there to represent the people of the United States? I share your alarm regarding the seemingly callous disregard for the global threat to ALL humanity by the very people engaged in the business of perpetuating this threat. America has been drilling for oil intensively also, I believe.
So, because we can't rely on men who are trapped in their own paradigm, and can't deviate from the party-line without putting their own lives in danger, WE have to do something, no matter how small and insignificant it might feel. For example, you've written an important newsletter...the rest of us can share it, amplify the message on social media, quote from it in letters to the editor in local newspapers, etc. I have an electric car and solar panels...everyone can do something even though it isn't nearly enough.
I would love to see more of a serious BOYCOTT of gas stations. The Montgomery Bus Boycott for 13 months in 1956-57 created the tipping point for the Civil Rights Movement in the South. African-Americans walked, carpooled, and did whatever they could to avoid using the buses until the bus company relented and de-segregated them. Not everyone can do the same thing but everyone can do something to bring attention to the use of oil as a major threat to safety on this dangerously warming planet.
As for mental health evaluations, I think we need to continue educating the voting public regarding observable signs of sociopathy. The more people care about themselves the less they tolerate bad treatment from others. As you know, there are books like The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout, Disordered Minds, by Ian Hughes, Conservatives Without Conscience, by John Dean, etc. We need to keep teaching courses using these books, and especially YOUR books, to illustrate to wider and wider circles of readers how to spot the symptoms that make a political or business figure a dangerous person. I wish you and people like Ruth Ben Ghiat could teach these courses at journalism schools, educating journalists about the observable symptoms of people who have no capacity to care about others, so they can see characterological traits that belie their dangerousness and not just whether someone's a Democrat or Republican. We could use updated versions of Dangerous Case every two years or so!
We have no idea where or when a tipping point will occur and sufficient numbers of people will awaken and act on something in their own best interest. But the other side KNOWS that telling big lies over and over again is what influences public opinion. We need to tell the truth over and over again, just as you're doing in these postings, if we want to move the needle. Thank you so much for your efforts on our collective behalf.
Right now, it's extremely hard to see how societies are going to welcome or otherwise help the soon-to-be-displaced two billion climate refugees. I worry that the global lurch toward authoritarianism is a pre-emptive response to make it easier for countries to shut the door on them. It's gutting to watch this continue to play out with no resolutions in sight.