Untying the knots of eco anxiety
Global Action Plan is enabling young people to grasp an understanding of the world, nurturing their care for it, supporting them to imagine and communicate alternative futures, and enabling them to act collectively to create the change they want to see. This is the first of five articles by Dr Morgan Phillips, Head of Education and Youth Engagement, examining what it means to grasp, care, imagine, communicate and act.
Eco anxiety is a thing. I suffer from it, and I regularly meet others who suffer from it. The most popular cure for it is action. I agree with this advice, I follow it, and it does lower my anxiety levels. I then repeat this advice as an educator, a friend and colleague.
But ‘action’ as a prescription it isn't enough, not even close. It is only part of the remedy. Addressing eco-anxiety requires a much broader course of treatment.
The juggernaut of over consumption
We need to zoom out a little, there is another form of anxiety that works in tandem with eco-anxiety. It is highly pervasive, there are millions of sufferers, and for many the condition is chronic. This anxiety - status anxiety - fuels the juggernaut of over consumption that is trashing the planet. It needs to be tackled, not just for individuals, but for society as a whole.
We’d be lying if we said we never consider or even worry about our status in our community, school, or general life. In a society that nurtures us to endlessly compare ourselves to others, it would be near impossible not to - we are forever assessing how well we match up. From coveting high-status clothes, jewellery, shoes, gadgets, foods, furniture, houses, holidays, and cars – the list is endless. We’re encouraged to consume them conspicuously to present ourselves as having a certain level of wealth, which still for many in the UK equates to a certain level of status.
If not now, you likely understand or maybe experienced this feeling at least once when you were younger. I know I did. And I’m not ashamed to admit that sometimes I still do. It is hard not to. The problem with status symbols is that they only ever symbolise wealth and high status for a short while. Pretty soon they come to symbolise the opposite: "Morgan, I see you're still driving that Volvo, business stuttering, is it?"
This is why sufferers of status anxiety ditch their material possessions so quickly, and often long before whatever it was - their coat, or car, or chair - has ceased performing its physical function. Hence excessive consumption, natural resource depletion, mountains of waste, pollution, and the climate, ecological, and inequality multi-crisis.
Consumerism and climate stability are not compatible
I'm convinced that status anxiety makes eco anxiety worse, which is why tackling it head on is so critical. If we have high levels of status anxiety, and therefore feel compelled to buy a lot of stuff, a lot of the time, to "keep up with Jones'", or with the other kids in your school, news of the multicrisis is going to hit us very hard. If shopping for status symbols is our thing, the realisation that everyone - including ourselves - needs to consume drastically less, is going to feel devastating and disorienting.
In that moment, what we are grasping is that consumerism and climate stability are not compatible. In other words, status-seeking lives and life on planet Earth are incompatible. This is very uncomfortable ground for people who are riddled with status anxiety. Our newly developed eco anxiety is telling us we need to consume less, but our status anxiety is still screaming at us to consume more. Two worlds collide, a Gordian knot is formed.
But - and this is the good news - that knot can unravel surprisingly fast. This is where sustainability educators can step in.
The good life vs the goods life
Status anxiety can be let go of, grown out of, not entirely, but significantly enough; even in highly stratified societies like ours. It happens when one comes to terms - to quote Dave Ramsey - with the ridiculousness of a life spent buying "things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like."
To reach that point requires a deep exploration of status anxiety, its origins, reinforcers, links to consumerism, and the harms it does to people and planet. This can be done through film, literature, art, poetry, music, history, and through reflection on lived experience. Global Action Plan does it through the work of our Generation Action movement, with programmes like 'Schools Good Life Charter' and 'Buy Now Get Next Day'. These programmes with secondary school pupils are starting to have transformative effects on young people and their relationships to 'stuff'. They are coming to understand the difference between the good life and the goods life. They are seeing status symbols for what they are - false friends.
If the goal is to ease eco anxiety amongst young people, supporting them to let go of their status anxiety is crucial. When we are free of status anxiety – and the consumerist values it reinforces – it is far easier to imagine a less consumerist, greener, and more socially-just life and planet. And nothing eases eco anxiety quite like the genuine belief that alternative futures are possible.