Because we seem to be trying to turn a planet that supports life into one that does not, I’m posting a question or topic here every week to see if together we can work out some nuts and bolts of how to survive. The whole linkable list of prior questions/discussions can be found here.
This week’s question is Fawn, Freeze, Fight, or Flight?
Environmental destruction is hitting everyone, though some people don’t realize it yet. Given that you are now and will continue to be smacked by the consequences of CO2 build up in our atmosphere, how are you going to react? Can you steer a natural reaction mode into something that will benefit you, your community, and the ecosystem?
What fawn, freeze, fight, or flight look like in individuals
- Fawning means to appease a threat to yourself by abandoning your own needs to avoid conflict, also known as “please and appease”. This can be low energy or high energy. People worried about being bullied often fawn on bullies to avoid becoming targets.
- Freezing means to shut down and block out the threat. This is considered a low energy response. People overwhelmed by a mountain of work can end up doing nothing, feeling that any action is a hopeless.
- Fighting means confronting or attacking a threat directly. This is considered a high energy response. Someone is afraid of the person behind them so they turn around and swing.
- And flight is running away from a threat. This is considered a high energy response. When a wildfire is cresting the hill, people who are not wildland firefighters evacuate fast.
Communities and nations also use these strategies. Here is some of what these responses look like when performed by groups.
Fawn
Ruling and rich classes in colonies often fawn on their colonizers, imitating social structures, language, arts, clothing and make-up, food, and other attributes of the conquering society. The Raj and French Indochina are good examples of this. Cultural and business colonization can be seen in 18th and 19th century Russia’s upper class of Francophiles, and in the 20th century’s spread of American culture and American English.
Some fawning is imposed, such as in Japan post-WWII; this is frequently the case for the losers of a war. And some is with the goal of forming alligances, as with N Korea and its actions towards China, Russia, and Iran.
Freeze
Freezing happens when a culture tries to ignore threats that are endangering the people and the culture. It can look like stasis or stability, but ultimately is an inadequate response to conditions. The fall of the western Roman Empire, the disintegration of the USSR, and the fall of the Qing dynasty and imperial China all substantially involve countries trying to freeze in place institutions and patterns of behavior that are not longer effective.
Sometimes freezing works, at least for awhile, as in Japan before the U.S. forced the opening of the country in 1853. Sometimes a country seems to be frozen while it is actually taking a lot of action toward survival, such as Bhutan.
Fight
Fighting often happens when a culture or nation agree that conditions are unsustainable. There can be all kinds of revolutionary movements afoot, but unless there are a sufficient number of desperate people, large-scale fighting won’t happen. Sudan and South Sudan are seeing war and starvation driven by climate crisis, and the climate crisis is hitting Afghanistan hard, fueling ongoing fighting and war.
There are other ways to fight. The communities in Cancer Alley and the children of Hawai’i have both taken their fights to court. Extinction Rebellion fights in the arena of public opinion/media.
Flight
Flight happens when a people see leaving as their only choice. Many countries in Central America have seen massive numbers of people fleeing for a variety of causes, though the main driver now seems to be the climate crisis.
A few communities, so far, decide to leave as a group. The Quinalut Indian Nation is moving because of sea level rise, for example.
It’s good to think through choices before you have to make them
Because sometimes one strategy won’t work (Kintpuash/Captain Jack with fighting, Venezula with fleeing, for example), it’s useful to have other options available, and useful tto consider them in advance of need. It may be that nothing will work, but you can’t know that until you try everything.