Sustaining our ecological selves amidst collapse

Humanity has created an ecological crisis of unprecedented severity. The crisis represents an existential risk to the species. There is an urgent need to recognize how operating in the context of existential risk affects society and individuals, especially those very professionals tasked with mitigating or adapting to the crisis. Terror Management Theory is contributing to our understanding of how awareness of an existential threat can trigger unconscious defense reactions in human beings, making complex, collaborative problem-solving extremely difficult. Learning how those most immersed in the polycrisis navigate their proximity to existential risk is especially important today as we all face levels of collapse and the need for new sources of creativity. This conversation between Ted Meissner and Karen Doyle Grossman summarizes years of research on this topic.