The paradox of not being able to cope with paradox
We must hold open a space for transformation.
A common theme among the people I have worked with over the years is that they feel trapped in a paradox: painfully aware of the ecological crises facing us but utterly unable to respond in a way that feels adequate. This often leads to frenetic action driven by fear, grief, panic and anger, which then gets overtaken by stress and burnout. Feeling exhausted and unable to cope fuels the sense of inadequacy, and the process becomes a traumatic spiral.
As the wheels spin off, their efficacy plummets. Dwindling energy and fragmented focus stifle creativity and agency. They seek ways to cope by pushing away the difficult feelings. They blame others – corporations, the government, anyone who doesn’t seem to see the world the way they do. They become overwhelmed by bitterness and cynicism. Or else they hold all this bile inside and blame themselves – and end up feeling bewildered, ashamed and alone.
This is the story I hear. And it is my own story too.
The paradox, then, is that we are all complicit in creating the crises we seek to avoid. All of us. Even if many of us feel that this is because we are trapped in an ecologically impossible culture.
John Keats described his notion of Negative Capability as, ‘when man [sic] is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’1. I think there is something fundamentally important about this: something that could free us from the paradox of complicity.
I think that Keat’s offers a subtle but powerful message with real practical implications for the environmental movement. On one hand, we’re compelled by the knowledge of our own complicity to act. And that action, in our culture at least, tends to be dominated by an intellectual, factual, logical, rational, technical response. We recycle our stuff, install solar panels, drive an EV, use public transport, ride our bikes, buy organic food, and refuse to fly in a jet. We do not respond by creating beauty, listening deeply, writing poetry, singing, dancing, playing, preparing food together, making music or performing. Not as deliberate forms of activism anyway. And if we did, such acts would be considered naive and frivolous distractions - not real activism. They would be seen as inferior to acts informed by ‘fact and reason’. Fiddling while Rome - and the Planet - burned. But actually, these creative arts offer much more than fact or reason ever can. They bring us into relationship with each other, with our ecology, and with ourselves.
This is what we need most at this time: connection.
Negative Capability offers what Meg Wheately might describe as being ‘beyond hope and fear’. It offers a way into the ‘lichtung’ – the light-filled clearing in the forest that Martin Heidegger used to describe the nature of Being2. This space is still, but it is not passive; it is stable but also dynamic, never static; it is calm but also fizzing with potential. It is a state of holding still in extreme situations – and, more importantly, of having the energy, resolve, clarity, community, creativity, and courage to act appropriately at the precise moment when the opportunity arises.
If we apply this to the range of responses available to us in the environmental movement, we see something new emerging. Not frenetic activism fuelled by fear and blame, or passive denial. Not relentless analysis, or endless models of change. It’s something else. It is each of us opening to a kind of active acceptance, where we can find the space to focus on building the relationships without which we cannot survive. We must hold the paradox as a space of transformation, and prepare to act completely, skilfully - and together - when the time comes. Which it will.
Learn more about facilitating processes that heal our illusions of separation from the rest of nature on my upcoming course:
OUTDOOR ECOTHERAPY TRAINING
Professional Development Course - Starts: July 2026
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On Negative Capability: Letter to George and Tom Keats, 21, 27 December 1817.
Martin Heidegger (1962). Being and Time. Translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. London: SCM Press. Ch. 28, Pp 100-102.