“How to Stay Sane as the World Goes Crazy: Economic Hard times, Climate Change and the Messy Issues of Oil” with Kathy McMahon
Date:
Monday, October 18, 2010 - 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:
SFU Harbour Centre - Room 1400
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3
Cost: By Donation
PLEASE REGISTER AT: http://peakoilblues.eventbrite.com/
As we’re bombarded with alarming headlines on a daily basis, how do we find the sane space between Doom and Denial? Is there a place for wit when we examine the major challenges of our lifetime: economic depression, environmental degradation, and energy depletion? Is blind optimism itself, a diagnosable mental disorder?
With humor and insight clinical psychologist Kathy McMahon addresses a few of the major challenges of our time and discusses why “all or nothing” thinking is cutting short a more serious conversation about what we value, how our values dictate our behavior, and what we need to do to prepare for a future that may be very different from what’s been predicted.
She’ll introduce Panglossian Disorder with subtypes such as:
· Rhett-Butlerism – (“Peak Oil? Planetary and economic collapse? Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn…”)
· Scarlet O’Hara-ism- (“I’ll just have to think about that tomorrow…”) and
· Frank Zappa-ism: (“As soon as things get really bad, they’ll come up with something”- a belief that necessity is the mother of invention.)
All of these are popular but ineffective psychological strategies for handling bad news. What we face aren’t simple problems with clear cut solutions, but rather complicated dilemmas that require good humor, mature thinking and the ability to tolerate both unpleasant emotions and joy in the unexpected. Come join us as we search for a space where we can all be more human than otherwise.
Bio: Since 2006, Kathy McMahon, “The Peak Shrink,” has been offering clinical wisdom, common sense, and good humor to an international readership, who've shared their stories and sought her advice about managingin these hard times. Her research project, www.PeakOilBlues.com is acollection of these narratives, investigating the emotional impact onordinary people, living through dramatic economic, energy, and environmental upheavals.
Hosted by:
Village Vancouver Transition Town Initiative & Vancouver Peak Oil
Village Vancouver inspires individuals and organizations to take actions that build resilient and sustainable communities. We are one of hundreds of official Transition Town Initiatives spreading across the globe, the first in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and pleased to join our fellow sustainability pioneers in Victoria, Nelson, Salt Spring Island, and Powell River. Visit us at www.villagevancouver.ca.
Vancouver Peak Oil is a grassroots group of concerned local citizens, from different backgrounds, with different interests, who've separately become aware of the looming crisis caused by the peaking of world oil supplies. Visit our website at www.vancouverpeakoil.org or sign up for our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15588589388.
Additional support from support from The Board of Change (http://boardofchange.com/),
Cool North Shore (http://www.coolnorthshore.ca/) and How to Boil a Frog (www.howtoboilafrog.com)
