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The Plan: part 1
705.
First we have to get ourselves out of passive mode, out of our Learned Helplessness. Not just because the fossil fuellers want us to stay out from under their feet while they grab another few billion dollars to build a few more bunkers.
Learned Helplessness is very bad for us all — depression literally makes us sick. And also — where did Learned Helplessness, as seen in dogs and rats, actually come from?
After all, if it’s a mammalian behaviour, then it must be somehow adaptive, or at least not unadaptive.
I think there are two ways Learned Helplessness might have evolved. If nothing we do has any effect, we’re probably wounded, sick or poisoned. So we hide in our nest, growl at visitors, go off our food and sleep as much as we can. Hiding in our nest and growling at visitors stops us passing on whatever’s wrong with us. Not eating and going to sleep means our immune system can turn its full attention to healing us.
The other way is very much fear-based: a predator is chasing us, we’re terrified, what do we do? We run like hell, maybe turn at bay and fight. In the last resort we fall over and play dead (fight, flight, freeze).
None of the options are great, and certainly fighting and freezing are pretty long odds — but sometimes they work.
