Moral injury, the culture of uncare and the climate bubble

Abstract

The logic of living in a neoliberal economy conflicts with many peoples’ sense of moral decency. Neoliberal economic framing means that life is generally lived in ways that harm the planet, people and animals. To know at a feeling level that one has participated exposes one to moral injury, a violation of what is right and fair. Participating in the neoliberal economy generates conflict between more self-serving and more socially responsible values. Covid 19 has clearly exposed neoliberal framing and the underlying mindset that drives it, involving political and cultural Exceptionalism and the culture of uncare it maintains, generating fraud bubbles which are kept afloat by encouraging omnipotent thinking as a magical ‘solution’ to transgression of limits. The climate bubble, the most consequential fraud bubble ever seeded, is beginning to burst, and with that comes the sense of traumatic shock and moral injury at having been caught up in it.