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Anthropocene psychologies (or psychopathologies) have some similarities to the decadence and denialism of late socialism in central and eastern Europe that is one of my research interests. As ecological disasters, particularly in the coal regions of northern Bohemia; the most polluted area of europe at the time) gave the lie to the Party line of progress and prosperity, a comforting veil of ideology allowed leaders and many citizens to go about their business "as if" there were no looming crisis. In his New Year's address after becoming the first post Communist president of Czechoslovakia, dissident playwright Vaclav Havel made this connection clear, describing the destroyed environment as an undeniable symptom of modern humanity's disconnection from the natural world and a "contaminated moral environment." As outlined in the work of historian Miroslav Vanek (see our article "Ecological Roots of a democracy movement") , the ecological crisis was deeply entwined with a political crisis that eventually led to the collapse of the Communist state in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Havel's critique was not just of Communist ideologies, but of ideologies of technologival civilization and modernity in general:

"What we call the consumer and industrial (or postindustrial) society, and Ortega y Gasset once understood as "the revolt of the masses," as well as the intellectual, moral, political, and social misery in the world today: all of this is perhaps merely an aspect of the deep crisis in which humanity, dragged helplessly along by the automatism of global technological civilization, finds itself. The post-totalitarian system is only one aspect-a particularly drastic aspect and thus all the more revealing of its real origins-of this general inability of modern humanity to be the master of its own situation. The automatism of the posttotalitarian system is merely an extreme version of the global automatism of technological civilization. The human failure that it mirrors is only one variant of Ihe general failure of modern humanity. This planetary challenge to the position of human beings in the world is, of course, also taking place in the Western world, the only difference being the social and political forms it takes- Heidegger refers expressly to a crisis of democracy. ... It may even be said Ihat the more room there is in the Western democracies (compared to our world) for the genuine aims of life, the better the crisis is hidden from people and the more deeply do they become immersed in it. It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-cousumer society, for they, too, are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the posttotalitarian societies. But this static complex of rigid, conceptually sloppy, and politically pragmatic mass political parties run by professional apparatuses and releasing the citizen from all forms of concrete and personal responsibility; and those complex focuses of capital accumulation engaged in secret manipulations and expansion; the omnipresent dictatorship of consumption, production, advertising, commerce, consumer culture, and all that flood of information: all of it, so often analyzed and described, can only with great difficulty be imagined as the source of humanity's rediscovery of itself." (Power of the Powerless, 1978)

Thinking about the theme of this campus and after reviewing the material on the Whitney plantation, I was pondering the connections between the history of slavery in Louisiana and the industrial/technical implications and affects of the Anthropocene. I remembered a book by Andrew Nikiforuk called “The Energy of Slaves” (shout out to L Cohen fans)) which draws clear historical and technical parallels between the energy regimes of slavery and the petrochemical industry. Thought it might be interesting/relevant.

From the Greystonebooks publisher’s description:

“A radical analysis of our master-and-slave relationship to energy and a call for change.

Ancient civilizations routinely relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities. In the early nineteenth century, the slave trade became one of the most profitable enterprises on the planet, and slaveholders viewed religious critics as hostilely as oil companies now regard environmentalists. Yet when the abolition movement finally triumphed in the 1850s, it had an invisible ally: coal and oil. As the world's most portable and versatile workers, fossil fuels dramatically replenished slavery's ranks with combustion engines and other labour-saving tools. Since then, oil has transformed politics, economics, science, agriculture, gender, and even our concept of happiness. But as Andrew Nikiforuk argues in this provocative new book, we still behave like slaveholders in the way we use energy, and that urgently needs to change.

Many North Americans and Europeans today enjoy lifestyles as extravagant as those of Caribbean plantation owners. Like slaveholders, we feel entitled to surplus energy and rationalize inequality, even barbarity, to get it. But endless growth is an illusion, and now that half of the world's oil has been burned, our energy slaves are becoming more expensive by the day. What we need, Nikiforuk argues, is a radical new emancipation movement.”

Also book review @: https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/review-the-energy-of-slaves-oil-and-the-new-servitude/

If the Anthropocene epoch is characterized by a decadent, mutually destructive dance of human and physical geographies, then New Orleans is the perfect host city. Founded on the exploitation of both human and natural resources, built on the shifting sands of the delta, stripped of natural defenses, sitting below sea level with only earthen levees and ancient pumps keeping out the toxic waters of the Mississippi, Lake and Gulf, the city is a model of social and environmental injustice and unsustainability. The drunk staggering home past the trash and vomit on Bourbon street singing Jock-a-mo while the rats scurry, the levees seep and storm clouds gather in the Gulf is a good metaphor for the state of the planet and human civilization in the current epoch.

Yet, despite the intractable problems of decaying infrastructure, inequality, corruption and the constant threat of disaster, a stubborn spirit of grit, resilience, and even joy somehow endures. I first visited New Orleans in 2007. While the CBD and tourist quarters were open for business, heaps of steaming, mouldering debris still littered the lower 9th ward and outlying districts and half the population remained displaced, the majority-minority of whom labelled “refugees” in their own country. The hurricane had blown the sequins off the Big Easy’s carefree façade, stripping away the ideological veneer and laying bare its stark inequities, yet its soul was somehow intact*.

The criminal incompetence and indifference of the emergency response to Katrina (I remember tractor trailers full of supplies idling for days in Gloucester, MA waiting for instructions from FEMA) illustrated how there is no such thing as a “natural” disaster in the Anthropocene. “Acts of God” are increasingly triggered and mismanaged by acts of man.

As a political scientist and cultural historian, I am interested in how issues of power, control, resources, and justice are framed; how such narratives are deployed and contested; and (as an geographer at heart if not by training) how these cultural systems codependently interact with the environmental systems that underwrite them. The theme of “land, life and labor” exploitation of the New Orleans campus seems to me particularly salient for my interdisciplinary instincts and social science perspective. I look forward to meeting, working, and learning with you all.

*PS: The soul of New Orleans, which restored my faith in America during the dark years of the W administration (remember when we thought it couldn’t get worse?), is also what led my daughter to adopt the city as her own for the past five years, and inevitably led her parents to keep a wary weather eye on the Gulf and cancer alley. Actually both my daughters (like all sons and daughters of their generation) are on the front lines of the Anthropocene, as my youngest is a budding environmental scientist. So, my desire to understand the systems and scale of these issues is personal as well as political.

1. The Burning of the Capitol Building in 1814 is discussed. Knowles talks about how the burning was investigated by one of the key engineers of the building, Latrobe. He was allowed to investigate without any issues and was ultimately allowed to rebuild. Most Americans, however, viewed the burning as a failure of the military, not the engineer. 
2. The Hague Street Explosion of 1850, which was caused by an exploding boiler and resulted in mass casualties. Investigation and determination of responsibility was carried out by the Coroner's office and police. Media and news reporters also assisted in providing information to the public and attributed the explosion to an overheated boiler, as opposed to an engineering flaw. Jurors listened to expert witnesses in order to determine where the blame could be placed, which ultimately led to the disaster being blamed on all involved in the boiler and factory. 
3. The Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago that happened in 1903 provides information regarding disaster investigation as well. The fire curtains, shields, and other technology meant to protect the theater from the spread of a fire did not work. Building inspectors came into the city after the disaster to investigate along with architects and other commissioners. It was found that the theater (along with many others in the city) had many building code violations, which called into question the integrity of the entire building code system in Chicago. One of the nation's foremost authorities on fireproof construction, Ripley Freeman, conducted an extensive investigation with financial support from an elite man in Chicago. This marked a new era in history of disaster investigation in the US. 

The Compassion Protocol discusses current French laws and how they affect immigration and healthcare. In France, immigrants in need of healthcare that are unable to receive that healthcare in their native country would be given temporary residence permits and access to healthcare. The social factors, public health concerns, and human rights implications are discussed as well.  

The authors all work at University of California San Francisco. Their names are Vicanne Adams, Taslim Van Hattum, and Diana English. Adams works at USCF and was the former director and vice-chair in the department of anthropology, history, and social medicine. She focuses her research in Global Health, Asian Medical Systems, Social Theory, Critical Medical Anthropology, Sexuality and Gender, Safe Motherhood, Disaster Recovery, Tibet, Nepal, China and the US. She has been involved in various publications and has received numerous grants from the NIH. Van Hattum and English are also within the department for Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine. 

This article investigates the current state of disaster mental health research. They look at the presentation, burden, correlates, and treatment of mental disorders following disasters and look at the challenges surrounding those aspects of research. 

The article discusses major psychopathology that is found in populations affected by disasters. They investigate disorders such as PTSD and MDD and pre-disaster risk factors associated with them. They discuss vulnerable groups, such as women and children. They also look at during and post-disaster factors and how they correlate to an increase in mental health disorders. 

This report then discusses current interventions utilized and their effects on the prevalence of mental health issues. An issue they address is that many victims or those suffering do not seek help, making accurate research difficult.

On the iTunes App Store, there is another app called Medical Management of Radiological Casualties that appears to be similar, but costs $7.99 to download, while REMM's app is free. This app appears to serve a similar function with providing support for healthcare providers, but also includes psychological support information, which REMM does not provide. This app also appears geared toward EMS responders, while the other is primarily made for physicians. 

1. "But with every explosion that shook the Japanese plant it became clearer: there was nobody -- not in Japan, nor Russia, nor the United States -- who had the relevant know-how, equipment, or strategy to handle a nuclear disaster. No international nuclear emergency response group exists today." pg 194

2. "But in the interest of sustainable, socially legitimate solutions, arguably deisions about even the technical responses to disasters should not be left to scientists and engineers alone." pg 196

3. "While national and international disaster relief organizations have refined their response techniques over the past decades, nuclear emergency preparedness and response has hardly gained traction." pg 200

Per Bech - Danish Psychiatrist who provided the author with a story about a patient of his. He is an innovator in clinical psychometrics. 

Journal of the American Medical Association - in 1992 published an article about giving weight to the combination of doctor's experience and biological plausibility. 

Hellmuth Kaiser - a teacher to the author and taught him about fictional cases portrayed on stage. 

Oxford University Press - began publishing a journal devoted to case reports of patients. 

New England Jounrl of Medicine - opened an issue with a case history to highlight patient experience. 

Lone Lindberg - coauthor for Dr. Bech, point out that spontaneous recovery from depression late in life is rare

Leston Havens - psychoanalyst - uses an interesting approach with his patients