*Looking for Eros in the Long Hard Rain of Climate Collapse DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106561*

A serious moral reckoning should hold particular persons, interests and ideologies to account. Less formally, what is salient is that climate change is largely the outcome of anthropogenic inputs. In the abstract, this means that humankind is, as a species, at fault. Variations on this attribution include, but are not restricted to, blaming those who have been the elected representatives, media and industry heavy-weights, such as Rupert Murdoch, Exxon's Rex Tillerson, all citizens over eighteen years old in the (so-called) firstworld societies, and so forth. Investigations conducted, culprits could face executions and jail terms, public castigation and programs of re-education, fines and community service orders. How the dark art of fault finding should be processed is uncertain even if each of us is likely to have a more or less rational, personal view on what should occur.

More privately, self-blame is incited in the shadow of doubt. What seems very likely is that the fantasy of the vengeful, all-powerful mother will be excited in the psychic netherworlds that will exist in a climate de-regulated world. Guilt may be, or may not be, consciously denied but the infant's experience of the cold, angry or crazed mother figure is a trope that is perennially associated with, and is evoked by, the merest scent of guilt.

The threatening mother-figure takes different forms in particular faiths and cultures, fables and myths. She could be Kali, Media, a nameless animated gargoyle or the giant predatory Alien in the movie of the same name. Her method of attack also varies. She could be deadly in despising, ridiculing, ignoring or castigating. Vengefully enraged, she could smite with fire or sword, spell or stiletto. Grand in sweep, the aggression could desiccate, or flood, a whole region or, if the assault involved annihilation, the offending party could be swallowed - taken in, absorbed, engulfed, caused to disappear. And, in the event the party to be punished is male, a particular kind of gendered assault can be occasioned. The victim can be mocked, smacked, castrated or, Black Widow like, \*\*\*\*ed and cannibalized.

Deep in the psychic interior, these dark tropes survive as vestigial, embedded images. These animations are especially likely to be triggered when the past's dark parts echo with the realities, perceived or actual, of the here-and-now. The material circumstances of climate collapse will cue many instances of this kind of context resonance. Like the old children's game of Snakes and Ladders, these are the 'snakes', the trap-doors, that will unsettle, if not necessarily derail, consciousness.

In symbolic, and at times in material, ways climate collapse will have each of us feel vulnerable. This affect resonates with the inner experience of the orphan. In this ego state if I think, or I fantasize, that *I have done something,* or *I might have done something, wrong*, it follows that I deserve to be unsafe. More, I will feel I should be hurt rather than looked after. This one-down position invokes regression. The good mother, exemplar of moral authority, has been wronged and is the perfect person to inflict publishment on the offending child.

More generally, it can be expected that experiences of loss, anger and despair, like guilt, will tend to be amplified by pre-existing unconscious tropes. With respect to the fantasy of the enraged and dangerous mother, a particular hand-in-glove complicity brings on this specter in a climate collapsing world. You know your mother has been poisoned, and you claim you did not administer the toxin. This claim may, or may not, be credited, but you do know one thing is certain. You will inevitably be found guilty on an associated charge. You are condemned for failing to protect her.

In fantasy, and sometimes in the material world, mothers can be pushed so far that they become vengeful in their grief. This is a terrifying prospect. The yonic punisher,

it can be imagined, is perforce summoned because it is human kind that has poisoned nature. This culpability carries a terrible psychic charge, a timeless jeopardy that is worse that Sisyphus had to manage. Even if some of us have a more obvious criminal responsibility, it is us, not them, who is at fault. We know we could have done better. Like the concept of original sin, at a symbolic, if not at a behavioral level, everyone shares the sin of complicity. Nobody gets to be out of this world.
