We tend to think of denial as something loud, visible, and absurd. The flat-Earther. The climate denier. The one who rants on Facebook about globalist hoaxes and fake scientists. We shake our heads, reassure ourselves that we are not them. That we are the ones who think clearly. That we are rational.
But what if the more dangerous form of denial is the one that sounds like us? What if the act of rejecting the other is itself a way to reinforce our own sense of rationality?
The madness we call reason
The Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič makes an unsettling point in her book Disavowal. Speaking about conspiracy thinking more broadly, she notes how our condemnation of others’ irrationality may itself serve a defensive function. She writes (Disavowal, p. 106, Danish edition: Fornægtelse, Klim, 2023):
[…] in order to contrast the conspiracists’ ‘madness’ with their own presumed rationality, thereby making us blind to their own madness (which takes the form of ‘rational’ denial, insofar as they believe that things can more or less remain as they are).
This idea sticks to me. Because what she’s describing isn’t denial in the usual sense. It’s not the outright rejection of reality. It’s a quieter thing. A kind of disavowal where we technically know what’s coming, but we don’t act as if we do. We talk about 1.5 degrees. We invest in solar panels. We embrace green growth. But deep down, we hope the world doesn’t change too much. We don’t want to face what it would really mean to act proportionally to the crisis.
This form of disavowal often takes the shape of what we might call quiet optimism. A soft, strategic hope that things will work out. That small corrections will be enough. That we’ll be able to adapt. That the system, more or less, can stay intact. That, Zupančič suggests, is its own form of madness. And even worse, it passes as reason.
Disavowal looks like pragmatism
The danger lies in how this rational-sounding disavowal never gets called out. It’s rewarded. It is even published in op-eds. It appears in climate policy. It shows up in boardrooms and campaign slogans. Because it doesn’t look like denial. It looks like pragmatism. But perhaps that’s exactly what makes it so effective at protecting the very systems that brought us here.
Denial and disavowal do not operate independently. They function dialectically. Each form reinforces the other across ideological lines. The existence of blatant denialism gives moderate disavowal cover. It offers a contrast point that flatters us. We define ourselves as the rational ones. And that contrast itself becomes part of the problem.
Pointing to greed as a way of looking away
Alenka Zupančič doesn’t stop there. She draws attention to another mechanism. One that appears especially virtuous and critical, but may in fact serve denial rather than break it. On pages 55–56, she writes:
The emphasis on financial interests and on those who profit from various things is a means of denial, because it redirects our attention to subjective causes (greed, enjoyment), and diverts us from the much more traumatic possibility of a greedy and self-indulgent non-subjective system that no one really controls.”
This is not an abstract point. It reframes much of how we talk about climate collapse. We like to blame fossil fuel companies, billionaires, corrupt politicians. And there’s truth in that. But this focus may also act as a psychological detour. It helps us avoid the more unbearable possibility. That we live inside a system that does not require evil intent to produce catastrophic outcomes. That destruction is not a side effect of bad decisions, but the logic of the system itself.
The system doesn’t need bad actors. It just works.
In this reading, climate denialism isn’t the root cause. It’s an after-effect. A visible crust forming atop a deeper refusal. The refusal to acknowledge that no one is really in charge. That the harm is structural, and therefore hard to personalize. And that the system doesn’t just function through coercion. It seduces. It gratifies. It offers comfort, convenience, status. It runs, in part, on enjoyment.
What reason refuses to see
This form of disavowal, the one that feels rational, strategic, pragmatic, is harder to confront. Precisely because it is us. It’s not some fringe ideology. It’s the dominant mood. The quiet confidence that we’re being reasonable. That we’re already doing something. That our hands are tied. That the market will sort it out. That we just need more time, more innovation, more growth. Green, of course.
Zupančič’s contribution is not a call for more awareness, more moral resolve, or even more knowledge. It’s a philosophical disruption. A suggestion that our very way of framing the crisis, and of contrasting ourselves with “the irrational,” might be how we avoid seeing what matters most.
So perhaps the question is not how we get through to the deniers.
But rather how we face the parts of ourselves still in disavowal.
Sources
Alenka Zupančič, Disavowal (Danish edition: Fornægtelse, Klim, 2023). Translations from the Danish edition are my own.
eudaimon.dk 
Leave a comment