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From individual denial to collective catastrophes, the ostrich policy insidiously shapes our relationship with the world. Between psychoanalysis and current events, this essay explores the mechanisms and implications of the phenomenon, which is as fascinating as it is potentially devastating at both individual and societal levels.
The expression “burying one’s head in the sand” describes a person who refrains from facing reality. While this phrase does not do justice to ostriches at all, in humans, it involves denial, an unconscious defense mechanism. It consists of refusing to acknowledge an unbearable reality, whether external or internal. We all use this mechanism to some extent; it helps protect us from intolerable aspects of situations perceived as anxiety-inducing. This occurs especially when we feel vulnerable or fragile. The proverbial phrase “Everything is fine, Madam the Marquise,” humorously set to music, caricatures this desperate attitude of distorting reality.
But this mechanism can have serious consequences when individuals — or even entire societies — persist in the willful ignorance of facts that are nonetheless obvious and have profound individual or collective implications with toxic results. Thus, when an individual locks themselves into a position of “not wanting to know” (“I see nothing, I hear nothing, so it doesn’t exist”), they construct a complex framework of rationalizations to keep at bay what they perceive as threatening. Far from being a simple temporary weakness, denial can, in this case, become a structural and pathological mode of relating to the world. While it may be beneficial temporarily, denial becomes dangerous when it is prolonged.
Thus, what is called the ostrich policy can permeate all aspects of existence, as evidenced by its omnipresence in daily life. In the professional sphere, for example, it manifests as the refusal to recognize the warning signs of burnout or the reality of harassment. Overworked executives persist in denial until they collapse, and organizations turn a blind eye to obvious dysfunctions.
Private life is not spared: denial of the deterioration of a relationship, blindness to a loved one’s addictions, stubborn refusal to seek medical advice, rejection of psychological reality, etc. All these small daily compromises with reality, when accumulated, can lead to precarious situations.
When denial solidifies into a structural mode of relating to the world, it reflects an inability to grieve the lost object, as well as to accept symbolic castration. By clinging to a fantasized reality, an individual refuses to face loss, finitude and the radical contingency of existence. On a societal scale, this refusal can take the form of a desperate quest for miracle solutions, a perpetual flight forward into illusion and excess. It is this interplay between individual and collective levels that gives the ostrich policy its potentially devastating dimension. By refusing to face reality and keeping it at bay through a system of rationalizations and negations, the individual reproduces at the group level the same pathogenic mechanisms they apply in their personal psychic economy.
On this collective scale, the consequences of the ostrich policy take on their full dramatic dimension. The history of the 20th century is full of examples of statesmen practicing this denial, often with catastrophic consequences.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement policy toward Hitler perfectly illustrate this mechanism. Convinced that he could contain the dictator’s ambitions through negotiation, he persisted in denying geopolitical realities. The Munich Agreement, signed in 1938, symbolizes this blindness: Chamberlain proclaimed he had obtained “peace for our time,” just months before Hitler launched World War II. This denial reinforced Hitler’s belief that Western democracies were too weak to oppose his plans. In Lebanon, this mode of functioning is not unfamiliar to us.
Other examples: during the Cold War, American leaders long refused to acknowledge the reality of the quagmire in Vietnam. Clinging to optimistic military reports that were contradicted by the situation on the ground, they persisted in a war with no way out, with the human and political consequences we now know.
The 2008 financial crisis revealed a similar mechanism at work at the heart of the global economic system. Regulators and bankers ignored the warning signs of the collapse of the subprime market, convinced of the unwavering solidity of the financial system.
More recently, the initial reaction of many governments to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated the persistence of the ostrich policy in modern governance. Several leaders initially downplayed the threat, comparing the virus to a simple seasonal flu, thereby delaying the implementation of essential health measures. The same mechanism is at work in response to the climate emergency: despite the accumulation of scientific evidence and the multiplication of extreme weather events, some political leaders continue to deny or downplay the severity of the situation.
The case of Lebanon illustrates in the most striking way the ostrich policy on a national scale: denial has become a mode of governance, a distorting prism through which reality is collectively perceived and denied. Our country, once a jewel of the Middle East, now presents the heartbreaking spectacle of systemic collapse, fueled by the institutionalized denial of its leaders.
Locked in a precarious sectarian balance, the Lebanese political system has become the breeding ground for a particularly insidious form of collective denial. Its leaders have elevated avoidance to an art of governing, perpetually postponing necessary reforms, instrumentalizing community divisions to divert attention from structural problems and normalizing widespread impunity.
The result: more than 80% of the population plunged below the poverty line, a national currency in freefall, having lost most of its value and a hemorrhage of talent threatening the very future of the country. Lebanon provides a striking illustration of denial’s self-perpetuating nature. The worse the situation gets, the stronger the mechanisms of denial become, creating a vicious cycle where the worsening crisis makes its acceptance increasingly difficult.
Lebanese leaders have thus constructed an alternative reality where responsibilities are perpetually externalized, solutions are endlessly postponed to a hypothetical future, and failures are disguised as successes in maintaining supposed stability. This toxic denial threatens the very existence of the nation.
The ostrich policy thus reveals its profoundly ambivalent nature. While it can occasionally serve as a defense mechanism against trauma, allowing for temporary shock absorption, it becomes dangerous when it turns into a poisonous tool of governance. When denial takes root over time, it only delays and worsens the inevitable confrontations with reality, transforming manageable difficulties into major crises, ultimately threatening, on a collective scale, the very existence of societies.
But reality always returns — often in an even harsher manner when it has been denied. This is the ultimate lesson of the ostrich policy: by refusing to face difficulties, one only prepares for disillusionment. The longer denial lasts, the harsher the reckoning.
Breaking out of denial requires the ability to question oneself. The challenge for both individuals and societies is therefore to learn to embrace reality in all its destabilizing aspects, to develop an ethic of lucidity and responsibility. Not a despairing lucidity, but a clear-sightedness — an acceptance of reality’s constraints as the foundation for genuine action. By courageously confronting the challenges of the present, however anxiety-inducing they may be, societies can reinvent themselves and build a desirable future.
The ostrich policy, however tempting it may be for our leaders, is nothing but an illusion, a flight forward that only delays and worsens crises. At a time of great existential challenges, it is urgent to replace it with an ethic of courage, honesty and responsibility. Not the vain courage of solitary heroes, but the humbler, more essential courage of facing reality head-on to better transform it. This may be the only way for Lebanon to write a new chapter in its history, far from the deadly cycles of denial.
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