Reposted from the Energy Resources Yahoo Group.
ECO
Much of humanity has, over the past 2 thousand years at least, suffered from a severe disconnect from the earth and its natural systems due to both the influence of religious beliefs and the Global Monetocracy System. Heretofore, native cultures were closely aligned with earth systems as hunter-gatherers and as early agriculturists—they understood clearly that the earth was their life support system and thus revered it.
The result of our disconnect is a deep pathology called ‘dissociation’ the symptoms of which are: anxiety, stress, depression, and loss of contact with reality among others; and which manifest in a collective society as aggression in the form of addiction, war, terrorism, excessive consumption, loss of ethics, and disregard for human and earth values among other things. Our turn toward an increasingly artificial world denies us the nurture that we formerly obtained from earth culture.
In fact, if we go back and review Jay Earley’s model for social evolution with regard to the planetary crisis, we see much of the same hypothesis as he argues that certain ground qualities were inherent at the beginning of our social evolution, e.g., community, vitality, equality, belonging, and natural living. And that as we evolved over time, emergent qualities developed to give us greater power over the world, e.g., technology, rational thinking, and social structure (social systems in the form of governance, economics, education, religion, etc.) And, in the process, the ground qualities became subordinated to the emergent qualities, however, at the expense of our health and wholeness.
In fact, if we really look at our situation today, The Global Monetocracy System, our form of economics in the modern world, along with technology clearly dominates our thinking and dictates our lifestyle. Since it so clearly deviates from what is ‘healthy’ in terms of earth and human values, the GMS is clearly an aberrant system to which we have become addicted. And, in so doing, we have created aberrant lifestyles. Money has clearly become the drug of choice for many. And, we’ve developed technology far beyond what is within our capacity to manage for our benefit in terms of the reality of today.
This societal ‘meme’ (habit pattern) that we have thus developed over thousands of years affects all of us to different degrees. Some of us have begun to realize its destructivness and are trying to release ourselves from it. Others still operate entirely within its grasp and like all addicts, act in denial of the destructiveness of aberrant ways which are allowing us to destroy our own life support system while acting in denial of our act.
And researchers are no different from the rest of us. So in spite of 30 years or more of direct visual proof of global warming, just as alcoholics act in denial of their destructive behavior, researchers addicted to the Global Monetocracy System act in denial of their destructive behavior. Yet, unable at all levels of their consciousness to be completely unaware of the full ramifications of global climate change and its meaning for society, some researchers will make token efforts in another related field of science in order to relieve their guilt.
But all this is going on at a totally subliminal level; and this is why the emerging field of eco-psychology is so important today because the therapist has to understand both earth systems and human systems and learn how to re-integrate them within the human mind in a healthy manner.
And since this ‘dissociation/addiction’ pattern is going on at a mass level within our world societies today, the question is as to how to treat masses of people and integrate the basic and emergent qualities so that as a society we are able to evolve in a healthier and less destructive manner.
I think whether we are addicts or not is related to our individual karma as Jim brings to our attention. Due to individual cultural/spiritual backgrounds some of us may be better equipped to ward off addictive behavior than others.
ECO is a pseudonym of Marguerite Hampton, an activist and writer with the Turtle Island Institute.