Seeds for Thought: an Ecopsychology Blog

Hymne à la beauté du monde

That's the title of a song by Québec song-writer, Luc Plamondon.  In English its title means:  Hymn to the beauty of the world.  It is a plea for us to do what we can to maintain the integrity of the planet.  With apologies to the composer, I'd like to summarize the message:

Let us not destroy the beauty of the world, the song of the bird, the blueness of the day;  Let us not destroy the beauty of the world:  the last opportunity to save the world is playing itself out right now; Let us make an immense garden of this planet, for those who will follow in our footsteps.

The music is in the form of a lament, with a very mournful mood.

Yesterday, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, our new Governor General was installed:  Haitian-born Michaelle Jean, inspired broadcaster, veritable beauty, vibrant mother, valiant fighter for women's rights, dedicated advocate for a saner environment.

Evolving Intelligence

The court case in Dover Pennsylvania pitting evolution against “intelligent design” can be viewed from several perspectives. For some it is just a replay of the Scopes trial – a futile flailing of fundamentalist muscle against the fortress of scientific factuality. For others it is a test of the freedom to keep doors open to possibilities that lie outside a scientific hegemony. Buffy St Marie used to sing, “God is alive, magic is afoot!” The cosmos as a divine comedy has an appeal to some. Last week I suggested that “evolution” itself can form a bridge between the classical and a modern world view. Biology claims that we are neither “fallen” out of Eden nor are we are progressively “rising” (slowly) up out of a cosmic chaos. The tree of life grows out not up. Theoretically nothing restricts a creative divinity from “using” evolution to solve problems of adaptation on a cosmic time scale. The question William Jame’s pragmatism always asks is, “what difference does it actually make whether cosmic creativity is natural or divine?”

for better and for worse

I had two responses to my autumn equinox blues from people who like autumn the best, including a lovely poem from Holly Cornell

well yes, there can be glorious indian summers. But the light is going. The equinox is a very powerful trigger for some plants and animals, it does make me feel strange and often get ill. Once it settles down yes it is beautiful.

Forests & Rivers in MOMA

I took the BART into San Francisco yesterday and visited the fabulous MOMA. There were all sorts of wonders there, several very pertinent to our topic, but I’ll just tell you about a couple of them…

Have You Taken Your Nature Vitamins Today?

Your doctor may prescribe daily multivitamins. Your ecotherapist prescribes your nature vitamins!

Every single day we need nature connection. It may be as simple as petting your cat or feeding your houseplant. Or it may be a walk outdoors, tai chi in the park or a couple of hours tending your garden. But whatever it is, it’s good for us!

We are creatures of nature and our unnatural lifestyles lived in cubicles or cars, plugged into screens, cel phones, indoor exercise equipment or computers takes its toll on both our physical and mental health. Research is beginning to prove that nature connection in whatever form has measurable positive effects.

So what nature vitamins will you take today?

Chalquist – Katrina and Rita: A Terrapsychological Read

No sooner did New Orleans begin to dry out from Hurricane Katrina than Rita came barreling down on a strip of coast already devastated by the first of what scientists believe will be a long procession of unusually powerful storms raging around the globe, their energies fed by the warming seas.

"Barreling" is the operative word: the first storm having dented an already faltering petroleum supply, the second is aimed straight for another complex of key production facilities.

From the perspective of terrapsychology, the study of the presence, reactivity, or "soul" of the land, the industrial-sized belief that such incidents occur at random is untenable. There is too much symbolic significance, too much obvious meaning, behind such earthly movements--movements which every aboriginal culture understood to be expressions of a spirit or soul of place. A more contemporary, more psychological way of stating this is that psyche is not a brain secretion peculiar only to humans, but a dimension of being, a kind of inner lining to the world. Philosophers refer to this as panpsychism.

Rebuilding--who decides?

One of the big topics of discussion following the Hurricane Katrina disaster is whether, and how, to rebuild New Orleans. It seems there are some, mostly from the wealthy white parts of town, who would like to make the city over without the "bad elements" who lived in the Ninth Ward and other poor, mostly African-American, areas. Now that most of those people have been transported to shelters, many far from Louisiana, it's pretty difficult to involve them in decisions about how to rebuild the city. But this is what ought to happen.

Of course, without the people of African descent, there wouldn't be the culture that made New Orleans unique. Maybe the newly rebuilt city can look and feel just like, say, the more upscale areas of Los Angeles or Houston. The jazz would have to be brought in specially, and it would probably sound pretty pale (in more ways than one) without the people whose experience, going back for generations, jazz expresses.

scooping towards unsustainability

In a previous post I talked about the abundance of blueberries this year -- far greater than in the last several summers.  An opportunity for locals to pick and freeze for the winter. 

What disturbs me, however, is that a local person decided to pay $1.09 per pound for blueberries to be sold to a large processor of small fruit.  Within a day, dozens of local people had been given a scoop that rakes through the blueberry plants to capture not only the ripe fruit but also "blueberries-in-training".  Same scoop damages the blueberry plant.  I'm not an expert but it seems to me that it would take some time for these plants to heal from such an assault.

Evolving Evolution

One bridge between those who sense “intelligence” in the natural world and those who see merely a self-organizing “chaos” is the concept of “evolving evolution” proposed by the Darwinian fundamentalist, Richard Dawkins author of the infamous ”Selfish Gene”.
Dawkins says he would object to being cast as an “ultra Darwinian” if he didn’t consider it a compliment. He also argues that naming his book “The Cooperative Gene” would have been just as appropriate and saved him a lot of grief from detractors who never bother to read what he actually had to say. While firmly opposed to the “creationist” view of decaying perfection or the “guiding hand” of a progressive creator, Dawkins considers the possibility that evolution tends to converge on successful adaptations. Wings and eyeballs emerged in unrelated species from different starting points (bats, birds). Few doubt that human “intelligence” is affecting the current adaptation of many other species. Cute Koala bears received more attention than Tasmanian devils. Someday Koala Bears may evolve their own intelligence and return the favor.

People are from earth

At last! According to the analysis by Janet Shibley Hyde, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the similarities between men and women are far greater than their differences.

Men and women come from same planet after all, claims psychology study

The genetic determinists are wrong. There are few inborn differences between men and women

well yes. Obvious really. But it isn't just annoying to us old hairy feminists. It's bad for us.