The Worn World Needs Eco-Psych Support In 2024
Go and commune with trees to gather their ancient wisdom
Find your tribe
You may be hearing, or worse yet, ignoring, that scientists are very alarmed about climate crisis. Naturalists are very alarmed about the Sixth Extinction and biodiversity loss. Politicos are very alarmed about social upheaval/war and refugees, and most people are increasingly alarmed about inflation, food supply, water access, and housing.
There are tight ties although these topics are often revealed to us as disparate. You may be hearing it’s the end of the world.
The news does not make the links between these issues very obvious, but you can connect the dots. More importantly, you can connect to nature.
It is the end of the world. At least, as we knew the former world less than a century ago. Do not be hysterical but brave. Do not be accepting of giving up, but practical. Do not worry if you feel alienated or alone, you are not. Do not seek only digital answers, but commune with reality and your senses. Do not put faith in miracles, or tech, but in human cooperation with compassion.
Now our Earth tribe is global because we connected commerce and community electronically, but our more ancient tribe is with life; which is to say biology. Your immediate and supportive Earth systems, are local. Find your local tribe of both humans and the outdoors. When possible, walk with others.
Most of all, put faith in nature. Nature’s laws are knowable whereas mystic and supernatural grasps are our best guesses. When we use our ecopsychology, our belonging, we can align with natural flows of energy to find balance.
The rules of life
Upon reading the news, what I notice is that people somehow separate psychology and human behavior from science and nature’s rules.
In the end, Nature always wins. It does not matter if you see life and consciousness itself as a rare benevolent miracle, or if you see the inevitable heat death of the universe as a cold, hard fact. Both happen. You don’t have much control of any of that.
But, you can know that our species, sapiens, is wired to be connected to all diversity and life. On our screens, we often forget that. This is because of a strange quirk no other animals have, we tell stories. We have abstract language and it profoundly shapes our thinking, behavior, and our planet.
We may have suppressed that we are embedded in natural systems of weather, water, biodiversity, food, shelter, and inspiration, but we are dependent upon these 100% even if we forget that momentarily. To restore our former belonging, we have to be open to many opportunities.
Technology, clean energy, and efficient use of resources is important. Changing society for more equality and representation are important. Finding ways to reconnect to wildlife and plants is important. But often forgotten and vitally important is to combine these together in our psyche to realize how they fit into one woven world. Mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health all rely on how we mesh these things together.
Taken together, all of these systems and sharing is called ecopsychology. For those of us who can see the mental and physical benefits that spending time with a tree can confer, it’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook.
We eat, breathe, shelter, and write upon all the gifts of trees — and their supporting life-forms — which makes them easy to take for granted. But if we think about them, are grateful to them, realize their being, we are in a much better position to protect them. And us.
Seeing the big picture in the tiny threads
Our world faces many challenges. The greatest way to face these challenges is to acknowledge our place in the great scheme of things has been privileged by fossil fuels and modern convenience, but this has been a distorting,and temporary illusion.
Now we face reality. The best way to do so is to see it for what it is, a vast, interwoven system of which we are a small part. We shaped the world we have now, but now that environment (as all environment) is shaping our evolution.
There are micro systems. Our cells carry threads of DNA that all other life forms share. There are macro systems. All weather, water, soil, food, mineral, physics, and biodiversity happen on many interlaced levels.
There is the greater, astonishing universe that we can employ to educate, inform, and inspire while we endeavor to reconnect to one planet and possibilities beyond.
Our minds and bodies can reveal nature’s abundance by recognizing our ecopsychology — our belonging to nature.
In summary, there is something greater than ourselves no matter what our uncertain spiritual journeys yield, or how far off-course we we wander. We just need to rejoin the Creation that gave birth to us.
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