Such an important topic for exploration... Sharing this post on recent ecopsychological field work from Eric Peterson: The Rewilding of the Human Spirit & the Ecological Self
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I firmly believe the ecological crisis we are currently facing is a direct result of modernity’s fundamental disconnection from the natural world. This is to say, through our modern convenient lives, we have engineered the human spirit out of the natural world; through our shortsighted and mostly unconscious development of technological advances, we have engineered the natural world out of being human. For the most part, the collective human psyche does not have space for nature. The most terrifying aspect of this disconnect is that it is primarily unrecognized by the masses, and this current state of the human-nature disconnect has become normalized to a zombiatic level.
To heal this ecological crisis we must become mindful and self-reflexive with our continued use and development of technologies, as well as return the wild nature to our being human. The world desperately needs the human spirit to become rewilded; humanity cannot survive without its wild spirit. The ecological world will only be healed once the human-nature relationship has been healed.
Don’t you long for an intimate relationship with nature? Not one that is a weekend fling, or a monthly or even yearly vacation into “out there,” but a daily communion of the soul within its birth place, which is nature.
This fundamental disconnect has helped to create a dichotomous view of the natural and the built environments. Many of us see ourselves as being apart from nature instead of a part of nature. Many of us believe wilderness is a magical place void of humans, a place where humans only visit and are not at home “out there.” The concept of “wilderness” is a Western cultural idea, which is rooted in the egocentric individualistic sense of self. Not identifying with the wildness of nature comes from a fundamental misidentification and fear of being the “rational animals” that we are. If we truly knew who we were we would treat nature as if it were our sacred mother, and not some objectified external pile of resources to be exploited and to be consumed, or even conserved. I wish more environmentalists would understand how destructive this concept of “wilderness” truly is to their efforts of trying to protect the natural environment. The more this false dichotomy is nurtured, by either side of the environmental war, the more the natural world will be abused and consumed in the name of modernity and in the name of Western individualism.
How are the masses going to wake up to their natural identity, to their ecological self? What is an effective way of reappraising one’s held attitudes and beliefs about the natural environment as well as one’s sense of self? ... Click here to read the full post located at http://www.outdooradventureleader.com/?p=449
Replies
As for the author's suggestions to walk barefoot or sit naked to experience a "rewilding," first: notice that he didn't do that in the snow, and second: nature can hurt you. You can walk around barefoot, cut your foot, have it become infected, and die of sepsis. That's "nature" too. I suspect the survival instinct to wear shoes and clothes is much more natural than exposing yourself to injury, inclement weather, and predators. To paraphrase Edith Wharton, humans want to get away from nature even more quickly than they want to get to it.
And I suspect animals draw as much inspiration from our technology as we do from mountains and forests. Voles make nests in old cars for a reason. My lizards prefer living in my hallway closet to the tree I gave them. In downtown Chicago I saw spider webs outside windows at 22 stories up. How the heck did they make it up that high and why? Like Lisa Douglas of "Green Acres" the cosmopolitan arachnids of Chicago prefer a penthouse view, and they're willing to do whatever it takes to make it up there, no matter how impractical.