The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 376 pages
• Published by: Phanes Press
• Edition: 2nd Edition December 2001
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1890482803
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1890482800
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Reader Reviews
This book could easily be seen as one of the most profound wake-up calls for humanity published for the 21st century! This is the stage in our evolution that we'll either continue on our destructive, insane, parasitic and unconscious collective death-wish to oblivion, or we'll heed the loud call heard here to become aware of our life-sustaining, interconnectedness to all life and start to heal our riff not only amongst ourselves, but more importantly, with Earth. To give this outstanding book a 5-star rating is not enough- it deserves 10-stars! For those who are not familiar with *Ecopsychology*, there is a good description and comparison of it to human-only psychology in the Epilog of this monumental work: "Just as it has been the goal of previous therapies to recover the contents of the unconscious, so the goal of ecopsychology is to awaken the inherent sense of environmental reciprocity that lies within the ecological unconscious. Other therapies seek to heal the alienation between person to person, person and family, person and society. Ecopsychology seeks to heal the more fundamental alienation between the person and the natural environment." (p 320) The current state of affairs in the human relationship with the earth is not only ambivalent and dismissive, it is destructive, parasitic and cancerous, and yet, Planet Earth is our only life-support system- our very reason for existence. One might then be inclined to see our current relationship with our home as outright insanity. And indeed, it is! "If we could assume the viewpoint of nonhuman nature, what passes for sane behavior in our social affairs might seem madness." (Preface, p 13) And, of course, our "social affairs", disregarding our relationship to Earth, is riff with pathology and psychosis. Earth's voice is simply stated in: "The Earth's cry for rescue from the punishing weight of the industrial system we have created is our own cry for a scale and quality of life that will free each of us to become the complete person we were born to be." (p 14) From the philosopher Mary Midgley in her book, "Beast and Man...": "[she]...finds the doctrinaire dismissal of the physical and biological worlds to be `the really monstrous thing about Existentialism.'" and, "...as if the world contained only dead matter (things) on the one hand and fully rational, educated, adult human beings on the other-as if there were no other life-forms. ...I am sure, not to the removal of God, but to this contemptuous dismissal of the biosphere-plants, animals, and children. Life shrinks to a few urban rooms; no wonder it becomes absurd." (p 66) Indeed. With science leading us to an awareness of the dynamics of life and Earth's self-regulating life-support systems, we have: "If human conduct were governed by reason alone, what science has taught us about the great ecological patterns and cycles of the planet might be enough to reform our bad environmental habits." (p 95) This, then leads us to the very fascinating chapter 5: "Anima Mundi: The Search For Gaia- The Many Faces of Mother Earth". In the Anima Mundi, earlier human civilizations felt the wonder and presence of Earth's majestic powers, so when did humanity start to loose it's sense of awe and respect for Earth? Perhaps the advent of citification, social class structures, and certainly, industrialization might have been that point. We became fixated on blinding human concocted regimes apart from the workings and acknowledgement of Nature. In Part Three- "Ecology" (p 213), there is: "The New Cosmology and our deepening study of ordered complexity provide the raw intellectual material for a new understanding of human connectedness with nature. In time, with enough help from artists and visionary philosophers, this body of fact and theory may mature into an ecologically grounded form of animism. We will find ourselves once again on speaking terms with nature. Within this greater environmental context, sanity and madness take on new meanings." We will hopefully begin to understand that: "Industrialism, with it's rapacious use of the environment as either raw material or dumping ground, has further entrenched the city's alienation from nature." (p 220) Therefore, "...the environmental movement is trying to teach us that both economics and ethics must be contained within an ecological context." (p 248) This then, leads to a sane, life-enhancing, and rewarding human existence. One could go on and on relating the plethora of thought provoking lines found all through this masterpiece of a call to education, realization, and return to sanity in our relation-ship with Earth, but that would be burdensome for a review and this is possibly too long as it is. I highly recommend this book to everyone on the planet, especially to industry, government, and all religious orders. Comment | | (Report this)