Climate Chaos, Ecopsychology, and the Maturing Human Being

Abstract

Our relationship with nature is being called into question urgently and ominously. It has never before happened quite like this. A chronic history of ill-advised solutions to environmental problems has led to the predictable result that we are faced with the possibility of unprecedented natural catastrophe. The way we live our everyday lives is putting us in danger of rendering the planet uninhabitable, and the way we live thrives on experienced alienation from the rest of nature. We pay a high psychological price for our presumed separateness; dodging growth toward maturity as individuals and as a species never serves us well. Will this terrifying predicament hasten the demise of the anthropocentric posture which gave rise to sustainability problems in the first place, ushering in a new era of mature human–nature intimacy? Can we muster the maturity and wisdom necessary to meet this challenge? And why is our relationship with nature so difficult to question, so easy for us to be in denial about? It is argued that we move toward greater levels of psychological health, maturity, and wisdom by relating with nature in a more ecocentric (rather than anthropocentric) way. Ecocentric relating leads invariably to a deeply felt inclination toward the responsible environmental actions necessary for sustainability. Ecocentric awareness derives in large part from a certain kind of experience—the experience of self as part of nature. Phenomenological research into this experience shows that the lack of intimacy with nature is associated with habitually constricted and impermeable self boundaries, psychological overdefendedness, and fearfulness—these are experienced independent of perceived external dangers: We are not fearful because of dangers “out there,” we are fearful when we are psychologically overdefended. This surplus defendedness and fearfulness affects our psychological health, the way we treat each other, and the way we treat nature.