Hi Vaughn, very much appreciate your sharing this resource.
there is a lot here that could be explored, and has a lot of new
thoughts and recent reflections connecting, so will share some
ideas on this and in a future post relate it to 'occupation', too.
there is an interview on the site with Theodore Roszak which
i excerpted some of, below, which connects with some of
the previous themes. i also have a UN dictionary here that
has something interesting on 'symbolism' and even more
on symbols (though too much to reproduce by keyboard).
i was just biking around lake calhoun here and heard that
Senator Wellstone, buried in a graveyard with his family
above the lake, finally received a 'temporary' headstone.
when biking around the lake i looked up across the street
and saw, next to a dynamic metal (gehry/brancusi) sculpture
that is a headstone-- a basic large boulder/rock. which must
be the family's 'temporary' headstone. have not yet gone up
to see it but laughed and it was perfectly fitting for both its
symbolism (rock) and also the temporal aspect (temporary,
yet a huge boulder). one of my favorite truisms learned
was with boulders, a boss who said: ' do not fight the
boulder, the boulder will always win.' it is quite true. if
you try moving a boulder, it goes where it is heading.
reading of ecological-psychology, then mention of
psychology as self-image, this in relation to cosmology
and then also philosophy, religion, and other matters,
had me wondering if psychology or vice versa, maybe
ecology, is the 'carrier' for another discipline in which
to further define or get at some truths that bridge the
specialized ways of perceiving. the most immediate
part is that of identification of person with a place-
which Paul Shepheard (not sure if this is who is
quoted, and name misspelled possibly, below)
also writes about with great excellence, the role
of place in people and people in place, and how
these can be found in buildings, thinking, clothing,
landscapes, stories, etc. this connection is a
fact that probably neurologists can 'map' out,
even, at least conceptually, of an interaction of
worlds. the 'ruins of mind' and role of memories
and archives and archaeology of mind relating
to the same idea it would seem, or, of being of
a city, the city in the mind, the mind in the city.
or world. or, if going to earth-scale, humans
as an extension of earth, partly machine and
partly autonomous. we are & are of the Earth.
or universe, yet it seems that scale would be
necessary for us to survive on Earth and to
find some way to co-exist before going to a
new level of interaction and advancement,
not having mastered sustainable existence
to foster a jump ahead. it seems instead a
kind of 'build the ark' movement is going on
with spacecraft of some sort. interested to
know what others think about the site too.
brian
http://tearsofllorona.com/ecopsych.html
Nothing so clearly identifies the West as the distrust of the powers of
the Earth, focused at last upon the undomesticatable wildness within.
-- Paul Shepard
'This course will offer several dialogical tools for the student to
experiment with in learning to tell voice of self from voice of place
by growing more sensitive to both. A key model for this will be the
psychotherapist's use of the ongoing stream of intuitive, bodily, and
emotional reactions ("countertransference") to understand the patient's
way of being. By making use of our ecological countertransference, we
can learn to listen through our reactions to the quiet promptings of
place, promptings that when unheeded can exaggerate our personal
issues, widen alienation from self and world, and contaminate our
dealings with one another.' ... 'We will also cover a bit of basic
ecology to get a feel for the physical interdependencies that move and
regulate the world in which we live, one species in a complex series of
interlocking systems and vital interchanges of matter and energy.'
ECO-PSYCHOLOGY With THEODORE ROSZAK (excerpts. part 1 of 3)
http://www.williamjames.com/transcripts/roszak.htm
'... if you look at psychiatric literature as a whole, there's almost
no mention in it of the non-human world, as if it just doesn't matter.
Indeed you find extreme examples of this in a development following
World War 2-- existential therapy for example-- it is simply assumed
that human beings exist in the condition of alienation from nature.
Indeed that's the key problem that you have to address yourself too:
Our profound alienation as human being in an alien universe. Well, I
decided to go back beyond Freud and then to place his work within a
larger framework of spiritual healing, psychotherapy in the most
general sense of the term because if you look beyond the modern,
Western schools of psychiatry, you find that in traditional societies
among primary people, the people we once used to call primitives, that
it is understood that sanity and madness have to be defined always in
relationship to the natural habitat; and that indeed to a very large
extent, madness is understood to be an imbalance between the individual
and the natural environment or between an entire tribe or a people and
its natural environment. That's a much larger conception of what sanity
and madness are. And so my feeling is that the indigenous cultures have
a lot to offer our understanding of sanity and madness in this one
significant respect-- that there has to be a balance between the psyche
and the natural world around us. That I think has profound ecological
implications.'
[on communal madness:] 'Perhaps an entire society is mad, in which
case you don't simply want to adjust people back into another condition
of madness. The way in which I take this issue up is to suggest that
there is a madness involved in urban industrial society that has to do
with our lack of balance and integration with the natural environment
and that this might be an interesting baseline to use for the
definition of sanity as we move into the next century.'
'psychoanalysis, like confession in the Catholic church, is a matter
of confessing your guilty secrets.'
'....the madness of cities is an important consideration in
eco-psychology. And cities are becoming the only way of life left in
the modern world. There's very little that's outside of the city. Now
if the city is a crazy context in which people live, then there would
also be a crazy context in which to carry on psychotherapy.'
[? Roszak states the first urban 'society' is very recent: in England
150 years ago... ? (later on 'urban industrialism' is mentioned which
would make some sense of the previous statement.]
ECO-PSYCHOLOGY part II
(cosmology (purpose/intention of machinery/people/place/universe))
'Indeed the basis of Freud's idea of death instinct is entropy. The
idea that the universe is naturally a cold dead place. And the death
instinct which he called the most conservative of the instincts has as
its goal returning life to the inert state. That's the way he described
it. That's what the death instinct is within us. This gave Freud
psychology a dark, stoical character. And I think that has haunted
psychiatry, psychiatric theory all the way through the twentieth
century.'
' We have come to see the universe as an evolving hierarchy of systems
within which we find our place as one of the most complex of systems in
the universe.' ..... 'Over a period of fifteen to twenty billion years
since that, all of these systems have grown out of one another in a
hierarchical way, which means that they are positioned as lower and
higher meaning less complex and more complex systems. And life and mind
are part of that process. They are not alien from it, they are part of
it. They are layered upon system after system after system in a way
that gives us a entirely different vision of nature.'
'.... may be what we have to get over is the idea that minds can only
be only located in heads.'
ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, PART III
With THEODORE ROSZAK
'.... deep ecology draws many of its insights from nature mysticism...
... I tend to feel deep ecology draws upon a valid perception of nature
as seen from an aesthetic and religious point of view.' ... 'Generally
speaking, I would say nature-mysticism is a sacramental view of the
religion of nature. It's characteristic of most primary people, the
religions we think of as traditional religions among primary people--
the people that used to be called primitives, almost always based upon
the perception of nature as alive and intentional and in touch with us;
a nature that must be treated with respect and with reciprocity. So
generally speaking, those are the characteristics of nature-mysticisms.'
'There are still certain parts of the Christian community, especially
in the Christian community, some suspicion that people want to address
the natural world as if it's alive, vital, and sacred. ...it's quite
possible for a high civilization to be deeply animistic.'
...
'... one of the deep teachings of modern environmental philosophy is
really quite traditional. You cannot simply take and take and take from
nature without giving. So the proper relationship between human beings
and the natural world is one of reciprocity. Well, reciprocity lies at
the root of all of the religious practices of primary people, of
traditional societies, a sense that you cannot simply take without
giving back. Now we speak of that reciprocity in terms of recycling
things. Of using things with thrift of wasting very little. So we can
reinterpret this in modern terms that sound abstractly economic. But
underlying this is the sense that we must relate to planet as if it
were an intentional personal presence with whom a relationship that
involves an ethical obligation to reciprocate the generosity of the
planet. And if we don't do that we distort that relationship and seek
to make it one of exploitation and domination. This may very well lie
at the very root of our ecological crisis in the modern world. And the
solution to it is at least along that one level is a psychological of
recognizing that we can gain greater security by way of trust and
reciprocity than by domination and exploitation.'
...
'I think many environmentalists in more scientific terms of coming to
tell us that same thing, that we have to change our lifestyle and our
habits of life on this planets in ways that at some points may involve
sacrifice, but will nevertheless in the long term give us the capacity
to survive with grace and with a adequate standard of living. So this
is a very real choice that confronts us about the meaning of security--
long term security on the planet and maybe that we are presently
trapped within a psychology of domination that has pretty much
characterized our style of life-- the city with its heavy weight upon
the planet exploiting the planet as much as possible to give us all the
things we need to create a artificial environment within which we will
feel a kind of perhaps false security that cannot outlive three or four
or five generations. That may be the essence of our environmental
problem that we are seeking security along the wrong root. But the
solution is not simply an economic and social political one. It's also
a personal and psychological one.'
COPYRIGHT (C) 1998 THINKING ALLOWED PRODUCTIONS
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
there is a lot here that could be explored, and has a lot of new
thoughts and recent reflections connecting, so will share some
ideas on this and in a future post relate it to 'occupation', too.
The Tears of Llorena: Tending the Exiled Presence of Place
http://Tearsofllorona.com/llorona.html
there is an interview on the site with Theodore Roszak which
i excerpted some of, below, which connects with some of
the previous themes. i also have a UN dictionary here that
has something interesting on 'symbolism' and even more
on symbols (though too much to reproduce by keyboard).
i was just biking around lake calhoun here and heard that
Senator Wellstone, buried in a graveyard with his family
above the lake, finally received a 'temporary' headstone.
when biking around the lake i looked up across the street
and saw, next to a dynamic metal (gehry/brancusi) sculpture
that is a headstone-- a basic large boulder/rock. which must
be the family's 'temporary' headstone. have not yet gone up
to see it but laughed and it was perfectly fitting for both its
symbolism (rock) and also the temporal aspect (temporary,
yet a huge boulder). one of my favorite truisms learned
was with boulders, a boss who said: ' do not fight the
boulder, the boulder will always win.' it is quite true. if
you try moving a boulder, it goes where it is heading.
reading of ecological-psychology, then mention of
psychology as self-image, this in relation to cosmology
and then also philosophy, religion, and other matters,
had me wondering if psychology or vice versa, maybe
ecology, is the 'carrier' for another discipline in which
to further define or get at some truths that bridge the
specialized ways of perceiving. the most immediate
part is that of identification of person with a place-
which Paul Shepheard (not sure if this is who is
quoted, and name misspelled possibly, below)
also writes about with great excellence, the role
of place in people and people in place, and how
these can be found in buildings, thinking, clothing,
landscapes, stories, etc. this connection is a
fact that probably neurologists can 'map' out,
even, at least conceptually, of an interaction of
worlds. the 'ruins of mind' and role of memories
and archives and archaeology of mind relating
to the same idea it would seem, or, of being of
a city, the city in the mind, the mind in the city.
or world. or, if going to earth-scale, humans
as an extension of earth, partly machine and
partly autonomous. we are & are of the Earth.
or universe, yet it seems that scale would be
necessary for us to survive on Earth and to
find some way to co-exist before going to a
new level of interaction and advancement,
not having mastered sustainable existence
to foster a jump ahead. it seems instead a
kind of 'build the ark' movement is going on
with spacecraft of some sort. interested to
know what others think about the site too.
brian
http://tearsofllorona.com/ecopsych.html
Nothing so clearly identifies the West as the distrust of the powers of
the Earth, focused at last upon the undomesticatable wildness within.
-- Paul Shepard
'This course will offer several dialogical tools for the student to
experiment with in learning to tell voice of self from voice of place
by growing more sensitive to both. A key model for this will be the
psychotherapist's use of the ongoing stream of intuitive, bodily, and
emotional reactions ("countertransference") to understand the patient's
way of being. By making use of our ecological countertransference, we
can learn to listen through our reactions to the quiet promptings of
place, promptings that when unheeded can exaggerate our personal
issues, widen alienation from self and world, and contaminate our
dealings with one another.' ... 'We will also cover a bit of basic
ecology to get a feel for the physical interdependencies that move and
regulate the world in which we live, one species in a complex series of
interlocking systems and vital interchanges of matter and energy.'
ECO-PSYCHOLOGY With THEODORE ROSZAK (excerpts. part 1 of 3)
http://www.williamjames.com/transcripts/roszak.htm
'... if you look at psychiatric literature as a whole, there's almost
no mention in it of the non-human world, as if it just doesn't matter.
Indeed you find extreme examples of this in a development following
World War 2-- existential therapy for example-- it is simply assumed
that human beings exist in the condition of alienation from nature.
Indeed that's the key problem that you have to address yourself too:
Our profound alienation as human being in an alien universe. Well, I
decided to go back beyond Freud and then to place his work within a
larger framework of spiritual healing, psychotherapy in the most
general sense of the term because if you look beyond the modern,
Western schools of psychiatry, you find that in traditional societies
among primary people, the people we once used to call primitives, that
it is understood that sanity and madness have to be defined always in
relationship to the natural habitat; and that indeed to a very large
extent, madness is understood to be an imbalance between the individual
and the natural environment or between an entire tribe or a people and
its natural environment. That's a much larger conception of what sanity
and madness are. And so my feeling is that the indigenous cultures have
a lot to offer our understanding of sanity and madness in this one
significant respect-- that there has to be a balance between the psyche
and the natural world around us. That I think has profound ecological
implications.'
[on communal madness:] 'Perhaps an entire society is mad, in which
case you don't simply want to adjust people back into another condition
of madness. The way in which I take this issue up is to suggest that
there is a madness involved in urban industrial society that has to do
with our lack of balance and integration with the natural environment
and that this might be an interesting baseline to use for the
definition of sanity as we move into the next century.'
'psychoanalysis, like confession in the Catholic church, is a matter
of confessing your guilty secrets.'
'....the madness of cities is an important consideration in
eco-psychology. And cities are becoming the only way of life left in
the modern world. There's very little that's outside of the city. Now
if the city is a crazy context in which people live, then there would
also be a crazy context in which to carry on psychotherapy.'
[? Roszak states the first urban 'society' is very recent: in England
150 years ago... ? (later on 'urban industrialism' is mentioned which
would make some sense of the previous statement.]
ECO-PSYCHOLOGY part II
(cosmology (purpose/intention of machinery/people/place/universe))
'Indeed the basis of Freud's idea of death instinct is entropy. The
idea that the universe is naturally a cold dead place. And the death
instinct which he called the most conservative of the instincts has as
its goal returning life to the inert state. That's the way he described
it. That's what the death instinct is within us. This gave Freud
psychology a dark, stoical character. And I think that has haunted
psychiatry, psychiatric theory all the way through the twentieth
century.'
' We have come to see the universe as an evolving hierarchy of systems
within which we find our place as one of the most complex of systems in
the universe.' ..... 'Over a period of fifteen to twenty billion years
since that, all of these systems have grown out of one another in a
hierarchical way, which means that they are positioned as lower and
higher meaning less complex and more complex systems. And life and mind
are part of that process. They are not alien from it, they are part of
it. They are layered upon system after system after system in a way
that gives us a entirely different vision of nature.'
'.... may be what we have to get over is the idea that minds can only
be only located in heads.'
ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, PART III
With THEODORE ROSZAK
'.... deep ecology draws many of its insights from nature mysticism...
... I tend to feel deep ecology draws upon a valid perception of nature
as seen from an aesthetic and religious point of view.' ... 'Generally
speaking, I would say nature-mysticism is a sacramental view of the
religion of nature. It's characteristic of most primary people, the
religions we think of as traditional religions among primary people--
the people that used to be called primitives, almost always based upon
the perception of nature as alive and intentional and in touch with us;
a nature that must be treated with respect and with reciprocity. So
generally speaking, those are the characteristics of nature-mysticisms.'
'There are still certain parts of the Christian community, especially
in the Christian community, some suspicion that people want to address
the natural world as if it's alive, vital, and sacred. ...it's quite
possible for a high civilization to be deeply animistic.'
...
'... one of the deep teachings of modern environmental philosophy is
really quite traditional. You cannot simply take and take and take from
nature without giving. So the proper relationship between human beings
and the natural world is one of reciprocity. Well, reciprocity lies at
the root of all of the religious practices of primary people, of
traditional societies, a sense that you cannot simply take without
giving back. Now we speak of that reciprocity in terms of recycling
things. Of using things with thrift of wasting very little. So we can
reinterpret this in modern terms that sound abstractly economic. But
underlying this is the sense that we must relate to planet as if it
were an intentional personal presence with whom a relationship that
involves an ethical obligation to reciprocate the generosity of the
planet. And if we don't do that we distort that relationship and seek
to make it one of exploitation and domination. This may very well lie
at the very root of our ecological crisis in the modern world. And the
solution to it is at least along that one level is a psychological of
recognizing that we can gain greater security by way of trust and
reciprocity than by domination and exploitation.'
...
'I think many environmentalists in more scientific terms of coming to
tell us that same thing, that we have to change our lifestyle and our
habits of life on this planets in ways that at some points may involve
sacrifice, but will nevertheless in the long term give us the capacity
to survive with grace and with a adequate standard of living. So this
is a very real choice that confronts us about the meaning of security--
long term security on the planet and maybe that we are presently
trapped within a psychology of domination that has pretty much
characterized our style of life-- the city with its heavy weight upon
the planet exploiting the planet as much as possible to give us all the
things we need to create a artificial environment within which we will
feel a kind of perhaps false security that cannot outlive three or four
or five generations. That may be the essence of our environmental
problem that we are seeking security along the wrong root. But the
solution is not simply an economic and social political one. It's also
a personal and psychological one.'
COPYRIGHT (C) 1998 THINKING ALLOWED PRODUCTIONS
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html