Essay on deep ecology

What is Deep Ecology?

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Through deep experience, deep questioning and deep commitment emerges deep ecology

By Stephan Harding *

IN THE 1960s, HAVING read Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, Arne Naess was moved to apply his formidable philosophical skills to understanding the ecological crisis and its resolution. Since becoming the youngest-ever professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo whilst still in his twenties, Arne Naess has revealed his brilliance by studying and writing extensively in many fields, including semantics, philosophy of science, and the works of Spinoza and Gandhi. But he is much more than an academic. His approach to ecology bears the stamp of his life’s experience as a philosopher in the truest sense — as a lover of wisdom, and as a lover of mountains. A key influence in his long life has been his deep relationship to Hallingskarvet mountain in central Norway, where, in 1937, he built a simple cabin at the place called Tvergastein (crossed stones).

Essay: The Ecological Self by John Seed

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Trumpeter ISSN: 0832-6193 Volume 22, Number 2 (2006) The Ecological Self John Seed

In this article John explores some of the key issues in deep Ecology, his own experience as an activist and facilitator of the work.

In the 1970s, when Jerry Brown was Governor of California, the eco-poet Gary Snyder was working in his administration. One day Gov. Brown felt exasperated. He said to Snyder: “Gary, why is it that, whatever the issue, you are always going against the flow?” Gary replied: “Jerry, what you call ‘the flow’ is just a 16,000 year eddy; I’m going with the actual flow!” The deep, long-range ecology movement is based on a feeling for nature that sees the environmental crisis as a symptom of a psychological or spiritual ailment that afflicts modern humanity in technological societies. We moderns are enveloped by an illusion of separation from nature, made more extreme by anthropocentrism or human first centredness. Supporters of the deep, long-range ecology movement critique the idea that we are the crown of creation, and the measure of all beings. We tend to think that the world is a pyramid with humanity rightly on top: that nature is merely a resource and that it has only instrumental value. To maintain such a position, we have to ignore our own deeper feelings that our poets remind us of.

The Development of the Deep Ecology Process

Tue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Our Philosophy page describes Arne Naess’s call for “therapies which heal our relations with the widest community, that of all living beings”, and notes that the processes answering that call were developed largely by his coauthors on Thinking Like a Mountain. What follows traces that development more closely: how a workshop first conceived in response to the nuclear threat became, over four decades and in two hemispheres, the body of practice now generally offered as the Work That Reconnects.

Gandhi, Non-Violence & the Rainforest Movement

Sun, 01 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

From the Rainforest Information Centre archives — a letter exchange between Harsh Prabhu and John Seed on the influence of Mohandas Gandhi on the Australian rainforest movement. Reproduced with attribution as an example of “Going Forth” — translating insight into sustained, non-violent action.

Letter to John Seed, 7 September 1999

Dear Friend,

Would it be possible to write 50–100 words on the influence of M K Gandhi on the environmental movement in the rainbow region? We have been invited to participate in an expo on Gandhi, and we thought we would invite people from the alternative/environmental movement here to make a contribution on the topic of Gandhi and his influence, from a local, Australian perspective.

Despair and Empowerment: Joanna Macy's Foundational Work

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Everything ported into the “Honouring Our Pain for the World” section of this site — the Truth Mandala, the Mourning — has one direct ancestor: Joanna Macy’s Despair and Empowerment workshops, developed in the early 1980s in response to the psychological toll of living under nuclear threat. This is the historical foundation, with sources.

The book

Joanna Macy, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (New Society Publishers, 1983) — free to read at the Internet Archive. Forty-seven exercises for working through despair, isolation and powerlessness in the face of nuclear war, environmental destruction, and social injustice, developed from Macy’s own workshops of the same name.
A later, freely available essay covering similar ground: Joanna Macy, “Working Through Environmental Despair”.

The psychological grounding

Macy’s central insight drew on psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton’s research on “psychic numbing” — the emotional shutdown Lifton documented in survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Macy recognised the same numbing in people living under the threat of nuclear war: a widespread, anticipatory retreat from unbearable knowledge. Rather than responding with more facts and statistics, she built group exercises that gave fear, grief and anger a structured, safe space to be spoken aloud — the direct template for what later became the Truth Mandala and the Mourning.

The Role of Hope in the Truth Mandala

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In the Truth Mandala process, it’s common for participants to observe that while there is a quadrant for Doubt, Fear, Anger and Sadness, there does not seem to be a place for Hope in the mandala. It’s important to understand that this type of process is precious precisely because it is a place where we give ourselves and others permission to express our more difficult feelings — even the deepest and darkest ones. Bringing words of hope and comfort and a more positive perspective can often prevent others in the circle from expressing their “bad” feelings, because — as in our normal lives — they feel expected to repress any negative feelings and look on the bright side. We are invited to visualise hope as the ground of the mandala: we wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for our hope, but we make space during the process for the other, more difficult emotions that often don’t get voiced.

Article: The Shallow and the Deep, long-Range Ecology Movement, A Summary, by Arne Naess

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“The emergence of ecologists from their former relative obscurity marks a turning point in our scientific communities. Their message, however, is twisted and misused. A shallow, but currently rather powerful movement, and a deep, but less influential movement compete for our attention” - Arne Naess

In this seminal essay, Arne Naess coins the term Deep Ecology, and outlines its distinction from other forms of ecological distinction.

See for an embedded version of the essay visit Essay: The shallow and the Deep, long Range Ecology Movement

The Deep Ecology Platform

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In April 1984, during the advent of Spring and John Muir’s birthday, George Sessions and Arne Næss summarized fifteen years of thinking on the principles of deep ecology while camping in Death Valley, California. They articulated these principles in a literal, somewhat neutral way, hoping that they would be understood and accepted by persons coming from different philosophical and religious positions.

Readers are encouraged to elaborate their own versions of deep ecology, clarify key concepts and think through the consequences of acting from these principles.

The Council of All Beings

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

By Joanna Macy, Ph.D. Written for The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Full source page: rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/Joanna Macy.htm.

The Council of All Beings is a communal ritual in which participants step aside from their human identity and speak on behalf of another life-form. A simple structure for spontaneous expression, it aims to heighten awareness of our interdependence in the living body of Earth, and to strengthen our commitment to defend it. The ritual serves to help us acknowledge and give voice to the suffering of our world. It also serves, in equal measure, to help us experience the beauty and power of our interconnectedness with all life.

Earth Anatomy for Gaeans

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Earth Anatomy for Gaeans

Richard W. Ely

Those of us who follow Earth-centered spiritual paths need to have a scientific as well as a spiritual understanding of our planet, for Earth is our sacred text, and we should know how to read it both ways. I am fortunate in being both a professional geologist and a priest of Gaea. Most ritual circles that I attend include a grounding to establish an energetic connection with the Earth. Groundings are, in principle, a Good Thing, but I sometimes find my inner critic is so aroused by the uninformed, vaporous imaginings of what lies beneath our feet that I must tune out the words out and do my own grounding. In self defense, I offer this basic outline of Earth’s inner anatomy.

Essay: RAINFOREST and PSYCHE

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

by John Seed

In the fourth World Rainforest Report, Queensland zoologist Peter Dwyer noted that the New Guinea highlanders find the rainforest wildlife not only good to eat, but also “good to think”.

He goes on to say that “Whilst we don’t eat our rainforests, we do become enmeshed in our perceptions and thinking about them until they suddenly and vividly possess for us values that we can only identify as symbolic, intrinsic and – with some desperation, – as spiritual.

Spirit of The Earth

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I"f we enter the rainforest and allow our energies to merge with the energies we find there, I found, a most profound change in consciousness takes place. We realize that our psyche is itself a part of the rainforests. I am protecting the rain forest becomes I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking" - John Seed

—

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH

Essay: Ecopsychology: The Birth of A New Proffesion

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

By Theodore Roszak

excerpt from “The Voice of the Earth by Theodore Roszak - Simon Schuster 1992

In the post-Earth Summit era it is becoming clear that the environmental movement will have to find a new way forward if it is to achieve its ambitious agenda for change. The Earth Summit succeeded in clearly establishing one fact; We are all-literally all-in one planetary boat. The living standard of the rich has been maintained largely off natural resources, labor, and the unwilling compliance of the poor. Now the poor demand their share, and we see that there is no benefit the rich nations enjoy that the poor nations cannot deny them or destroy by the reckless “development” of their resources.

Essay - Council of All Beings – John Seed

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

![/images/council-of-all-beings.jpg) ‘Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one release one’s sadness’

—

The Council of All Beings is a series of re-Earthing rituals created by myself and Joanna Macy to help end the sense of alienation from the living Earth that most of us feel, and to connect us with new sources of joy, commitment and inspiration that follow from union with Gaia.

I had been working for the rainforests since 1979 first in Australia and then elsewhere around the world. Although many of our early efforts were crowned with success, I couldn’t help but notice that for every forest we were able to save, worldwide 100 disappeared. Clearly we weren’t going to be able to save the planet one forest at a time. One green Earth or a bowl of dust, unless somehow a profound change of consciousness was to sweep the globe we could kiss the forests goodbye, the ones we had “saved” alongside the rest.

Essay - Thinking Like A Mountain – Aldo Leopold

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

For more information visit: www.aldoleopold.org

“A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world. Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of all flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.

Essay: Buddha touched the Earth – By John Seed

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

An Exploration of Engaged BuddhismBy John Seed

(See below for an embedded pdf version with illustrations)

Buddha Touched the Earth is the title of a new workshop facilitated by William James, Lisa Siegel and I that was first held at North Farm near Bellingen in northern New South Wales, Australia Feb 7-10 2012.

The workshop brought together Buddhist meditation with experiential deep ecology processes. Mornings were spent in silence, yoga, sitting and walking meditation. Afternoons and evenings consisted of experiential deep ecology processes as devised by Joanna Macy, myself and others.

Essay: Ecopsychology – by John Seed

Sun, 02 Oct 1994 00:00:00 +0000

PAPER DELIVERED BY JOHN SEED TO THE ECOPSYCHOLOGY SYMPOSIUM AT THE AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY’S 28TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, GOLD COAST, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA, 2/10/94

I take “ecopsychology” to mean psychology in service to the Earth. ECO, PSYCHE, LOGOS: Knowing that the Earth is home to our soul. In spite of the modern delusion of alienation, of separation from the living Earth, we are NOT aliens, we belong here. The human psych too is Earth-born, the result of 4000 million years of continuous evolution and the complex, exquisite biology from which psyche emerged inevitably remains the matrix, the grounding of any sane psychology.

Essay: Beyond Anthropocentrism – By John Seed

Fri, 08 Jan 1988 00:00:00 +0000

from the book Thinking Like a mountain - Towards a Council of All Beings - Seed et al by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Arne Naess & Pat Fleming, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1988

First published in ECOPHILOSOPHY 5 (Sierra College, California) and reprinted in PANTHEISM; OIKOS; AWAKENING IN THE NUCLEAR AGE and several Australian journals.

“But the time is not a strong prison either. A little scraping of the walls of dishonest contractor’s concrete through a shower of chips and sand makes freedom. Shake the dust from your hair. This mountain sea-coast is real For it reaches out far into the past and future; It is part of the great and timeless excellence of things.” (1)