Green Psychology
Transforming Our Relationship to the Earth
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A visionary ecopsychologist examines the rift between human beings and nature and shows what can be done to bring harmony to both the ecosystem and our own minds.
• Shows that the solution to our ecological dilemma lies in our own consciousnesses.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the causes and cures for the current ecological crisis are to be found in the hearts and minds of human beings. For millennia we existed within a religious and psychological framework that honored the Earth as a partner and worked to maintain a balance with nature. But somehow a root pathology took hold in Western civilization--the idea of domination over nature--and this led to an alienation of the human spirit that has allowed an unprecedented destruction of the very systems which support that spirit.
In Green Psychology Ralph Metzner explores the history of this global pathology and examines the ways that we can restore a healing relationship with nature. His search for role models takes him from shamanic ceremonies with the Lacandon Maya of Mexico to vision quests in the California desert, from the astonishing nature mysticism of Hildegard von Bingen to the Black Goddesses and Green Gods of our pagan ancestors. He examines the historical roots of the split between humans and nature, showing how first sky-god worshiping cultures, then monotheisms, and finally mechanistic science continued to isolate the human psyche from the life-giving Earth. His final chapters present a solution, showing that disciplines such as deep ecology and ecofeminism are creating a worldview in which the mind of humanity and the health of the Earth are harmoniously intertwined.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Metzner, who worked at Harvard in the 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (they co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience), is currently a psychotherapist in California and the author of several books, including Maps of Consciousness. At once visionary and down-to-earth, his latest is an often profound exploration of the deeply disturbed relationship between humanity and nature, which, in his diagnosis, is leading to worldwide ecological destruction. Building on the work of Mircea Eliade, Marija Gimbutas and others, Metzner traces our dissociation from Mother Earth some 6000 years back, when invading Indo-European tribes conquered the relatively peaceful, matriarchal cultures of Old Europe, replacing Earth Goddess worship with sky-and-war-god religions and patriarchy. In later epochs, he maintains, as Christian monotheism and mechanistic science stamped out polytheistic animism, the Western psyche was increasingly marked by a "human superiority complex," along with a presumed right to dominate and exploit nature, animals and other societies. Metzner seeks the basis for an ecological ethic, not always convincingly, in shamanistic interaction with nature, alchemy, yoga and mind-expanding plants used sacramentally by indigenous cultures. Assembled from essays published in ReVision, the Sun and elsewhere, his book has a patchwork quality. On balance, however, his useful synthesis should appeal to Gaian scientists, environmentalists, students of myth and holistic thinkers. Illustrated.
