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Orientation Course Evaluation
Natural
Systems Thinking Process: the ecosychology of change
Madelyn Bolling
<mbolling@u.washington.edu>
A basic problem addressed by ecopsychology (global citizenship
psychology) is that though humans are an integral part of the
intelligent, self-sustaining living system that is our planet,
the stories told in western culture have led us to ignore and
act against this truth. Consequently much harm has been done
to the planet and simultaneously to ourselves.
Many people
have understood that we need to change our behavior
with respect to the natural world. But change cannot come about
using the same kind of language tools that caused the problems
in the first place. In fact, much teaching, preaching, and theorizing
have led to relatively little change because our language and
culture assume that we are separate from nature and guide our
actions accordingly, even when fighting on behalf of the natural
world. We of the disconnected cultures need positive intrinsic
motivation to contact our nonverbal substrate directly and deliberately
- to contact what is, prior to our culturally sanctioned interpretations
- in order to bypass the assumption of separateness and discover
for ourselves the more functional (or congruent) principle of
interdependence. Once this becomes the basis of our awareness,
change will flow naturally.
This course
led us to discover how our everyday speech carries and
perpetuates a "nature-disconnected" way of being. For
instance, using the word "resource" in reference to
water, species of fish, forest, minerals, etc. takes these phenomena
out of their complex interdependent living context and reduces
them to dead interchangeable value-tallies. While this has led
to fantastic short-term economic gain for a few people, it does
not take into account the health of the whole or of future generations.
This exercise
uncovered the enormous qualitative difference in attitude and
possible actions when one shifts between considering, e.g., a
forested area as "resource" versus contacting it directly
in a nonverbal, multisensory way. For example, Jacki said:
"I think
by seeing the insignificance and yet the perfect inter-relation
between each tiny part of our world, we can see that nothing
is a dead natural resource. Everything is living and trying to
continue as a
balanced organism."
If we see the
world this way it is obvious I think that it would be complete
lunacy to keep exploiting and destroying natural elements.
Madelon said:
"I thought
"resource" and considered the lumber and firewood and
clearcut remains. I thought "living organism" and recalled
the large cool presence, the varied colors and shapes, the enticing
scents and varied animal life I saw the last time I had walked
under those trees. "Resource" depersonalized the experience.
Not because I was making a person out of the woods, but because
it removed ME from the picture, removed all living phenomena
of interest to me."
Jacki added:
"But can
it really be insane to think that a daisy or a lavender herb
is
more important than waging war on people in another country or
that the healing gift of nature is more valuable and dignified
than the scramble for profit? In other words, why in the world
would we want to engage in an act that is considered irrelevant
to the driving forces in our society?"
The move to
experience the nonverbal realm, the immediate
substrate of physical sensations, has to be intrinsically motivated:
it
has to be fun, attractive, desirable, and rewarding to every
person,
whether they be rich or poor, high class or low, accepted or
rejected by society, smart or dumb, old or young, healthy or
ill. The experience has to be intrinsically motivated because
people naturally resist suggestions to try anything simply because
they "should." This course helped us discover for ourselves
that direct, nonverbal contact with the natural world is always
a possible source of attractive, positive sensations, and that
it offers relief from stress and meaninglessness that pervade
contemporary life in western culture.
As Revalyn
noted:
"If such an isolated activity [one of the exercises] can
promote personal well-being which would then have a positive
influence on one's day to day relations, in the family, workplace
and other locations of interpersonal interaction, then a continuous
bonding with nature would surely reduce stress, conflict and
frustration."
When asked
in one exercise to notice our breath, to consider how the cycle
of air (the out-breathing of plants) calls us to participate
when we hold our breath, people reported an increased sense of
meaning in their lives:
Mike:
"I think it enhanced my self worth by pointing out that
by just breathing, something I do automatically, I am contributing
to the well being of the Earth!"
Marcia:
"I never thought I am so important to nature. I thought
nature was
important to me. I feel good, comfortable and opened to do the
activity. I can now feel and thinking about feeling without separation
as, mistaken by my stories, I used to do trying to adopt a more
spiritual way of life. I felt a kind of relief."
These statements
clearly show positive intrinsic motivation to live with and carry
forward the new awareness of interdependence. Revalyn summed
up another important aspect of the experience of these interactions
with nature - that the reward is in the doing, it is not a prize
or possession.
She said:
"For me,
if reward is removed from the concept of competition and is placed
in a natural context, then reward would not be a product but
rather a process of human endeavour. This would change its pace,
its essence and its value."
This is profound.
It hints at an inescapable truth: this awareness has to be practiced
repeatedly because we are immersed in stories that invalidate
the experience, deny its value and declare us to exist "against"
or "in spite of" nature rather than as an integral
part of it. As Mike said:
". . . it is not enough to keep reading about NSTP {although
cognitively stimulating} -it is in the doing, seeking out nature
that true learning and benefit occurs. What was refreshing was
the mindlessness I feel - I really felt connected to the wind
and trees -rather than the constant stream of thought in my head."
Another demonstration
of interconnectedness had us notice an
attractive feature in a natural area, to experience it as completely
as we could, and describe how/why it was attractive. We were
then to apply this exact description to ourselves. In a moving
poetic response, Jacki reported:
"I love
me because I am imperfect but beautiful. Parts of me have broken
away leaving jagged edges and holes. My surface is rough and
blotchy. But I have a feeling of mystery and complexity despite
my apparent simplicity. I am smooth at my core and I have a secret
part that you can't reach unless you are really really small
and need a home in a shell. But at my center I also have an openess
if you look carefully. Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I have subsitituted
"wow" for a much more profane word!!) What manner of
sorcery is this!!!!!!!!!????????????????? I recognize the value
of this activity just as I recognise the connection between me
and this shell. I sure do have a lot in common with the shell.
I feel like I found a gleaming white salty piece of me."
This, along
with an earlier exercise in which we were to ask first of some
attractive feature of a natural area, then of oneself, "What
are you without a name?" elicited responses demonstrating
a new permeability and expansive sense of "self," with
corresponding implied actions. This in turn opened the possibility
that the separate, skin-enclosed identity we assume to be "self"
is not the actual boundary - and in fact, that the notion of
finite, separated identity is limiting and less than true.
Mike wrote:
"I am a part of nature, I interact with it and am observed
by it. Yes it
enhanced self worth as I realize I'm apart of nature too. Nature
welcomes my interaction. When I go outside I'll probably think
the trees are watching me back. If you look at it this way it
would be hard to do anything destructive as litter etc."
Revalyn observed:
"The wind is as much a part of the web of life as any tangible
phenomenon and the difference between seen and unseen loses meaning
as the sensation of a presence gains in meaning."
Jacki reported:
"Once I had engaged in this exercise I felt more fully a
part of the
environment, rather than simply being an observer of a beautiful
scene."
Madelon wrote:
" . . . I am more like a limb of the world (or a digit!).
This being the
case, all my relationships change, shift, broaden. The anxieties
about holding this small manifestation together lessen and disappear
when I experience this "me" as the interacting of large
and complex forces and processes that are entirely natural and
need no "controlling."
and:
"Feelings are concomitants of what goes on around us, they
are the tug of the whole, not the "weakness" of the
individual. Life lives through us."
If we can experience
directly that the attractions of the natural world are features
of our very selves, then we will no longer be able to condone
or practice actions that lead to the destruction of species,
landforms, ecosystems. What endangers these endangers my very
self. Our best hope then is that the practice of reconnecting
is contagious. For myself, I intend to help it spread, because
if we practice this way of being, speak of it with other students,
validate it repeatedly until it is habitual and able to continue
even in the midst of the contrary practices of our culture, lasting
change in cultural practices is bound to occur.
In summary,
as Marcia said:
"If we remain connected with nature not as a contemplative
lord or owner but as the tiniest string of this web we will be
sure more integral beings. I think happiness comes from this
sense of integrity."
Not only individual
happiness, I may add, but the happiness of the whole in enacting
its purpose, which is to support life in balance.
Read
additional reports
by other Orientation Course participants
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