Reproduced by permission of GreenSpirit and the author from GreenSPirit Journal, Vol 10.1, 2008, pp 12-15

How come human beings are so clever, and at the same time, so stupid? This question is vital to the joint survival of ourselves and our planet as we know it. It is a question that I will seek to answer in this article as a psychologist, and as the answer is intimately bound up with the way we relate to our environment as well as to ourselves, it falls under the heading of ‘ecopsychology’. Whatwe need from ecopsychology is not only analysis of what is wrong, but direction on how to go forward in a more healthy relationship, both with ourselves and with our environment. For that direction, I will call on the prophet of Creation Spirituality/ GreenSpirit, Matthew Fox.

Our cleverness is obvious in the way we have used our ability to control our environment to our own ends; to eliminate so many uncertainties and discomforts from our daily life. Our stupidity is evident in the way that this activity has increasingly entailed devastating side effects for the planet on which we, and more importantly, our descendants depend for sustenance and survival. We love our children - so how come we are content to condemn them and their children to a ruined earth?

Something is the matter with the way we relate to our planet, to our descendents and indeed, to ourselves and each other. The recent international conference to tackle climate change in Bali seems to illustrate this only too clearly. No-one can now dispute the facts, but can we get together and agree an immediate way forward, without feeling taken advantage of, without trying to score points? In the event, the only way to avert deadlock was to delay any real steps towards the declared goal. The general irrationality of human behaviour has been noted from the time of Plato (and no doubt, before). Recent understanding of the way in which the brain is wired up enables us to get some sort of a handle on this. We fail to act in straightforward, rational ways, because our rational, logical, faculty is only one part of the complex apparatus that is a human being, and it is not necessarily the most important part, or the one that is in charge.

Matthew Fox has picked up this point in his most recent talks (such as the one he gave to the ‘Earth is Community’ conference in London in September; video available through GreenSpirit books). Fox blames the ‘reptilian brain’ for our failures. I think he has grasped some of the argument, but only some – say he has taken hold of one leg of the crocodile. So, let us see how far we can get with the reptilian brain. This refers to the inner and lower regions of our brain that govern sleep and waking, rapid response to danger, emotions and arousal.

Parts of this apparatus do indeed have a lot to answer for. When the ‘rapid response’ department picks up a hint of threat, it wheels our bodies into action, flicking the series of switches that transforms the human being from a calm, relaxed state into a would be prize fighter or a quivering jelly. The problem is that for most perceptions of threat in our current society, it is a close call which of these two responses is the more unmitigated disaster (though I would put my money on the fighter). Worse, the threat memory serves up all the nastiest things that have ever happened throughout our lives to date and produces them at such moments as if they were current – as this particular mode of processing does not appreciate niceties like time. This is also an effort, usually counterproductive, to keep us safe, by reminding us of all possible dangers.

So, is the solution to try and transcend our animal inheritance and move into the higher realms of the neocortex? I would argue; no. It is the human capacity for logical thought and individual self consciousness that enables us to develop the technology that can wreck the planet, and then retreat into the cocoon of individuality to enjoy the fruits of our efforts, while the future burns and drowns. The neocortex has a lot to answer for as well. Besides, we can hardly be expected to ditch the entire brain.

We need to understand the brain better; its limitations as well as its achievements. The problem is the gap between these two systems of processing described above – the so called ‘reptilian’ and neocortex; the emotional and the logical; the fact that they developed separately; that they represent evolutionarily different parts of our history; and that they sometimes co-operate well and at other times they do not speak to each other. We need to understand this gap. Research into the interconnections within the brain over the last three decades give us a fairly clear picture of the way in which these two parts of our makeup are essentially distinct. I have written at length elsewhere about the cognitive science based model that can enable us to understand this gap psychologically (e.g. ‘The New Human Story’, (Clarke 2004); my chapter in ‘Ways of Knowing, (Clarke 2005), or my website). Here I want to enlarge more on the implications of this twofold character of our mental apparatus.

The result of all this is that not one of us really knows who we are – because ‘who we are’ keeps changing. Our self conscious individuality is rooted in that verbally based, logical, ‘head’ bit. However, the other part, which connects with our bodies and our emotions, gives us everything that makes life feel worthwhile – the ‘heart’. This part does not make sense in a purely individual way. Our emotions are designed to manage relationship, and this part of ourselves is rooted in relationship. In a very real way, we are relationship. Not just the obvious relationships – all relationships. This is where our connection to ecology comes in. Right at the heart of our being.

Let me explain. Several schools of psychotherapy are based on the idea that we carry inside ourselves internalised patterns of relating which play out in whatever situation we find ourselves. One of the founding mothers of psychoanalysis, Melanie Klein, identified this role of relationship. She called such internalized relationships ‘objects’ – leading to the somewhat obscure term ‘object relations theory’. Freud’s concept of transference is another example of the same phenomenon. One of the therapies I use, Cognitive Analytic Therapy, brings these ideas together in the useful concept of internalised ‘Reciprocal Roles’ – repeating patterns of relating that originate in the past, but can be spotted and so revised in the present. (see Ryle 1995 for more on this). The character of these patterns determines the character of the person. Someone who is contemptuous of everyone does not come across as very loveable. We make ourselves by the way we relate.

Another clue to the centrality of relationship to our being is the way that losses shake us to the foundations. People often arrive in the acute mental health hospital where I work as a clinical psychologist because they have lost partners, parents or just jobs. The fabric of their being is disrupted by this and they need time and assistance to recover. Our relatedness is the foundation of that ‘heart’ part of our being. This is most obvious in the case of those close to us. The ecopsychological perspective recognizes that this relatedness extends far beyond the obvious family and friends; our relationship with those other beings with whom we share the earth, the animals, and with the very ecosystem and the earth itself, is knitted into the fabric of our being. The character of that relationship lies at the heart of who we are, but paradoxically, we lose part of our individuality when we really embrace relationship. That is how we breathe and grow.

The tragedy is that we are currently locked into a relationship of reckless greed and exploitation with this wider reality. I would suggest that this damages us as much as it damages the planet. It causes deep pain that is hard to bear. Human beings are also adept at finding ways of blocking out pain; ways that cause even more damage – we call it addiction.

Matthew Fox really put his finger on this aspect when he identified the role and extent of addiction in our society in his book Original Blessing (Fox, 1983). Of course, addiction to alcohol, drugs, self harm, eating disorders and eating – all the obvious ones are rife all around us. Fox added many of the seemingly harmless pastimes and lifestyle features of our society to the list of addictions: shopping, TV and cars, for instance. Of course, these are all features of the reckless consumption which is consuming the planet in its relentless conversion of the precious and limited resources of the earth into toxic waste. Interesting from the psychological point of view is what this culture of addiction does to us as human beings.

Addiction is about shutting off, limiting and narrowing down, as a defence against feeling; against really living. The heroin addict’s life is reduced to obtaining the next fix, and all values of relationship and morality are jettisoned in that frantic quest. In this respect, spirituality is the opposite of addiction. Spirituality is about opening out, receptivity, allowing oneself to be vulnerable.

So, why are people so easily persuaded to retreat into this self limiting, sterile place (persuaded because this situation is clearly in the interests of global capital)? I return to the earlier argument that relationship, and therefore emotion, feels so dangerous precisely because it penetrates to the core of our being. In my hospital work, I need a way of making sense of the instability of human beings, and their proneness to escape into addiction. All the main mental health problems or diagnoses can be understood in terms of the drive to escape from emotional pain and uncertainty; from insecurity and uncertainty about the self into the false certainty of symptoms. The consumerist, materialist addictions also give us that false sense of security. They secure the present at the cost of the future.

I have painted a pretty bleak picture. The genius of Matthew Fox’s prophetic writing is that, as well as making no bones about what is wrong, which is the duty of any prophet, it gives us a vision and hope to take us forward. I am now going to revisit this vision as it is set out in his seminal book, Original Blessing. In this book, Fox was making the bold claim that Christianity had lost itsway and betrayed its roots. He was appealing to an older tradition to bring it back on track. At the heart of his critique was the argument that idea of ‘original sin’ was a distortion of the true tradition, introduced by St. Augustine in the 4th Century CE. Fox appealed to the gospels, to the Hebrew prophets and tomystical writers such as Meister Eckhardt and Hildegard of Bingen (among many others) to restore the original vision. According to this vision, creation was not flawed and sinful, but good and bountiful. Justice for the disadvantaged and marginalizedwas at the heart ofmorality, not the search for individual purity. In the light of the great challenge of our age, the peril of the planet, ecological justice needs to take pride of place.

Matthew Fox set out a programme for people to follow in order to get back to this original vision. He took the medieval mystics’ idea of following specific paths of instruction; ‘viae’ – the Latin for ways. He came up with his Four Ways. The Via Positiva which mobilises the individual towards God through the wonder of creation; the painful encounter with the brokenness of creation, the Via Negativa follows naturally from this; accessing these depths opens humanity to its innate creativity, the Via Creativa – which is a mark of our godlike quality; awakening creativity in the individual is the catalyst to enable the person to engage with others in justice work to transform the planet, the Via Transformativa.

I will now use Fox’s Four Ways to suggest a way out of the mess we humans have made of our relationship with the planet. To understand this psychologically, I will draw out the concept of our two distinct ways of processing, arising from the two completely different systems in our brains as described above. These distinct systems translate into distinct ways of being. I will emphasize relatedness; how relatedness invites us beyond the individual to a place of wonder and vulnerability.

When introducing the concept of addiction, I stressed that addiction is about closing down; shutting off. Fox’s Four Ways are all about being open, being vulnerable. In terms of the two types of processing, it means leaving the apparent safety of our individuality and opening ourselves up in relatedness. The first way, the Via Positiva, is about the immediate response to the wonder of creation; its intricate beauty and commanding majesty. This is the response that calls the individual out of the sterile cocoon of their individuality to respond to the whole. Defensiveness and self interest fall away, and joy and generosity take their place.

However, simply revelling in beauty and awe could turn into shallow pleasure seeking; say a long holiday in a destination only reachable by a planet-destroying plane ride. It is the deep and sacrificial response of love that makes possible the rest of the journey through the four ways. This response opens the individual in vulnerability. Again, that closed off individuality is dissolved by entering into the divine sea of love.

Love opens the door to the Via Negativa; to the darkness of both suffering and letting go. This is the opposite of the darkness of the blocking out of the outside world, the escape into addiction. Love entails responsibility for the beloved. It opens the eyes and the heart to the damage that we are doing in our greed and stupidity. The courage to enter that darkness, and the strength to let go of the addictions that are ruining the planet, and preventing us from being truly ourselves, is the mark of the Via Negativa. It also means the courage to risk losing our ‘selves’ in the sense of the self as identified with the verbal, logical, side of our being.

Making those sacrifices enables us to connect both with the wider reality beyond us and with ourselves. This conjunction puts us in touch with the wellspring of creativity that can flow between our being and the being of the universe. In the Via Creativa, the dance of the Four Ways takes us back into the individual in order to unlock the enormous potential that might otherwise remain shut up within. Taking the risk of losing our selves, we can indeed gain the whole world. Releasing this creativity opens the way for the fourth and the most powerful Via of all: the Via Transformativa, the one with a key to our current dilemma.

This is a model of flow: flow between the individual and the whole, flow of the individual into the whole and the whole into the individual. It is a hopeful model, that moves away from the restricted, addicted, mode of being that traps us in our limited individuality; that limits our vision to immediate comfort and interests, and so cuts us off from the wonder that catches us when we lift our eyes to the whole. It is also a vision that calls for real risk and real sacrifice. In the case of the Via Transformativa, it also calls for action.

Taking his cue from Thomas Berry’s concept of ‘The Great Work’ (Berry, 2001), Fox dignifies this action with the idea that by working towards the good of creation, and against ecological destruction, we are participating in the work of continuous creation; we are participating with God, the creator. I am sensitive to the fact that the idea of God causes problems to a proportion of people in GreenSpirit. However, in line with the psychological model of the person that I have sketched in above, where a part of each one of us is composed of relationship, and flows in and out of the whole in that relationship, God can be seen as a name for the furthest and deepest reach of that web of relationship. Names and conceptualisation belong to the other part of our being, the part that pins things down. In my understanding, God is way beyond the grasp of that part. It is something we can only feel, as feeling is our way of ‘knowing’ relationship.

What matters here, is that by doing something quite humble, like keeping a household going - cleaning, caring and cooking wholesome food, operating in as authentic a way as possible in a twisted societal order - we are part of that continuous process of creation. Fox develops this theme further in another book of his; ‘The Reinvention of Work’ (Fox, 1994) Through our meeting with the pain of all beings in the Via Negativa, our creativity is awakened and we gain the courage to stand up for that authentic path. For some this might mean overt action, such as demonstrating or working for justice. For some it will be supporting organisations and others who also walk this path. This is a collective and a communal redemption. Alone we are nothing.

GreenSpirit is one of many organisations working in this direction. In many ways, its orientation is profoundly ecopsychological. Its emphasis on the centrality of spirituality in the work of justice and earth healing encourages us to engage in this work with the heart as well as the head; to embraces that vulnerability that will enable us to open the part of ourselves that exists in connection into fuller relationship with the other creatures and the earth. This is both sacrifice and enlargement of our being, and so a truly spiritual way forward.

However, GreenSpirit does not ditch the intellectual, the ‘head’ part of our being. In this, it is true to the spirit of balance, which I see as essential to any success in the perilous enterprise of being human. It respects the latest findings of science, the fruits of that analytical neocortex part of our thinking apparatus, as well as honouring the older, ‘heart’ part of the human being. In engaging the ‘heart’ as well as the ‘head’ with the work of transformation, the dangerous vulnerability that this entails is not ignored. GreenSpirit approaches this encounter in a spirit of joy and love, not guilt and fear. These are enabling and opening emotions and will assist what is necessarily a risky enterprise. The use of ritual and sharing are important elements in moving in safety from the confines of the individual to the embrace of the whole, and they play an important part in the life of this organization.

I hope here to have drawn together some of the more challenging insights of cognitive science, the psychotherapists understanding of the centrality of relationship, together with the genius of Matthew Fox, to suggest an ecopsychology for Green- Spirit.

References

Thomas Berry. The Great Work (Crown Publications, 2001).
Isabel Clarke. The New Human Story (Greenspirit Journal, Spring 2004), 18- 21.
Isabel Clarke.There is a Crack in Everything: that’s how the Light gets in, in C.Clarke (ed.). Ways of Knowing: science and mysticism today (Imprint Academic, 2005), 90-102.
Matthew Fox. Original Blessing (Bear & Company, 1983).
Anthony Ryle. Cognitive Analytic Therapy (Wiley, 1995).