Theodore Roszak: Ecopsychology - Restoring the Earth/Healing the Mind

Theodore Roszak on toimittanut monipuolisen artikkelikokoelman ihmisen suhteesta luontoon, sekä peloista että mielentyyneyden kokemuksista: Ecopsychology - Restoring the Earth/Healing the Mind (University of California Press, 2002; ISBN 978-0871564061).

Tuotteiden markkinointi ihmisille nousee vertauskuvaksi koko elämänmuotomme suhteen, sen asian että aina on olemassa uusi tuote joka lupaa täyttää elämässämme olevan aukon. Allen D. Kanner and Mary E. Gomes kirjoittavat loputtomasta ja täydellisestä kuluttamisen kierteestä näin:

The urge to purchase an endless stream material products has now reached such proportions that it is no longer a matter of whim or choice, but one of personal and cultural identity. [...] Consumer practices serve to temporarily alleviate the anguish of an empty life. The purchase of a new product, especially a “big ticket" item such as a car or computer, typically produces an immediate surge of pleasure and achievement, and often confers status and recognition upon the owner. Yet as the novelty wears off, the emptiness threatens to return. The standard consumer solution is to focus on the next promising purchase. Perhaps the satisfaction will be more lasting and meaningful the next time.

Kanner ja Gomes näkevät psykologien ja ympäristönsuojelijoiden välillä yhteistyön mahdollisuuksia, sillä heidän mukaansa nykyinen yhteiskunta on pahasti narsistinen, ja tämä on johtanut tilanteeseen jossa ihmiset eivät voi enää irrottautua kuluttamisen kierteestä:

For American society to become ecologically sustainable, the narcissistic wounding of the public by the advertising industry will have to stop. The currently lost capacity to live in balance with nature will need to be rediscovered and revitalized. Does this mean that every consumer needs to see a therapist? We think not. But by applying our understanding of narcissism to consumerism, ecopsychologists can join forces with the environmental movement on a number of different levels and in so doing enhance the efforts of both psychologists and activists.

Paul Shepard yrittää löytää syytä sille, miksi ympäristötietoisuudesta huolimatta juuri mikään ole muuttumassa. Ehkä syy on ahneudessa?

My question is: why does society persist in destroying its habitat? I have, at different times, believed the answer was a lack of information, faulty technique, or insensibility. [...] At mid-twentieth century there was a widely shared feeling that we needed only to bring businesspeople, cab drivers, homemakers, and politicians together with the right mix of oceanographers, soils experts, or foresters in order to set things right.

In time, even with the attention of the media and a windfall of synthesizers, popularizers, gurus of ecophilosophy, and other champions of ecology, and in spite of some new laws and indications that environmentalism is taking its place as a new turtle on the political log, nothing much has changed. Either I and the other “pessimists” and “doomsayers” were wrong about the human need for other species and about the decline of the planet as a life-support system; or our species is intent on suicide; or there is something we overlooked.

Such a something could be simply greed. Maybe the whole world is just acting out the same impulse that brought an 1898 cattlemen’s meeting in west Texas to an end with the following unanimous declaration: “Resolved, that none of us know, or care to know, anything about grasses, native or otherwise, outside the fact that for the present there are lots of them, the best on record, and we are after getting the most out them while they last?”

Eli "Meidän jälkeemme vedenpaisumus", hmmm? Kirja on kiinnostava ja monitieteinen katsaus ihmisen ja ympäristön vuorovaikutukseen, siihen miten luonnon katoaminen ihmisen ympäriltä vaikuttaa ihmiseen, ja miten ihminen on ajautunut tilanteeseen jossa ympäristön tilan huononeminen on vain yksi elämäntapavalintoihin vaikuttava seikka muiden joukossa, ja ehkä jopa vähemmän tärkeämmästä päästä, johtuen ihmiseen psyykeen kummallisesta rakenteesta.