The Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions continue to study the necessary links between Religion and Ecology. The UK´s Prince Charles made an impassioned plea in 2010 for Religions to step up to the challenges of "consumptive attitudes" and the "destuction of natural systems." Meanwhile, Prof Lloyd Steffen of Lehigh University commented in 2016 that "Religious faith and spiritual commitments are today providing the energizing (moral) 'fuel' to sustain involvement with issues like climate change and environmental responsibility."
Modern spiritual and religious seekers face an interesting challenge in relation to secular society, to say the least. Western Civilization has been given its common secularized name in a way that heavily hides its Christian foundations, which are sometimes more evident at least in another term, "Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman." Secularism itself emerged in a few identifiable steps that can be discerned from historical study. DesCartes was one landmark with his modern individualist approach to Philosophy. DesCartes´ ontological trademark argument and causal adequacy principle framed his identifying and justifying God´s existence, that all followed his young adult religious experience. That revelatory vision actually pointed Descartes to Scientific Philosophy, but he saw it as divinely inspired. He has been credited with causing the mind-body split, but is also known for shifting philosophical questioning from "What is true?" to "What can I be certain of?" He maintained his Catholic faith, and asserted the existence of God-given innate knowledge, but rejected the divinity of the soul. His philosophical work was not done in religious terms, but mechanistically and rationalist. He didn´t refer to the significance of his youthful visionary experience in making his arguments, for example. DesCartes was criticized by Pascal, the renowned mathematician with impassioned spirituality, for his mechanicism and rationalism as being a Deist. Mechanicism and rationalism have continued to prevail with the rise of profiteering business in the industrial revolution, the rise of Scientism, and the confusion of anti-religious critiques with the legitimacy of the religious experience knowledge domain, its epistemology. Nuclear physicist and Christian Ian Hutchinson wrote The Monopolization of Knowledge to look at the history of Scientism. Religious historian Karen Armstrong has written about societal modernization more generally, identifying religious experience in terms of "mythos" and rational modes as "logos," and the development of Fundamentalist views.
A key context in religious modernization involves the natural environment. Climate Change, one specific environmental issue of many that has high public visibility, has been associated with psychological issues from depression to denial. The recent high profile Gretchen Thunberg was diagnosed with Asperger´s syndrome, and even "selective mutism," according to The Guardian newspaper, after first being shown a film as an eight year old. She stayed home with depression for some time, but her parents were attentive enough to stay home with her. They already had human rights concerns, and after some years, were convinced by their daughter´s unwavering stance and clarity. Her father even appeared with her in 2018 at the UN Poland Climate Conference.
Tiyan Baker, a 29 year old artist and documntarian, spent time in China where environmental conditions made her depressed. She saw "waterways that are clearly ruined," for example. Scholar Ted Roszak proposed the term "ecopsychology" in his 1990s book The Voice of the Earth, supported by such psychological professionals as Harvard´s John E. Mack MD and Chellis Glendinning author of ...In Recovery fom Western Civilization.
Yet, psychiatry, for one, has developed its mainstream understanding in terms of "neurophysiology and biochemistry," as Mack wrote, perpetuating problems raised over decades by such professionals as Erich Fromm, Michel Foucault, RD Laing, and Thomas Szasz, who wrote The Myth of Mental Illness as the term "anti-psychiatry" also began to be used.
Mack, as a departmental director at Harvard Med School, referred to the importance of feelings around the natural world.
Retired therapist Sally Gillespie at W Sydney University in Australia looked at people´s emotional needs around Climate Change in a 2014 study. She found that people experienced feelings like fear and numbness. In terms of creating holistic lifestyle attitudes, educator Michael J. Cohen has conceived of "Natural Attraction Ecology" in Ecopsychology to draw on the Physics and Chemistry principles of "natural attraction relationships" to overcome exploitation concepts. Mack went even further when he employed the thinking of Transpersonal Psychology to assert the importance of the sacred and divine.
Chris Foster was a student at UC Davis in Califonia in 1991 when he was worried about the state of the environment, and began to try living off fallen fruit from trees, which he told author Ash Sanders. Foster recalled an incident at 15 years of age when he was hiking and saw clear cut land. By 2004, Chris was a college professor in Utah and had converted to Mormonism. By 2018, Chris was still an "awareness activist," including informing his classes how CO2 levels were at 400 ppm. Sanders reports that he is still anxious and depressed about environmental problems as he keeps busy. Sanders, herself had a similar kind of story that she also shares in her article, except for her not becoming Mormon.
I value Psychology greatly, for diverse reasons, one key one being the transformational power of emotional awareness and nurture consciousness. Anna O, Freud´s therapeutic pseudonym for his patient Bertha Pappenheim, is an early healing story in Psychology. However, the first healing story I recall ever learning was Louise Hay´s testimony of her cancer and her diverse successful attentive efforts to heal it psychosomatically and with lifestyle adjustments. She got bioenergetic psychotherapy and reflexology massage among other things. Hay used theistic Transpersonal references like "divine guidance" and "infinite intelligence" in her ministerial work that emerged from E Holmes´ Church of Religious Science. That itself descended from Mary Baker Eddy´s Christian Science.
The Hindu Vedic tradition has gained some attention through Deepak Chopra´s efforts, demonstrating some convergence as Christianity has itself opened itself societally through Religious Freedom and exploration. Clint Rogers shared about Pankaj Naram´s Hindu-related Vedic Healing at TED, and how he spent seven years documenting Naram´s healing work. Naram had quickly and effectively guided Roger´s father to being healed from a prognosis of weeks to live treated by four doctors and twelve medicines. Such validation of spiritual healing relates back to ecopsychology concerns and the industrial, business, and consumer values and lifestyles that have driven environmental problems into ecological overshoot. Hay shared about her organic gardening and Naram talks about the importance of healthy air, water, and food.
Wonderful qualities of individualism became possible in the West and beyond following DesCartes´ efforts, but secularism has far outsized itself in the problems of profiteering socioeconomic values, intellectual hubris often disdainful and fallacious about spirituality, unsustainable lifestyles and the natural environment.
1. What thoughts do you have about these perspectives on Religion, society, ecology, and healing? / /
https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2010/06/10/prince-charles-calls-on-religion-to-save-environment/ / /
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/religion-and-climate-change_b_8900316 / /
https://www.buzzfeed.com/elfyscott/a-new-branch-of-psychology-is-emerging-to-help-people / /
http://www.ecopsych.com/ecopsychologyjournal.html / /
https://believermag.com/under-the-weather/ / /
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHul6zDPE2w&t=17s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI60ByLtnzA&t=969s
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