Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology by Theodore Roszak

Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology Reviews

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  Uroš Đurković

  Teodor Rozak je pre svega poznat kao tvorac termina „kontrakultura” – toliko odomaćenog i poznatog da se čini kao da je oduvek postojao. Međutim, nije, a Rozak je, kao svi veliki umovi, zapazio nešto što i drugi, ali ga je nazvao potpuno odgovarajuće. Nije ništa novo niti čudno još jednom reći da su šezdesete godine dvadesetog veka bile presudne za stasavanje kontrakultura i da je naša savremenost možda i dalekosežnije obeležena kontrakulturom od onoga što bi bio glavni tok kulture. Ipak, smatram da jedno omogućuje drugo – kao što je karnevalska kultura srednjovekovlja predstavljala, zapravo, potrvđivanje teocentričnog i strogo hijerarhizovanog sveta, tako je i kontrakultura neraskidivo povezana od onoga prema čemu je suprotstavljena. Pobeda kontrakulture je u izvesnom smislu njeno izopačenje jer tad postaje sopstvena suprotnost – mejnstrim.
  
  Knjiga o kojoj trenutno pišem ne govori o kontrakulturi, već o nečemu što je sasvim daleko od opšte prepoznatljivosti. Ekopsihologija predstavlja još jedan izum Rozakove kovačnice ideja – patent za koji se nadam da će imati makar delom slične domete kao kontrakultura. Najjednostavnije rečeno, ekopsihologija predstavlja pokušaj redefinisanja ne samo kategorija mentalnog zdravlja, nego i duhovnosti, morala, pa i naučne metodologije. Koren ekološke krize, a time i sveopšte krize čovečanstva, leži upravo u loše postavljenoj osnovi, u omašenim težištima. Umesto da pravac razmišljanja o ličnoj dobrobiti povezujemo sa etikom Zemlje, mi sebe uporno odvajamo od nje, nasleđujući zabludu da smo osuđeni na suparništvo. Priroda se, tako, uvek savladava, kultiviše, obuzdava, pripitomljuje, da bi umesto nje došla kultura, koja bi omogućila što ušuškaniji i udobniji čovekov opstanak. Deluje da nam se interesi razilaze – čovek hoće svet po svojoj meri, a priroda nije pokrovitelj čovekovih prohteva, već ono što sve obuhvata. Štaviše, pokušaj da se uspostavi reciprocitet između čoveka i prirode je, ne samo megalomanski, nego i, kao još jedna zabluda antropocentrizma – smešan. Ujednačavanje proističe iz jedne klimave pretpostavke o ravnopravnosti, a stanje stvari je posve drukčije – priroda može bez nas, a mi bez prirode ne možemo. Prenebregavanje činjenice prirode kao životne sredine u psihoanalizi predstavlja, kako Rozak tvrdi, ni manje ni više nego psihozu kao nameru da se živi u laži (14). S tim u vezi, Rozak daje sjajnu reviziju Jungovog koncepta „kolektivnog nesvesnog” u smislu da ono ne treba da se sagledava isključivo domenu kompilacije mitova, nego kao, doslovce „ekološko nesvesno”, koje prevazilazi svako ljudsko postojanje na zemlji. Posao ekopsihologije je ponovo uspostaviti, odnosno, osvestiti vezu između čoveka i njegovog ekološkog nesvesnog, koje bi mu ukazalo na jedinstvo između njega i sveta. Posebno oštar izraz otuđenosti savremenog čoveka predstavlja industrijsko-urbana kultura i neproduktivni narcisizam. Gradovi gutaju svoje stanovnike namećući iluziju moći i bega, a neproduktivni narcisizam predstavlja nedostatak samosvesti, a Rozak samospoznaju toliko ceni (GNOTHI SEAUTON!) da smatra da omogućuje smrt globalne industrijske megamašine (315). Sve ovo može mnogima da zvuči kao njuejdž i razumem sve potencijalne kritike, ali Rozak, za razliku od selfhelp piskarala, poseduje okeansko znanje, potkrepljeno sjajnim izborom literature, koja se prostire od kosmologije do psihologije, i više nego pristojnu argumentaciju. Samo mi nije jasno kako (ili zašto) je propustio da spomene Fukoa, kad promišlja o temama koje su im zajedničke. Mada, Fuko se toliko spominje i kad treba i kad ne treba da je možda izostanak ovde i dobrodošao.
  
  Ipak, Rozakova ekopsihologija bi, poput geopoetike Keneta Vajta, možda najpre da se posmatra kao predlog za novu organizaciju znanja, koje bi predstavilo totalitet čovekovog iskustva. Umesto parcijalističkih, specijalističkih perspektiva, gde je moguće postojanje obilja stručnjaka za svaku pojedinost, a niko se ne bavi celinom, Rozak svojom ekopsihologijom predlaže radost ponovnog pronalaženja sinhroniciteta. Obitavalište nije negde drugde, mi ga sačinjavamo i oblikujemo. Zbog toga ekopsihologija nije neki aktivistički poduhvat za zaštitu životne sredine, već nešto daleko ambicioznije – sređivanje puta za preosmišljavanje temeljnih čovekovih kategorija. Verujem da je to i više nego vredno pažnje.
  
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  Chaz

  A highly detailed introduction to the field of eco-psychology. It would be helpful to have a good understanding of psychology, philosophy and ecology before reading this. This book is incredibly in-depth and proposes many questions to the reader about the meaning of life, the creation of the universe, and our interconnectivity with all species.
  
  The Hermetic saying "as above, so below" for the sake of brevity sums up the various suppositions presented here. The author wants us to understand when we affect the Earth we are also affecting ourselves -- so true -- while we pollute our earth we are polluting our own bodies for our bodies are made up of the earth....
  
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  Damien Jahan

  As the environmental crisis looms over humanity as no less than an existential threat, inciting society to take the right path to action has been the relentless task of scientists, ecologists, authors and public speakers alike for the past decades. But what if we had gone about it the wrong way? In The Voice of the Earth, Theodore Roszak suggests an avenue for change too rarely considered: human psychology. Remarking that “scare tactics” have fallen short of generating real change on the environmental issue, he then exposes one central proposition of his book:
  
  “The great changes our runaway industrial civilization must make if we are to keep the planet healthy will not come about by the force of reason alone or the influence of fact. Rather, they will come by way of psychological transformation. What the Earth requires will have to make itself felt within us as if it were our own most private desire.” (p. 47)
  
  This attempt to blend ecology and psychology led Roszak to develop the concept of ‘ecopsychology’, a way to link planetary and personal well-being. “Ecopsychology, the author writes, seeks to heal the fundamental alienation between the person and the natural environment” (p. 320). This goal strongly echoes the observations once made by a classic author in social science, Karl Marx. It is little known that Marx’s famous critique of capitalism included a foreseeing ecological aspect. The German philosopher notably warned about the rupture of the metabolic interaction between humans and the rest of nature caused by capitalist agriculture – what scholar John Bellamy Foster later named the “metabolic rift”. Roszak is similarly emphasizing how humans’ estrangement from nature has been driving enormous environmental degradation.
  
  Ecopsychology is thus an attempt to bridge over this lost connection between the human psyche – the inside – and the natural world – the outside. It argues that the environmental crisis will only stand a chance of being solved once we start recognizing that human needs and the needs of the planet are one and the same. What we do to our environment eventually hits us too. The “central ecological truth,” as Roszak puts it, is that “all things big and small are members of one another in the biospheric web” (p. 46). As long as we fail to see that deep connection running through all living things on Earth, our collective answer to the environmental crisis is bound to fall short of the radical transformation we need if we are to survive as a species. This alarming call, which points to the necessity of changing our society at the level of the psyche, is probably Roszak’s most crucial contribution in his book.
  
  At this point it’s worth noting that, more than just a pragmatic evaluation of the different solutions at hand to address the environmental crisis, Roszak’s analysis proceeds from a holistic perspective on human existence, with deep metaphysical interrogations along the way. Brilliantly written, with a rare passion tempered by great intellectual lucidity, the book explores an impressively wide range of knowledge, from psychology to cosmology and ecology, three disciplines each given their own part. I can here only mostly focus on the ecology part, as I would surely lack the needed expertise to provide an informed review of earlier chapters, whose examination of intricate concepts from the latest science of the mind and the universe proves at times difficult to fully master.
  
  In his presentation of ecopsychology, Roszak frequently calls upon traditional ecological knowledge for guidance to inform what renewed relations between humans and the natural world could look like. Knowing the history of Western science, which has for centuries looked down on Indigenous philosophies as superstitious and irrational, one could feel concerned about appropriating traditional ecological knowledge without considering its historical oppression. Yet, Roszak aptly contrives to weave Indigenous knowledge and modern science together without furthering the hegemony of Western epistemologies. The author’s ingenious work of synthesis – accomplishing what Native American scholar Sonya Atalay would describe as “braiding knowledge” – comes from a place of undeniable respect and awareness of the age-old epistemic injustice that has marginalized Indigenous outlooks on the world for too long.
  
  Also, while Roszak does address gender as another instrument of hierarchy and injustice, in contrast to Marx who largely neglected the role of women’s subordination in capitalism, his work nonetheless shares with Marxist theory a colorblind approach that tends to overlook the importance of race in sustaining the capitalist system. Indeed, Roszak glosses over questions of systemic racism and white supremacy that would seem impossible to ignore in our day and age, where the links between capitalism’s survival and racial domination have been clearly elucidated. We know that racism is as much a cause of the environmental crisis as capitalism. Since its inception, capitalism has necessitated the creation of a racial “other” to subjugate, exploit, and kill. The connection between racism and capitalism was brilliantly exposed in 1983 by Cedric Robinson in his book Black Marxism, where he helped popularize the term racial capitalism. Essentially, it describes that any analysis that separates capitalism from racism is flawed and ahistorical; capitalism is in fact racial capitalism. Thus it becomes indispensable that anti-racism takes center stage in the fight against capitalism; a requirement Roszak falls short of meeting. To be fair, the book was written about thirty years ago, at a time when such concepts were not as much talked about as they are today in both academic circles and society at large. Still, it would appear surprising that an author seemingly that enlightened and informed about world issues like Roszak had not come to realize the full importance of racial domination in the capitalist system. Ultimately, the reason why this aspect did not receive much attention from Roszak has most likely to do with the author’s positionality, or social identity. As an affluent, white man from a wealthy and settler colonial state like the U.S., Roszak accumulates privileges that undoubtedly influenced his outlook on the world, leaving out serious issues affecting minorities that ought yet to be acknowledged and denounced accordingly.
  
  Another issue that the book insufficiently addresses is how differentiated the impacts of capitalism on the environment have been. We know that climate change has already provoked irreversible damages to ecosystems all around the world, but they have mostly impacted communities of color and the Global South, who have yet contributed the least to the problem. There is an urgency to recognize this profound injustice and act right now to stop this ongoing environmental and social catastrophe before it gets any worse. By suggesting an indiscriminate change of mindset for all humankind, Roszak doesn’t mention the heightened responsibility of Western societies, nor does he capture that sense of emergency imposed by the current circumstances. Granted, the book’s original publication year, 1992, feels like a whole century now, as the effects of climate change have been intensifying exponentially ever since. But reading them in our day and age, Roszak’s suggestions simply don’t match the full extent of the current crisis, nor do they adequately address the disproportionate burden that the Global South and communities of color have been facing.
  
  As for the author’s emphasis on psychology as the most promising locus for radical change, while it has the merit of indicating a pathway too rarely considered, there’s a certain temptation in thinking that the solution would lie solely in the realm of our mind. Changing the way we think about nature and our place in it will not solve the environmental crisis overnight. The trap here would be to bask in a certain intellectual complacency and forget all the work left to do in terms of transforming society at the level of institutions, policy-making, laws, and other deep-seated historical trajectories. Surely holding introspection as the miraculous solution is the preserve of a privileged few who don’t much first-hand experience the consequences of our current plight. Let’s set our priorities straight. Our society does need psychological transformation, arguably desperately so, but this will take time and not be a panacea; we must also focus on other areas for change that more explicitly target the systemic causes of our current predicament, chiefly racial capitalism.
  
  Although not free of certain limitations, Roszak’s book ultimately remains a solid and thought-provoking intellectual exploration into the realms of the mind and the cosmos, which outlines promising avenues for change in the face of today’s pressing environmental crisis. Almost thirty years after its original publication, The Voice of the Earth still makes a highly relevant point: we need to profoundly rethink our place in this world and accordingly revise our relations to nonhuman species and the planet as a whole. The future of human existence on Earth may well depend on that ability to look within and embrace the recognition of our intrinsic bonds with the outside world. There lies the importance and timely relevance of The Voice of the Earth.
  
  
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  Emily

  This book took me a painfully long time to read (3 months!) because I kept having to stop and read other things that weren't so "heavy." Don't get me wrong, most of the books I read are academic (non novel) books, but this one was too much. Maybe if I had a background in psychology, philosophy or cosmology I would have gotten more out of it. There is a LOT of info in this book, but I don't feel it flowed together well at all.
  
  Personally, if I did it again, I would skip chapters 4, 5, 10 & 11. There are other sections I would skip too, but those chapters in particular were like reading mud.
  
  To Roszak's credit, the best parts of the book are actual questions he raises about our evolutionary past and how we currently live on this planet. One example: "Sick souls may indeed be the fruit of sick families and sick societies; but what, in turn, is the measure of sickness for society as a whole? While many criteria might be nominated, there is surely one that ranks above all others: the species that destroys its own habitat in pursuit of false values, in willful ignorance of what it does, is "mad" if the word means anything."
  
  Overall, having read every single page, I can't say I have any better of an understanding of ecopsychology than I did 3 months ago.
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  Christina

  An incredible exploration of the human relationship to nature, and how by repairing it we could very likely repair the psychological damage so prevalent in our modern society. I couldn’t agree more with Roszak here and I wish more people would read his work.
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  Meagan Sullivan

  I read this over 10 years ago and don't remember all of it, but he made some poignant points that have stuck with me. I wonder how it would be to reread it now.
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  Braden Canfield

  A remarkable and thought provoking book from a historian with a tremendous breadth of knowledge. This is a strong argument advocating for psychology to join the forces of ecologists in attempting to heal our collective insanity evidenced by our species apparent voracious appetite for destroying our own habitat. It is a bit weak on practical strategies but attempts to point the way. I believe he tackles practicalities in a follow-up volume.
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  Ken Hada

  Roszak challenges our presuppositions even as he gives us reasons to honor Gaia. Our human psychology is concomitantly linked to our understanding (of misunderstanding and misuse) of our earth and the natural phenomena it sustains.
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  Gianetta

  I liked this book though I found Roszak's voice a bit dry. I was left wanting more than was addressed in this book. I have a desire to see the idea of ecopsychology broadened.
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  Richard Kravitz

  This was an amazing book, right what I was into at the time. Alchemy, nature and our connection to Gaia. Soror Mystica!!
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  Michael

  great