Column: ​In helping to heal the Earth, we can begin to heal ourselves

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​A recent UN summit on biodiversity has revealed that ecosystems on Earth are at the edge of catastrophe, and that global wildlife populations have declined by 73 per cent in the last 50 years, says writer Laurence Coupe.

​It’s always tempting to turn the page when we read about such matters. The desire to repress the truth about what’s happening to the Earth is all too common in today’s world.

It’s as damaging for us as it is for the planet we live on.

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For deep down, we know all too well that much of the natural world is dying. There exists an ‘ecological unconscious’ which registers what we are trying consciously to evade.

Guest columnist Laurence Coupe is a writer.Guest columnist Laurence Coupe is a writer.
Guest columnist Laurence Coupe is a writer.

In its depths we experience not mild melancholy (the subject of my last column) but severe depression.

In his pioneering book, The Voice Of The Earth, first published 30 years ago, Theodore Roszak set out his case for what he called ‘ecopsychology’.

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He had long since understood the importance of ecology – the study of the Earth as our home (Greek, oikos). Now he had come to realize that there was a connection between the state of the Earth and the state of the human mind, or soul (Greek, psyche).

This would be revealed by a new kind of psychology that would take into account the devastating effects of our alienation from the very source of our being – nature.

​”The goal is to become both a whole individual and a citizen of the whole Earth community. In helping to heal the Earth, we begin to heal ourselves,” says writer Laurence Coupe.​”The goal is to become both a whole individual and a citizen of the whole Earth community. In helping to heal the Earth, we begin to heal ourselves,” says writer Laurence Coupe.
​”The goal is to become both a whole individual and a citizen of the whole Earth community. In helping to heal the Earth, we begin to heal ourselves,” says writer Laurence Coupe.

Roszak sees industrial society as a form of madness. It can only work by means of a divorce of the human soul from the source of its being. None of us can begin to heal except through commitment to dwelling responsibly on the Earth.

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As Roszak explains: ‘Other therapies seek to heal the alienation between person and person, person and family, person and society.

"Ecopsychology seeks to heal the more fundamental alienation between the person and the natural environment.”

Opening out to what our distant ancestors understood instinctively opens up the possibility of a truly human culture that would regain the archaic sense of oneness with the Earth which the modern world has lost.

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Ecopsychology teaches us that in the same way as we have to accept our responsibility to other people, we have to accept our responsibility to the planet.

The goal is to become both a whole individual and a citizen of the whole Earth community.

In helping to heal the Earth, we begin to heal ourselves.

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