Ecopsychology
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes no.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver's (Clinebell, 1996, p.188) poem has a lot to say about the relatively new approach to conservation called ecopsychology. Ecopsychology combines the human element from psychology, with the study of how biological systems work together from ecology. A more in depth explanation of ecopsychology is that it seeks to help humans experience themselves as an integral part of nature (Strubbe 1997). When this is accomplished, humans can proceed to commit to "helping heal the earth, as well as healing ourselves" (Strubbe 1997, p. 293). In the past, environmental action has consisted of scaring and shaming those who over consume or do not recycle, which proved to be quite ineffective. Ecopsychology, in contrast, attempts to create positive and affirming motivations, derived from a bond of love and loyalty to nature (Bayland, 1995). Before tackling the principles, religious aspects, therapy, actions and education included in ecopsychology, it is essential to unde...
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...ting a more earth-friendly human nature. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
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Earthquakes are a natural part of the Earth’s evolution. Scientific evidence leads many geologists to believe that all of the land on Earth was at one point in time connected. Because of plate tectonic movements or earthquakes, continental drift occurred separating the one massive piece of land in to the seven major continents today. Further evidence supports this theory, starting with the Mid-Atlantic ridge, a large mass of plate tectonics, which are increasing the size of the Atlantic Ocean while shrinking the Pacific. Some scientists believe that the major plate moveme...
Eiseley, Loren “The Flow of the River” from Fifty Great Essays 2nd ed. 2002 Penguin Academics New York.
From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in each and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are centered around their relationship to nature.
Many years ago, people saw the wilderness as a savage wasteland, but today, it is viewed as “the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth.” (Cronon) He discusses this changed point of view by stating the difficulties that society will have rectifying environmental ailments if it stops viewing wilderness as “a dualistic picture in which the human is completely outside the nature.” (Cronon) This is understandable because humans rely on others to create opinions, and they do not know how to form their own thoughts and solutions to issues such as environmental ones. Therefore, it is with great importance that humans begin to learn how to formulate their own thoughts and share those personal thoughts with others, such as sharing solutions about environmental
The Blizzard of 1888 tested how much the human spirit could take. Stacking problems on problems, it was unforgiving to everybody in the area. Though the immigrants who came to the US all took different paths and ended up settling in different places of the Great Plains, in the end they both went through the same cold, unpredictable blizzard.
Societies often struggle to define censorship. Interestingly, the nineteenth-century did not explicitly define the word “censorship” as Westerners understand it today. The nineteenth-century's definition of censorship is “the office of a censor” and the definition of censor is “an officer of Rome who had the power of correcting manners” (Johnson 112).
One of the worst natural disasters in United States history to this date occurred almost 109 years ago. On April 18, 1906 at 5:15am in San Francisco, California, the earthquake of San Francisco occurred hitting between 7.9 and 8.3M on the Richter scale. The San Andreas Fault, which is about 600 miles long, running from the Gulf of California to Cape Mendocino and is an active strike-slip fault, cut through the continental lithosphere to cause the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. An earthquake is a trembling or shaking of the ground produced by movements along a fault (Strahler, 2012). After the tension is released at a critical point, the fault or tectonic plate slips and relieves the strain and creates the seismic waves, which radiates out in all directions causing the shaking of the surface.
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...erson to uphold the responsibility of this position as well as great sacrifice to become an anesthesiologist. He or she is expected to do many great things, not only helping patients get in and out of the surgery safely but send them to the best recovery centers for each of his or her necessities.
The world is categorized into many ecospheres, among all, water and land. Upon further analysis, it is evident that both nature and humanity are interdependent. However, our anthropocentric views on the world have led to a golden age of mass production, accelerating beyond natures ability to regenerate itself. In the late 1950s nature was not seen as an item of importance, during the time civilization was captured by the topic of civil rights for the human being, rather than the detrimental natural surroundings. Often times, society does not utilize all the resources provided by the environment and can fall into the mindset of hurting the environment without knowing the full consequences. In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson exposes the hidden
For years, the topic of censorship has a been highly controversial issue. Over the centuries, many people have fought and died to gain the freedom of speech and ideas. The impression that creative ideas and important information should be hidden from society and controlled by the government, is a discordant one. Censorship is the act of controlling the freedom of speech, ideas, and information. Unsuprisingly, people in the nineteenth or the twentieth century had no problem with the controversial issue of censorship. A century ago, technology just started to make itself known in the world. People had the radio, the television, and the typewriter. Although the internet was invented, it was hardly used as frequently as individuals, in modern times,
Vaill, Peter B.. "Introduction: An Ordinary Day on the River." Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for Survival in a World of Permanent White Water. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. 1-20. Print.
In modern times, censorship refers to the inspection of books, periodicals, plays, films, television and radio programs, news reports, and other communication media for the purpose of changing, altering or suppressing parts thought to be objectionable or offensive. The objectionable material may be considered immoral or obscene, heretical or blasphemous, subversive or rebellious, or damaging to the national security. Thus, the rationale for censorship is that it is necessary for the protection of three basic social institutions: the family, the church, and the state.