Note from Walker: Robert has responded with an initial review statement, and then he has chosen to respond in a paragraph by paragraph manner to my previous blog entry. So when you scroll down, you will see my previous comments in this black ink, while Robert's new words will appear in this beige (?) ink.
............................................................................................ Since I'm a ten-steps-forward-nine-steps-back kind of person (and in a way, you are too, only you call it an "Interlude") -- I'll loop back before lurching forward: seeking to be on the same page with you! Why are we doing this? My answer to this rhetorical question is that we have done much the same work in a major part of our lives, only with differences in practice and description that may (or may not) be important to reveal and discuss. We have learned from each other, and seek to continue that fortuitous process. And now you see me challenging "eco- psychology" ("EP") (my baby!) and you wonder what I'm up to. You know I've spent much time and energy "mastering" Ken Wilber's amazing "map of everything" "Integral Psychology and "AQAL") and you appear to be doing so too -- and you wonder if that map applies to the critique and revisions of current EP practice I'm making. We agree, I believe, that the entire global mind-set of humans continues to reflect assumptions about the human-nature- relationship ("HNR"), or at best are simply myopic with regard to this relationship, such that we as humans continue to damage the planet's "health" -- to the degree that our future is in peril. With regard to the critique of EP -- I say it has become broad and vague, and that it assumes a kind of colonizing priority over many ancient and current expressions of the HNR -- and thus is not useful as a map -- a map for action, or for psychological and social change. Again, I advocate juxtaposing a trans- personal psychology with real ecology, claiming that this holds a strong potential for a more useful map, and/or at least might enhance existing maps. And all this seems important -- saving the "efflorescence of life" as Thomas Berry puts it; continuing the process of evolution, not necessarily as an end in itself, but to see where it wants to go. The key assumption here is that "spiritual evolution" is beautiful, but can't continue without our home base, the earth. So we're working on a map that might at least participate and enhance a very subtle, often hidden, but huge worldwide effort -- to overcome dualistic modes of thought, perhaps; from which to create models of alternatives that are "sustainable". To open to perspectives -- "higher" or "larger" or "deeper" or "more accurate" -- so our efforts will be in alignment with all that we know, and with the vast mysteries that surround about which we distort, or about which we have not yet learned. Many of our students and colleagues admonish us to stop navel gazing, to stop nit-picking about philosophical issues, about "underlying assumptions", and do "actions". We do actions, but I argue, and hope you agree that this is also a crucial time to become more fully aware of the assumptions underlying actions and practices; and a crucial time for a stronger analysis and diagnosis at the shape of this "dis-ease" that seems to be pushing us in a catastrophic direction; that questioning and improving our maps might help insure that our actions are healing rather than smoke and mirrors. And so on. So, we wonder what a "more rigorous" EP map might look like, and what it might do for us. And now, I suggest, we have raised the issue of "maps" -- and must ask what they are, how they work, and indeed what might be needed. So "maps"! Maps are not "the territory", though often confused as such. They represent a territory, usually implying that such representations guide us to that territory. It is nice when they can be held in the hands, and folded up and put away; nice when they can be trusted -- trusted because they are based on the experience of many others -- past explorers, those able to see patterns, to have tried out various routes. Nice when they are accurate -- when they get us far into where we wish to go, rather than back at the cars, back to our starting point. But too, maps are often speculative, often couched in the specialized language of a certain which, as I've argued, has been caught up in various cultural eddies and points "back", not into "the promised land", but into our all-embracing culture -- its tropes and hopes, its veneers, love of easy solutions, tendencies towards imperialism and colonization, and especially it's deeply-engrained habits of "dividing and conquering" -- what I often sum up as "our addiction to dualistic modes of thought". So, we're looking for a new and better map, a map that leads us to a mental-cultural state we can only vaguely envision -- some kind of place where we're in "alignment" or "in cooperation with" that billions-years-old program of evolution that has produced ... us! We see maps on all sides -- many of which aggressively propose their utility: from the massive Wilberian "Integral Ecology", to the "it's-all-about-expanding-the-self" Deep Ecology, to eco-feminists "recovery of the Feminine" maps, to no-map-is- better-than-false-map adventurers (and "stay off the trails!") to maps leading into unbelievably immense and complex jungles, from which people who have entered confidently are never seen again. And I have so-far argued that the juxtaposition of psychology and real ecology is a map worth developing -- based on what we can glean from lives spent trying out many other maps, and from our own explorations, in wildernesses, in cities, on farms and in the Hinterlands. Real ecology, juxtaposed with (let me qualify it a bit now) the kinds of psychology that are wholistic, introspective, and transpersonal. OK -- that's my "interlude" -- now, on to commenting on your comments! (Walker from 10/3):This elaboration from you, Robert, really helps my understanding of what “Greenway ecopsychology” is all about. Thank you. It’s becoming clearer and clearer as we go along. And I’m happy to report that I find myself pretty much in full agreement with what you say. It makes a tremendous amount of sense, which doesn’t surprise me. Let me comment a moment on the “Interlude”, which will also lead us into other matters within your “Response 4”. I did not mean to privilege poetry over other modes of knowing or expressing. I agree with you wholeheartedly (and with those Buddhists you cite) that there are countless ways up the mountain, all valid. I will be the first to attest that my poetry is built upon a background of reading lots and lots of non-fiction, including most of the books you recommend in your list of “10” and also many of the books and fields of study you cite as part of “Antoinette’s” education. Yes, I understand and agree. Sources of poetry are endlessly discussed by poets and critics and philosophers -- sources ranging from fully rational clusters of words, to the memories of experiences; from the rational "algebraic dynamics" of similes, to the mystical rooted-in-nature sources of metaphor. So, you say you are pretty rational and read a lot (!), and I know you to be a "deep ponderer", via which, I assume, you're accessing all sorts of ancient and modern myths, what the Jungians would call the various archetypal upwellings that carry us back perhaps a million years into our species' roots. And you like "parsimony" and "serendipity". And your poetry is beautiful, and, it appears to me, reflective of your deep scholarship on the one hand, and years of experience guiding students "into the wild" on the other. (Good work!) However, I was trying to get at something that may have significance in our further conversation. Namely, (using Wilber) the difference between Right Quadrant and Left. I'm not sure how many of our readers (do we have readers?) who understand Wilber's AQAL (All Quadrants/All Levels) map. You summarize it a bit below -- I'll let that stand for now -- but yes, I find his map extremely useful, and I place "ecoposychology" within that map, as you are suggesting here -- as well as all those other expressions of the human-nature relationship. (It is important to point out, however, that the AQAL map is in need of the what a strong ecopsychology might bring to it: the linkage between perspectives (i.e., "Quadrants" -- like between the objectified exterior (the Upper Right Quadrant, and the human "mind" -- the Upper Left interior Quadrant. Just how does that "linkage" or "juxtaposition" actually work? Wilber (and the authors of Integral Ecology) do not answer this, to the best of my knowledge, referring only rather vaguely to the presence of "intersubjectivity" or "resonance" between the quadrants. So though the quadrants seem accurate and very useful, exactly how they might interact is missing -- and this is precisely the kind a strong EP might shed light on!) (And precisely, by the way, where "languages" of music, poetry, dance, narrative, etc., might help bring the map -- or any map of the HNR -- to completion (at least, temporary "completion"!). The science of ecology is a Right Quadrant activity. It is an observer perceiving and detailing other objects. As Wilber has gone to great lengths to show (perhaps excessively) as regards writers like Fritjof Capra or Joanna Macy who use quantum mechanics or systems theory (ecology) to argue for humans as not-separate from everything else, that type of scientific argument is not in itself the realization of non-separateness. Our science has for a long time now made very clear that humans are “but one strand in the web” (good old Chief Seattle), and yet, that science has not yet been enough to influence our culture as a whole to behave from that non-separate understanding. Yes, I believe this to be accurate. And I believe that this, and past maps -- and especially the diverse mish-mash of EP maps -- aren't convincing because they are incomplete. It's like you've got a detailed and beautiful map of the Yolla Bolly Wilderness, even the trails laid out to our Sacred Shell Mountain, and the map doesn't show you where (and how) to cross the Middle Fork! We're going to "get inside" the wilderness, and we think that (finally!) we'll be able to feel our way into being one strand of a "whole environment" we can fully trust -- and then, some- how we're not fully "inside" -- we're half in, half out -- still under the powers of the dualistic mind. How do we get across the river? So yes, I'm agreeing with you! And, to bring the UL ("mind") and UR (objective data about environment) together, as I mentioned we have mathematics and statistics from those giving privilege to the UR Quadrant; and poetry or dance (or humming) to those privileging the UL Quadrant; and from those privilege "experience over language" we might have .... what? silence, and exemplary behavior? And from those familiar with boundaries dissolving through mind-altering substances, we might have those privileging, well, ritual and the like. But the "transmission across boundaries" -- presuming the map of these boundaries is based on some correspondence with reality -- is, in my view, the essence of what is needed. It is "the next move" towards healing the human-nature relationship. Think of all our various relationships: can we do better than chance to find the "dynamic" of how a non-dominant or non-exploitative relationship might work? Wilber argues that the actual realization or experience of non-separateness, of belonging to the earth, of being interconnected with all other beings, even "one" with them, happens on the Left Quadrant. Therefore, it is really Left Quadrant “skillful means”, rather than Right Quadrant elaborations, that most directly lead to the experience of connectedness. You can have all the Right Quadrant elaborations in the world, but it doesn't automatically jump over to Left Quadrant realization. If it did, we'd merely have to be told there was a Singularity, there was a Big Bang, and we'd feel to the very core the non-duality that is implicit in that cosmology. Well, this is interesting, but I don't think I quite agree (perhaps more from my own interpretation of Wilber, than a strict adherence to his map). Each of the four quadrants are always in play in every situation. It is a rational act of the UR Quadrant to see the quadrants as separate at all. My scientist friends (and my own love of ecological science) is aflow with aesthetic, interior (Upper Left Quadrant) feelings; my under standing of, say, solid data from the UR (with regard to, say, a river watershed into which I'm moving) is based on Lower Right (objective-consensus) language from the scientific community that studies such things; and the Lower Left "subjective" inflow of, say, "the collective unconscious" -- the upwelling of archetypes into consciousness, via dreams, via reverie, and so on -- all are in play, though yes, I may indeed by favoring the "objective measurements" of the Upper Right perspective. The point is, leaning into one or the other of the Quadrants is always -- always-- a matter of emphasis, not a separate locked-in isolated mode of looking at things -- although, yes, it may seem that way when listening to the fanatic measurer, the fanatic data-hound; or the narcissist enraptured only with her interior emotional pleasures. As with Jungian therapy (with his own interesting quadrant approach to personality), the practice of such things is to balance -- to invite the non-dominant perspective into discourse. (And this, by the way, would underlie my long-standing argument that there are aspects of "the wilderness experience" that can only be done in groups, other aspects that can only be experienced when alone.) (And the difficulty of this kind of "intersubjective" flexibility -- this kind of "interactivity" between the quadrants -- is perhaps rooted in the very deep-level dualistic grip that our cultural matrix embeds into as our developmental processes (multiple lines of development!) flow through it!. Without some kind of "deep" self analysis (or perhaps psychoanalysis) one rarely is aware of such things as dominance patterns in relationships, say, or in privileging this or that "mode of knowing" (or privileged perspective of one of Wilber's map's Four Quadrants.) Like you, I am all for rationality ("fully engaged"). But it must be seen for its limits. Rationality is the ego perceiving and measuring things outside itself, and studying associated cause and effect often from its own self-centered needs and perspective. As such, duality is fairly implicit in, and inextricable from, rationality. Well, sort of. In my view, "ego" -- our "executive function" for getting needs -- any and all felt needs -- may or may not involve rationality. And rationality may or may not be absent or present with regard to "the dualistic tendency" embedded in our Western culture, and thus in our psyches. (I take my definition of dualism from both Stan McDaniel, my colleague from Sonoma State, and from Ken Wilber as well. There's a continuum from the perception of a distinction, all the way to the pushing of that distinction to a complete splintering of reality. So "pairs" (and paraxoxes, and "two-things" -- "the dual") may or may not be dualism. It is clearly conceivable to have the "dualistic process" fully guided by, or "operationally paired" with "rationality". Now I certainly do not rule out that the study of natural history can lead to many moments of deep awe at the sheer intricate way nature works, or that a profound knowledge of ecology can in a “vision logic” moment lead to a very deep understanding of non-duality. Perhaps we could liken this approach to “Jnana Yoga”, the use of thought and knowledge to transform fundamental worldview. But by including "vision logic", we are moving into the lower rungs of all the "trans-rational" levels that Wilber describes. And I believe he would maintain that rationality itself as a "stage" cannot experience the non-dual. In fact for him, the "rational" is in some ways the most "alienated" stage, with both pre-rational and trans-rational containing more experiential feelings of connection. No, I don't think so. (I apologize for not taking the time to look up Wilber's voluminous writings on rationality, extolling it as a stage -- advocating, even, it's perhaps crucial utility even now, as the world lurches towards destruction- born-of irrationality. But yes, the point of his "all levels" aspect of AQAL) is that we proceed through rationality, on our way to the full non-dual. And it's not as if we leave rationality behind, it's "transcended and incorporated" -- what I take the Vapassana meditation teacher Jack Kornfield means in one of his books' titles: "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry".) Fortunately, your “Greenway ecopsychology” balances ecology (Right Quadrant) with psychology, and psychology, as we know, is concerned with what happens in the Left Quadrants. This balance is something I admire in your system and which makes it very encompassing and applicable all through AQUAL. And I know you are in particular a proponent of "trans-personal" psychology, which further shows your valuation of the trans-rational stages I'm referring to. Yes! I am reminded a bit of a difference between Emerson and Thoreau. Thoreau “wanted to get to know his neighbors”, so he spent a lot of time running around the Concord area looking at plants, animals, watersheds, weather and seasonal patterns, such that he came to be someone we would think of as a very good naturalist (and something of an ecologist, though that full science had yet to come into its own). Yes, and this reminds me of a couple of things: the incredible understandings (of, we'll call it, "the human-nature relationship") that Thoreau, Muir, Emerson, and so many others, may or may not have understood, didactically, what we now call "ecology". But they, and most if not all of those developing "soft" ecopsychologies, or these many human-nature-relational studies I keep mentioning -- they all have that sense of acute perception into the "dynamics" of the natural world; and their "interior" emotional love was aroused. That is very close to what I'm calling "real ecopsychology" -- both sides of the equation are in play. Again, I'm just saying that, now, with the tools of "real ecology", and of an appropriate psychology, we can get to that same place, perhaps, even, to a "deeper place". But, fortunately, through myriads of ways, this "experiencing of nature" along with serious self understanding, as alive and well on many many fronts. (I'd further need to add, however, that I define "rationality" separate from "ego" and "ego-as-motivational force" -- we'll save that for another time.) Emerson, on the other hand, explicitly warns against “a too trivial and microscopic study of the universal tablet” (nature). He talks about “relaxing the despotism of the senses” (Right Quadrant activity) and allowing what we might think of as a more intuitive or contemplative mode to arise (Left). Yes, a point made by all the great teachers (especially those extolling The Middle Way) -- our egoic (need-oriented) mind has a passionate tendency to latch on to one or another of what Wilber is calling AQAL -- the quickest, easiest map. Since these maps don't seem to be working, we now seek a map to a deeper place -- or perhaps a completely different kind of map altogether (consider, music!) (smile) Perhaps poetry, music, art, dance, could be likened, in contrast to “Jnana”, as more of a “Bhakti Yoga” approach. This would be oriented toward the feelings of love, reverence, celebration of our connection to nature. So, one practitioner (Emerson-style) of “Greenway ecopsychology” might read and study a little less of ecology and a little more of the poets and mystics, while another practitioner (Thoreau-style) might be out there devoutly with hand lens and binocular, and more rarely with Mary Oliver or Rumi. Both are acceptable paths, and I'll give them equal "certificates of completion" if you will. Absolutely, and a good point -- as long as we don't fall out of traffic with all Four Quadrants, and into the false simplicity of a favorite mode. I see it as a matter of emphasis, not a move towards the isolation of one or the other of the Quadrants. Seems really complicated -- and, well, changing one's worldview takes some energy! But it's really simple when one "practices" .... There's a "to each his/her own" feeling about the overall map, though; and a beautiful sense that however one might place emphasis, the other aspects of the map, when invited, are there to expand and enhance -- and hopefully sooner rather than later, be more convincing to more people -- even to our very frightening political structures continuing to dominate "the fate of the earth". Here's something that is always so interesting to me: why did Thoreau become Thoreau and Emerson, Emerson? Why will one student within the same two-year Greenway ecopsychology program become an absolute expert in ecology but quite mediocre when it comes to composing a poem or carrying a tune? Since we both subscribe to the idea that no path up the mountain is better than another path (though a path not going up the mountain – connection; non-duality; intersubjectivity; querencia – might be questioned), then it becomes a matter (and a mystery) of each individual finding their own way. This I think is where "good psychology" could help us. I think the answer to your question rests within the multiple "tracks" of development that every human now goes through: motor development, moral development cognitive development, and so on. There are "lesions" along every path of development -- different balances between ever individual. Different patterns of needs, different ways of fulfilling those needs; different ways of "connecting with -- or dealing with -- the mysteries in which we're all immersed, and so on. (I remember, when leading wilderness trips, I sometimes would "sense into" a group, and feel almost overwhelmed with the differences-of-levels that comprised the group. It is why I often turned to singing, as a way of finding "common ground' amidst huge differences of developmental levels.) I look to Joseph Campbell here (“follow your bliss”) and Carlos Castaneda (“find a path with heart”). I even look as far as James Hillman, Bill Plotkin, David Whyte and their radical perspective that we aren’t blank slates but arrive in birth as “souls”, and that our delicious life-task is to discern and harken to the very particular callings of our soul. You would enjoy (probably already are familiar with) James Hillman's writings on development as "Soul Making"-- which, to say it simplistically, means opening to the unconscious, ancient archetypal "knowing" that we do indeed come into the world with. (Yeah, not hard UR science -- but lots of UL "interior" work!. Or better, LL-- the social component of the interior -- that brought into consciousness via collective ritual -- an ancient practice, alive and ... maybe not so well ... into the present.) OK, to wrap up, I am saying nothing that Bateson didn't say years ago, but more succinctly: "the map is not the territory". You explicitly call your EP a "map", and it uses a "fully engaged" rationality to lay itself out. That's all very good. I think we need maps – they help guide us in a direction we want to go (up that mountain), and in cases of insight or peak experience, the map helps us make sense, orient, and incorporate that new perspective. But ultimately, it's the "territory" we want, not the map. I think my Interlude was trying to say that sometimes for me a poem, or let's take the example of a Zen koan, can prod or seduce me into an actual glimpse of the territory more than, say, a book length treatment of cybernetics. But to each their own! (It was Korzybski not Bateson who started this "the map is not the territory" business -- I had thought it was Marshall McLuhan at first thought. ) But, after much reflection, I'm not sure that that the famed statement is inaccurate, if not dualistic. Sure, there are differences between "the model" and "the reality". But to be dualistic they'd need to be disconnected. And "the map" is beautifully connected with the territory -- or certainly should be! For me, I'm not sure I want "the map" to be absent from my territory -- not as a crutch, or as a substitute, but as, well, a very aspect of the territory I'm moving through. And remember, as you know, "the map" may have many manifestations: the moss on the north side of a rock or tree, the differences in sounds along a river as temperature cools, lichens hanging from trees -- these experiences are both "just there", but also signs ... "messages" -- part of what it feels like to experience mind (even... careful here ... a rational mind) in juxtaposition with one's environment! What I'd like to ask you now, with the "map" having become more clear, what have you found in your years about how to foster that mysterious leap from map to territory, from Right Quadrant explanation to Left Quadrant experience, realization, transformation? Well, a beautiful question. Simple to say, much harder to practice. There is of course a penchant (some of us, crazy enough to have) to "just do it -- figure it out later". One charges off into the wilderness, starts farms, explores into the shadows, or not. But, though they are usually intended to lead into the pre-cultural or non-rational, maps themselves are rational constructions, and at times, when it's taking you where you want to go, are worth following with care. Me, I take ecology very seriously -- I think it is a beautiful "higher" stage of understanding of the "dynamics of the natural world". And though I find it confusing and a mess and widely misused, I take certain psychologies seriously as well. And when both are "full activated" in life (especially in certain situations where all Four Quadrants can be fully in play), amazing and beautiful things happen: "peak experiences", as Maslow called them; "kensho" experiences as the Z'en folks say. Epiphanies, is the world Jung used -- and saw these experiences as serendipitous, synchronous at times, and potent windows just a little further into the mysteries that surround us. The crisis our civilization is facing, the danger to the health of our earth and all life on it, is never far from our minds. But even so, the practice of the mind (as best as we can understand "it") brought together with the context in which we find ourselves (as best as we can understand it) -- may expand the maps, reveal some "better" trails, help us reach perspectives that are more convincing to our fellow humans than those we now have. Back to poetry. Mary Oliver writes: "the path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. [map?] It's in the imagination [Left] with which you perceive this world and the gestures with which you honor it." Nice! I won't even try to top that! Thanks, Walker. I appreciate this.
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AuthorDiscussion between Walker Abel and Robert Greenway. Archives
January 2015
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