Our Ailments and the Earth

We have run out of planet—a never-before-seen thing. A whole 1.7 planet’s worth. Humans have stolen the gifts of the Earth. Her bones have been mined from her body. The rocks can no longer breathe. Her waters can no longer dream. Her skin is scabrous with parking lots. And the Great Barrier Reef is dying. The trees have nearly given up. The animals have done what they can. 9/11, the GFC and Covid have tried their best. Monotheism has abandoned the earth for heavenly rewards. Indigenous peoples are now only 5% of the world’s population. Half of the world lives in cities. And our relationship with beauty has been lost.

Jung said, “The world itself becomes a reflection of the psyche”. But every stick has two ends and the psyche/body is also a reflection of the world. Our body is made from her body and when her lungs are ravaged so too are ours. When she can’t breathe, we go on ventilators. All boats rise on this moon-less tide of the fallacy of growth and the profound contempt for matter. Pathological optimism keeps us in an ecological coma. This brings with it the metastatic growth of psychological highs and lows (depression, anxiety, narcissism, grief, self-harm, and nostalgia) and the physical ailments of blood and breath, skin and bone (Covid, anorexia, bulimia, ADHD, and the loss of memory).

With the help of Jung, Hillman, Von Franz and Kalsched we shall imagine, discuss, write, and hopefully do the impossible—to hear the distant echoes and feel the subterranean entanglements between the health of the  Earth and the modern  ailments that beset us.    March 19 flyer