Preface
My lifetime coincides with the massive transformational forces of the
Anthropocene, the period of human dominance over all biophysical processes on the planet, including the big one, a hotter and more chaotic global
climate. The effects of social and biophysical change are now so large and
rapid that it is difficult to comprehend them all.
As I have matured into this life I feel capable of reflecting on what it
means to live in the Anthropocene. In this book, I have concentrated on
one major theme: the particular human emotional responses we have to the
scale and pace of ecological and environmental change. I call these responses
“Earth emotions.”
Writing a book about Earth emotions was bound to be an emotional
experience, and I have constructed my own “sumbiography,” or an account
of the sum total of events and experiences that have coalesced to produce
my particular, and perhaps peculiar, take on nature and life. Through this
telling, I hope to help readers understand and respond to the huge turmoil
we are in, as a species, at this moment of Earth’s history. I also want to help
create a way out of it.
I have also drawn on older cultural traditions to understand what our
relationship to the Earth is about. Australian Aboriginal people have been
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in the “Great South Land” for up to eighty thousand years. They have a
powerful story of longevity and coexistence with other humans and nonhumans to share with the rest of the world. Many Aboriginal elders have a
double experience of turmoil. First their traditional culture was dismantled
by colonial forces; and now, their emergent hybrid culture is assaulted by
climate chaos. Their experience of loss and persistence is instructive to all
humans.
As the threat to humanity of a powerful climatic global force of our own
making has never before existed, much of what has been written in the past
about nature and life is irrelevant to the future we now face. Also, since the
essence of the Anthropocene seems to be self-destructive, I want to exit the
era as soon as possible. Earth Emotions will take us directly to the core of our
problems and use the knowledge gained by the latest science to guide us
rapidly into a better future.
Based on the biosciences that underpin discoveries about the central
role of symbiosis (living together) in the lifeworld, I have created “the Symbiocene,” an alternative “good” future place with distinctive positive Earth
emotions. Along the way, I create many new ideas, words, and concepts that
I think will challenge the representatives of the Anthropocene and usher in
the Symbiocene.
The first of these concepts is “solastalgia,” or the lived experience of distressing, negative environmental change. I tell the story of the “discovery”
of solastalgia and how it has become a key concept in the domain of human
responses to negative and distressing environmental change. Solastalgia is as
relevant to individuals’ loss of an endemic sense of place due to the negative
impacts of global warming as it is to cities and their urban complexes as they
are transformed by the forces of development.
After creating the concept of solastalgia, I came to the realization that
this negative emotional and psychological experience sat within a wider
range of what I now call “psychoterratic” (psyche-earth) emotional concepts. I have set about describing these negative Earth emotions and juxtaposing them against positive ones. I call the result of this comparative
analysis the “psychoterratic typology,” and it is work in progress as the
novel effects of grand-scale environmental damage to places, hearts, and
psyches become evident. Conversely, as we lose beautiful and loved places
on Earth, we begin to put into words those positive emotional states that
were once delivered for free and without the need for terminology. Positive and negative Earth emotions are in lockstep, as you cannot have one
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without the other. I have devoted two chapters in this book to the explication of these dialectically opposed elements of the psychoterratic typology.
Included in these chapters are the ideas of other writers and thinkers who
have contributed to the typology. Some, like Aldo Leopold, are famous,
while another, Elyne Mitchell, an Australian writer and a contemporary
of Leopold’s, is almost unknown as an environmental thinker even within
Australia.
The revolution in scientific and transdisciplinary thinking, based on
the foundation of life we call symbiosis, is also a stimulus for the creation of a new secular form of spirituality that accompanies the science, technology, ethics, and culture of the Symbiocene. I have named
this new secular spirituality “the ghedeist,” and it, too, is vital for the
development of a new human relationship with the rest of life. I am of
the view that many of my readers will feel, like me, that the old sources
of spiritual insight are not going to make the grade in the twenty-first
century. If you crave a new secular spirituality that reunites humanity
with the Earth from which we emerged as a species, then I have something to offer you.
The book concludes with an examination of what humans must do to
enter the Symbiocene. Although a transdisciplinary philosopher by inclination, I have attempted to give “Generation Symbiocene” a relentless, optimistic, and practical view of their future. Such extreme optimism is needed
to counter the ruthless pessimism that is emerging from the critics of the
Anthropocene and the collective wisdom of scientists who keep warning
us about the apocalyptic scenario that is unfolding due to ecosystem destruction, toxic pollution, and climate warming. Even baby boomers are
given a satisfactory way of exiting this life, as they can play a huge role in
enabling their own children and grandchildren to successfully enter the
Symbiocene.
I do not make light of the situation we now find ourselves in. I have
declared that there is now an open emotional war occurring between the
forces of creation and the forces of destruction on this Earth. World War
Three will be an emotional war that must end in victory for the forces of
creation. Yet those who command the forces of destruction will not easily
cede their control of the Earth. The future could turn out to be very ugly for
humanity—but then again, it could be brilliant.
Earth Emotions is my contribution to an optimistic future, one that challenges everything that is going wrong on the Earth right now, and it offers
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solutions. I trust that feelings of solastalgia will become a distant memory
of a past we choose to negate. My hope is that, by the end of this book, you
will feel totally at home with the new concepts I have created. For one, you
will be “in” the Symbiocene: you will feel that you are already part of it, and
that it is a part of you.