As ever, I am committing myself to more learning.
But you don't have time! I hear you say. You are leaving volunteering early to get your work done so you can get to the hospital!
Yeah but it's not like I have a private life, is it??
So, this is an online course hosted by Schumacher College's Stephan Harding (I've read two of his books) and Norwegian philosopher Per Ingvar Haukeland. Harding worked closely with James Lovelock, the Gaia-guy, and Haukeland was mentored by Arne Naess. pretty impressive credentials.
The course is exploring the way in which the alchemical system can act as a metaphor for a deepening ecosophical sense.
Ecosophy is a word coined by Naess - Oikos is Greek for 'home' and Sophia for 'wisdom'. He wanted to offer a sense of a personal wisdom-relationship-understanding between a person and her environment - that would be her ecosophy. One is meant to develop one's own. So Naess called his Ecosophy T - with T as the first letter of the mountain he loved and where he spent much of his time in a cabin.
Still, there are some foundational rules or values... The Deep Ecology Platform...
THE DEEP ECOLOGY PLATFORM (Naess/Sessions 1984)
The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs.
The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.
In building an ecosophy, one is inspired by deep experiences, comes to value this list of beliefs, then you work out what actions impede or enhance the flourishing of rich and diverse life forms and finally you act upon it.
You can envisage this as a tree.
This is from Per Ingvar's presentation.
Now, what they are interested in is whether an understanding of the processes of alchemy can deepen this ecosophical development further.
Hell. Now I need to list the alchemical process.
Good description here. The seven stages are Calcination, Dissolution, Separation, Conjunction, Fermentation, Distillation and Coagulation. Now, if you take this as a metaphor, which I think Jung did, you can use it to map the process of individuation. But it can also map onto the history of earth, the formation of soil and the development of an ecosophy.
This is from Stephan's presentation. See the crows? The crows become white and fly up to become Spirit and Anima.
I guess this all sounds pretty arcane and maybe crazy. It's worth remembering that Harding is a scientist, an ecologist, and Haukeland a philosopher.
What they want is to see if we can find a way to care deeply about the planet by integrating reason and imagination, thinking and feeling, science and intuition. They see these 'opposites' as artificial and destructive.
What they are saying aligns with my views - this, after all, was why I quit the Masters: there was no heart in it, no soul. What I want is the heart.
Let's see if this helps me find it.
Comments