Bill Plotkin - Discussion Thread

[mountainFrugal]

----tl:dr - Plotkin has a potential roadmap to follow based on internal spiritual journeys AND ecology/nature/Adventure/ERE skills development. As far as I can tell this not bounded by any specific religious lens or ceremonies so BYOB... Bring Your Own Beliefs.

Here are some Plotkin notes to start some conversation. I have at least skimmed all of his books. I read Soulcraft and Nature and the Human Soul. I am currently working on Wild Mind (will do Journey of Soul Initiation next), but there is a lot of overlap with all of them.

The main idea with Plotkin is that there is "adult development" meaning development does not stop when we reach physically mature adulthood. He defines mature adults as ones that have a deep sense of meaning and purpose that is tied to nature in some way. Or to put it another way, for us to realize that we are not separate from nature. He uses a circle for development that also represents nature's cardinal directions (N, S, E, W), the daily rhythms of the sun and moon, and the yearly cycles of the seasons. He has an entire human life mapped out on this circle as well characterizing 8 stages of development. We start in the East as children and then move clockwise around the circle to adolescence in the South to "Adulthood" in the West and then elderhood in the North. A human life completes the circle in the North East. A majority of his work focuses on moving people from late-adolescence to adulthood in the Southwest and Western part of this diagram.


All of his books refer to this diagram, but it is more developed in his later books. Soulcraft, his first book, focuses on techniques to move past Stage 4 into Stage 5. The goal, if there is one, would be to eventually get to something like the following few passages:

The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It's not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift — your true self — is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs."
Plotkin, Bill. Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (p. 13).

SOUL INITIATION: EMBRACING YOUR
ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” the poet Mary Oliver asks.1 Soul initiation is the moment an answer wholly claims you. In that moment, you fully accept, deep in your bones, what Viktor Frankl calls your “own specific mission in life.” The answer takes the form of an image, an image burned into your soul before birth, an image in the presence of which your heart first opened, as Albert Camus put it. This image, this symbol, is the gods' way of sending you off to life with a destiny and a task, with a template of how to be in this lifetime. This image identifies the essence of your soul powers — your core abilities, knowledge, or values. It shows you the nature of the gift you were born to bring into the world. Before becoming conscious of this image, you might have an inchoate sense of your soul powers, but this will not support you in embodying your soul as effectively as the conscious recovery and embrace of your soul image. Once you have identified your soul powers, you must learn how to embody those powers within your specific culture, time, and place. Determining an effective form of embodiment and learning the necessary skills are more the ego's tasks than the soul's. The form of embodiment is the delivery system for your soul powers. The delivery system may be art, architecture, raising children, psychotherapy, gardening, teaching, politics, healing, poetry, or dance. The soul, however, is not deeply concerned with the nature of the delivery system, it just wants to know its true gift is being embodied beautifully and delivered effectively.
Plotkin, Bill. Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (p. 306).

ecological niche (eco-niche):
A person or thing’s unique place, role, or function in a particular ecosystem.

I refer to this sometimes as our psycho-ecological niche. By adding the “psycho,” I am highlighting that our human niche in the [more-than-human world](https://www.animas.org/glossary-to-lang ... than-human world) has an intrinsic psychological dimension. Our eco-niche is not just a matter of where we fit in the food chain. More important is what we bring to the evolution of the anima mundi, the soul of the world, the way we’re able to enhance and enrich the relational net made up of and shared by all living things. A distinguishing characteristic of our human eco-niche is something psychological or noetic: our particular mode of consciousness, namely our conscious self-awareness.

Here is a digital glossary of the terms with links between them:
https://www.animas.org/glossary-to-lang ... ul-canyon/
His terminology is used specifically for his system so some common meanings of words have specific (and sometimes different) meanings in his writings. Remember this before being dismissive (as I was in the past).

[7Wannabe5]

When I was in therapy in my late 30s, the way I came up with to think about this sort of thing was that there are 4 quadrants representing your adult feminine, adult masculine, juvenile masculine, and juvenile feminine energies. There is also a spirit animal assigned to each quadrant. For instance, mine would be the deer, the snowy owl, the monkey, and the bunny. When you are in a good or strong/fluid state, you can take on any of the qualities of any of your spirit animals in any combination towards your purpose(s.) When you are in not so good state, you can picture your spirit animals in distress. For instance, when I overtask myself with caring for others as opposed to myself, my "deer" becomes bloated and domesticated into the "cow", and when I used to allow my hyper-sexual "monkey" to take the lead, I would picture the "monkey" shoving the "bunny" into a back-pack.

Anyways, I read the first section of "Soulcraft" which I was able to download for free and found it quite interesting. It seems like his work might be a bit like sexual therapy in that it requires the mediation of fantasy and reality through various practices or exercises. Also, if you aren't open to the revelatory experience it's not going to "work" for you, whether it's time spent alone in the woods fasting or engaging in a trust drop with your partner.

Another thought I had was that maybe you don't so much have to go out into nature to do this if you are female, because it's more like you are already part of nature when you are doing something like breast-feeding your infant. I mean, those poor orphanage babies that were kept alone in cribs with propped up bottles might be the epitome of all that was wrong with the modern era.

[mountainFrugal]

When I was in therapy in my late 30s, the way I came up with to think about this sort of thing was that there are 4 quadrants representing your adult feminine, adult masculine, juvenile masculine, and juvenile feminine energies...

...Also, if you aren't open to the revelatory experience it's not going to "work" for you, whether it's time spent alone in the woods fasting or engaging in a trust drop with your partner...

...Another thought I had was that maybe you don't so much have to go out into nature to do this if you are female, because it's more like you are already part of nature when you are doing something like breast-feeding your infant.

Those are interesting observations of the different parts of your psyche and how they balance or dominate one another. I think you already have a great understanding (from my understanding, haha). Plotkin talks about these different parts being out of balance and goes into a great amount of detail in his Wild Mind book. Over-caring for others is one specific example of an imbalance with Northern archetypes (Loyal soldiers) at the expense of Southern archetypes (Wild and free). All of these are important parts of being a well formed mature adult. I think that being open to these types of experience is also spot on. Another example he uses is the "warrior" type who always has to save others or place effort outside themselves so they do not have to come to terms with being vulnerable to others. I think that any profound experiences can bring you closer to what it means to be human and an inseparable part of nature. Often for men and women in our current cultural state requires internal and external work developing against gender norms of society.

A few additional notes and ideas relevant to ERE:
Plotkin was trained in Western Psychology and has worked as a psychotherapist and academic with this field before doing his own searching and finding limitations to traditional Western techniques. He acknowledges that these still have their place, but they focus almost exclusively on fixing what part is broken rather than the human psyche as a system that operates within a natural world. Deep inner work towards figuring out who you are and the gifts that you can bring to the world are not at all part of Western Psychology. He and his colleagues have guided many (thousands) of people towards figuring this out within themselves and so they have a practical understanding of what does and does not work. It aligns with ERE/DIY/Individualism because it is up to the individual to put in the hard psychological work of confronting underdeveloped aspects internally and how one interacts externally with other humans. There is no single way as this is left up to the individual. This also makes all of his body of work pragmatic and not very dogmatic. (Pragmatic poetry anyone?). He makes the argument that because these "rights of passage" and other symbolic transitions into adulthood are basically gone in our contemporary society most of us (myself included) get stuck as adolescents. We are physically adults, but mentally we have not undergone a transition to find out who we really are. He argues this is why many come back to these questions later on through some sort of midlife crisis because the contemporary focus on career, money, status, consumerism, is a dead end street for spiritual development (obviously this is not a new idea around the ERE forums). His series of books deal with all of these aspects after working with thousands of people going through similar transitions. He has a large list of potential ways to deepen ecological and nature awareness and methods for finding your mythopoetic identity. All of these have been used in combination for folks to work through thier own situations, strengths, weaknesses, and balancing. A few ERE relevant examples being journaling, meditation, animal tracking and nature observation, ceremonial sweats and saunas, yoga, breath work, extreme physical exertion, fasting, wilderness exploration, artwork, poetry, etc.

I also find it interesting that he has found a way to include meditation and other contemplative spiritual practices across a wide swath of religions. These all have goals of broadening awareness for fellow humans, animals, and nature, but where they fall short is that the goal can become "let's all live in a blissed out state of being man" while nothing actually gets done (see hippy camp failures as examples). The missing piece is that these states need to be balanced with a deep sense of purpose for who you are and how you will serve the human and natural world.

Nearly all of his body of work (as far as I can tell) aligns well with ERE as a general philosophy, but could offer an individual spiritual based path of development that goes beyond. I suppose this could be thought of as a lego kit of spiritual development so you can swap pieces between kits as you need them to work on whatever is you need to work on.

[AnalyticalEngine]

This discussion about the different "parts" inside of you reminds me of Internal Family Systems, where you map out the different "parts" of yourself and try to find balance between them. This reminds me of @7W5's quadrant too, and IFS personally helped me do the work of finding my internal weaknesses. A bit of a tangent, but this idea of the self being made of parts is recurrent across disciplines, so it's interesting to see it here too.

I'll check out more of his work.

[7Wannabe5]

Over-caring for others is one specific example of an imbalance with Northern archetypes (Loyal soldiers) at the expense of Southern archetypes (Wild and free). All of these are important parts of being a well formed mature adult. I think that being open to these types of experience is also spot on. Another example he uses is the "warrior" type who always has to save others or place effort outside themselves so they do not have to come to terms with being vulnerable to others.

Right. A lot of people are bloated in their Caretake energy or locked in their Dominant energy, and this actually makes them more weak in their Wild and Free and curious juvenile masculine energy and their vulnerable aesthetic juvenile feminine energy. It's a vicious cycle. I actually haven't thought about this stuff for a while now after I did some very good work at mid-life. Funny note would be that joining this forum was actually an attempt to bolster up my relatively under-developed adult masculine Snowy Owl energy. I thought this would work because the Snowy Owl is the part of me that is more like a 5 (INTJ ish) than a 7 (ENTP ish.) I should have known that it wouldn't really work, because following a model is a weak form of development. What would work better would be putting myself into challenging situations where I am the human with the most adult masculine energy. For instance, when I am teaching kindergarten in a chaotic setting.

[mountainFrugal]

@analyticalengine I think Plotkin is fairly well read pulling techniques from all over so FTS would also be relevant.

@7w5 Now I understand your user name. Could also grow by having a well developed masculine energy human knowing that path help you grow. How to find one? I think this is one of Plotkins overall societal points... that because we have a lack of fully developed humans representing all these aspects at different stages of life it makes it difficult to level up. No (broken?) conveyor belt. A majority of his work focuses on getting people up to fully formed adults that know what their purpose is because that is the bottle neck right now. Most of us are stuck in adolescent ideas of the world of social comparison. Not that this is not important, it is just there is more!

My late DW transformed me from a stoic soldier to someone being able to be vulnerable. How to love AND how to be loved. There is a huge difference. I am grateful for the deep life lesson as it has allowed me to strengthen all of my relationships, not just romantic ones.

Main book topics that all have significant overlaps in content listed in order of publication:
Soul Craft - Adolescent to full adulthood (eco-psycho-spiritually speaking)
Nature and the Human Soul - Whole life development (Jacob's WL10 book suggestion)
Wild Mind - Balancing all the parts of yourself - common pitfalls discussed in contrasts and many examples (currently reading)
Journey of Soul Initiation - More or less an updated version of Soulcraft (have only skimmed, next on my reading list)

journey of soul initiation (JoSI):
The extended developmental process of searching for Soul, encountering Soul, and being shape-shifted by that encounter. JoSI takes you from the end of one particular life stage (the Oasis, ecocentric early Adolescence), across the passage of Confirmation into a second stage (the Cocoon, ecocentric late Adolescence), through the Cocoon and then across the next passage of Soul Initiation, which is the start of the life stage of the Wellspring (early Adulthood). Using a bigger lens, the journey of soul initiation could be understood as starting as early as conception or birth and ending with death.

[Bicycle7]

I just read Nature and The Human Soul and am now reading a lot of Ken Wilber's work. I read Integral Psychology by Wilber and am now about halfway through Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, also by Wilber.

Plotkin in Soulcraft I believe says something to the effect of that Wilber doesn't write about soul but rather is focused on spirit. (correct me if I'm wrong)

From what I have read, I would say this is somewhat correct. Where Plotkin is helping people find their true place in the world or niche or soul, Wilber is concerned about the evolution of the universe and individuals. Or put another way, human development in terms of cognition, morals, etc. In this respect, I have found Wilber and Plotkin to provide complementary approaches.

I could go on comparing and contrasting them. Plotkin speaks in beautiful metaphor where Wilber likes to stay concrete and abstract only sparingly using metaphor. Plotkin provides a circular model, whereas Wilber thinks horizontally (personality type) and vertically (spiral dynamics, human development). I have only noted the differences so far, they are also astonishingly similar for how differently the writing is presented, both are obviously talking about human development.

For me, Plotkin has helped me think more deeply about the space I would like to occupy in my community, how I want to make a difference. He also made me really excited to connect more deeply to nature this year, to explore myself through rewilding and contemplation. Wilber has made me more deeply understand reality, the idea of holons and human/cultural development.

[mountainFrugal]

I just read Nature and The Human Soul and am now reading a lot of Ken Wilber's work. I read Integral Psychology by Wilber and am now about halfway through Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, also by Wilber.

...Plotkin in Soulcraft I believe says something to the effect of that Wilber doesn't write about soul but rather is focused on spirit. (correct me if I'm wrong)...

In this respect, I have found Wilber and Plotkin to provide complementary approaches.

Thank you for bringing this up! I did not want to overwhelm the thread with a complete wall of text without some feedback!

I think this is correct that they are complimentary from my understanding. Plotkin includes Wilber and other spirit focused thinkers as additional tools, but more in service to soul. The other component I like about Plotkin is that he and his colleagues have mentored thousands of people through what he proposes. WIlber has never taken on disciples in a classical sense. This means something specific in spiritual traditions and he avoided it. This is both a strength and a weakness to Wilber's writings. Basically he has found a single truth for how his mind is wired by integrating many different spiritual traditions. Plotkin on the other hand, has many thousand data points for guiding people. Complementary but different both in approach, writings, and communication style. I think that it is easier for Plotkin to have a metaphorical tone to his writing because it is easier to capture a broader swath of (Western) human experience that way.

I am glad that you find both writers helpful in the practical aspects of your life. I do too.

[RoamingFrancis]

I feel I've successfully passed to Stage 5. The mythological archetype that used to resonate most was Luke Skywalker meeting Ben Kenobi and leaving Tatooine. Now it's the Twelve Labors of Hercules. Maybe it's time to take another glance at Nature and the Human Soul.

"Learning delivery systems for embodying soul in culture" - this is fucking HARD. Culture seems to be set up to just shuttle you into working at some insurance company. It's an uphill battle, and it's the battle I'm fighting now.

I'm interested in Internal Family Sytems as well - when I first started meditating I thought it was the end-all and be-all. Now I'm starting to see some unhealthy relationship habits that I think Western psychotherapy would be more effective at addressing - to reiterate Wilber, there's a difference between Waking Up and Cleaning Up.

[7Wannabe5]

Could also grow by having a well developed masculine energy human knowing that path help you grow. How to find one?

Eh, if I had a penny for every uber-assertive guy who tried to whip me into shape Just a few days ago, one of my friends was like "Why are you dithering around in grad school at age 57? Send me your resume and I will give it to somebody who will find you a professional job you can do while suffering from symptoms of Crohn's disease. Also, sell that damn falling down house you bought already!"

Anyways, I'm probably over-stating the problem. My behavior at a book sale was once described as "shark-like." Yet, I do have difficulties with tasks such as thinning out a tray of pansy seedlings or limiting my possible options towards greater focus. Maybe if I went out into the wilderness by myself and had to kill something in order to survive I might reform my ways.

My late DW transformed me from a stoic soldier to someone being able to be vulnerable. How to love AND how to be loved. There is a huge difference. I am grateful for the deep life lesson as it has allowed me to strengthen all of my relationships, not just romantic ones.

That's wonderful. You do come across as warm and empathetic in your writing voice.

[mountainFrugal]

"Learning delivery systems for embodying soul in culture" - this is fucking HARD. Culture seems to be set up to just shuttle you into working at some insurance company.

Survival dance vs. spiritual/soul dance. Work for insurance company for 5 years, save a ton, learn the ins/outs of the business and then devote part of ERE life towards helping others navigate the insurance world. Just to push you on the anti-work idea a bit.

Eh, if I had a penny for every uber-assertive guy who tried to whip me into shape...

Maybe if I went out into the wilderness by myself and had to kill something in order to survive I might reform my ways.

That's wonderful. You do come across as warm and empathetic in your writing voice.

I suppose under an ideal world that would not need to be a guy necessarily. Someone that could meet you where you are and push towards a new level, and not dominate decision making.

You can also have a profound experience by taking the life of any animal with your bare hands or a knife (if you have not done so personally). No need for wilderness immersion. Just think deeply about it and kill a chicken for dinner (GI issues aside).

Thank you for your comment. I try to be vulnerable, fully understanding and quick to admit when I am wrong in life and in writing.

[jacob]

So @RF asked me on another channel whether I thought "deep ecology" was still a goal to seek. In any case this is how I interpreted it. I'm strongly paraphrasing the original question, but my answer is currently no. I do no think that "returning to nature" is still a viable glide-path.

I see "deep ecology" as a desire to return to a proven system that worked for a human population of no more than a few hundred million at best while ignoring how we're now at ~8 billion humans strong. Fun exercise: Ask a random person how many humans we currently are. (Current answer is 7.93B). Depending on when anyone is born or keep in touch, their answer will range between 4B and 7B.

As such, I consider reintegrating with disintegrating natural systems to be a lost cause. Humanity will go from here and maybe make something better or something worse. Most importantly and in particular. Systems are not innately valuable just because they came from "evolution". Value can come from other generators, like involution. Having evolved (from evolution), physics and nature are still crucial. We're still sacks of meat and water. However, we also have enough awareness to potentially determine the destiny of our future environment. I do fear how we believe it's a simple matter of engineering. It probably isn't. We [humans] should not be too arrogant about this.

[mountainFrugal]

I see "deep ecology" as a desire to return to a proven system that worked for a human population of no more than a few hundred million at best while ignoring how we're now at ~8 billion humans strong.

As such, I consider reintegrating with disintegrating natural systems to be a lost cause. Humanity will go from here and maybe make something better or something worse. Most importantly and in particular. Systems are not innately valuable just because they came from "evolution". Value can come from other generators, like involution.

I think this is a good critique of "deep ecology". I am not (nor is Plotkin as far as I know) advocating for a position of we can all live like stone age hunter gathers again with the current population levels (for extreme ends of deep ecology see Anarcho-primitivism). I still think that there is value in deriving some sort of deeper connection as a human to the ecological services nature provides us, even if these are not going to last or are going to change in the near future. Deep ecology folks have part of the puzzle, but ignore other important facts. Thinking more broadly, I suppose that you could use the same techniques that Plotkin lays out to come up with ceremonies for any type of mystical associations including large modern engineering projects if your imagination wanted to go there. Either way it might be hard to see outside of that lens if you spend all of your time in that frame of reference. How to choose a roughly correct path?

[RoamingFrancis]

I agree with Jacob on deep ecology. Seems like the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. I do, however, think that a spiritual connection with the natural world is important. Seems like the following could be a good resource for expanding the discussion:

https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Ecolog ... 464&sr=8-1

I'm also reminded of Chris Ryan's work. He often says on podcasts that he doesn't think we should return to being hunter-gatherers, but that understanding pre-agricultural humanity is essential to build a better zoo. Sexual exclusivity and easy access to sugary foods, for example, are aspects of modern society that a prehistoric understanding could allow us to design away from. (Or at least approach with greater wisdom. I don't think there's anything wrong with monogamy per se.)

[jacob]

So to clarify or elaborate ... I've drunk the kool-aid of including humans into nature (or NATURE in integral ecology terms). This means nature is no longer trees and plants and animals but also what humans do in nature, like metals, cities, and---sigh---pollution (bumbling idiots such as our species are). Essentially, humans are part and parcel of nature on the planet now. The Anthropocene. Nature is no longer something separate from us that we can drive to and visit on weekends in our tents or pay $20/month to conserve or go to shoot selective members of other species. It's also not something we can study or ever return to as something that is apart from ourselves given our very very non-negligible impact anymore.

Being 8 billion strong, humans are now 1/3 of the mass of the entire mammalian biosphere. That's a lot. It's game changing. The way is forward because there's no going back anymore.

It's conceivable that we can collapse back (that would require a lot of death) and it's also conceivable that we can find a way to live with 8B humans (that would require a lot of cultural adaption) ... I don't think either is a given. Indeed, humanity might fail entirely at either or find a third way. Nothing is given. I'm not [insert idiom] with any approach yet. I still see this century as a navigational exercise.

Which comes back to ... "the spiritual connection to" what, who, what, or how? Right?

The stoics believed that spiritualism was about aligning your understanding and learning with nature or NATURE. They believed that humans were uniquely capable of this (this uniqueness may just be a matter of definition of what alignment is). An ecological understanding of planet earth can be included in this no problem. However, "deep ecology" seems to require looking back to pre-anthropocene times? Hmm... I should probably reread my Arne Naess.

[mountainFrugal]

These new discussion points reminds me of one of my favorite essays by William Cronon- The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature (1995) https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/T ... _Main.html

This, then, is the central paradox: wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural. If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall. The place where we are is the place where nature is not. If this is so—if by definition wilderness leaves no place for human beings, save perhaps as contemplative sojourners enjoying their leisurely reverie in God’s natural cathedral—then also by definition it can offer no solution to the environmental and other problems that confront us. To the extent that we celebrate wilderness as the measure with which we judge civilization, we reproduce the dualism that sets humanity and nature at opposite poles. We thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like.

Worse: to the extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead. We inhabit civilization while holding some part of ourselves—what we imagine to be the most precious part—aloof from its entanglements. We work our nine-to-five jobs in its institutions, we eat its food, we drive its cars (not least to reach the wilderness), we benefit from the intricate and all too invisible networks with which it shelters us, all the while pretending that these things are not an essential part of who we are. By imagining that our true home is in the wilderness, we forgive ourselves the homes we actually inhabit. In its flight from history, in its siren song of escape, in its reproduction of the dangerous dualism that sets human beings outside of nature—in all of these ways, wilderness poses a serious threat to responsible environmentalism at the end of the twentieth century.

[mountainFrugal]

Which comes back to ... "the spiritual connection to" what, who, what, or how? Right?

The stoics believed that spiritualism was about aligning your understanding and learning with nature or NATURE. They believed that humans were uniquely capable of this (this uniqueness may just be a matter of definition of what alignment is). An ecological understanding of planet earth can be included in this no problem. However, "deep ecology" seems to require looking back to pre-anthropocene times? Hmm... I should probably reread my Arne Naess.

I think all of these ideas are inline with my understanding of Plotkin's work. He has made a map that is nature based. It is circular to represent days, moons, years, life-cycle etc. He has developed other ideas towards getting people to realize they are not different or separate from nature as part of their journey to find soul. Plotkin states that he is making a nature based map of human development for contemporary western culture. This also includes an understanding of all the environmental degradation and pollution. I think some of the folks that read him or some of the other deep ecologists take it to mean that we must always and only look back.

[7Wannabe5]

Michael Pollan wrote about this in "Second Nature." How once we have cut the trail through the wilderness from which we observe the wilderness, it is no longer the wilderness. Therefore, we need to take on the responsibility of being good gardeners of the planet.

But, this is not unlike any other somewhat depressing or confusing post-modern realization. We can move past this and still observe the truth of how being in that which we refer to as the wilderness affects us psychologically and emotionally. I mean it seems elitist to cast the purpose of the wilderness as being provision of sublime human experience, but that is also the purpose of the garden or any other form of art. Moving towards a higher aesthetic, and growing in emotional depth through therapy, are some of the means by which we can continue to improve our lives without making further claims on limited material resources. IOW, how we might maintain GDP (as representation of overall happiness) and population but continuously lower the footprint from 1.7 at the margin, especially as we all become more urban. And especially with a service or experience such as nature therapy, the feedback loop would likely be very positive.

[jacob]

I agree with Jacob on deep ecology. Seems like the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. I do, however, think that a spiritual connection with the natural world is important.

Well, this is where I don't "get it". I often have this discussion with DW when out in nature (lower case n). She gets something out of it. I mostly get mosquito bites and a moderate concern about allergic reactions. In particular, I wonder whether the ecological wiring (humans are part of NATURE, all capitals) Plotkin talks about is innate or inherent?

IOW, can humanity (some phenotypes at least) evolve or devolve sufficiently far away from the ancient line that this connection to NATURE is literally decoupled. E.g. can humanity turn into a spacefaring species or would this require a different species or humans being fundamentally traumatized, broken, and permanently stunted. This is not my experience, but maybe I'm so "arrested" that I can't see it.

This is why I'd like to see what the "urban jungle" version looks like. My question hangs on whether there's an analogous version (isomorphic if you will) or whether such a version is impossible because humans are innately wired to be incompatible.

[theanimal]

IOW, can humanity (some phenotypes at least) evolve or devolve sufficiently far away from the ancient line that this connection to NATURE is literally decoupled. E.g. can humanity turn into a spacefaring species or would this require a different species or humans being fundamentally traumatized, broken, and permanently stunted. This is not my experience, but maybe I'm so "arrested" that I can't see it.

This is why I'd like to see what the "urban jungle" version looks like. My question hangs on whether there's an analogous version (isomorphic if you will) or whether such a version is impossible because humans are innately wired to be incompatible.

My understanding of Plotkin is that he says this is not possible on a wide scale and that the disconnection from nature leads to ill adjusted adults and the stunting of personal development. He isn't advocating for a return back to a more primitive life but that people still need to incorporate time outside in whatever capacity possible. For you this could be your garden or your time walking in the forest preserves.

Perhaps the lack of spiritual feeling is from being in dense urban areas for most of your life. From my own experience and the readings of others, the spiritual feelings increase the more time you are out and away from civilization. The first three days of any trip I still have the hang ups of civilization. The desire to meet deadlines, get things done, stupid anxieties and the like. After 3 days, all of that begins to melt away and the experience becomes more immersive. After 10 days or so, it's even more accelerated and I feel like I belong. This was most evident on my NOLS course when we spent 50 days out away from any people or roads. I've wanted to do a longer style trip like that since. Have you considred doing something similar? A self directed course/trip where you are out for more than 2 weeks?