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...Friends of Natural Systems: the online, natural
relationship global health and education
...society and informal holistic-spirit nature
school.
 INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION
Special
NGO Consultant, United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNESCO)
Project
NatureConnect
The Friends of Natural
Systems Society Association
A public,
online, holistic, environmentally sound education society and
association for natural health and spirit that helps improve
personal and professional relationships at home, work or school.
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HELP INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS
PROTECT AND PRESERVE NATURAL SYSTEMS WITHIN US AND AROUND US.
LEARN TO USE A NATURE CONNECTING TOOL
THAT ENABLES US TO WALK OUR TALK.
Become a catalyst for personal, social
and environmental health and learning.
Enjoy and teach enabling nature sensitivity
activities that help people transform the hurtful ways of industrial
society associations into constructive relationships.
"Most of our populace
and all of our leaders are participating in a mass
hallucinatory fantasy in which:
- the megatons
of waste we dump in our rivers and bays are not poisoning the
water, our body or our spirit.
- the hydrocarbons
and chemicals we pump into the air are not changing the climate
or deteriorating our health.
- overfishing
is not depleting the oceans,
- living separately
from nature's grace and restorative powers does not reduce our
resilience or create lonliness and dysfunctions.
- fossil fuels
will never run out,
- wars that
kill masses of civilians are an appropriate way to keep our hands
on what's left,
- we are not
desperately overdrawn at the environmental or emotional bank
- and really,
the kids are all right."
..........Barbara Kingsolver.(edited)
"The human need for nature
is linked not just to the material exploitation of the environment
but also to the influence of the natural world on our emotional,
cognitive, aesthetic, and even spiritual development."
| |
Edward
O. Wilson
Harvard University
Pulitzer Prize Recipient (To the American Psychological Association
National Convention) |
PART ONE
Observations concerning the associations
of industrial society and their awareness of sensory relationships
with natural systems.
The percentage of our lifetime
that natural systems try to nurture and heal people physically,
emotionally and spiritually, as they do for all of nature.
.....100%
The average percentage of a
contemporary citizen's lifetime that is spent indoors, separated
from the supportive wholeness, grace and restorative powers of
natural systems.
.....95%
The average
number of developmental hours in nature-disconnected indoor study
that are required to obtain cultural literacy and a high school
diploma.
.....18,000 hours
The average
number of outdoor study hours with natural systems in people
and places that are required for a high school diploma:
.....0
The average percentage of a
contemporary citizen's thinking over their lifetime that is separated
from and not in tune with natural systems within and about them:
.....99.9%
The average number of hours
in a seventy year lifetime that our thinking is connected to
nature-disconnected cultural stories.
.....540,000
hours
On average, the number of hours
in a seventy year lifetime that our thinking may be in tune with
nature.
.....11.6
hours.
Terms used to describe the
state of mind that results from industrial society's extreme
estrangement from nature and the natural:
....."prejudice against nature"
....."nature bigotry"
....."bewildered "(wilderness-separated)
Terms used to describe the
type or depth of estrangement industrial society experiences
from natural systems:
....."addictive"
....."emotionally bonded"
....."habitually conditioned"
....".brainwashed"
Terms used to describe industrial
society's relationship with nature and its systems:
....."exploitive"
....."conquering"
....."abusive"
Terms used to describe a person's
mutually supportive relationship with nature or its systems:
....."nature-connected"
....."organic"
The estimated percentage of
the U.S. population who have had at least one beneficial or feel-good
"organic" experience in nature.
.....99%
The percentage of the U.S.
population who at some level recognize that we are part of nature,
that our basic ability to think, sense and feel is part of our
inborn inheritance from nature.
.....95%
The estimated percentage of
the U.S. population who at some level recognize that the separation
of our mind from the wholeness and recuperative powers of natural
systems leaves us with a mental void that is accompanied by frustrated,
disturbed or unbalanced thoughts and feelings.
.....95%
The estimated percentage of
the U.S. population who learn to disregard good experiences
with natural systems as an essential part of their well being.
.....99%
The percentage of U.S. population
who have used nature-connected education and counseling and have
enjoyed an increase in their well being (Visit this study).
.....97%
The percentage of Americans
who agree with the following observation made by Al Gore
and many others:
"We are dysfunctional
socially and environmentally because we are cut off and isolated
from the world of nature and the natural."
.....percentage
unknown
The percentage of Americans
who agree with the following observation made by Gregory Bateson
and many others:
"Our greatest problems
result from the difference between how people think and how nature
works."
.....percentage
unknown
CONCLUSION: Although we are
citizens of Planet Earth, to our loss, we omit the ways and wisdom
of natural systems from our consciousness and thinking. This
is as detrimental as losing our ability to reason, learn and
communicate in words, images and numbers. Prejudiciously, we
reject the latter as being"stupid" or "moronic,"
but we applaud the former as "normal."
A comedian might say that with
respect to nature the thinking in industrial society proves that
evolution CAN go in reverse.
Continue
to PART TWO (scroll
below)
|
Empower yourself.
Join Friends of Natural Systems
Enjoy the well-being produced
by learning to think and co-create organically with natural systems
within and about you.
Take a giant
step for reversing destructive dysfunctions in our psyche and
the suffering they cause. Enable yourself to make a difference
in industrial society
Take advantage of free personal
or professional holistic health education and job, internship,
career, funding opportunities and discounts that support the
wellness of all of life.
In our society, our loimited
ways of thinking result in the social and environmental disorders
that unnecessarily produce suffering. Learn how to help overcome the exploitative cultural
forces that, for a profit, reduce your ability to make happy, sustainable
social and environmental choices.
Friends
of Natural Systems supports natural health and spirit schools,
courses and individuals that help improve personal and professional
relationships. We are a free, online, holistic, environmentally
sound education oganization.
| SELECT HERE to become a member of Friends of Natural Systems Association |
Select here to enjoy a free Organic Psychology
(OP)* activity online.
* OP is an applied, organic, accredited
form of ecopsychology (Google) from Project NatureConnect
at the Institute
of Global Education.
|
PART TWO
Reconnecting With
the Web of Life
Michael J. Cohen
©1997
Proceedings of the 1997 International
Convention of the North American Association for Environmental
Education at the University of British Columbia.
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"Oh, what a catastrophe,
what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal
feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding
at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and
stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom,
we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected
it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."
- D. H. Lawrence
"By thoughtfully learning
how to become conscious of 53 hidden natural senses we reattach
our ability to love to its roots in nature. This restores love
to its fullness and heals our bleeding."
- Michael J. Cohen
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The unbalanced way we learn
to think in the nature conquering culture of industrial society
associations produces personal, social and environmental abusiveness
along with war. Although we despise these evils, they don't readily
change for, subconsciously, we have psychologically bonded to
the ideas and values that produce them. Without appropriately
addressing these destructive bonds we and Earth remain dangerously
unbalanced.
Biologically and psychologically
we are part of natural systems and vice versa. However, we learn
to live in physical and mental disconnection from nature and
its balanced ways. This severance from our inherent fulfillments
in nature produces a void in our psyche. It triggers cravings
that we must gratify artificially, no matter their ruinous effects.
Artificial fulfillments often color and distort our thinking
yet they provide rewards and fuel our economy. Unthoughtful development,
consumerism and disorders result. Despite excellent evidence
to the contrary, very few of us think that we can satisfy our
cravings by thoughtfully reconnecting to nature. Such denial
is typical of addiction.
As members of industrial society
and its associations, we have become so bewildered (wilderness
separated) that we try to resolve our problems using the same
nature disconnected thinking that produces them. The good news
is that a social invention has been researched that breaks this
psychological vicious circle.
Experts accurately portray
nature and the web of life by gathering a group of people in
a circle. Each person is asked to represent some part of nature,
a bird, soil, water, etc. A large ball of string then demonstrates
the interconnecting relationships between things in nature. For
example the bird eats insects so the string is passed from the
"bird person" to the "insect person." That
is their connection. The insect lives in a flower, so the string
is further unrolled across the circle to the "flower person."
Soon a web of string is formed interconnecting all members of
the group, including somebody representing a person.
Every part of the global life
community, from sub-atomic particles to weather systems, is part
of this lifeweb. Their webstring interconnectedness produces
nature's balanced integrity and prevents runaway disorders. Dramatically,
people pull back, sense, and enjoy how the string peacefully
unites, supports and interconnects them and all of life. Then
one strand of the web is cut signifying the loss of a species,
habitat or relationship. Sadly, the weakening effect on all is
noted. Another and another string is cut. Soon the web's integrity,
support and power disintegrates along with its spirit. Because
this reflects the reality of our lives, it triggers feelings
of hurt, despair and sadness in many activity participants. Earth
and its people increasingly suffer from "cut string"
disintegration, yet we continue to cut the strings.
Natural beings and systems
relate while in contact with the whole of the web through webstrings.
As part of nature, we are born with this ability. Pulitzer-Prize
winning sociobiologist Dr. Edward O. Wilson, of Harvard, affirms
that people have an inherent biological need to be in contact
with nature. He says Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual,
cognitive, and even spiritual satisfaction.
Recently, I asked some web
of life activity participants if they ever went into a natural
area and actually saw strings interconnecting things there. They
said no, that would be crazy. I responded, "If there are
no strings there, what then are the actual strands that hold
the natural community together in balance and diversity?"
It became very, very quiet.
Too quiet.
Are you quiet, too?
Pay close attention to this silence. It flags the missing link
in our troubled thinking, perception and relationships. The web
strings are a vital part of natural systems and survival, just
as real and important as the plants, animals and minerals that
they interconnect, including ourselves. The strings are as true
as 2 + 2 = 4, facts as genuine as thirst.
As part of nature and its systems
we are born with the natural ability to know webstrings but we
learn to neither recognize nor exercise this ability. Without
seeing, sensing or respecting the strings in natural systems
within and around us, we break, injure and ignore them (1). Their
disappearance produces a void, an uncomfortable psychological
emptiness in our lives that we constantly try to fill. We want,
and when we want there is never enough. We become greedy, stressed
and reckless while trying to artificially regain webstring fulfillment.
We place ourselves, others and Earth at risk for with respect
to the web of life there is no substitute for the real thing
(2).
With the exception of humanity,
no member of the lifeweb relates, interacts or thinks through
the webstring sense of verbal language. The natural system web
is a non-verbal, preliterate experience consisting of webstring
loves, not words that abstract, (meaning pull apart) (4). A bird's
love for food (hunger) is a webstring. So is the tree's attraction
to grow away from gravity and its roots attraction toward it.
The fawn's desire for its mother and  vice-versa
are webstrings. Every atom and its nucleus consists of, expresses
and relates through webstring attractions. All of nature, including
us, consists of these attractions. People inherently experience
those needed for our survival as 53 or more natural senses. As
we learn to ignore them, our webstrings end up hurt and frustrated
in our subconscious mind (11).
Today, newly researched nature
reconnecting activities enable people to sensuously bring webstrings
back into our lives (3). Their presence helps reinstate balanced
personal and environmental relationships (10).
Genuine webstring contacts
in natural areas help us sentiently reattach the strings within
us to their origins, the strings in the web of life (6). We feel,
enjoy and trust this thoughtful connection.
Webstring connection activities
also help people and associations in our society translate webstring
attraction feelings into verbal language and share them (9).
In this unifying way, our sensory connections with the web feelingly
express and validate themselves in conscious thoughts and words
that help us guide our reasoning and relationships (12). They
enable us to think like natural systems work. We enjoy nature's
balanced wisdom and restorative power as it enters our relationships.
Webstring support replaces destructive exploitation, competition
and greed, recovery occurs (7). The natural world, backyard or
backcountry, becomes a remarkable classroom, library and therapist
that we treasure (8). It helps us peacefully co-create a future
in balance with ourselves, each other and the global life community
(12).
|
Empower yourself.
Join Friends of Natural Systems
Enjoy the well-being produced
by learning to think and co-create organically with natural systems
within and about you.
Take a giant
step for reversing destructive dysfunctions in our psyche and
the suffering they cause. Enable yourself to make a difference
in industrial society
Take advantage of free personal
or professional holistic health education and job, internship,
career, funding opportunities and discounts that support the
wellness of all of life.
Our society and association's
limited ways of thinking result in the social and environmental
disorders that unnecessarily produce suffering. Learn how to help overcome the exploitative
cultural forces that, for a profit, reduce your ability to make
happy,
sustainable social and environmental choices.
Friends
of Natural Systems supports natural health and spirit schools,
courses and individuals that help improve personal and professional
relationships. We are a free, online, holistic, environmentally
sound education oganization.
| SELECT HERE to become a member of the Friends of Natural Systems Society |
Select here to enjoy a free Organic Psychology
(OP)* activity online.
* OP is an applied, organic, accredited
form of ecopsychology (Google) from Project NatureConnect
at the Institute
of Global Education.
|
References:
1. Cohen, 2000, Nature Connected Psychology:
creating moments that let Earth teach http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html
2. Cohen, 1997, Reconnecting
With Nature: Finding Wellness through restoring your bond with
the Earth, Ecopress, Corvallis, Oregon. http://www.ecopsych.com/newbook.html
3. Cohen, 1994, The Natural Systems
Thinking Process
http://www.ecopsych.com
4. Cohen 1995, Counseling and
Educating With Nature http://www.ecopsych.com/counseling.html
5. Cohen 1993, Well Mind, Well
Earth, Roche Harbor, WA, World Peace University Press
http://www.ecopsych.com/books.html
6. Kofalk, 1994 The Distinguished
World Citizen Award
http://www.ecopsych.com/overview.html
7. Cohen, 1996, Study and Survey
of Participants http://www.ecopsych.com/survey.html
8. Cohen, 1996 Nature Psychology
Courses and Degrees http://www.rockisland.com/~process/
9. Cohen, 1996 Psychological
Elements of Global Citizenship http://www.ecopsych.com/orient.html
10. Cohen, 1997, Journalized
Findings of Participants http://www.ecopsych.com/millecopstrand.html
11. Beyond Addicted Thinking:
do this activity. http://www.ecopsych.com/webstzbutton.html
12. Cohen, 1995, The Global Wellness
and Unity Activity http://www.ecopsych.com/amental.html
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