Democracy: Playing with Words

“If words are symbols or metaphors, then our speaking is never neutral. Whenever we speak, we select linguistic symbols in order to evoke those particular meanings that will communicate our view or sense of reality. This nonneutrality of speech is what is in a broad sense characterizes its rhetorical quality.” Andy Fisher, Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life

I’m having a tongue in cheek look at democracy and how it works in many (though not all) countries around the world, and take a few terms, new and old, for a rhetorical spin.

This is how it works. The people (democracy) go out to choose who governs them (not how they are governed!). Often this is based on choosing between ideocracies organised around particracies. So democracy is given the choice of being ruled over by partisan ideocracies. There are many ways to find out who to vote for, mainly by an infocratic network. These infocracies (the media) often have certain allegiances to certain ideocracies and/or particracies. So don’t worry about biased propaganda, they know what they’re talking about.

Now since society is so large it has to be organised by bureaucracies where impersonal rules rule (and not personal people, i.e. democracy) .  Not only that but bureaucracy is informed by the “experts” and “professionals”, heretofore called the technocrats (who themselves can end up becoming entrapped by their own  rules if they’re not careful). The technocrats know best, and we should abide by what they say because their advice is objective and impartial (and impersonal, i.e. undemocratic). In fact perhaps we should just give up democracy, since government might be easier in the hands of those who know best.

Now floating around this democratic system are old vestiges of government, like monarchs, and aristocrats. Obviously since they have a long, inherited, line of experience stretching back generations they may have a clue as to what ruling means and how it should be done. And in some cases, according to some theocrats (old proto-types of the technocrats) these monarchs and aristocrats are ordained by God Himself. Surely we cannot argue against the will of God, right?

Behind all of the above lies this, plutocracy and econocracy. Even the dominant ideocracies are driven by ideas like “capitalism” and “economic growth” and “entrepreneurialism” and “consumerism”. The people with the most money rule, especially if they fund certain parties at election time. But what are they ruled by? Probably money and the making of it.

So after that, we may describe modern democracy as… a so-called democratic electorate (i.e. there’s some sort of universal suffrage) that defers government to a partisan ideocracy that is supported and attacked on all sides by an infocratic network, organised by a bureaucracy that is ruled over by a technocratic elite, influenced by a semi-redundant monarchic aristocracy and theocracy, and all of which is driven by greedy and ruthless plutocratic values.

But don’t fret, there are other “ocracies” that predate any of these, “living democracy” and “ecocracy”.

Living democracy– This is something which political constitutions and institutions cannot take into account. It is universal and happens wherever there are people, no matter the political structure that governs them. This is what we do in our everyday life, the choices we make, the activities we take part in. It is the sum total of human activity, from scratching our noses to signing peace treaties, taking the dogs for a walk to having a conference of world leaders. It’s how the mass of people act and interact, how we make decisions that can “ripple out” and influence others, whether those decisions are political or personal. It’s how humanity has been functioning and will always function with or without political structures.

Ecocracy– This one, like living democracy, isn’t easily institutionalised or constitutionalised because it is pre-institutional and pre-constitutional. It’s even pre-human and pre-democratic. It’s the sum total of all ecological and biological activity on the planet, it is what governs our lives. This includes human politics, because politics is a part of the activity of human organisms and human organisms are a part of the activity of the earth’s ecosystems.

Power might be organised in complex ways, with a “government” at its apex, but the source of that power is found in wider life of humanity and Gaia. These are the foundation of politics, that happens outside of ballot boxes – what power we have!

 

A Synthesis of Ecopsychology

Psychosynthesis Egg of Being or "egg diagram"

“I suggest, to begin, that Ecopsychology is best thought of as a project, in the sense of a large multifaceted undertaking. This makes room for a great number of perspectives and interests and rules out the idea that Ecopsychology will ever resemble a traditional discipline.” Andy Fisher, Radical Ecopsychology

 

 

“Nature is always trying to reestablish harmony, and within the psyche the principle of synthesis is dominant. Irreconcilable opposites do not exist. The task of therapy is to aid the individual in transforming the personality, and integrating apparent contradictions.” Roberto Assagioli, The Golden Mean of Roberto Assagioli

 

“In one of his letters Freud said, “I am interested only in the basement of the human being.” Psychosynthesis is interested in the whole building. We try to build an elevator which will allow a person access to every level of his personality. After all, a building with only a basement is very limited. We want to open up the terrace where you can sun-bathe or look at the stars. Our concern is the synthesis of all areas of the personality. That means Psychosynthesis is holistic, global and inclusive. It is not against psychoanalysis or even behavior modification but it insists that the needs for meaning, for higher values, for a spiritual life, are as real as biological or social needs.” Roberto Assagioli, The Golden Mean of Roberto Assagioli

 

“Growth is hard, regression is easy.” Ken Wilber

 

Ecopsychology is not defined by any one person, by any one discipline, by any one method. Put simply, it is a bridge between ecology and psychology and whatever comes after this is up to a psychologist’s or ecologist’s own “perspectives and interests”. The Earth Sanctuary, where I live and work, is made up of people who have experience with Psychosynthesis (among other things). It is through this, and other experiences, that we hope to approach Ecopsychology.

 

What can Psychosynthesis do for Ecopsychology? The principle of synthesis for a start. Although Psychosynthesis is perhaps not very different from some other schools of psychological thought (its inclusive nature in fact incorporates many ideas and practices into it) it tends to talk about synthesis, mainly the synthesis of the personality, where we find ourselves having to adapt our personality to suit our situations. Psychosynthesis takes the resulting “subpersonalities,” as it calls them (a similar concept in Gestalt Therapy talks of “creative adjustments”), and through recognising and integrating them they might be reconciled with the whole of the personality. One such subpersonality or creative adjustment may be the suppression of an ecological identity or ego. Many urban people are so submerged in a human environment that they have lost an ecological perspective which has usually been a natural and healthy part of human existence. If we are to live harmoniously with the planet then one psychological work is to reintegrate this wider, more-than-human, perspective as a part of us by seeing ourselves as a part of the more-than-human world.

 

One exercise in Psychosynthesis is to draw your personal life history from present to past, to get a sense of your development through your life, seeing it as a coherent process rather than just a string of random events. This same exercise may be done with how humans have appeared in the universe. In one book I have, called Thinking Like a Mountain, there are a few meditations that try to facilitate just this, guiding us through various images that link us back into the natural processes of cosmic and ecological evolution. After all, humans belong in this universe because its laws and evolution make us possible. James Lovelock also did his own synthesis on the Earth’s evolution, but more as a scientific exercise than a meditation, in The Ages of Gaia. These can help us to gain a perspective on the history of things and help us re-identify ourselves as a part of this history, synthesising our presence within the greater whole. With the current atmosphere of globalisation, human history is undergoing its own process of global synthesis, where we can look back and see the various stages we have gone through as a coherent process; from our evolution in and dispersal from Africa, and subsequent diversification, to our current reconnection across the globe. Psychosynthesis has tools to help us see that cosmic, ecological, human and personal evolutions are part of a coherent, synthesised, process.

 

In Ecopsychology there is a concept called the ecological unconscious, described as “the living record of cosmic evolution, tracing back to distant initial conditions in the history of time.” (Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth). The structure of it has been determined by the nature of our universe as well as the psychological evolution of our species and beyond to the start of life. The previous ideas about identifying with ecological and cosmic evolution can help us reconnect with the ecological unconscious within us. But we have to be careful that this reconnection to the “bigger picture” doesn’t mean regressing or becoming a mere product in its unfolding. We can, instead, be a positive contributing factor in our personal lives and as a species.

The ecological unconscious is something new to Psychosynthesis, its model of the human psyche, called the Egg of Being, describes several “types” or “aspects” of the unconscious but nothing explicitly ecological. So where does the ecological unconscious fit into the Egg of Being? At first, because of its description as something related to the deep evolutionary past of life and the universe, I thought that it could be in the lowest part of the lower unconscious (1) which can represent the individual psyche’s unconscious past or the physical body. Unfortunately this is still not a very whole picture, it still leaves the middle (present/emotional-intellectual) unconscious and especially the upper (future/spiritual/transpersonal) unconscious as somehow not related to what the ecological unconscious represents. Our choice then remains to either regress when connecting with the ecological unconscious or to detach from it when pursuing “higher” evolution. In either case it fragments the psyche, “dissecting” the Egg of Being.

Since the ecological unconscious is a developing model, there is room to look at in various ways as people define it as it best works for them. The Egg of Being model is quite versatile in that it doesn’t just have to represent an individual but also can be used to look at the psychological dynamics of various things, such as human groups. We can also use the Egg to look at the ecological unconscious and give it not only a deep aspect but also a higher aspect of spiritual or transpersonal evolution. This is made possible because the nature of the universe includes this potential within it, not as something imposed on it from “out there” in some spiritual dimension separate from our universe. Therefore humans represent a part of the unfolding potential of the universe, emerging within the living Earth just as a flower might, and also within the human psyche the ecological unconscious can be seen to somehow be “omnipresent” providing it with its structure and evolutionary potential.  The whole process of the psyche is embedded in the ecological unconscious. To put it into other terms, personal and human evolution of the past, present and future, are all a part of the universe’s own evolution. Our physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual evolution are contained within the greater picture of the universe’s evolutionary processes especially that of the living Earth’s, though it is by no means diminished for being so.

Psychology shouldn’t just be about therapy and healing, it should also be about how we open up to and develop our “higher” potential. Many people have worked with this in mind when working with Ecopsychology, sometimes calling it Transpersonal Ecopsychology or Econoetics, which you can find on the internet. Psychosynthesis can be one contribution to this, facilitating every level of our evolution and integrating that into the wider ecological evolution of our planet of which we are a part.

Further refence to Econoetics can be found as a three part series, which is part of some work done between myself and the author:

EcoNoetics- Part I http://earthsanctuary.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/673/

EcoNoetics- Part II http://earthsanctuary.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/econoetics-part-ii/

EcoNoetics- Part III http://earthsanctuary.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/econoetics-part-iii/