This is a question which seems so important to understanding our current context and dilemma that I usually make it far too complicated! I'm extremely grateful to various patient friends who have been generous enough to insist that I can get ever clearly. Here's another go!!
The scientists and researchers suggest that the universe evolved - roughly stated - with interacting quantum wierdness giving rise to more familiar physical and chemical processes. Their interactions led to biological processes, which, in turn, led to the complexity of ecology, atmosphere, and matter that we know today.
Ancient traditions also recognised an interplay of elements. Many Euroasian traditions name earth, fire, water and air, whilst in the East, fire, water, earth, metal and wood are commonly known, and African traditions reference stone, iron, fire, water and air.
20th century science recognises the interactions of atmosphere (air), biosphere (living things), hydrosphere (water), cryosophere (ice) and lithosphere (rock and soil).
Traditional cultures tend to see human well-being as part and parcel of this dynamic, whereas, for the last few millennia, “moderns” have chosen to behave as if we are separate from the world system, and we have developed an increasingly one-way, exploitative relationship with it, largely designed to increase individual and in-group well-being at the disregard or expense of other.
Which has led to a lot of remarkable human advances at an unprecedented cost to other cultures and lifeforms. Modern humans, more than any other species or process, have caused planetary disruption and systemic disequilibrium on a massive scale.
And, recently, we have begun to see a massive rise in symptoms of dis-equilibrium, dis-ease and dis-stress in human individuals and society.
We know that these are connected. But the question is whether humans are simply stressed by their lifestyle and increasingly toxic conditions, or whether this is part of systemic process? Does our impact on the planetary system cause feedback that we experience on levels other than those we can film or measure?
Are human psycho-emotional processes embroiled in the wider living systems of our planet in ways which would challenge the idea of our being separate and disconnected?
Well, back in the lab, the quantum scientists are grappling with the evidence that suggests that the inner processes of a human being effect subatomic activity. Over in biology, research is piling up that we are not the only species to have an inner life that shapes its understanding of environment, shaping its relationship and behaviour in the world. And in psychology, the neuroscientist is explaining “mind” as an “emergent phenomenon” arising from an individual’s embodied, felt awareness of the state of the system and environment around it.
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Elsewhere in the building, psychotherapists are recognising that trauma arises when a natural process designed to integrate and regulate a stressful experience is interrupted or blocked. They show how this somehow gets held physically and chemically in our bodies. Some now suggest that if we don’t recognise it for what it is - feedback from the system - we can only interpret it through past experiences of pain, distress and trauma. We are then most likely to respond or react seeking comfort in similar ways as before - which, in Modern society, we noted as “largely designed to increase individual and in-group well-being at the disregard or expense of other.”`
psych sphere
Psychosphere
Psychosphere -
Evolution never wastes a good idea…. what if evolution were “exploring” whether “self reflective consciousness” might be a good way to manage the remarkable complexity of homeostasis … the planetary system that keeps everything in balance?
If that were true, what might we expect if we were to ignore or discount the natural process seeking to regulate planetary equilibrium through alert sent energetically through the system - including living things?
Might we see human experiences of distress and imbalance increasing along with the external signals - more dissatisfaction and social unrest, more personal distress and lack of meaning and purpose, more anxiety and grief…
Which is exactly what is happening. Perhaps its time to re-examine our psycho-emotional experience in a new light? Perhaps there are other ways to be comfortable and comforted in the world without destroying it?
We seem to be beginning to see a remarkable interweaving of inner and outer experience at every level, not just humanity in collision with a world of unforgiving objects, but - in the words of one writer - “a communion of subjects” sharing information through inner felt-sense, at a level beneath the language we might later use to make sense to our human selves.
This would be the psychosphere - and until we begin to consider this we will continue to try to sooth ourselves through the familiar patterns of consumption, power and control that have become our familiar identity… and which are driving the disequilibrium. So the external indicators would get worse too….
Evolution never wastes a good idea. And it always drops the bad ones.
Until now there has been no need to pay great attention to the generative and sometimes ragged harmony of all these inner processes and identities rubbing up against each other. However, the inner processes and self sense upon which the dominating human culture depends inform a world view (and subsequent behaviour) that no longer attends to the rhythms and cadences of the wider world: human psyche is out of step and out of tune with the wider collective of this sentience: "psychosphere".