The Love of Nature and the End of the World
Subtitle: The Unspoken Dimensions of Environmental Concern
Edition: 1st edition
Publisher: The MIT Press; MIT Press
Published: December 1, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 226
ISBN-13: 9780262140768
Subjects: Environmentalist thought & ideology; Psychology; Philosophy Of Science; Nature; Environmental Studies; Environmental Conservation & Protection - General; Environmental Engineering & Technology; Ethics & Moral Philosophy; Science / Environmental Science; Ecology; General; Environmental degradation; Human Ecology; Philosophy; Psychological aspects
First sentence: This book has its starting point in a persistent question: How can the public mind relegate matters of the environment, which is the ground of our whole lives, to the periphery of concern, as though they were the private interest of a group called "environmentalists"?
Description: "The Love of Nature and the End of the World is a gathering of meditation and collages. Its evocations of our emotional attachment to the natural world and the emotional impact of the environmental deterioration are meant to encourage individual and collective reflection on a difficult dilemma. Nicholsen draws on work in environmental philosophy and ecopsychology; the writings of psychoanalytic thinkers such as Wilfred Bion, Donald Meltzer, and D.W. Winnicott; and ideas from Buddhist and Sufi traditions.

She shows how our emotional responses to the vulnerabilities of the natural world range from intense caring and compassion, through grief and outrage, to diffuse depression. Individual chapters focus on silence and the process whereby we move from the unspoken to the spoken.

The love of nature, the "perceptual reciprocity" with the natural world to which we might mature, beauty in the human and natural realms, the psychological impact of the destruction of the natural world, and reflections on the future."--BOOK JACKET.