On Environmental Powerlessness

When confronted with so many examples of deterioration in our ecosystems, "not thinking about it because I can't do anything about it" is a common response.  Acid rain, deforestation, extinction of species, sullying of habitats, you name it - there's enough environmental despair to go around.

Teacher and Scholar Joanna Macy has some interesting thoughts on this "just ignore it" reaction:

Logically, this is a non sequitur: it confuses what can be thought with what can be done.  When forces are seen as so vast that they cannot be consciously contemplated or seriously discussed, we are doubly victimized; we are impeded in thought as well as action.

 Resistance to painful information on the grounds that we cannot '
doanything about it' springs less from actual powerlessness--as a measure of our capacity to effect change--than from the fear of experiencing powerlessness."  -- J. Macy, "Working Through Environmental Despair"

 Bringing Nature's elements into our living and work spaces using Honey Bee ecoBowls can be empowering and nurturing. Living among and benefiting from Nature's elements can also remind us of the pain of the world, of ways we can help relieve that pain, and, sometimes, of ways we can't. The vastness of our planet is humbling, as is the sheer magnitude of destruction it is experiencing.

 

But unless we are willing to listen to the earth, and be touched by Nature's beauty and life-supporting energies, how can we find our way through environmental despair to a place of willingness to take actions, however insignificant they might seem, to relieve the suffering of the planet that so kindly holds us to her side?