Nature and new media

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the readings this week, particularly Smith's article, Is There an Ecological Unconscious?  I read E. O. Wilson's book Consilience in 1999 and was deeply influenced by the message. I later read Biophilia and was captivated by the concept and fly bought into the idea that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems. To me this is pure logic, because after all how can we be separate from it when we are made of it?

So to come upon Smith article and read about the work of Albrecht, Bateson and Doherty was like a revelation to me.  I watched a TedTalk video of Albrecht (and made my husband watch it!) in which he further expounds on the concepts of solastalgia and soliphilia. Albrecht views solastalgia as a new form of psychoterratic disease, describing it as in a way as to lose solace in the loss of home environment, describing it as a feeling of "homesickness you have when you’re still at home”.  Soliphilia on the other hand is the love of the totality of our place relationships and a willingness to accept, the process to build life rather than destroy it. Albrecht is interested in relationships between environment, natural and human made and our human consciousness. 

Smith's article focuses on the work of people like Albrecht and Doherty who investigate the relationship between  the health of the natural world and the health of the human mind.  As we continue to develop the planet what impact is it having on our psychology?

The Wordle produced from the article made perfect sense to me highlighting words such as nature, psychology, ecological, ecospychology and health. The human race has contributed to the industrialization of the planet and thereby created the ecological challenges we face today, that continue to grow. Is there any doubt it might affect us detrimentally as it does the ecosystem?

It reminds of this video, sadly.

References:

Wilson, E. O. (1984) Biophilia. Harvard Press.

Wilson, E. O. (1998) Consilience : The Unity of Knowledge, Knopf.

Creative misunderstanding

In picking one of this week's readings to plug into a Wordle, I decided to throw a bit of a curve ball by going with the lyrics to Bjork's "Sacrifice" (Internet song lyric sites are notoriously unreliable, but these lyrics seemed to match what she was singing).  Here's what Wordle gave me:

Given the title Bjork chose for her 2011 album, Biophilia, I read the lyrics metaphorically—as a plea to humanity to reconnect with nature:

Build a bridge to her.

Initiate a touch

before it's too late.

Having played a bit with Wordle, I see it as a kind of typographic Rorschach test—you often see what you're looking for. "love Now," Bjork seems to be commanding us, and we reply "Yes, before it's too late!"

The punchline to my little foray into Bjork analysis came when I probed a bit further on the Internet, to maybe get a sense of what drew the quirky Icelandic singer to Edward O. Wilson's writings. I found this Q&A from 2011, in which Bjork admits she picked the title for the album without having a clear idea of what the word "Biophilia" meant. 

"My bad sense of English thought it was feeling up nature or something — Biofeelingup. When I read about it online some people were speculating about the name — I think they went to a dictionary and saw that it means “love of life” and — and I was like “Oops. OK, I can go with that.”