Return to the Eden Project

Posted by Robert de Vos on 29 October 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: James Hollis, Eden Project

I have been aware of this Eden concept drifting in and out of my consciousness for some time and find perhaps synchronicity in the article by Michael Crichton in that the relationship between ourselves and the planet is reaching another critical phase.   I found some interesting psychological aspects on the emotions linked to the mythical Eden and our motives in becoming more environmentally aware in James Hollis’s book “The Eden Project: in search of the Magical Other.”

As a Jungian analyst, Hollis’s book delves into the intricate and sometimes archetypal aspects of human relationships. I see similarities in our relationship with the planet.

After eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the fledgling human race develops consciousness and is split from Paradise. “Once the dream-time is truncated, the shock of separation is so systemic ... that it remains imprinted on the neurological pathways, abiding in the unconscious as lost connectedness”. In our childhood years if we are not held or reassured, “we may suffer anaclitic depression resulting in being more prone to mental and physiological retardation and to life-threatening illnesses, than those who are emotionally nourished”.

The parallel between the current Western social structure and this interpretation is striking. Oliver Robinson et al., in edition 100 of the Network Review, expressed similar opinions;

“There is a crisis in the social fabric, shown by the gradually decreasing level of trust and cohesion in the UK over the past 50 years. The uneven distribution of income across society is worse than at any time in history, with Britain being one of the most extreme cases in the developed world. There is also a psychological crisis, as rates of depression and anxiety continue to rise, while reported levels of well-being are in decline. Despite advances in recuperative medicine, physical health is declining as levels of obesity, diabetes, liver disease, alcohol abuse, heart disease, stroke, cancer and other lifestyle-related disorders increase, leading to intolerable demands on the NHS and other health systems.”

Hollis’s sub-title, in search of the Magical Other, perhaps evokes our innate need for nurturing from the planet and our inability to rationalize our fate, our mortality and the “great false idea that drives humankind, the fantasy of the Magical Other, the notion that there is one person out there who is right for us, will make our lives work ... meets those deepest needs, protect us from suffering and, if we are lucky, spare us the perilous journey of individuation.”

As Stuart Kauffman has pointed out in his recent book,Reinventing the Sacred, consciousness brings with it agency, meaning, and value. These qualities are real in the universe but cannot be predicted by reductionist science. Kauffman emphasises that evolution proceeds not only by natural selection but also by events which are inherently unpredictable and outside natural law. Our culture desperately needs to restore morality to a proper place in our communities and institutions but seems unlikely to do so unless science itself changes to allow a nonmaterial aspect as part of reality.

So why is there such enmity between science and alternative thinkers? Why is the middle road so unacceptable?

I would see the Return to Eden as an opportunity for science to express its creativity in sustainable development, architecture and engineering using new and exciting raw materials. Structures of previously impossible design made possible through software and innovative use of material; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatics_Centre_(London) there are vast new fields in cosmology and biology as a result of technological development.

Is it simply that science has sold out to corporate funders and doesn’t have the infrastructure of management to determine its own path and is it because, like the child who having been abused and “senses its powerlessness in the presence of the ubiquitous Other and wishes to survive, then its psyche will generate personality strategies based on the survival of the organism and the management of angst?”

Is this deep sense of almost primal emotion entwining humanity and a relationship with the planet just too unfathomable for the reductionist thinking of science?

I don’t see a problem in the elements of the discussion, only in the approach of some of the participants and the overarching influence of global capital, which till now has not yet seen a way to extract sufficient profit from the situation.

David Peake’s post regarding David Bohm’s concept of implicate and explicate order is now very relevant in that the unfolding of the intrinsic elements of the universe are now emerging into our reality at a rate which is increasing as explained by Keith Wakelam in a recent post and although this is not the first radical climate event in the planet’s history, it may be the only one where someone will be around to record it.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist master has described the situation very succinctly in his piece entitled Interbeing.

“There is a cloud floating on this sheet of paper that you are holding in your hand. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either; so the cloud and paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there. the forest cannot grow. In fact nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper; the paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too.

Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too, because when we look at a sheet of paper; the sheet of paper is part of our perception. So everything is in this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here - time, space, the Earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper.  “To be” is “to inter-be”. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.  As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe within it.

Robert de Vos, Cape Town, South Africa.

“The Eden Project-in search of the magical other.” 1998, Inner City Books. James Hollis.