{"id":10743,"date":"2022-11-16T08:04:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=10743"},"modified":"2022-11-07T13:46:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T18:46:43","slug":"healing-the-connection-between-people-and-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2022\/11\/16\/healing-the-connection-between-people-and-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Healing the Connection Between People and Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Portrait
Photo by Randy Thomae <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Jeanine Canty \u201992 sees connections: between people and nature, personal and collective. \u201cMy first semester at Colgate, a professor brought together Gandhi and ecology,\u201d Canty recalls. \u201cI was 18 and hardly understood his focus on \u2018interrelatedness,\u2019 but that planted a seed.\u201d It grew into a career of uncovering links between social and ecological issues through the lens of ecopsychology. Her new book, Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet<\/em>, equips readers to understand and begin to restore those links in their own lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEcopsychology looks at how people are disconnected from nature,\u201d Canty explains. She boils down the basic tenets: \u201cThe planet needs healing from climate change and destruction. People need healing from illness, violence, estrangement, addiction. Earth\u2019s suffering and people\u2019s suffering are directly connected. This all takes place in the context of a globalized, corporate consumer culture hyper-focused on individualism and pursuing wealth.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a guest teacher at several other schools, Canty had been writing, researching, and teaching ecopsychology for years before this book. Narcissism\u2019s role, however, was new to her. Early ecopsychology writers had connected the dots between narcissism and consumerism; Canty took this further by studying narcissism and concepts of \u201cself\u201d across academic research, philosophical traditions, and pop culture therapy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She learned that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is often linked with a childhood in which caregivers could not or would not create deep connections. \u201cDespite that, so many sources demonize narcissists,\u201d she says. \u201cTop literature recommends cutting ties with them.\u201d When you do, the person simply feeds on someone else\u2019s attention and energy. The cycle of harm continues. Due to this \u2014 and the growing number of people who exhibit narcissistic patterns \u2014 Canty believes narcissism should be addressed as a collective issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone’s a narcissist,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not about labeling anyone. It\u2019s not a finger-shaking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, it\u2019s an opportunity to realize that our suffering and the damage we\u2019ve inflicted on our planet stem from the same root \u2014 and the same practices can help us heal ourselves and the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her book, Canty provides a primer on narcissism before demonstrating how collective narcissism evolved from Western social structures that distance us from nature- and community-based traditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe globalized, corporate consumer culture conditions us to think in certain ways, to be self-focused yet insecure. \u2018How do I look? How do people see me?\u2019 All our time and attention go there,\u201d Canty explains. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost a deep connection with our inner life and the sense of deep community we need to be healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat makes it easier to see people and Earth\u2019s resources as disposable,\u201d she adds. \u201cTo not question systems that ignore human dignity.\u201d This is how our collective narcissism intertwines with large-scale social and environmental issues: poverty, mental illness, school shootings, political polarization, climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that we can heal by changing our collective ways of being in nature, in community, even in business. The last portion of Canty\u2019s book provides readers with what she calls \u201cpatterns and practices\u201d to help readers \u201cfeel whole, able to love who we are rather than who we think we need to project, and then extend compassion to people we perceive as \u2018other.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her new book, Jeanine Canty \u201992 explains the links between social and ecological issues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":10752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[425,1229,1230,86],"coauthors":[1231],"class_list":["post-10743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-discover","tag-ecology","tag-ecopsychology","tag-narcissism","tag-nature"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-2Nh","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/11\/Jeanine-NaropaFeature.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10743"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10896,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10743\/revisions\/10896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10743"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}