The National Institute on Mental Health, the lead U.S. federal agency for research on mental disorders, defines psychosis as “a collection of symptoms that affect the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality”… people “may have difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not.”
In Strawberry Fields, the Beatles said “nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about.” Bob Dylan said “what’s real and what is not” doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden.
But societal psychosis — widespread loss of contact with reality — is destroying our trust in science, in media, in government institutions, and in our neighbours. It is destroying our world.
What is real?
Not the cyber world. No human creation can endure. Cities, civilizations, nation states crumble into dust. But life itself has persisted, since our earliest microbial ancestors evolved four billion years ago in the depths of the oceans.
Life is reality. Our survival requires respect for, and restoration of, life.
This won’t be easy.
Portia Clark hosts Information Morning for Mainland Nova Scotia on CBC Radio One. She interviewed Becca Rowland, author of Bird Talk: Hilariously Accurate Ways to Identify Birds by the Sounds They Make, saying Becca “matches bird noises with funny real world sounds.” Red-breasted nuthatches sound like truck safety backup beeps.
Whoa.
“Bird noises” aren’t real when we’re immersed in the world of city sounds, cars and trucks. Don’t get run over! Far too much of the time, we’re immersed in the cyber reality of videos on our screens — two steps removed from nature, from life, from reality.
Disconnection from life creates great opportunities for scam artists. Politicians are particularly vulnerable. Build big now! Economic growth! Burn trees for electricity! Critical minerals! Pipelines! Carbon capture! Nuclear power!
To conceal the resultant destruction of nature, obedient bureaucrats crank out false narratives like the annual State of the Forests Report.
The Council of All Beings is a “communal ritual workshop in which participants step aside from their human identity and speak on behalf of other life-forms,” developed by Joanna Macy, who passed away recently. Read her autobiography, Widening Circles.
At a recent Sierra Club retreat at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre (IJC) in Guelph, ON, I joined a Council of All Beings as a white pine. told the other participants that the Algonquins were setting low-intensity fires that created space for my children, but the English came and chopped us down to make masts for their warships.
The Jesuits played a central role in colonizing North America. Their relationships with Indigenous peoples they sought to convert to Christianity were fraught. But now IJC is “committed to deep truth, healing and compassion in the work towards reconciliation.”
IJC is reconciling with Mother Earth on 600 acres of forests, fields, wetlands, and farmland. An old growth forest project aims to return a 93-acre section of the land to its natural state over the next 500 years. Brook trout have returned to Marden Creek thanks to the Ignatius Dam Removal Project. Planted trees have “resurrected” a quarry from which building materials were extracted to build the Centre. An extensive IJC trail network provides “access to the natural landscape and opportunities for fresh air, exercise, and quiet reflection.”
In his introduction to When God Was a Bird, religious scholar Mark I. Wallace asks, “In a time of rapid climate change and species extinction, what role have the world’s religions played in ameliorating, or causing, the crisis we now face?” He says that Christianity — the dominant religion of the colonists — “bears a disproportionate burden for creating humankind’s exploitative attitudes toward nature.” Yet, like all religions, Christianity has its roots in love of the Earth. Wallace says that the Holy Spirit is air, water, fire, and earth. It descended as a dove during the baptism of Jesus.
Reverence, respect, reconciliation, restoration, reciprocity, and rights — these can build a new relationship between people and nature. This is our true, nation-building work. Canada must lead the way. We can overcome the curse of societal psychosis.
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