The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, Ecopsychology, and the Crisis of Extinction: On Annihilating and Nurturing Other Beings, Relationships, and Ourselves.

Abstract

This study is an exploration of today's mass extinction of species and mass extinction of relationships: When species become extinct and ecosystems are destroyed, distinctive interrelationships are extinguished. Humans and nature are mutually impoverished. This crisis of consciousness and culture involves our exclusive identification as (supposedly) separate egoic subjects, dissociation of humans and nature, and anthropocentrism. An emerging psychocultural therapy may help us transcend such narcissistic alienation and realize our nondual intimacy with the rest of nature. The primacy of interrelating is explored via Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological ontology and Buddhist psychology. Direct experiences with nature interact in mutually enhancing ways with interpersonal relationships and sociocultural structures/discourses that value nature.We may thereby cultivate mutual intimacy, health, and justice in our intersubjective relationships with the natural world.