| Jean John
The Fall of Rome - A Life-Cycle Archetypal Perspective of Climate Change
The world we live in is threatened by climate change. Through our overuse of fossil fuels, we are unwittingly moving the planet head long into a global crisis with potentially catastrophic consequences. Within our lifetime –
will be impossible to avert massive impacts on the planet. Western civilization as we know it could collapse. We are like frogs in the warming water, oblivious to our imminent demise. Or we are quickly overwhelmed by the
Psychologically, our epoch of benign climate is about to end. Death is in the wings, and transformation has to happen. The breakdown of civilization was prophetically captured by W.H. Auden in his poem Fall of Rome. Th
polluted world spirals down into anarchy and betrayal. But rebirth is in the wings. While the Bruce MacLennan, PhD
Knowing Nature, or: Desperately Seeking Gretchen
Some say there were two historical Fausts, one a wise magus, the other a ruthless sorcerer. These archetypal twins provide a launching point for considering our contemporary relation to Nature. We begin with the birth o
world's animating force. Science emphasized the exterior over the interior, mechanism over soul, quantity over quality, and abstraction over sensuous reality. Nature, no longer a goddess, no longer the World Soul, becam
philosophers such as Goethe, who advocated an empathetic, participatory, and holistic natural science--his delicate empiricism. Since materialist science, technology, and economics have largely contributed to our ecolog
transvaluation of Nature. Isolated individuals can follow a path putting them into more spiritual (and soulful!) relation to Nature, but that will not solve the worldwide crisis. Rather, since the goal is the return (or reawakening
spirit and matter. Can Faust be redeemed?
Bruce MacLennan, PhD is an Associate Professor in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Dept. of Computer Science. He investigates the mind from the perspectives of both psychical and physical reality, and pursue
philosophy and psychology. His other research includes Neoplatonism and Goethean science, their relation to Jungian psychology, and how they can revitalize science. He has published papers on evolutionary Jungian p
Neoplatonism in science.Recently he taught Minds and Machines and Goethe, Faust, and Science.affected bird witnesses this demise, she sits patiently on her nest, in hope and expectation. The spirit of the reindeer heralds the
we be paralyzed and whither away beneath the heaviness of the fall? Or will we run gracefully and fleetingly with the reindeer, transformed by the climate of change that is now upon us?
Jean Johnis the director of the Psychesoma Center in Santa Barbara. She has a PhD in clinical psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and a MS in nutritional science from the University of Wisconsin. She teaches t
Institute. Jean has published articles on her work and lectured internationally and nationally. |