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THE NON-ECO EGO
I’ve decided to start posting some of my major essays. This
first one will be in five weekly parts, and concerns an analysis
of deep history and psychology in order to out a possible
non-eco psychology that could lie at the heart of our green
problems. I hope you enjoy the experience.
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I used to pull the legs off crane-fly.
Most children do at one time or another. It’s part of growing up. They see it as fun. But on the inside, we could possibly see it as a statement of the evolving man flexing his power over nature.
I don’t want to pull the legs off crane-fly anymore. I’ve grown up – realised an ecological conscience – and no longer see the crane-fly as something to subdue. But far too many of us still want to pull the legs off crane-fly.
However, it’s too childish for a grown man to go about doing this form of mutilation, and it doesn’t give an adult much of a power surge. So they do far better in their power struggle with nature. They try to destroy planet Earth itself.
There can be little doubt that the human race is now facing environmental problems of such importance that we are putting our life on Earth at risk. Such dangers are all around us. We are interfering with the food chain, tampering with the mutualistic influences of nature’s balance, and driving species out of existence.
We are heating the planet through man-made fossil combustion and turning the rivers and seas into infested rubbish bins. Even our ideas of individualism and globalisation are destructive both to planetary and human nature itself.
However, it is equally apparent that we are incapable of doing a great deal about it other than trite cosmetics. There is a state of mind within mankind that refuses to accept the reality of danger until it smacks us in the face.
On the surface, the reason for this problem is obvious. Man is ruled by the Ego, a strange element of consciousness that allows us to delude ourselves that we are correct in what we do, even though, in an environmental sense, we rarely are.
The science fiction writer A E Van Vogt identified the impulse for our general egoism when he coined the term, ‘right man’. He is a man fuelled with a need for self-esteem, and will deny truths to uphold the rightness of his beliefs.
Should his egoism be threatened he reverts to violence, such as pulling the legs off crane-fly, or trying to destroy the planet. Man cannot be put down. His pride will not allow it. And pride is egoistic. But could our Ego be the sole reason behind our ecological madness?
American writer Theodore Roszak was of the opinion that through our globalisation the Earth is suffering from City Pox . In our industrialised city culture we eat up our resources in the name of consumerism. In his book ‘Voice of the Earth’ he states:
‘The culture of cities has become the planet’s only culture, all others lingering on as curiosities preserved for scholarly study … ‘
But what does he say of the actual development of cities? ‘Now thoroughly rationalised as ”normal” the city dates back to the fantasies of megalomaniac pharaohs and conquering god-kings. It was born of delusions of grandeur, built by disciplined violence and dedicated to the ruthless regimentation of man and nature. The walls and towers, pyramids and ziggurats of ancient cities were declarations of a wishful biological independence from the natural environmental.’
Roszak has, I believe, provided the key to our ecological madness. In the above he highlights three vital elements concerning the city. First, it is through the city culture that our industrialisation and consumerism was born.
Second, the concept of the city was due to our Ego – our delusions of grandeur. And third, the city was conceived as a barrier between man and nature. The city, through which history itself manifested, links our present ecological madness directly to our Ego and our apparent need to distance ourselves from nature.
But if Roszak is correct, why is this so?
Shrouded in the veil of prehistory, the city first rose as man’s greatest achievement some 7,000 years ago as an organizational and spiritual centre of agricultural economy. Prior to such an economy, man was enslaved to his natural environment . But with the discovery of agriculture, man made one of his most significant advancements.
Man had learnt to adapt nature to fit in with HIS plans instead of simply adapting to survive. Suddenly he had learnt to turn the tables on nature; or at least, realised that such a thing was possible.
The enormity of this discovery was well appreciated. This fact is recorded in early mythologies, the most prevalent theme being the idea that man was unique to nature, finally symbolised in the Creation Myth of Genesis, where man was created separate and given lordship over nature.
However, it would have been a notion fraught with difficulties for nature would have constantly reminded man of his fragility – the bad harvest, the drought, and myriad other natural phenomena which would have brought his early civilisations near collapse.
But a notion, once instilled, is impossible to put at bay. So man developed his society and advanced into history. He devised the city. But nature had another little shock in store for him.
The city, in western terms, first manifested in the ‘fertile crescent’ of the eastern Mediterranean, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in modern day Iraq. The area was geographically perfect for such an outburst of civilization, in that it was fertile , flat and naturally irrigated.
However, the problem with such regions is that they are prone to flooding . Hence, even with his city, man became locked within an apparently vicious circle of conflict with nature, forever battling to retain his foothold with civilisation.
Indeed, it in widely accepted that the first form of large-scale construction involved the building of dams to hold back flood waters; and we simply have to look at the prevalence of flood-myths of the time and region – the Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek, Egyptian and, of course, the Biblical Flood – to see how almost apocalyptic fears of the power of flood impinged upon man’s psyche.
Try to picture the times.
Man had worked out that he was a cunning, ingenious animal. Something inside him told him that he had a greatness about him that could rise above nature. He had developed the city as a material representation of this might.
But still nature simply laughed at him and cut him down at a whim. Imagine being in a labyrinth. You know that, with a little reasoning, you can figure out how to escape, but you find yourself trapped, and suddenly you become anxious.
This was the lot of man at the time; a time, incidentally, when man developed religious representations of the very labyrinths I speak of. Perhaps, in the labyrinth, we see a psychological cry for help from a species, realising greatness, but approaching a form of madness in being unable to display, once and for all, such greatness.
He couldn’t understand that his attempts to rise above nature were nothing more than delusions of grandeur. Van Vogt recognised the psychological model for such delusions within his Right Man theory.
He noticed the prevalence of the syndrome within marriage. An apparently powerful man would marry, and the wife would become the target for his self-esteem. He would live as HE chose within the marriage, often being unfaithful, but would insist upon total loyalty from his wife.
He would try to subjugate her. And should any form of rebellion be displayed, he would beat her, forcing her back to submission. However, should the wife leave him, he is exposed for what he really is. The focal point of his self-esteem is gone and he becomes a psychological wreck.
The Right Man syndrome is so common that most people will know such a man. The syndrome is deeply embedded in the human race. And I suggest the syndrome is born from our original delusions as we tentatively rose out of the clutches of nature through the evolution of the city.
But in realising our greatness, we also birthed the insecurities to drive us on. We simply could not go back, so our bridgehead out of nature became a foundation made of quicksand. But we DID realise the route out of our increasing paranoia. The answer had always been there. As we shall see next week, man had only to look above his head.
© Anthony North, March 2009
There is a feeling among rationalists that the world is slowly going mad. The reason? The continuing growth of fundamentalist beliefs concerning Creationism. But what is at the root of this growing phenomenon?
And the sooner science accepts this and stops decrying the Creationist, the sooner there may be the return of a little commonsense in the debate – on both sides.
And the problem is also of paradigms. 
POLLY TICKS – On maybe tomorrow something will happen
Yes listen up, because this IS important. Well, to me anyway. This Sunday Scribblings prompt couldn’t be more timely. You see, I’ve been assessing where I’m going with this blog.
I want to expand them on this blog; the latter has decided me to begin editing and serialising many of my major essays and stories. I began this process this week. Initial instalments are linked below. Why not take a look?
ULRIKA AND THE ZONE – Fiction
We are so used to living in a material world, ruled by pragmatism, relying solely on the individual, and leaving knowledge to science alone, that we forget that more collective psychologies may have a bearing on our lives.
In their work on myths and archetypes, they identified specific personality traits that exist in myth. But more than this, they also appeared in our dreams.
I think they actually are eternal. 
