Gregory Bateson, author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Photo courtesy of Barry Schwartz.

If we understand a little bit of what we’re doing, maybe it will help us to find our way out of the maze of hallucinations that we have created around ourselves.
~Gregory Bateson (Bateson, p.475)

Within the last decade, environmental concerns have seized public awareness to a previously unachieved degree. Growing public awareness of Earth’s environment is the one slender benefit of the imminent nature of the ecological crises facing our world’s population. Yet although awareness of the issues is crucial to solving them, it is only the first step toward greater ecological health, and the next step must be action. Before action, however, stands the perplexing question: “how?” Many individuals are eager, even desperate, to dive into the fray of the struggle to save our Earth, but even when a desirable course of action is clear (which is rare), how to achieve that goal is often unclear. What can be done to motivate individuals and societies to take action? How can we ensure that those actions are beneficial? One potential source of answers to today’s questions was proposed back in 1972. In that year, Gregory Bateson introduced a theory that proposed the need to change not just our actions, but our thoughts as well—to think about how we think. Bateson called this means of understanding ideas “ecology of mind.”

Ecology of mind as Bateson envisioned it, refers to an interdisciplinary approach to probing the way in which consciousness changes and forms patterns, both on a social and individual level. The purpose of such a study is analogous to the purpose of the study of biological ecology. Ecology of mind is based on the model of consciousness, or “mind ”, as being like an ecosystem, and ideas as being like the flora and fauna of this system. Like the plants and animals in a tangible ecosystem, ideas are then subject to evolution, extinction, or successful flourishing. In biological ecology, scientists strive to understand biological processes so that we can promote those we deem beneficial and avoid introducing destructive elements into the system. Bateson applied this same belief to his concept “ecology of mind”: if we wish to constructively shape the ideas produced by our society, then we must understand the processes by which ideas interact with one another and why some ideas thrive and others wither. As Bateson discussed in his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind, “science can give us something of a chart” to direct our course toward selected goals for social systems (Bateson, p.164).

South Platte River. Photo by E.C. Mulder, 2009

But for a movement to successfully take root in any society, individual as well as national character must be taken into account. Legislation and technology are limited in their capacity to address environmental issues; personal consciousness is deeply influential as well. Again, observing consciousness (“mind”) as an ecosystem provides an opportunity for guidance. As Bateson repeatedly emphasized in his works, no ecological system is completely closed. Think of a river flowing through a forest, or of pollutants carried by wind to high latitudes. Consciousness is not a closed system either.

The images, sounds, and emotions it is exposed to each day have a profound influence on the ideas already inhabiting that consciousness. Art, media, discussion, and education therefore become crucial in any attempt to rectify environmental wrongs. Attempts to steer information flow for any given purpose, however, run the dangerous risk of becoming pedagogical. Who is to decide precisely what the end should be?

Again, Bateson in his description of ecology of mind, provides guidance. Throughout Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Bateson reiterates the idea that rather than trying to shape nature we should first endeavor to learn about how it functions and how we function within it. We would “do well,” he remarks, “to hold back our eagerness to control that world which we so imperfectly understand….Rather, our studies could be inspired by a more ancient, but today less honored, motive: a curiosity about the world of which we are a part. The rewards of such work are not power, but beauty” (p. 269.) Bateson’s manner of approaching knowledge might equally be applied to our studies of social thought, too. Trying to inform ourselves of how we think for curiosity’s sake rather than a specific end will help us avoid trying too much to dictate what people believe. Meanwhile, the wisdom we accrue will help us to decide how the changes in attitude that we wish to see may best be achieved.

The final aspect of achieving change, social or personal, is the motive used to instigate change. Incorporating a new analogy, industrial waste and detritus from fallen leaves can both provide nutrients that allow plants to grow, but most people feel that one source is superior to the other. The same could be said of the form in which information is offered to our consciousness. Often, ecological information is offered to the public in the form of fear as the prime motivator. Descriptions of punishments that may result should inadequate action be taken are to provide our impetus. But there is another means of fertilizing our desire to shift our actions. Once again, we can turn to Bateson for inspiration.

…we might be kept on our toes by a nameless, shapeless,
unlocated hope of achievement….the achievement need scarcely
be defined. All we need to be sure of is that, at any moment,
achievement may be just around the corner. (pp.175-176)

The beauty of this belief, as Bateson points out, is that “true or false, this can never be tested.” For the future always remains unknown, and possibility is perpetually there. To carry Bateson’s recommendation one step further, hope is a superior motivator to fear because fear has limited efficacy. If fear is introduced in surplus, then it becomes overwhelming and action becomes difficult. With hope, there is no such limitation.

Re-planting Marsh Grass. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife

Quotations taken from the 1972 edition of Steps to an Ecology of Mind published by Chandler Publishing Company in New York. The book was re-issued in 2000 by the University of Chicago Press with a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson:

Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry,
Evolution, and Epistemology. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Biography

Gregory Bateson was born in 1904 in Granchester, England. He completed a bachelor’s degree in natural history (1925) and a master’s degree (1930) in anthropology at St. John’s of Cambridge University. During the 1930s, Bateson conducted anthropological research in New Britain and New Guinea. (The latter studies were carried out in conjunction with his first wife, Margaret Mead.) During his early research, Bateson began to conceptually explore the idea that analogies of form and pattern may exist between apparently diverse fields of thought. In the following years, Bateson continued to investigate relationships between fields, and his work ranged through psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, art, biology, cybernetics, and politics. Bateson’s career expanded to include teaching, lecturing, and publishing numerous books and articles in addition to conducting research. In 1972, Bateson drew from his lectures and papers of the previous three decades to compile Steps to an Ecology of Mind, and the result is a book that exemplifies how ideas can be approached in an interdisciplinary way and the relationship between varied areas of focus. Gregory Bateson continued to explore new ways of approaching science and thought until he died in 1980. He leaves behind a legacy of curiosity and intelligent inquiry.

For further information on Gregory Bateson and work:
The Institute for Intercultural Studies

Louv, Richard. Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005.

We all hear about global this and global that, what to recycle or not, and who should be responsible. This is almost non-stop from every sort of media available, which becomes mind numbing and, in a huge sense, scary. With all the information out there, Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods caught my attention. Louv presents not only a plethora of problems, but with some solid suggestions and plans for now and in our future. His suggestions are solutions even I could deal with and help resolve.

“Our society is teaching young people to avoid a direct experience in nature, either by turning summer camps into weight loss camps, computer camps and various other renamed camps that have little to do with nature,” Louv writes. A recent TV ad shows a family off on a vacation, supposedly to experience nature, as the kids in the SUV back seat flip down their video screens to watch a movie. “…As the young spend less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically and this reduces the richness of human experience… we need contact with nature.” (Emphasis Louv’s).

Louv characterizes at least five trends which should be of concern to this generation. Briefly, I will explain two: 1) Family farms are disappearing and young people no longer experience raising animals for butchering and growing vegetables for eating. They see food as shrink-wrapped or lab-produced.” 2) Biological absolutes are ending. Human genes are used to produce creatures called chimera. The world’s first human-sheep chimera was created in 2007. How will our children understand their natural world? What will be their definition of life? These trends show some of the ways childhood is being de-natured.

There are multiple causes of the de-natured childhood. “Countless communities have virtually outlawed unstructured outdoor play, often because of the threat of lawsuits”… and also “adults growing obsession with order,” Louv writes. In Pennsylvania, three brothers spent eight months and their own money to build a tree house in their backyard. The district council ordered the boys to tear it down because they had no building permit.

Governments make poor decisions about land use. For example: Each year 53,000 acres of land are developed in the Chesapeake Bay watershed; that’s about one acre every ten minutes. Louv cites the Alliance for Chesapeake Bay for this information.

The impact of over-development, the multiplication of park rules, increasing environmental and building regulations, and fears of litigation send a definite message to our children that playing outside in nature is no longer acceptable. Hence we have organized sports, manicured arenas etc. as the only acceptable outdoor recreations. As Louv so succinctly put it, “some kids don’t want to be organized all the time… they want to let their imaginations run; they want to see where a stream of water takes them.”

There are many studies emerging which Louv thoroughly documents. James Sallis is author of one; and he says, “The best predictor of pre-school children’s physical activity is simply being outdoors… an indoor sedentary childhood is linked to mental health problems.” In the U.S., outside “natural unstructured play from 1997 to 2003 declined by 50 percent.” In Scotland, researchers attached an electronic accelerometer to the waistband of 78 three-year-olds for a week. It was found that these “toddlers were physically active for only twenty minutes a day,” Louv writes. It becomes apparent that in the urbanizing world, the nature experience for children is “becoming a major casualty.” Louv calls this phenomenon, “nature-deficit disorder… and describes the human costs of alienation from nature. as diminished use of senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.” As the nature deficit grows, “another body of scientific evidence indicates that direct exposure to nature is essential for physical and emotional health.”

It is truly difficult being a parent in today’s world with so many demands on our time. Louv suggests a way to answer this challenge is to view nature as an antidote. It has been shown to reduce stress, improve physical health, develop a deeper sense of self, and improve creativity and a sense of play. These are the rewards that will be realized. To be disconnected from our natural world is a guarantee to reduce mental health as well as physical health.

Start with short hikes in the neighborhood, maybe collecting different kinds of leaves and interesting rocks. Sleep in the backyard in summer and observe the stars. Read about nature with your child. Louv suggests Kipling, Huckleberry Finn and the J.R.R. Tolkien books. Start a small vegetable garden that germinates quickly and can be eaten.

Louv also has a very good chapter that deals with the risks and fears our children face today and practical suggestions to reduce them. When children’s senses are reduced to only the visual sense by a TV or computer screen, their survival skills are reduced no matter what programs they have watched. He shows this by saying, “nature accentuates all the senses, and using all the senses is the first line of self-defense” for our children.

Louv encourages parents to read Rachel Carson, John Muir and Aldo Leopold to name a few, so they can relate these words of wisdom to their children. Talking about nature with children at an early age is so important.

Luov quotes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who is an environmental lawyer working with River keeper to help bring the Hudson River watershed back from a polluted grave. Kennedy states, “We’re part of nature… we have a role in nature. If we separate ourselves from that, we’re separating ourselves … from the things that tie us together.” He continues, “that destroying our rivers and oceans is to destroy our natural world. (nature) is what connects us, this is what connects humanity… it’s not the Internet, it’s the oceans.”

He also quotes Dr.Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard, who, in 1983, “developed the theory of multiple intelligences (by) proposing seven different intelligences.” More recently, he added “natural intelligence (nature smart) to his list.”

In the U.S. there are an increasing number of environmentally-based schools and the test results are “stunning” in all subject matters, Louv writes. There is a corresponding increase in GPAs, improvement in “problem solving, critical thinking and decision making.” Louv says “an environment-based education… will help students realize that school isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.” He encourages a partnership with religious organizations, scouting, business, art groups, etc, in order to realize the “most value in the education of our children.”

This book is filled with so much valuable information and has been thoroughly researched and documented. Louv shows us how our family, our neighborhood, our city can begin in seemingly small ways to improve natural health and in so doing begin to improve our planet earth.

How can we have a better world, a greener world, a cleaner and healthier world? We must start in our own backyards and teach our children to respect and love all of the world’s backyards. This book, Last Child in the Woods, helps show us the way.

Reviewed by Nancy Racette
Wichita, Kansas

A small disappointment comes in the closing chapter, An Alliance For Life, in which Wilson misses an opportunity to set aside differences and paint us a picture of what an allied Earth might resemble. Instead he lambastes the theory of Intelligent Design. Wilson claims that, “statured scientists…unanimously agree that the theory of Intelligent Design does not qualify as science.” Certainly, Wilson has rational and intuitive reasons for discrediting his own conception of Intelligent Design. Does he not see his life as a creative force through which beautiful work has been made with premeditated design? But scientific understanding of creativity and its role in unfolding the universal expansion is extremely limited-certainly too limited to dismiss intelligent design as a characteristic descriptor of the universe’s evolution. Other great scientists have been so mistaken; in the nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin and A.A. Michelson claimed all that remained for the physical sciences to discover was better precision.

Wilson closes The Creation by returning to his correspondence with the pastor, concluding that: “there remains the earthborn, yet transcendental, obligation we are both morally to share.” In fact, Wilson’s letter is not just to a Southern Baptist pastor, it is addressed to everyone. I highly recommend this thought-provoking read.

Paul Racette
Editor in Chief

Jared Diamond starts his book with a question from an acquaintance in New Guinea: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people have little cargo of our own.” Whether the cargo is wealth, power, good medicines or a long life, Diamond sets out to answer this question in a logical and analytical process and 440 pages later comes to some interesting and very thoughtful conclusions. His main thesis is that societies developed differently on different continents because of variations in the environment and not because of differences in human capabilities. Looking over 13000 years, “advances” in society have come through competition and the availability of seeds for civilization. When there were sufficient food surpluses, labor was freed for innovation, for organization and to support greater population densities and the need for written languages. But domesticable wild plants and animal species essential for the rise of agriculture were distributed unevenly over the continents. Thus centers of development varied over the world with advances in Mesopotamia, China and later Europe and North Africa.

By now, you are thinking this sounds like a classroom lecture series. The author then manages to slip in little factoids that strike the reader. He states (with some backup) that the Chinese were exploring South America before the Spanish knew of its existence. Another is that the Spanish overcame South America not by their armies of hundreds, but by the germs they brought with them (and to which they had developed immunity).

The basis of the book is that agriculture and domesticated animals (for power and transportation) created opportunities for denser civilizations. These, in turn, caused competition between societies (guns), the growth of and immunities to disease (germs) and creation of tools for manufacture and innovation (steel). The migration of these capabilities was uneven. It was easier for agriculture to move east-west through similar climates than north-south across temperate and tropical zones. Thus continents with an east-west orientation such as Asia developed more rapidly that those such as Africa or the Americas with a north-south axis. It was easier for societies to remain in competition and continue to advance if geographic barriers (as in Europe) suppress easy unification.

As a comment in the Afterword, the author begins to extend the discussion to corporations and their cultures. Here comments get sketchy, but it is not for the reader to forbid the author from creating an opportunity for a follow-on volume. This is a book worth reading. If it gets slow in the middle, jump a hundred pages, but don’t miss a full ride to the end

When it was suggested to me by Cleon Anderson, the 2005 President of the IEEE, to read “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman, my initial reaction was to think that I had already heard all that I needed to know about globalization. Fortunately, my curiosity and Cleon’s insistence got the better of me, and I bought the book at the outset of a trip from Denver to New Delhi. I couldn’t put it down for nearly the entire flight. I now readily concede relearning from Friedman’s book a great deal of what I thought I knew about the impending global techno-economic changes that lie ahead. “The World is Flat” is an important contribution to global social trend analysis in the early 21st century, and should be required reading for any technologically minded person living in the relative comfort of a first-world economy.

Building upon over a year of research into the economically exploding once-backwaters of India and China, Friedman relates in plain terms the degree to which telecommunications, political stability, and the relentless pursuit of a better lifestyle are creating previously unheard of opportunity in some of the most densely populated and heretofore underdeveloped cities in the world. Global investments in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Shanghai, and Beijing, along with outsourcing of “back room” information processing tasks and virtually all forms of manufacturing from the developed countries – specifically the U.S. and countries within Western Europe – have given rise to a historically unprecedented boom in building construction, employment, and migration from the surrounding rural areas. These information and manufacturing juggernauts continue to grab millions of moderate-wage jobs from the developed nations yet at the same time keep global inflation in check by providing low-cost services and goods. Flatness has also had its negative consequences, including the rise of loose-knit global organizations bent on destruction, for example, Al Qaida. It has also hastened environmental exploitation as the newly empowered populations vie for natural resources, especially building materials and fuel.

When will these techno-economic trends diminish? According to Friedman, they’ve only just begun. We live in an age when literally billions of impoverished people are becoming empowered as a result of the availability of cellular phones, the internet, cheap bandwidth, and the educational opportunities provided by many high-quality universities. Contrary to prevailing first-world attitudes, engineering seems to be the degree of choice for the many young upwardly mobile Indians and Chinese who are striving to live well and prosper. Do they know something that we in the first world might have forgotten?

Overall, I have to agree with Friedman that a flatter world is preferable to one with artificial socioeconomic barriers, and hope that we will continue to make decisions that engender flatness. On my way to Delhi a well-dressed info-tech savvy young Indian man with more than a few frequent flyer miles said to me “What a funny title for a book. The world isn’t flat!? I replied, “Oh yes it is – and you should thank your lucky stars.?