Ecological Disaster and The Unloved Child

When I look around at the ecological disaster we humans seem so intent on creating I can't help but wonder what is motivating this destructiveness. Why is it we are continuing to behave in ways that are destroying the resources we completely depend upon for our survival? Why is it that we ignore the evidence that tells us loud and clear that our current rate of population growth as well as our way of life is not sustainable. One doesn't have to be an expert or even particularly well informed to see that there is something very destructive going on and we are all responsible to varying degrees. Its apparent that the planet isn't actually being destroyed, in all likelihood it'll continue to exist, in some form or another long after we have rendered it unable to support our species, so maybe what we're actually doing is eradicating ourselves in an act of a mass species suicide. As a therapist of course suicideality is something I come across not infrequently, I've had my own brushes with suicidal feelings in the distant past, and have known people who have killed themselves as well as survivors of bereavement by suicide. There is a lot written elsewhere on the warning signs of suicide and the meaning of the act but there are certain risk factors all therapists are aware of when working with someone who contemplates suicide. A past history of attempts, having a family member or close friend who has committed suicide, a history of attempts using extreme or violent methods (hanging, stabbing, traffic or rail etc) all increase the risk, as does the presence of a sense of hopelessness about ones future, a generally depressed mindset (though I've also heard it said that its just as someone is slightly feeling a bit better than the severe depression which incapacitates a person entirely that the greatest risk of suicide occurs). So how do all these thoughts about suicide relate to our destruction of our precious resources? Are we suffering from a kind of ecological sociopathy and if so what is its aetiology? What about the idea of anger turned against the self, anger that rightly belongs at the feet of the people who created us, failed to love us adequately and brought us up not to feel the pain of their failures?

Suicide can be seen as the desperate act of the unloved child who, as a result of being unloved believes they are unlovable and knows that life without love is not only intolerable but simply impossible since unless a baby's parents love it it will die. Without their protection, care and nurturance basic physical survival is impossible. We all experienced parents who did not love us fully, did not cherish our deepest, truest selves but whether
consciously or not sought to mold us to fulfill their needs. The first word most babies hear when they arrive in the world after birth is 'Shhhh' after all! An attempt at soothing on one level but also basically an instruction to stop expressing their emotional response to a fairly extreme experience by any definition! In the absence of active encouragement to feel and express our emotional realities we are trained to deny what they are, that they exist and the significance of them from the get go. To cut off from our feelings and therefore our selves (for where does selfdom exist if not in what we feel ourselves to be?) may seem an inevitable part of being a human but we must ask ourselves at what cost do we habitually dissociate in this way? Not just the cost to ourselves as individuals which is obviously massive but looking around us, the cost to our planet and all its flora and fauna. Perhaps if we were able to feel all our feelings, heal the pain of being cut off from them at our parents behest and begin to exist as feeling beings we wouldn't feel so comfortable ignoring the cries of our planet and abusing its resources. Perhaps if we could evolve in this way we'd be able and willing to stop the inexorable rise in population, put an end to our wastefulness and our overwhelming addiction to consuming 'stuff' in order to blot out the painful void of emptiness that not being able to feel and be who we are inevitably leaves us with.