Odin Lysaker / From Ecological Grief to Ecological Love

Photo: Lars Verket

It is possible to think like a mountain, Aldo Leopold famously suggests in his seminal book A Sand County Almanac (Leopold 1949). In light of this observation, I ask: is it possible to love like a mountain or at least love the mountain—an inanimate (e.g., stones) part of the world? I propose that such love can be practiced. To explain how that can be done, I coin the concept of ecological love (Lysaker 2020b). In the following, I outline that term and relate it to the experience of ecological grief.

To many people, today’s ecological crisis creates a wide range of emotional experiences and reactions. In addition to ecological love, I have in mind so-called ecological anxiety (or, ecoanxiety), ecological grief (or, ecogrief), and ecological rage (or, ecorage). Some scholars also appeal to the idea solastalgia (Albrecht 2005). This is a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home in a sustainable world, yet the environment has been changed the extent to which one feels unfamiliar to respond emotionally to the ecocrisis. Solastalgia can echo, then, the homesickness in terms of alienation portrayed by Hartmut Rosa. Recently, in opposition to ecogrief, some scientists defend the notion of Anthropocene horror, which refers to “a sense of horror about the changing environment globally … giving a sense of threats that need not be anchored to any particular place, but which are both everywhere and anywhere” (Clarke 2020, 61). Further, some suggest using the notions flight shame (i.e., the discomfort because one’s energy-intense and climatically problematic consumption of flights) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while being exposed to, say, sea-levels rise at small, low-lying islands have been proposed as other adequate responses. It is disputed among researchers and others if these emotional states and reactions should be understood as well as officially acknowledged by health professions or not. This dispute is partly due to the diagnosis manuals that psychologists, psychiatrists, and other health professionals use. These manuals are collections of diagnoses of diseases and disabilities, and a guide for how health professionals should understand and treat these diagnoses.

In the above discourse, it seems to be at least two schools of thought. The first school of thought can be labeled the critical one (e.g., Madsen 2020). The term critical here refers to psychologist and other scholars arguing that concepts such as ecoanxiety, ecogrief, ecorage, and ecological love are invalid to address today’s ecocrisis in an efficient way (ibid.). Here, the psychological science is criticized for being too focused on individuals within a therapeutic-oriented culture. Further, the critical school of thought argues, the research field of ecopsychology and its assumed large-scale ambition to close the emotional gap between humans and nature cannot be fulfilled (ibid.). From this angle, it is also raised the issue if emotional responses to today’s environmental disaster are as motivating and mobilizing as the proponents of ecoanxiety, ecogrief, ecorage, and ecological love seem to suggest (ibid.). Rather, the ecological tragedy should be addressed in other and assumingly more constructive ways. One way to do so, is to look other places than human emotions. In this context, it should be noted that eco-anxiety is not (yet) a formal diagnosis according to the diagnosis manuals.

The other school of thought can be labeled the responsive one. One reason for doing so is that this outlook argues the opposite of the critical school of thought. Here, to be responsive welcome emotional experiences and responses as an adequate way to address the ecocrisis. Further, this school suggests that emotional reactions toward the ecocrisis can, and should, motivate to approach this problem in responsible ways. These emotional experiences include the above introduced ecoanxiety, ecogrief, ecorage, and ecological love, to only mention a few (e.g., Albrecht 2012; Cunsolo 2017; Cunsolo and Ellis 2018; Cunsolo et al. 2020). Here, it is often argued that because the ecological crisis can be scientifically studied, these emotional responses grow out of objective facts. Evolutionary psychology can explain these responses, then, by showing that when humans are in danger, the alarm system turns on to find ways to survive through our fight, flight, or freeze functions. In turn, the environmental tragedy can by some be experienced as a lack of control over one’s life conditions and prospects to live a good life. Also, since the danger of the ecological crisis is acute, and some people feel that politicians and governments do not respond to the ecocrisis fast enough and to the necessary degree, to act motivated by such emotional experiences can create meaning and orientation in times of loss of meaning or even apathy. Additionally, some scholars understand these emotional experiences and responses as a way to advance mental health, physical health, and community health while experiencing the negative impacts of the ecological crisis (e.g., Cunsolo 2017; Cunsolo and Ellis 2018; Cunsolo et al. 2020). This school also suggests that environmental-driven events (e.g., climate change, rising sea levels, heat waves, wildfire, extreme storms, and flooding) can significantly threaten mental health, physical health, and community health (Clayton, Manning, and Hodge 2014). In the latter case, it is assumed that emotional reactions toward the environmental crisis, are reactions and ways to tackle this crisis in more adequate ways, which even can be empirically studied. Even if these emotional states and reactions never will become part of the diagnosis manuals, they nonetheless can contribute to the achievement of the goal of bodily and public health, which partially can take place by expressing these emotions and act on the basis of them.

I suggest, therefore, that negative emotions, experiences, and responses can be transformed and transitioned into positively articulated as ecological love.

Though I find the above psychological research and discourse interesting and relevant, my focus is somewhat different. I here define and justify my concept of ecological love—which serves as the core of the present book. In doing that, I suggest a middle ground between the critical school of thought and the response school of thought. In line with the critical school of thought, I am critical toward the response school of thought due to its often too strong focus on negative emotions (e.g., ecoanxiety, ecogrief, and ecorage). Inspired by the response school of thought, however, I focus more on emotional experiences and responses than what is the typical approach of the critical school of thought. Yet, in contrast to the response school of thought, I do so in the sense of positive emotions, especially ecological love. I therefore agree to the thesis that various emotional responses to the ecocrisis are adequate since they are healthy. I also argue that ecological love and other positive emotions, experiences, and responses can motivate humans to become more morally responsible while attempting to tackle today’s environmental crisis.

I suggest, therefore, that negative emotions, experiences, and responses can be transformed and transitioned into positively articulated as ecological love. In the next step, such action and interaction can motivate us to be more engaged within the framework of ecological democracy. Let me admit there are some attempts at conceptualizing ideas which are similar my own notion of ecological love.

Edward O. Wilson, for instance, has formulated the biophilia hypothesis. According to him, biophilia can be defined as “our innate tendency to focus upon life and life-like forms and, in some instances, to affiliate with them emotionally” (Wilson 1984, 134). Glenn Albrecht, seemingly somewhat different from Wilson’s evolutionary and phylogenetic understanding of love, defines love in this context as follows: “the love of the totality of our place relationships and a willingness to accept, in solidarity and affiliation with others, the political responsibility for the health of the earth, our home” (Albrecht 2012, 72).

In contrast to these voices, I explore the idea of ecological love in Arne Johan Vetlesen and Andreas Weber. Though these approaches are somewhat different, I wish to show how Vetlesen and Weber can mutually supplement each other. I am particularly interested in what I interpret as their ecophenomenological approach to ecological love, which seems to echo my own account ecological democracy.

Before I move on to the presentation and discussion of Vetlesen’s and Weber’s standpoints, however, let me define my own concept of ecological love. In more detailed, to love ecologically indicates to potentially being emotionally attached to and encountering everything which exists (Lysaker 2020b). In light of how ecocrisis in the Anthropocene impacts the Earth system and is connected to the universe, I suggest that ecological love even should involve emotionally attachments and encountering related to the cosmos. In that case, I suggest that we can speak of cosmological love, as well.

To better understand what ecological love is, it is worthwhile addressing this concept ontologically, phenomenologically, and normatively. First, ontologically, as stated above, ecological love involves, affects, and engages with all of existence. I here draw on the ecocentric view on nature. Subsequently, ecological love both includes and moves beyond living organisms (e.g., humans, animals, and plants). To literally love in an ecological sense, we must open our arms and hearts even to inanimate co-habitants on Mother Earth and in the cosmos. Let me here add something I find as fundamental to ecological love: due to how all existing beings are interconnecting within the Earth system, not to forget how both biotic and biotic elements of the Earth system are, more or less, affected by the ecocrisis of the Anthropocene. Then, to practice ecological love cannot ontologically be based on only half of the picture regarding what nature is. That is one of the main reasons why ecological love involves all existence. On top of that, I base this term on the morality of the existential preconditions of vulnerability and dependency. These preconditions are the most fundamental ones. Also, they are shared by both human nature and nonhuman nature. In turn, by existing, humans and the more-than-human world are vulnerable to a wide range of events in the world, such as the effects of the ecological crisis. Furthermore, due to this vulnerability, all existing beings depend on other beings’ care and protection. Here, ecological love is key to look after the vulnerability and dependency of all existing beings.

On my reading, to the degree to which all existing beings are ontologically premised by these existential preconditions, they can experience vulnerability and dependency.

Second, phenomenologically, ecological love emotionally expresses humans’ care for the entire planet and the universe. In turn, this worldview is based on our ontologically conditioned embodiment, sensibility, and affectability. Also, by building further on Vetlesen understanding of existential preconditions, I underscore that not only humans qua bodily beings are sensuous and affectable, but even nonhumans. On my reading, to the degree to which all existing beings are ontologically premised by these existential preconditions, they can experience vulnerability and dependency. To illustrate, water, a so-called inanimate (i.e., dead) part of nature, can be experienced animistic. This point is, I believe, beautifully grasped by David Abram. According to him, “the most primordial level of sensuous, bodily experience, we find ourselves in an expressive, gesturing landscape, in a world that speaks” (Abram 1996, 82, original emphasis). Given that, he continues, human languages are “continually nourished by these other voices”, and it is “not by chance” that we use words like rush, splash, gush, or wash to describe water (ibid.). “Yet these are more than mere metaphors”, Abram suggests (ibid.). By looking closer, “the sound that unites all these words is that which the water itself chants as it flows”, say, between the banks of a river (ibid., emphasis added). In Abram’s view, language and communication is more than a psychological phenomenon. Additionally, it is “a sensuous, bodily activity born of carnal reciprocity and participation, then our discourse has surely been influenced by many gestures, sounds, and rhythms besides those of our single species” (ibid.). The implication of this that “if human language arises from the perceptual interplay between the body and the world, then this language “belongs” to the animate landscape as much as it “belongs” to ourselves” (ibid.). In my interpretation, this view perceives the water as more than an instrumental matter in terms of humans’ basic need to drink water to survive and thus to avoid polluting water. Rather, it is a way in which to safeguard the water’s own inner way of being in the world and how this expression of intimate nature can be experienced by humans as well as reciprocally engaged with. Due to the exposed vulnerability of the water while being polluted, humans and other parts of nature can, and should, ecologically love the water and thereby champion that pollution. Here, ecological love is a sensuous encountering between all existence, and not simply a human practice.

Odin Lysaker er filosof, forfatter, poet, og professor ved Universitetet i Agder. Klimaaksjonen takker for tillatelsen til å bringe dette utdraget!

Ecological Democracy offers an original, thought-provoking, and engaging treatment of why and how democracy should be re-imagined in reaction to today’s ecological crisis. The book explains that one need to re-imagine both the view on nature and democratic ideals within the same framework in the Anthropocene, the present geological epoch of human-made instability in the Earth system and its planetary boundaries. This book proposes unique and challenging readings of green political theory and its development of ecological democracy in the last four decades. (From the publishers note)