Jeanine M. Canty - Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet

Within this moment, I am writing in a rainstorma wall of water, complete with thunder and unseen lightning. This moment culminates the writing of this book, a multiyear inquiry of both passion and concern. I adore the words of the author Tyson Yunkaporta:

What I will say will still be subjective and fragmentary, of course, and five minutes after it is written it will already be out-of-datea problem common to all printed texts. The real knowledge will keep moving in lands and peoples, and Ill move on with it. Youll move on too.

When taking my courses, often my students will comment on the publication dates of some of our texts, stretching back decades, yet the content is so relevant to this moment. Unfortunately, our ecological crises are not going out of date, yet I am envisioning a time when they willa time when we have moved into deep healing and change, when we have collectively moved on to lifestyles that repattern back into relationship with the land and all sentient beings.

In the weeks leading up to this moment, the heat and drought too-often present in the western United States caught up to the community I live in, in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado, marked by high dry grasses, stifling heat, and pending fears of wildfires. I have lived out West for almost three decades and have become accustomed to the dryness of midsummer and the eventual coming of the rains. Yet for several summers this pattern has broken, with the rains sometimes forsaking us and the late summer and fall bringing treacherous fires. Perhaps most discouraging, the beautiful mountain air has been replaced with daily ozone warnings to stay indoors. The current pairings of fires, floods, pandemics, climate refugees, homelessness, poverty, fossil fuel pollution, and unbridled inequities often make us feel that Earth has finally forsaken usshe has decided to finally leave the abusive relationship she has been in with us for decades, or even centuries.

This book examines our growing collective narcissism and the damage we have been doing to Earth, which includes ourselves and fellow humans. The seeds for this inquiry were planted from a difficult romantic relationship I had with a narcissist. Many wise teachers see our difficulties as entry points for new learning and eventual healing. Looking at individual narcissism, I noticed how it mirrored the collective narcissism we are engaging in and the damage it is inflicting on the Earth. Over time I came to the insight that by limiting narcissism to a personal problem, we are not looking at our larger and quite ominous issues.

Tragic optimism is a term coined by the Holocaust survivor and existential-humanistic psychologist Viktor Frankl, and it embodies our ability to look for meaning during times of immense collective suffering. It is not wishing for something better to manifest without our effort; rather, it is our ability to stay with the suffering in order to learn its lesson. Waking up to the sobering realities of our ecological crisis and the ways in which our individual and collective narcissism have bred this allows us to embark on a search for not only meaning but healing.

This book is dedicated to Earth and all her beloveds, each and every sentient being. May we remember that we are family, unraveling our dysfunctions, and renewing our bonds.