Biophilia

from the Wikipedia article:

Whenever an explanation includes reference to the subconscious, I get wary. But I like the idea that weather is part of this phenomenon. What I don't get is the need to seek connection or 'affiliation'; such things are already available and present, all that is missing is awareness of them, easily restored by mere attention.

 

I agree 100% with the concept. To me its just obvious that everything is connected. But I'm not sure that wiki gives the credit to the right person though.

Its in all the shamanic belief systems, as well as Buddhism and Hinduism, and the idea goes back thousands of years.

 

The OED gives the following
biophilia, n.
†1. = hypochondria n. 2. Obs. rare.
1857 J. M. Galloway tr. G. H. G. Jahr Hartmann's Special Therapeutics: 3rd Vol. ii. i. 287 (heading) Hypochondria. Melancholia. Hypochondriaca. Biophilia... Descriptions of the disease.
2. Psychol. The biological drive towards self-preservation; love of life; (now chiefly Psychoanal.) this drive as an indicator of normal and healthy emotional and social development; opposed to necrophilia. Popularized in psychoanalytical use by Erich Fromm.
1892 D. H. Tuke Dict. Psychol. Med. I. 135/1 Biophilia, the instinct of self-preservation common to man and the lower animals.
1964 E. Fromm Heart of Man 13 That malignant form of destructiveness, necrophilia, which is a true love of death as opposed to biophilia which is the love of life.
1973 E. Fromm Anat. Human Destructiveness (1974) xii. 366 Biophilia.is understood to refer to a biologically normal impulse, while necrophilia is understood as a psycho-pathological phenomenon.
1992 Jrnl. Amer. Acad. Psychoanal. 20 233 Biophilia corresponds to necrophilia as its opposite.
2006 Guardian (Nexis) 30 May (Education section) 12 According to White, the behaviour of the over-45s is an indication that biophilia develops with age.

3. A love of or empathy with the natural world, esp. when seen as a human instinct.
1979 E. O. Wilson in N.Y. Times Bk. Rev. 14 Jan. 43/3 Our deepest needs stem from ancient and still poorly understood biological adaptations. Among them is biophilia: the rich, natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms.
1994 Sci. Amer. Apr. 21/1 Gould derided the biophilia theory, arguing that humans show as great a propensity for destruction of life as for preservation of it.
2006 M. Pollan Omnivore's Dilemma viii. 128 Our inclination toward grass, which has the force of a tropism, is frequently cited as a prime example of ‘biophilia’.

Ignoring the hypochondria. I liked the idea that it develops with age and wonder if this is why gardeners tend to be middle aged or older.

 

Does it though? When I was a yoof, I had such a strong conviction that everything, living or otherwise, is connected. Well, not connected, as that suggests separate things that are linked but distinct from each other, whereas my view was that everything is actually one thing, if that makes any sense.

I started to doubt that for a while as I got a bit older, but more recently, I kind of see it again.

 

While I always "helped" in the garden from earliest times, I didn't give much thought to the idea of everything being connected. until a lot older. Then I came across Jim Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis which made a great deal of sense to me.
For many years I've been of the opinion that every living thing interacts directly or indirectly with, thereby affecting, every other living thing.

 

[QUOTE="NigelJ, post: 808843, member: 10849]White, the behaviour of the over-45s is an indication that biophilia develops with age.[/QUOTE]
People in midlife have a better shot at carving out time for getting well into it, maybe.

 

Jenny

 

For me its not just about living things. Consider what makes it possible for us to even have this discussion. A very long time ago, in space, stuff exploded. The debris collected, and ultimately our solar system was formed. Earth is connected to the sun and the moon in the very real and physical sense that they're all bound by the same laws of physics including gravity. Everything that happens here on earth is to large extent influenced by the way the earth spins, its orbit around the sun, and the moon's orbit around us. Nothing would be living here at all if it wasn't for the sun, and the manner in which everything has evolved is so strongly influenced by the cycle of day and night, the seasons, and the tides. And everything living here is made out of the minerals that are here and powered by the energy from the sun (ok, animals are largely not solar powered, but plants are, and there's be no animals without plants to eat). So in the very real sense, everything is one thing.

If you think about the interdependencies between species and groups of species for a moment, its like a single machine. If there were only plants, they would struggle to survive without the micro-organisms that unlock nutrients in the soil to feed the plants. No fungi to break down lignin would mean dead wood would not rot. There'd be a gradual shift in the make up of the atmosphere towards pure oxygen, which would be toxic to plants. Conversely, if stuff was breaking down dead plant matter too rapidly, there'd be more carbon in gaseous form (I always get mixed up between CO2 and C2O but you know what I mean I'm sure), so again the atmosphere would become toxic to many species. The whole system is balanced. If it shifts too much one way or another, the thing causing the shift will be impeded by that shift, so that it balances up. Stuff is far too interconnected and interdependent to be a collection of separate things.

Or, to try another analogy. Consider a car engine. One could say that it consists of nuts and bolts and pipes and valves and pistons and bearings and all manner of other things, all connected to each other, but you'd never routinely think of it as anything other than an engine, a single thing.