Joe, I agree that there is much to be done to invite the deep human capacity for awareness, or attunement, into our contemporary spectrum of responses through our relationship with the natural world. Certainly, as you suggest, evolutionary biology and psychology related research demonstrates that people’s biophilic response capacity is alive and well, though often buried beneath cultural influence. I study biophilic responses, based on Stephen R. Kellert’s work, and one of the nine biophilic values, known as the ‘symbolic response’ is, to my thinking, a capacity for expressing our relationship with nature through arts. This value also could be the portal through which to invite our ancient adaptive capacity through symbolic expressive forms such as visual arts, dance, music, and the like. I believe these ways are companionable, friendly, and inviting when compared to the current focus mostly on demanding cognitive awareness of the problem of human estrangement from the matrix of the biosphere. Certainly, I encourage my students to express their sense of and relationship with nature through all of the various expressive arts, writing included, of course.

Hi there,

I agree with both of your sentiments entirely. In a personal capacity I am very interested in ‘awareness’ in a spiritual sense, neurobiological sense and even the quantum mechanics of it all. But in a professional sense I am interested in creating social change through both global, local and community action. My research has found a very strong correlation between long-term social change and awareness/knowledge/social interconnectedness. Interesting, no? I am in the process of starting a nonprofit focussed solely on ‘marine awareness’ with the intended outcome to encourage marine conservation through local action. I think there is a shift in the way many nonprofits are going about business as they start to realise how important awareness really is in the equation. I would be interested in your thoughts on how we can develop the skills necessary to modulate awareness on a broader scale to, say, change perceptions about sustainability?