Lori Pye, Ph.D.
February 9, 2024 | 7:00-9:00 pm MST | Via Zoom
Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5658270584
Fee: $30 for nonmembers, free for members
It matters what ideas we use to think other ideas (with). – Marilyn Strathern
It matters what image we use to imagine other images (with).
Problems we face in the world today, from climate disruptions to the destruction caused by ecocide, culturecide, and genocide, are not new. These interrelated problems stem from unexamined narratives and their practices – from human psychology. Narrative entanglements such as purism-supremacism-individualism-exceptionalism form a rigidified psychic stance and their behavior and practices are deadly for the cultural ecology. This talk will focus on the narrative thread of human exceptionalism.
My image for unexamined narratives or what Jung might consider a ‘complex’- emotionally charged group of ideas and/or images - is an assemblage of barnacles on a rock. When young, barnacles swim in the ocean, seeking a rock to cement themselves in place. One cannot pry a barnacle off the rock, so you might think that barnacles don’t move, but they can, and they do – by attaching themselves to a completely different animal.
Barnacle behavior is like an exceptionalism narrative seeking a place in the psyche to cement itself. If left unexamined, the narrative, like a barnacle, becomes parasitic. We then take our barnacle (unexamined narrative) into the cultural waters, inducing the cultural ecosystem with our rigid, life-taking narrative, behavior, and practice. It does not take long for more barnacles to assemble and form what one might call a ‘cultural complex.’
In our time together, we will follow this eco-psychological metaphor to explore how one learns a narrative of human exceptionalism, how it becomes attached to a cultural ecosystem, how it protects and is protected by the cultural ecosystem (defense processes), and what it takes to move the barnacle off the rock or reconfigure the narrative into an altogether different animal.
Dr. Pye is a Founder and President of Viridis Graduate Institute (Ecological Psychology & Environmental Humanities - viridis.edu). As an executive director for international marine nonprofits, Dr. Pye worked with numerous NGOs to co-develop the Eastern Tropical Pacific Biological Seascape Corridor with the Ministers of the Environment from Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador.
Dr. Pye has multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals and serves on the Editorial Board for Ecopsychology Journal. Dr. Pye lectures at Viridis Graduate Institute, and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). She formerly taught at Pacifica Graduate Institute (clinical psychology, counseling psychology, depth psychology, and mythological studies programs), and at Kaweah Delta Mental Health Hospital Psychiatric Residency Program. Forthcoming textbook: Fundamentals of Ecological Psychology, Routledge.