Besides the many diverse costs resulting from our environmental damage to nature, we are now beginning to suffer a loss of reputation. Under a new category of study called “ecopsychology”, thinkers from a wide range of disciplines have started an honest and penetrating examination of mechanisms guiding our collective behaviour. The resulting image of humanity is not flattering. Words such as “psychopathic” are appearing, along with invented derivatives such as “ecopathic”, “ecopath” and “ecopathy”.

Ecopathy is derived from two Greek words, oikos for “house” and pathy for “sickness”, “disease” or “suffering”. The word is sobering because it recognizes that the deteriorating ecological condition of our planet is the direct result of an indifference and negligence in our human behaviour that we seem incapable of correcting, even though we have known for decades what to do and how to do it. The medical term for this condition is a pathology. Continue reading →