At a time when environmental crises unfold around us with unprecedented speed and scale, it can feel as though we are unmoored, disconnected from both the natural world and from something essential within ourselves.
In this lecture, Michael Owen invites us to look beyond the familiar discourses of climate change, to confront deeper questions about the soul of the planet, and our collective interconnection between Earth’s fate and the human psyche.
Much has been written about the threat to civilisation from climate change and ecological collapse. However, the collective does not want to think the unthinkable — that this planet may be dying. But to think the unthinkable allows what does not have a home to find a home. Then it may not happen in the same way as it might have done. Perhaps.
We have run out of planet — a never-before-seen thing. A whole 1.7 planet’s worth. Her bones have been mined. The rocks can no longer breathe. Her waters can no longer dream. Her skin is scabrous with parking lots. And the Great Barrier Reef is dying.
The trees have nearly given up. The animals have done what they can. 9/11, the Global Financial Crisis, and Covid-19 have tried their best. Monotheism has abandoned the earth for heavenly rewards. Pathological optimism keeps us in an ecological coma. Indigenous peoples are now only 5% of the world’s population. Half the world’s people live in cities. And our relationship with beauty has been lost.
Jung said, “The world itself becomes a reflection of the psyche.” The psyche is also a reflection of the world. Our body is made from her body. And when she cannot breathe, we go on ventilators.
With Jung’s help, this lecture will touch on: the relationship between the health of the planet and the human body; monotheism as a planetary danger; and the Earth as the original Self — the “God-image within.”
Join us for this poetic and deeply reflective exploration of the interconnection between psyche and planet, at a time when ecological and global crises demand that we return to listening anew to the wisdom of the Earth.