Themes from The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2024

The themes that have emerged for me from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024  are:

1. The earth is getting warmer and having negative consequences for the ecological balances which we humans have become accustomed to.
2. This climate warming is having negative consequences up to and ending in death for many living things.
3. A small group of under-supported scientists are studying what's happening and their findings are largely ignored or dismissed by the decision makers except in a few instances.
4. Science journalism is one way of informing and educating people about what is happening to them which is outside their level of awareness because the changes are insidious except when they culminate in catastrophic weather events.

Some observers have noted that because of these four things social anxiety and tension has risen contributing to political polarization and the rise of autocracies exemplified by the "strong man" leader who promises to "fix everything" and make people safe and more secure. This political solution is delusional because it doesn't address the underlying problem which is human caused climate change.

What will help? A correct diagnosis of the problem causing the rise in anxiety and plans that are effective in addressing the creation and maintenance of the problem. This requires cooperation, collaboration, and joint efforts around the planet. Isolation and nationalism will not help, but only maintain and increase the problem. There needs to be a shift from the emphasis on private wealth and profit to a sharing and creation of health giving commons. This is a huge shift in values especially in the richest country in the world, the US. What will bring this shift in values in the US population? The worsening of circumstances until people have to find a better way to live if they are to survive. And then a transformation into cooperative, collaborative, mutually satisfying democratic processes.

PS - The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 is the August 2024 selected read of the Allnonfiction Book Discussion Group. If you are interested in joining the Allnonfiction Book Discussion Group you can find more about it here.

Book Discussion - Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy - Bio-psycho-social-spiritual components of human functioning.

Bio-psycho-social-spiritual: the four components of human functioning.

After all, psychology is still a young field, just a little over a hundred years old. And the study of spirituality is even younger, after having been largely neglected by psychologists for many years. My hope is that this work contributes in some way to a more integrated approach to understanding and addressing the spiritual dimension in psychotherapy.

Kenneth I. Pargament PhD. Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred (Kindle Locations 55-57). Kindle Edition. 

Most psychotherapists since the 1970s have been trained in the bio-psyco-social model of human behavior. In the last twenty years “spiritual” has been added so now we have the bio-psycho-social-spiritual model.

All four components of the model explaining human functioning are important. Kenneth Pargament is one of the early pioneering psychologists exploring the spiritual in addition to the other three models.

There is an important distinction to be made between “religious” and “spiritual.” Religious refers to membership in an institution and an ethnocentric identity which involves membership, adherence to creedal beliefs, certain practices and traditions, and respect for expert leaders of the religion as well as for sacred texts.

Spiritual is one’s relationship with one’s Higher Power whatever the person considers their Higher Power to be.

Some people are religious but not spiritual. Some people are spiritual but not religious, and some people are both religious and spiritual.

Being spiritual does not require a belief in a god. In fact many atheists consider themselves spiritual in the sense that they believe in a transcendent reality greater than their own egos if only a belief in the rightness of atheism itself.

One of the important aspects of a psychotherapist’s activity is to try to understand the client’s view of the world. The three major spiritual questions are: why was I born, what is the purpose of my life, what happens when I die? Unless the psychotherapist understands how the client would answer or does answer these three major existential questions, the psychotherapist may not be able to be of much help to the person.

These three questions are not often explicitly stated and discussed, but as the psychotherapist comes to know the client’s story and the client’s situation, an empathic psychotherapist will have a good sense of how the client views themself and the world.

Opening up these questions for exploration and examination may be an important part of any helpful episode of psychotherapy.

Book discussion - Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy by Kenneth Pargament.

I am reading Kenneth Pargament's book, Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, and will be posting a series of articles on some of the ideas he discusses. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts as well.