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S2E35 TRANSCRIPT----more----Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca 

Mark: And I’m Mark

Yucca: and this week we have a topic that has been inspired by many different directions, but particularly by an email that one of our wonderful listeners sent in and we're going to be talking about misanthropy. Climate grief and our relationship with all of that 

Mark: Right. This is something that many of us really struggle with. The idea that humans are a problem or that we're we're a virus that's devouring the earth, or that there's something inherently bad about us. 

Yucca: We're cancer. 

Mark: Yeah, that were, that were metastasizing all over the earth and that it's, it's it's killing what we love.

And the challenge in confronting this of course, is that if you choose to look at the reality of what's happening on the planet and you choose to look through that lens, Then you can confirm it to yourself. You can con you can say, well, yeah, that's exactly what's happening, but there are other ways of looking at it.

And we'd like to talk about that today.

Yucca: And we think that this is particularly important for any person today, but especially for those of us who have earth centered practices. Right. Those of us who think of, of us as being part of nature as being part of the earth and that being sacred. 

Mark: Yes. Yes. And a part of. Understanding is understanding that our relationships with the remainder of the biosphere are meaningful and that we should tend to them carefully and think carefully about how we, how we maintain relationships with our, our fellow creatures and systems here on the earth.

That's not something that we are raised in the habit of doing in our culture. And it's one of the ways in which a science-based pagan culture really diverges from the mainstream. And probably in my opinion, the most important difference that we understand that we are a part of this greater whole and that we have reciprocal responsibilities to those systems.

Yucca: Yeah. And so that sometimes can make, make it all the more painful. When we look around at our world and we see the, the ecosystems falling apart and the loss of biodiversity and the. Environmental injustices between different racial groups and all of that just on and on and on. There's, there's so much and. And it's easy to take that very personally because it is us, right. We're part of it. It's the whole system. We can't actually take ourselves out of the system. So it's sometimes really easy to go. Oh well, it's humans are the problem in the system, then we're terrible. We're bad shame on us. Shame on all humans.

And I'm just going to throw up my hands and just, I just can't can't even deal with it. Right. 

Mark: Yeah. And that's, that's not an unnatural response. The, the ordinary human response to overwhelm is dissociation. That's what we do psychologically. And that can come down to as, as. As much of a thing as when someone gets terrified enough, they will just sit, maybe rock back and forth, but they won't do anything because they're paralyzed with fear.

Well, it's possible to become. Exasperated and give up hope and filled with despair when confronted with a lot of bad news as well. And I think that, especially as we are barraged with bad news through our media, it becomes really easy for us to choose that path. Now I think it's fair to say that we're wired to look for bad news.

Yucca: Yes. 

Mark: of the things about the nature of humans. You know, when when we were on the African Savannah, it became very important to understand that Bob got eaten by a lion yesterday.

Yucca: Yeah. It's we need to stay alive. This is what's going to keep us alive. Is going lion. lion is a problem, right? Lots of great things happened yesterday.

but where's Bob, 

Mark: But Bob got eaten by a lion. So we're going to, we're going to foc