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Ralph Metzner

Ralph Metzner Quotes

Psychologist

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Famous Ralph Metzner Quotes

“Wars between people cannot be reduced or eliminated as long as the war with nature proceeds quite unconsciously. Both situations of war may ultimately be seen as externalizations of the conflicts and wars within human consciousness. If this is so, then our task becomes one of recognizing and confronting the 'inner enemy,' the inner antagonist. We need to recognize and withdraw the projections of this inner enemy onto external agents or forces—whether this be other human beings or the world of wild nature.”

PhilosophyNatureConsciousnessHuman NatureAwakeningProjectionWar And PeaceInner ConflictEnvironmental EthicsEco Psychology
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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“We were all wild humans before we became civilized in that peculiar process of self-domestication known as the Neolithic agricultural revolution. The word 'wild' is related to the word 'will'; the wild creature is self-willed, autonomous, not domesticated, living by nature's ways, not the laws of human beings.”

PhilosophyNatureFreedomHuman NatureCivilizationEcologyAutonomyAnthropologyWildnessSelf Will
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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“The reckless application of technology, harnessed to greed, degrades and destroys the ecosystems in which the energies of the elements are maintained in exquisite balance. Since the elements constitute us, we are also being degraded in the process. We are engaged in an ongoing assault on the planetary elements, the decimation of species, and the relentless suicidal degradation of our own habitats. In short, the situation can be called ecocide. Humankind is at war with nature.”

PhilosophyHumanityNatureTechnologyEnvironmentEthicsSustainabilityEcologyClimate CrisisEcocide
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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“The Lacandones have no way of saying 'hello' or 'good-bye'; when they meet they just start talking, and when they depart they just walk away. It's as if the bonds of family and friendship are not disconnected by distance and therefore do not need to be reestablished.”

PhilosophyWisdomLife LessonsCultureRelationshipsFriendshipDistanceAnthropologyHuman ConnectionLacandone
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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“We were mothered out of the substance of this planet. Her elements, her periodicities, her gravitational embrace, her subtle vibrations still mingle in our nature, worked a billion years down into the textures of life and mind. Logically, the individual human being is a living organic system that exists as part of the larger living organic system that we call the biosphere, or Earth.”

PhilosophyWisdomEarthSpiritualityNatureConsciousnessUnityEcologyInterconnectednessBiosphere
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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“The relentless pursuit of consumer goods feeds the entitled 'false self,' while the insecure and empty inner self remains anxious and wounded—driven then to buy even more goods to cover up the inner emptiness. The empty self seeks the experience of being continually filled up in an attempt to combat the growing alienation.”

SelfPhilosophyPsychologyMental HealthEmptinessMaterialismNarcissismConsumerismAlienationModern Society
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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“The fundamental reality of the universe is a continuum, a unitive field or fabric of energy and consciousness that goes beyond time, space, and all forms and yet lies within them. In traditional Asian religions, this unitive field is variously referred to as Tao or Brahman. Some Native North Americans refer to it as Wakan-Tanka, the all-pervading Creator Spirit. The pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons of the British Isles called it the Wyrd. In the systems language of postmodern science, it is seen as an infinitely complex system of interrelationships or a 'web of life.”

PhilosophySpiritualityUniverseEnergyConsciousnessOnenessWeb Of LifeQuantum RealityInterrelationshipScience And Spirit
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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“Once we recognize our inescapable embeddedness in the living, organic ecosystem and our mutual interdependence with all other coexisting species, our sense of separate identity, so strenuously acquired and desperately maintained, recedes more into the background. Instead, the relationships, whether balanced or imbalanced, take the foreground and become the focus of concern. This is the perceptual basis for a new and ancient point of view: it is holistic and inclusive and inevitably accompanied by a sense of wonder and reverence.”

PhilosophyConsciousnessIdentityMindfulnessUnityHolisticInterconnectednessGaiaEcosystemNature Wisdom
Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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