Transformation to The Symbiocene

Transformation to The Symbiocene: The Frederik van Eeden Lecture, 2024.

An account of the book Earth Emotions published in Dutch as Aarde Emotes by Noordoek Publishers in early April 2024.

Glenn A Albrecht PhD

 Abstract

The book, Earth Emotions, is an account of the relationship between the state of the Earth and our mental and emotional states. It presents a now commonly accepted scenario that during the epoch known as the Anthropocene, our relationship to the total Earth has turned bad. Not only have we threatened the health of the planet with a toxic, cruel, parasitic, extractive and wasteful economy, we have also triggered an avalanche of mental and emotional distress on humans and non-humans all over the planet. The negative psychoterratic (psyche-Earth) mental and emotional health impacts of the Anthropocene, or age of attempted human dominance, have included my concepts of solastalgia, global dread and tierratrauma, and, from many others, eco-anxiety, eco-grief and ecoparalysis. In other words, the lack of intelligence as represented by the ecocidal Anthropocene and its tragically flawed anthropocentric thinking is leading us to sickness then extinction.

In order to confront our imminent collapse, we need the very opposite of the despotism of the Anthropocene. An actively created symbiotic relationship with the rest of life on this wonderful planet is one that emerges from positive psychoterratic mental and emotional states. These include my concepts of soliphilia, eutierria, endemophilia and, from many others, topophilia, biophilia and ecophilia. The combination of positive psychoterratic states and life-affirming science and technology will give point and purpose to those who undertake this transformational work. From a healthy mental and biophysical base, we humans can build the Symbiocene using bioscience and symbioactive technologies that are safe, renewable and non-polluting. As the Anthropocene collapses, the Symbiocene must be built. Bad growth (dysbiosis) is transformed by human intelligence into good growth (symbiosis). In other words, the anthropocentric thinking of the Anthropocene needs to be supplanted by symbiocentric thinking in the Symbiocene. We move from a death and disease economy into a living and healthy one.

Introduction

The book, Earth Emotions, is about the ‘psychoterratic’, that is, the relationship between the state of our psyche and the state of Terra or the Earth. In the twenty-first century, we are living in a time when the relationship between humans and the rest of what we call ‘nature’ is in deep trouble. There has been a concerted effort to describe the ‘trouble’ within the bounds of the biophysical sciences and to dwell on the potentially catastrophic consequences if humans (not all humans) do not mitigate or adapt to these changes.

However, while there has been a focus on documenting how we are exceeding the safe limits of various planetary boundaries such as the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the nitrogen cycle etc. etc., there has not been a corresponding focus on the consequences of exceeding the boundaries of the psychological limits of all species, sentient or otherwise. I think it fair to say that we have entered a biophysical crisis that has a corresponding psychological and emotional crisis. In 2014 I wrote about this issue of ‘safe spaces’ in the journal, Ecopsychology:

Within a period of earth history now known as the Anthropocene, the dominant role humans play at a planetary scale has enabled us to exceed many of the biophysical limits that would have us conduct our economies within what has been described as a “safe operating space.” The “unsafe” biophysical space that we are creating for ourselves will have its correlates in a self-generated unsafe psychoterratic (psyche-earth) space. Identifying and documenting the negative impacts of the Anthropocene on the psyche will be one of the important roles for ecopsychology.  In order to avoid further transgression into unsafe spaces and to retreat from those already entered, we need to move out of the Anthropocene as soon as possible. (Albrecht 2014).

Not only have we threatened the health of the planet with a toxic, cruel, parasitic, extractive and wasteful economy, we have also triggered an avalanche of mental and emotional distress on humans and non-humans all over the planet.

Earth Emotions was written to explore this unfortunate space that has opened up in the period informally known as the Anthropocene, or period of human dominance. Since the start of the fossil-fuelled, steam powered industrial revolution in the 18th century we can observe a gradual, but increasing divide between human beings living within mass industrial cities and their urban satellites, and the rest of humanity and nature. Another critical aspect of the industrial revolution was the colonisation of the world outside of Europe and the importation of materials needed for industrial production. The role of racism manifest as slavery in gathering these materials (e.g., cotton) and then exporting them to industrial centres in Europe cannot be overestimated.

In my own lifetime (b. 1953), I have witnessed what is now understood as “the great acceleration” of the Anthropocene, to the point of asking a simple but profound question … “accelerating towards what”?

I leave it to biophysical and climate scientists to describe their observations of the trends and destination of the great acceleration. I wish to note that, despite their warnings so far about just how bad things could get, the captains of the SS Anthropocene have not changed the direction of their big ship. Every year, our global C02 emissions go up! In early April 2024, in my part of the world, the Great Barrier Reef is suffering a massive bleaching event and Antarctica is experiencing record warming and melting. The word everyone is using nowadays is “unprecedented”.

It seems that more empirical information about imminent collapse has not had an impact as yet on the human response. Given the lag effect or future consequences of many of our past and present action and inaction, this failure to motivate change is likely to be disastrous. As suggested above, perhaps acknowledging that we are exceeding our “safe” psychic and emotional boundaries will prove to be a greater motivational factor for change than straight facts? A starting point for such an analysis comes from the word ’emotion’.

‘Emotion’ has its origins in the Latin movēre, to move, and ēmovēre, to agitate, or disturb. Emotions are defined as ‘that which moves us’ or affects us.  At all scales, from micro to macro, there are forces of creation and destruction that are primary determinants of our emotions with respect to the Earth. I have given the extremes of these e-motions new names; terraphthora (earth destroyer) derived from Terra, the Latin for “earth” and the Greek φθορά (phthorá) or “destruction” and terranascia, (earth creator) derived from Terra, and the Latin nātūra, “to be born”. I argue that the conflict between terraphthoran and terranascient emotions, as exemplified in personality, corporate and state mentalities is now global in scale. Terraphthorans are the humans who are destroying the earth within the Anthropocene. Terranascient humans will be those who will create its opposite. There is a spectrum of mentalities at play here but perhaps we are moving towards a binary?

A Sumbiography: A Summation of my Green Past

In Chapter One of Earth Emotions, I present a short history of my own upbringing and how I developed as a terranascient, nature loving boy in Western Australia. I was lucky to have grandparents and my mother as mentors. I called this limited biography a sumbiography, as it helps the reader understand why I wished to write about our emotional relationship to the Earth in particular places. The term is derived from the Greek sumbiosis (companionship), sumbion (to live together) sumbios (living together) and, of course, Greek bio (life) and graphy (from the Greek graphein, to write). The meaning and importance of the sum total of living together with ‘nature’, key people and other beings, is what a sumbiography attempts to describe and acknowledge. It is my hope that you can all assemble for own sumbiographies in order to see what kind of person you are with respect to nature. Where on the spectrum between strong terraphthora and strong terranascia do you reside? What were the main influences in your life that produced such a person?

Solastalgia

My sumbiography put me on a path that led me to develop the idea of the psychoterratic (see Albrecht 2011a). As a nature lover (birds in particular), I resonated strongly with life-affirming places and was repelled by those where the desolation of life was evident.

This tendency of mine to avoid places that the Anthropocene was destroying and polluting was put into crisis when I had to confront open cut (pit) coal mining in the state of New South Wales, not far from my home.  Here, over 500 square kilometres of aggressively mined land was producing black coal for the domestic and international power stations and steel mills of the world.

The Hunter Valley was described by early European settlers as “The Tuscany of the South”, so beautiful was this landscape. And, of course, the traditional people of this area, the Wonnarua, had been there for tens of thousands of years before “invasion day” on the 26^th of January 1778.

I had gone to this part of the Hunter Valley to engage in one of my favourite pursuits, birdwatching, but instead I had stumbled into the battlefield of the terraphthorans or the earth destroyers in the form of multinational coal miners and their “open-cuts”, large power stations and all the infrastructure needed for the ‘coal chain’. Their massive impact can be seen from space. So profound was my own reaction to the damage being done to place and its people, that I decided to study this location, where the physical landscape and the emotional landscape were in open confrontation. I was outraged at how this once beautiful valley was being ruined by a second wave of colonisation, this time, by those who profit from coal mining.

My first psychoterratic concept, solastalgia (Albrecht 2005), arose out of this personal experience. I define solastalgia as the pain or distress caused by the ongoing loss of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory. It is the existential and ‘lived experience’ of negative environmental change, manifest as an attack on one’s sense of place. It is the homesickness you have when you remain at home, but your home leaves you! It is the opposite of Hoferian (1688) nostalgia.

Solastalgia is derived from the words; solace, desolation, nostalgia and algia or pain/sorrow. The word “solace” is derived from the Latin verb, solari, with meanings connected to the alleviation or relief of distress, or to the provision of comfort or consolation in the face of distressing events. The word “desolation” has its origins in the Latin solus (noun desolare), with meanings connected to devastation, deprivation of comfort, abandonment and loneliness (to be solitary or alone). . That this new concept was an ‘algia’ was abundantly clear to me right from the start and it is important to remember that from its Greek origins, ‘algia’ has connotations of pain, sorrow and grief. Solastalgia is not a biomedically defined psychological state: it is an existential response to an unwelcome structural change to the home.  As such, it cannot be addressed by ‘therapy’, as only personal or community led change to the causes of this particular form of Earth distress will once again deliver solace to the sufferer.

The Anthropocene and Negative Earth Emotions

After the creation of solastalgia, I realised that the domain of the psychoterratic must be very broad. Given the amount of distress being caused by Anthropocene ‘forcings’ such as climate chaos, it did not take me long to compile a list of emotions.

TABLE 1.  The Typology of Negative Psychoterratic States

Negative Earth Emotions	Origin
Biophobia	Kellert & Wilson 1995
Ecoagnosy	Albrecht 2017
Ecoamnesia	Kahn 1999
Ecoanxiety	Leff 1990
Ecocide	Galston 1970s
Eco-necrophilia	Fromm 1965
Ecoparalysis	Rees 2007
Ecophobia	G. F. Will 1988
Global Dread	Albrecht 2003
Meteoranxiety	Albrecht 2014
Nature Deficit Disorder	Louv 2005
Nostalgia	Hoffer 1688
Solastalgia	Albrecht 2003
Terrafurie	Albrecht 2017
Tierracide	Albrecht 2017
Tierratrauma	Albrecht 2013
Topoaversion	Albrecht 2013
Toponesia	Heneghan 2013
Ecological Grief	Kevorkian 2004-13

The negative psychoterratic emotions are ‘work in progress’ as we humans are still creating forms of emotional distress in the face of an increasingly desolated Earth.

I want the need to keep creating and naming ever worsening emotional feelings about the state and fate of humanity and the Earth to come to a halt.

Symbiosis

In order to confront our imminent collapse, we need the very opposite of the despotism of the Anthropocene. An actively created symbiotic relationship with the rest of life on this wonderful planet is one that emerges from positive psychoterratic mental and emotional states. Before I go into the details of the Symbiocene (Albrecht, 2014), it is necessary to briefly engage with the term ‘symbiosis’ as it is crucial to the authenticity of the Symbiocene as a meme or cultural replicator.

The term, symbiosis, is from the Ancient Greek, σῠμβῐ́ωσῐς, meaning to live together in a special form of companionship (from συμβιόω (sumbióō, “to live together” +‎ -σις -sis). Symbiosis, as a concept, has had an interesting career. In ancient Greece, it was applied to two distinct but related contexts.

In biological observations the term was explicitly used by writers such as Plutarch (46 CE, died after 119 CE), Herodotus (died ca. 420 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) to describe mutually beneficial relationships between different kinds of organisms. Two such examples are the fan shell (Pinna) of the Mediterranean which has a special feeding relationship with a type of crab called the Pinna guard, and the Egyptian plover that reportedly removes rotting food, leeches and other parasites from the mouth of the Nile crocodile for its own food.

In the societal context the term was used to describe special relationships between people most commonly connected to co-habitation, social intercourse, fellowship, communion and commerce. However, there are also intimate relationships such as sexual intercourse (‘commerce’) and marriage (wedded life) where ‘symbiosis’ may have applied in ancient Greece.

There then appears a long gap in the global literature connected to the Greek origins of the word. ‘Symbiosis’ re-appears as transliteration in English, Spanish and German writings in the early 17th century mainly in connection to commerce and common interests.

The first recorded social use in English was by Edward Misselden in 1622. In a study of the principles of free trade Misselden compares the rights of private patent holders to the public good, or what he described as “the publique symbiosis”.  However, in 1680, under the intriguing title of (‘Συμβίωσις), Symbiåosis, or, The intimate converse of Pope and Devil attended by a cardinal and buffoon to which is annexed the pourtrait of each, with a brief explication thereof, was written by James Salgado. Here, the Greek idea of an intimate coming together of unlike parties has continuity!

Scientific Symbiosis

As German scientists in the 1870s were trying to understand and describe newly discovered relationships between the identifiably different components of organisms such as lichens, the idea of symbiosis in scientific talks and papers was used to give expression about novel ‘ways of living together’ for mutual benefit.

Credit is given to the botanist, Albert Bernhard Frank, when in 1877, he used the term symbiotismus (symbiotism) to describe the mutualistic relation between fungi, cyanobacteria or algae seen in lichens. A lichen is a combination of two separate species producing a union of the two that has properties not possessed by either party. The scientific term, symbiosis, was first used in public by the mycologist, Anton de Bary in 1878. From a lecture given that year, de Bary stated:

When I was trying to find a subject for this conference, I was studying two plants that live in a special relationship. This gave me the idea to talk about observations regarding dissimilarly named organisms that live together, in symbiosis, as we can call these associations. The present preoccupation with the subject, but also the consideration that similar relationships have become well known in the course of the past 10 years, are factors in deeming them to be of general interest. Thus, this talk will be a consideration of such symbioses, namely, the living together of differently named organisms. (de Bary 1878)

Since that time, symbiosis as a bioscience has proliferated, so much so that modern research in plant biology and the human microbiome have placed this branch of biology at the centre of what might be called ‘the symbiotic revolution’. At the core of this revolution is an advance in knowledge about how different organisms cooperate in nature, how some ‘organs’ within species (e.g., mitochondria and chloroplasts) are products of symbiosis and that evolution itself is shaped by both Darwinian and what I call Margulisian evolution. Our latest findings in this process of discovery include the surprising fact that ancient retrovirus genetic material makes up 8-10% of the human genome and has been crucial for our survival, including the way the human embryo develops. There is no ‘junk’ in life.

The biologist, Lynn Margulis (1938 – 2011), perhaps more than any other person, established symbiosis as a hugely important factor in life and evolution. We all owe her a huge debt of gratitude.

The Symbiocene

I created the concept of the Symbiocene in 2011 (Albrecht 2011b) and developed it further in a public conference presentation under the theme of ‘Out of The Anthropocene and into The Symbiocene’ at the Landlines Colloquium at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, in June 2013. From 2014 onward I wrote essays such as “Ecopsychology for the Symbiocene” for the peer reviewed journal Ecopsychology (Albrecht 2014) and “Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene”, first on my Blog in 2015, then in the journal, Minding Nature, connected to the Centre for Humans and Nature in 2016 (Albrecht 2016). The ‘Exiting’ essay was reprinted by the Centre for Humans and Nature in 2021.  

In Earth Emotions (2019a) I devoted half the book to developing the Symbiocene as a mega-meme for the future of humanity and this book was translated and published in 2020 into French, Spanish and now, in 2024, Dutch. Since the 2019 publication I have given many national and international talks and lectures devoted to the theme of the Symbiocene.

In summary, I put the case that the Symbiocene is the opposite of the Anthropocene. It is a period in human and Earth history when humans reintegrate with the rest of life. Core to this reintegration is the utilisation of our extant, relictual and novel positive psychoterratic emotions to motivate us to action. The Symbiocene must be an act of creation by emotionally and ethically motivated humans, in conjunction with other life forms. Emotion and motivation go together. I have radical anticipation for the Symbiocene and I see it as crucial for young people to engage in the project of life and to see and feel a healthy future for themselves and their communities.

The Symbiocene will be the result of a total life philosophy that I call ‘Sumbioism’. Sumbioism is the collective transdisciplinary art and science of ‘living together’ (sumbios) within the matrix of all life. A ‘sumbioist’ is a person who reflects on, writes about and lives by the discipline of sumbiology and the philosophy of sumbioism (See Albrecht 2017). I will be developing these themes in my forthcoming book on the philosophy and reasoning behind the Symbiocene.

Positive Earth Emotions

We once had positive Earth emotions for free; there were so many opportunities to experience them, perhaps we took them for granted because they satisfied the principle of plenitude. Now, because of the desolation of the Anthropocene, we need to actively create the circumstances where they can be freely had and enjoyed once again. If the Anthropocene is the source of our ascending negative Earth emotions, the Symbiocene will be the catalyst for the rediscovery of past positive Earth emotions and the stimulus for explicitly naming new emotional connections to the Earth. Below is my psychoterratic typology of positive Earth emotions.

TABLE 2.  The Typology of Positive Psychoterratic States

Positive Earth Emotions	Origin
Biophilia	Fromm 1964
Ecoliteracy	Orr 1991
Sumbiophilia	Albrecht 2018
Eutierria	Albrecht 2010
Soliphilia	Albrecht 2009
Ecophilia	Sobel 1995
Meteorphilia	Albrecht 2023
Eutierria	Albrecht 2010
Endemophilia	Albrecht 2010
Topophilia	Tuan 1974
Terraliben	Albrecht 2018
Topowokia*	Albrecht 2024

Gaia and the Ghedeist: Secular Spirituality

Chapter 5 of Earth Emotions deals with the ethical and spiritual aspects of the entry into the Symbiocene. In many respects the form of secular spirituality that emerges from a biophilic understanding of life, is a reversal of many of our past sources in ‘the search for meaning’.

The discovery of the microcosmos, as Lynn Margulis called it, suggests to me that rather than seeking meaning in the big things in life … the big tree, the big church, the ‘big man’ … we should be focussed on the smallest units of life. It is the microcosmos after all, from which all complex life has come.  Life is not only interconnected in ecological physical space: every being living today has a shared life heritage that goes back billions of years.

That we now use science to understand these micro symbiotic spatial and temporal connections does not invalidate older symbolic spiritual understandings held by humans in the past. It unites past animistic spirituality with the best in modern science. Bring-on neo-animism!

In order to give expression to this understanding, I have used an old root word in Indo-European languages, ghehd, which means ‘to unite’ as a way to generate this secular spirituality. Ghehd is the root for many words in Old English and old Germanic language such as ‘together’, to ‘gather’, and, importantly for me, the word ‘good’.

The connections between the sumbios (living together) and ghehd (united together) were too ‘ghoohd’ to miss. I then thought that a modern version of the word ghehd could be incorporated into a spiritual context in the form of the ‘ghedeist’, with a shortening of the German ‘geist’ with its meanings of spirit and mind, and affinities in other languages with a vital or life force. The neologism, ‘ghedeist’, was thus created by me to account for a secular feeling for the unity of life and the intuition that all things are interconnected. My definition of the ghedeist is:

The spirit or force which holds things together, a feeling of interconnectedness in life between the self and other beings (human and non-human) and their gathering together to live within shared Earth places and spaces. It is a feeling of intense affinity and sense of mutual empathy for other beings.  It is a non-religious term for acknowledging the life-spirit kinship which all living beings share and a way of distinguishing the good (which associates and interconnects) from the bad (which disassociates and dis-integrates). (Albrecht 2016a).

As I say to my more spiritually inclined friends … “may the ghedeist be with you”.

Generation Symbiocene: Creating the New World

In Chapter 6, I present the case that a multigenerational ‘tribe’ of humans has the task of creating the Symbiocene. As I researched and wrote Earth Emotions in 2018, I had no feeling that such a generation was already rising from the maelstrom of the Anthropocene. However, I was wrong as both Greta Thunberg (School Strike 4 Climate.) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) came to prominence worldwide in late 2018-2019, after my book was committed for publication. I feel that the world-leading example of Greta and the open opposition of the Anthropocene by members of XR has vindicated my optimism that good humans would rise up in defence of life. Our Earth emotions have been stirred into action and Generation Symbiocene (Gen S) is now an emergent force (see Albrecht 2019b).

The psychoterratic typology has been used by Extinction Rebellion (Sydney) to train new volunteers to manage their emotional engagement with a society that sees them as radical and dissidents. They are definitely dissidents, but they are not radicals. Radical views are held by people who are anti-life. Conservative views and values are held by people who are biophilic. As I suggested in Earth Emotions, “As they build their own unique identity, Gen S has the task of building the Symbiocene. Given the dire state of the Anthropocene, their work will have to be fast and furious.”

It is also worth noting that I hold a very positive view of the role of technology in the building of the Symbiocene. Every toxic and polluting artefact or energy source must be replaced by a science-based symbiotically benign or life-affirming ‘sumbiofact’.  Architecture (to rule over design) needs to be replaced by sumbiotecture (to design in collaboration with others, including non-humans).

Fortunately, some people are already in the Symbiocene and are working at top pace to create the very materials and sumbiofacts needed to live well in the twenty first century. We already have building blocks, bricks, leather, coffins and packaging material sourced and produced from fungi. Utensils are now being made from wood cellulose and household furniture is being made from algae.

The current forms of alternative energy are the transition technologies to the bioenergy and bioluminescence needed to run our economies. To create a sumbonomy (Albrecht 2024), a form of economy informed by the science of symbiosis, will require humans to move from a dumb, extractive, anthropocentric way of thinking, to an intelligent sumbiocentric way of thinking.

Symbiotechnologies will re-animate our connections to life in nature … our lights will shine like fireflies!

Conclusion

In Earth Emotions I present a new narrative for the future. There is radical anticipation that the ‘Great Separation’ from life and nature under the Anthropocene will come to an end. There are only two possible endings now: one is the complete collapse and catastrophe of the Anthropocene and the other is the rise and creation of the Symbiocene. I am proposing that as the Anthropocene collapses, the Symbiocene is built: bad growth (dysbiosis) is replaced by good growth (symbiosis).

The foundation for the Symbiocene is both emotional and scientific. Good science and good emotions work together to produce something symbiotically beautiful. The Symbiocene gives point and purpose to life. It gives to the holobiont known as Homo sapiens, the opportunity to finally live up to its scientific name.

I have warned that the ‘Great Reconnection’ with life could be extremely difficult as the ‘war’ of emotions is played out in the next decade or so. However, pointing out the past follies of terraphthorans could also be a lot of fun, as there is endless material for comedians in the spectacular failure and downfall of the stupid terraphthorans. We have been far too serious in taking their pathological view of unreality as truth and it has come at the cost of our own happiness. The Symbiocene not only offers a healthy material basis for life, it gifts the opportunity to experience “the joy of life” in all of its wonderful complexity and diversity.

References.

 Albrecht, Glenn. A. 2005. “Solastalgia: A New Concept in Human Health and Identity.” PAN

(Philosophy, Activism, Nature). 3: 41-55.

Albrecht, Glenn A. 2011a. “Chronic Environmental Change: Emerging ‘Psychoterratic’ Syndromes.  In Climate Change and Human Well-Being: Global Challenges and Opportunities, edited by Inka Weissbecker, 43-56. New York: Springer.

Albrecht, Glenn A. 2011b. “Symbiocene.” Healthearth, May 19 2011.

http://healthearth.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/symbiocene.html

Albrecht Glenn A. 2014. “Ecopsychology in ‘The Symbiocene.'” Ecopsychology 6, (1): 58-59.

https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2013.0091

Albrecht, Glenn A. 2015. “Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene”. Healthearth Blog

Exiting The Anthropocene and Entering The Symbiocene.

Albrecht, Glenn. A. 2016a. “The Ghedeist.” Psychoterratica. June 6.

The Ghedeist

Albrecht, Glenn A. 2016b. “Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene“. Minding Nature, 9(2), 12-16.

Albrecht, Glenn A. 2019a. Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Albrecht, Glenn A. 2019b. Generation Symbiocene. The Ecologist 8^th March 2019: https://theecologist.org/2019/mar/08/generation-symbiocene

Albrecht, Glenn A. 2024. The Sumbonomy. https://glennaalbrecht.wordpress.com/2024/02/25/growth-in-the-sumbonomy/

De Bary, Heinrich Anton (1878). English translation of Heinrich Anton de Bary’s 1878 speech, ‘Die Erscheinung der Symbiose’ (‘De la symbiose’). Symbiosis (2016) 69:131–139 DOI 10.1007/s13199-016-0409-8.

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