Volume 16.1 “Creating a Climate for Change”
This issue of Family Systems focuses on a special topic, “Creating a Climate for Change.” It is based on the Bowen Center’s 2020 Spring Conference, which used Bowen theory to focus on understanding the impact of climate and humans as part of evolution and the natural world.
Articles: Volume 16, Number 1
FROM THE EDITOR
Special Guest Editor: Stephanie J. Ferrera, MSW
“The mission of the conference and of this issue of Family Systems has been to look at the facts about climate change as well as interrelated crises that humanity is facing in this century, and ask: “What must we do to create a climate for change in our way of thinking, our behavior, and our way of life, in order to live in better harmony with nature and with one another?” These were core questions that Murray Bowen addressed in the 1970s in his thinking and writing on the human response to the environmental crisis.”
UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGES ON ANXIETY: BOWEN THEORY AND AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
Victoria Harrison, MA
This paper is an expanded version of a presentation for “Creating a Climate for Change,” the Bowen Center 2020 Spring Conference and part of a book underway titled The Dance of Life in Nature and the Family. It examines the functions of anxiety, defined in Bowen theory as “emotional reactiveness to a real or imagined threat,” in adaptation to climate over the human phylogenetic lineage as a backdrop for understanding the impact of climate changes in human evolution. Relationship patterns synchronize survival and reproduction with the environment and regulate the biology and behavior of individuals. Climate changes disrupt those relationships and stir threat reactions within the social group and family. The capacity of individuals to function and think somewhat independently in the face of anxiety is an additional resource in adaptation for the human. Responsibility for the impact of climate change is based in part on understanding anxiety as the capacity to recognize and adapt to real threats. This paper will include ways to take advantage of anxiety for thoughtful adaptation and conclude with directions for further study.
MURRAY BOWEN’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF COMPLEX HUMAN SYSTEMS
Daniel V. Papero, PhD, MSSW
Knowledge of the family system permitted Murray Bowen to extend theoretical formulations to larger complex human systems like organizations and communities. He observed that many of the same processes evident in family system behavior exist in other human systems as well. These include, among others, the role of fearful emotional arousal (anxiety and stress) in energizing behavior, the emergent markers of the effects of that anxiety on individuals and relationships within the system, the emotional flow and counterflow among members and segments of the system that form a discernible and predictable pattern of behavior, and the ability of one individual to influence the functioning of the system with his or her own behavior.
HUMAN NATURE AND SUSTAINABILITY: INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR IS NOT INDIVIDUAL
John Gowdy, PhD: Conference Distinguished Guest Lecturer
At the root of public policy debates about sustainability are starkly contrasting views of “human nature.” If one believes that people are by nature selfish and greedy, one is likely to support public policies motivated by narrow self-interest. If one takes a more benign view that if left alone people will live in harmony, one is more likely to favor policies based on mutual aid, sharing, and cooperation. Findings from such diverse fields as anthropology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience suggest that behavior depends on the physical environment, neurology, cultural context, and individual and social history. Focusing on individual behavior alone misses the drivers of unsustainability—namely, a global economy whose viability depends on growth and exploitation, and the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of an elite that controls the public policy agenda.
THE GROWTH DYNAMIC
Stephanie J. Ferrera, MSW
Growth is a dynamic biological process for all living organisms. Turning points in the human growth trajectory are described, with focus on the interplay between economic, cultural and emotional forces. The mode of securing resources to sustain life evolved from the early hunter-gatherer societies, to the agricultural transformation, to the industrial and technological revolutions. With each transition, the relationships of humans to the earth and to one another were radically changed. Climate change and a host of related dangers have arisen as humans have become dominant in the ecosystem. To change course will require substantial growth in maturity or differentiation of self.
BOOK REVIEW
Climate Change: Two Perspectives on Taking Action
Anne S. McKnight, MSW, EdD reviews:
Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard by Douglas Tallamy.
Drawdown by Paul Hawken.
“Some readers may be frustrated and overwhelmed, as I am sometimes, by the challenges of climate change and its devasting impact on Earth and the natural world that inhabits it. Two books with different approaches to the current crises of global warming and shrinking natural habitat give readers concrete steps they can use to act to mitigate climate change, both as individuals and collectively. The first is Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard by Douglas Tallamy. The second is Drawdown by Paul Hawken.”