Exploring Earth Emotions02

Exploring Earth Emotions

Places to Feel

To begin the Studio, we as a class read parts of Glenn Albrecht’s book called “Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World.” Albrecht wrote this book to form new words that define both positive and negative relationships to the state of the Earth. He found a need to be able to express pain and joy for new emotions surrounding the current state of our planet, and our relationship with the living world.

This studio went a step further by saying that we also need places to help us express our collective earth emotions;

our pain and joy. We need places to feel grief and joy. We need places to feel fear and hope. We need places for being alone to grieve, and others to facilitate collective action. We need spaces to care for and cultivate. I decided to design a garden around “the ghedeist” and “ecoagnosy,” Earth emotions defined by Glenn Albrecht (definitions found on pg. 16-17 of this book). These two Earth emotions were antonyms of each other, one representing the awareness of a spirit or force that holds all life together; while the other represented the common ignorance we have of the past ecological states of the places we live in.

I wanted to design a garden that helped people better see and understand the

state of the world. I thought that if people could see the exploited living systems, for themselves, they would spring into collective action. Helping people understand their place in the world would usher forward a new age of collective awareness. A new era where humans once again would live in reciprocity with the rest of the living

world.

Solastalgia

The pain or distress caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory. It is the lived experience of negative environmental change. It is the homesickness you have when you are still at home.

Eutierria

A positive and good feeling of oneness with the Earth and its life forces where the boundaries between self and the rest of nature are obliterated and a deep sense of peace and connectedness pervades consciousness.

Ghedeist

Awareness of a spirit or force that holds all life together; a feeling of profound symbiotic interconnectedness in all life between the self and other beings (human and nonhuman) and their gathering together to live within shared Earth places and spaces. It is a secular feeling of intense affinity and sense of mutual empathy for other beings.

Ecoagnosy

Lack of knowledge about, hence ignorance of, past ecological states.