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I would rather be writing about many other topics. I always thought I'd blog about traveling, food, and family trauma and how I have been processing. There is so much to unpack in those topics, but here I am, dedicating a lifetime to writing about climate justice, because we are, in fact, living in an era of planetary emergency. Climate instability, toxic bio-accumulation, and runaway biodiversity loss are the material conditions of our daily lives. Yet, when governments scramble for solutions, they almost always turn to the same tools that caused the damage: high-tech eco-modernization, top-down carbon markets, and mechanistic resource management.What if the crisis is not merely technical, but actually epistemic? What if the way we have been taught to view ourselves, our relationships with others, and our place in evolutionary history is built on a rudimental error?An extraordinary, decades-long body of intellectual history offers a revolutionary alternative. Synthesizing an extensive library of over one hundred seminal books on environmentalism and gender published before 2018 (before the use of GenAI became normalised in publication spheres) stretching from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) to Stacy Alaimo’s posthumanist inquiries, has given me, a person with autism and excellent pattern recognition, an (un)expected revelation: the exploitation of the biosphere and the subjugation of marginalized human bodies are driven by the exact same philosophical and economic machinery.The authors of these books have laid the groundwork for a groundbreaking, cooperative paradigm of human evolution and ecological survival. Let me walk you through it, as simply as I can:<h3>The dualistic mind: How Cartesian rationalism severed the world at the core of Western civilization lies an ingrained mental habit: the split.</h3>If you're familiar with my work, you know my stand when it comes to binaries and dichotomies. So I am approaching this analysis with the same lens. Let's begin with Val Plumwood. In her landmark book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993), Plumwood demonstrates that Western thought is structured around nested, hierarchical dualisms: Reason vs. Nature, Male vs. Female, Mind vs. Body, and Culture vs. Nature. These are form a colonizing "Master Identity" that establishes its dominance through five distinct logical moves:Backgrounding (Denial): The Master systematically renders the reproductive and life-sustaining labor of nature and women invisible, pretending he is entirely self-sufficient. Radical Exclusion (Hyper-separation): Complex biological continuities between humans and other species are severed to create an ontological canyon. Incorporation: Nondominant beings are denied independent value and defined purely by their utility to the Master. Instrumentalism: The living world is treated as passive, inert matter, pre-adapted to serve as tools for extraction. Homogenization: The rich diversity of ecological and human subaltern communities is flattened into a single, uniform category (e.g., "the wild," "the native," "women").This dualistic architecture underpins the Scientific Revolution. In The Death of Nature (1980), Carolyn Merchant traces the historical transition from an organic, holistic view of the earth as a living mother (I am also opposed to calling Earth a mother) to a mechanistic, Newtonian model of dead matter. This conceptual death-blow stripped nature of its active agency, licensing the unrestrained extraction of natural resources and synchronizing the subjugation of women’s bodily autonomy with the containment of ecosystems.<h3>Re-writing the tree of life: From the selfish gene to social selection</h3>Perhaps the most intriguing disruption within this literature is the dismantling of neo-Darwinian sociobiology. In the mid-to-late 20th century, sociobiologists painted a bleak, hyper-competitive picture of natural history: a theater of ruthless, individualistic conflict where aggressive, active males battle for dominance and passive, coy females merely select the winners.Feminist evolutionary scholars like Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Ruth Hubbard exposed this as a capitalist-patriarchal fantasy projected onto the animal kingdom. In Mother Nature (1999), Hrdy demonstrated that human and primate evolution did not succeed because of solitary, aggressive male hunters, but because of cooperative breeding. Human infants survived because mothers, kin, and communities formed collective alliances to share food, protection, and emotional care.Taking this a step further, evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden launched a direct attack on Darwin's theory of sexual selection in her monumental Evolution’s Rainbow (2004). Roughgarden challenges the gene-centric, conflict-driven model of sexual reproduction and replaces it with the theory of Social Selection. Mating is not an endless war of deceit and hoarding; it is a system of cooperative negotiation and teamwork designed to maximize the survival of offspring. Same-sex mating, gender multiplicity, and sex-role reversals are not evolutionary flukes, but adaptive strategies that build group cohesion and coordinate labor across hundreds of species.<h3>Microontologies and the unfolding of symbiogenesis</h3> What happens if we look past the macroscopic scale of individuals entirely?Posthumanist theorists like Myra Hird (<a data-mce-href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230242210" href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230242210">The Origins of Sociable Life</a>, 2009) and Donna Haraway (<a data-mce-href="https://media.icamiami.org/2020/07/c93615e4-haraway.-staying-with-the-trouble_-making-kin-in-the-chthulucene.pdf" href="https://media.icamiami.org/2020/07/c93615e4-haraway.-staying-with-the-trouble_-making-kin-in-the-chthulucene.pdf">Staying with the Trouble,</a> 2016) re-centered evolution around Lynn Margulis’s groundbreaking <a data-mce-href="https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publications/plants-fungi-2025/symbiogenesis-daneshvar" href="https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publications/plants-fungi-2025/symbiogenesis-daneshvar">concept of symbiogenesis</a>. Margulis proved that complex, eukaryotic cells (the building blocks of all complex life) did not arise from competitive branching, but through endosymbiotic events, where specific bacterial organisms merged their genomes to live together permanently.This microbial turn introduces what Hird calls microontologies. It simply dismantles the myth of the self-contained human individual. Humans are walk consortia; homo-microbial symbionts. Over 90% of the genetic material in our bodies is microbial. Our metabolism, immune systems, and even our cognitive states are co-produced with companion species.Haraway calls this sym-poiesis (making-with) rather than auto-poiesis (self-creation). Life is a networked gift economy of cellular wastes turned into metabolic lifelines.As feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz adds in <a data-mce-href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003118121/nick-time-elizabeth-grosz" href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003118121/nick-time-elizabeth-grosz">The Nick of Time </a>(2004), biological ttime is unlike mainstream understanding: It is creative, generative, and characterized by "the untimely", a constant generation of virtual variations that makes biology inherently open-ended and plastic.<h3>Trans-corporeality and toxic bio-accumulation</h3>This posthumanist dissolution of boundaries has immediate, visceral, physical consequences for environmental health.In <a data-mce-href="https://iupress.org/9780253222404/bodily-natures/" href="https://iupress.org/9780253222404/bodily-natures/">Bodily Natures</a> (2010), Stacy Alaimo coined the term trans-corporeality to map how human bodies are porous sites of material, chemical, and biological exchange with the environment. Our skin is therefore an active, porous membrane.Ecologist Sandra Steingraber (<a data-mce-href="https://archive.org/details/havingfaithecolo0000stei" href="https://archive.org/details/havingfaithecolo0000stei">Having Faith</a>, 2001) proves this through an analysis of pregnancy and breast milk. Industrial synthetic chemicals, heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants cross the placental barrier and accumulate inside fetal tissues. The womb, therefore, instead of being a private, safe domestic space; is forced to be nested in the industrial ecosphere.Using <a data-mce-href="https://www.artcurious-contemporary.com/karen-barads-agential-realism-a-comprehensive-summary/" href="https://www.artcurious-contemporary.com/karen-barads-agential-realism-a-comprehensive-summary/">Karen Barad’s quantum physics-inspired agential realism</a>, we see that matter is not passive. Toxins, plastics, and radioactive isotopes have material agency. They intra-act with our genes, which leads to the changing of human biology and the rewriting the evolutionary future. To harm the biosphere is quite literally to rewrite the molecular biology of our own bodies.<h3>The thermodynamics of care</h3> How does global capitalism extract this bodily energy? This is where socialist ecofeminists like Ariel Salleh (<a data-mce-href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ecofeminism-as-politics-9781786990426/" href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ecofeminism-as-politics-9781786990426/">Ecofeminism as Politics</a>, 1997) and Mary Mellor intervene with embodied materialism.Salleh argues that capitalism operates as a metabolic parasite. It relies on a "metabolic rift", the linear, non-circular extraction of nutrients from the Earth and energy from living bodies, generating systemic entropy and waste. This rift is built on a sexist "1/0 imaginary" that devalues reproductive, life-sustaining labor (which is feminized, racialized, and colonized) while valuing only high-throughput industrial production.<h3>Decolonial polycultures vs. the monocultures of the mind</h3> This thermodynamic analysis grounds the work of Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) and decolonial ecofeminists.Scholars like Sherilyn MacGregor (Beyond Mothering Earth, 2006) deliver a crucial critique of early maternalist ecofeminism. They argue that reducing women’s environmentalism to a natural, "maternal instinct" depoliticizes their civic agency and shifts the burden of ecological cleanup to already exploited women, rather than distributing the labor of care democratically.Vandana Shiva (Staying Alive, 1988) argues that corporate agriculture and Western biotechnology impose a "monoculture of the mind"—an epistemology that devalues and destroys the complex, multi-species polycultures of Indigenous agriculture. Patenting seeds ("biopiracy") is a colonial capture of the evolutionary commons.In Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), Robin Wall Kimmerer contrasts this reductionism with Indigenous plant science, which models human-nature relationships as reciprocal, kin-centric covenants. Evolution is not a solo race to survive; as Anna Tsing illustrates in her study of the matsutake mushroom (The Mushroom at the End of the World, 2015), it is a messy, collaborative survival in the ruins of industrial capitalism, where life persists through multi-species entanglement.<h3>Five commandments for the Anthropocene</h3> By synthesizing these five decades of radical thought, we can distill five macro-evolutionary principles to guide our species forward:Embrace Symbiogenesis over Hyper-Competition: Evolutionary history proves that biological complexity arose through cooperation and symbiogenesis, indicating that human social and economic systems must prioritize mutual aid to survive. Accept Our Trans-corporeal Vulnerability: Environmental policy must treat human and ecosystem health as a single, indivisible system; to poison the soil, water, and air is to poison ourselves. Redefine Gender and Diversity as Evolutionary Strengths: Diversity is not an anomaly to be policed, but an adaptive mechanism that enhances social resilience and group survival. Shift from Capitalist Extraction to Economies of Care: We must dismantle the high-entropy treadmill of capital and build localized, low-entropy circular economies centered around metabolic value. Restore Epistemic and Ecological Pluralism: True ecological restoration requires decolonial, Indigenous scientific perspectives that treat landscapes and non-human species as active, intelligent partners. Survival will not be delivered by a smarter machine, but by a deeper relational shift. It is time to abandon the Master's dualisms and learn, at long last, how to make-with the Earth.

How 100+ books on gender and ecology rewrote the laws of human evolution and Nature

The mythos of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ is not merely a cornerstone of Christian theology; it functions as an ideology for the reproduction of cisheteropatriarchal dynamics within the nuclear family. In the traditional narrative, Mary validates Jesus’s divine status from birth, socialising him into the absolute certainty of his exceptionalism. Internalising this positionality, Jesus steps into the world acting as humanity's saviour.When examined through a de-essentialized ecofeminist lens, this theological relationship can be interpreted as a metaphor for how contemporary mothers are structurally conditioned to socialise their (cisgender straight) sons. By treating their sons as almost divinely exceptional, therfore reenacting holy Mary behaviour, mothers inadvertently cultivate a "Jesus behavior" in their sons: a psychological framework characterized by entitlement, assumed authority, and a saviour complex.A de-essentialised approach rejects the idea that this dynamic is born of an innate, biological female self-sacrifice or male aggression. Instead, it analyses how these behaviours are socially engineered survival mechanisms designed to sustain a loop of systemic domination.<h3>The Marian obsession: Cisheteropatriarchy and the grooming of the divine son</h3> Under the strictures of cisheteropatriarchy, women are globally denied direct access to institutional, political, and economic power (though this is VERY different if we compare Icelandic women to Afghani women). In this framework, a mother’s value is frequently derived from her utility to the patriarchal lineage. To survive and gain social capital within this system, the mother turns to her closest male proxy: her son, who represents the ultimate inheritor of patriarchal privilege, or in other words, the carrier of the bloodline.This cultural phenomenon is mirrored in gender-role scripts like marianismo, where women are socialised to be spiritually pure, submissive, and self-sacrificing caretakers who find their primary validation through the family unit (Kosmicki, 2017). This cultural imposition exerts a continuous structural pressure on women at the expense of their own psychological wellbeing (Urbina-Garcia, 2025).The mechanism of maternal elevation functions through several interconnected relational phases. First, a proclamation of divinity occurs where a mother operating within a patriarchal matrix is encouraged to treat her straight son as a site of special reverence, shielding him from domestic work (which is then shared with the daughters if there are any) and conditioning him to believe his comfort takes precedence. <blockquote>I remember growing up with two brothers under the same roof. We all had to be quiet when one of them was asleep. My sleep never mattered; my bedroom door slammed open and then shut at 6.30 a.m. (for no urgent reason) almost every day by my mother, who in contrast, took it upon her to ensure there is utter silence when my brother was taking a nap. If I missed lunch, there was never a share kept for me, so I had to fix myself a meal. Guess who was always late for lunch, only to find the best pieces on a plate waiting for him? Guess who never, not even once, did their laundy, made their bed, or even cleaned the bathrooms we all shared? Yup, not me, folks.&nbsp;</blockquote> This is accompanied by a curated close interpersonal proximity. Because fathers are more likely to be emotionally alienated or physically absent due to patriarchal mandates of masculinity (Urbina-Garcia, 2025), in a nuclear family, the mother invests her emotional and physical work and aspirations into the son(s). This creates a sovereign domestic sphere where the boy learns to view his authority not as earned, but as an ontological truth, a birthright, placing him at the absolute center of the household universe.<h3>The Christ complex and the logic of extraction</h3> When a boy is continuously and consistently socialised through this Marian lens, he internalises the message of his own exceptionalism. He does not just accept the praise, but develops an ensemble of behavious that mimics the Christ archetype.The characteristics of this reenacted Jesus behaviour can be observed in adult dynamics, beginning with the fallacy of infallibility. Because his primary caregiver has mirrored back an image of perfection and divine right, the adult male inevitably struggles with systemic accountability, perceiving criticism not as constructive feedback but as a persecution of his character. This feeds directly into a saviour complex, wherein (cisgender, straight) men are socialised to believe they must fix, save, or lead the world, therefore positioning themselves as the rational arbiters of truth even when uninvited. This dynamic demands an extraction of disciple-like devotion. Just as Christ expected his followers to leave everything behind to support his mother-inflicted delusion, the socialised man enters romantic partnerships expecting his partner to assume a self-sacrificing, supportive role, extracting unconditional emotional and domestic maintenance as a natural birthright.To fully understand this cycle, we must apply the work of ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood (2019), who articulated how patriarchy constructs dualisms to justify exploitation: Culture vs. Nature, Male vs. Female, Divine vs. Mundane.Plumwood (2019) highlighted a mechanism known as backgrounding or the denial of dependency. The master, or the sovereign son, attempts to make use of the other by relying on and benefiting from their service, while simultaneously denying the dependency this creates. In this socialisation loop, the mother’s body, time, and emotional energy are treated exactly how patriarchal capitalism treats the natural world: as an infinite, self-renewing, and free resource. The mother exhausts her own capital to elevate the son into her personal self-fabricated foregrounded world of culture and divinity, while she remains relegated to the background of nature and service.<h3>The mitochondrial paradox: Deconstructing the myth of the patrilineal bloodline</h3> To expose the illusion of this cisheteropatriarchal family structure, we must confront its most desperate obsession: the continuation of the male bloodline. For millennia, cultures and religions worldwide have prioritised the birth of a son under the false premise that he is the sole vessel capable of carrying the family's biological legacy into the future. From a cellular and genetic standpoint, however, this foundational patriarchal anxiety is built on a complete scientific inversion of reality. <blockquote>The true, unbroken lineage of human life moves not through men, but exclusively through people assigned female at birth.&nbsp;Every human cell contains mitochondria, the organelles responsible for generating cellular energy. While nuclear DNA is a equal mix from both parents, mitochondrial DNA is inherited strictly from the mother (Sato &amp; Sato, 2012).</blockquote>During sexual reproduction, various cellular pathways operate across animal species to ensure that only maternal mitochondria are transmitted to the offspring <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10990420/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10990420/">(Cao et al., 2024)</a>. Sperm-derived paternal mitochondria and their genomes enter the oocyte cytoplasm upon fertilization but are systematically eliminated and degraded during early embryogenesis, often via specialized autophagic pathways<a data-mce-href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22302002/" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22302002/"> (Sato &amp; Sato, 2012).</a><blockquote>Because of this biological barrier, a mother passes her mitochondrial lineage to both her sons and daughters, but the lineage stops completely with the male (Sato &amp; Sato, 2012; Cao et al., 2024). A son carries his mother’s mitochondrial DNA, but he possesses no biological mechanism to pass it on to his children. When a man has offspring, his children will inherit their mitochondrial bloodline entirely from their mother, not him.</blockquote>When integrated into our de-essentialized ecofeminist critique, this biological fact introduces quites the irony to the holy Mary dynamic. The mother exhausts her own life force to elevate her son into a state of divine, patriarchal exceptionalism, fueled by the cultural pressure to preserve the husband's or family's lineage. Yet, by yielding to the pressure to produce a male heir, the family ensures the absolute termination of that specific, uninterrupted cellular line.The global obsession with the male bloodline is a purely social, juridical, and linguistic fiction. It relies entirely on symbolic markers, like the passing down of a surname, to mask the material reality that men are a genetic dead-end for the primary cellular lineage that powers human life.&nbsp;<h3>Final thoughts</h3> The reenactment of the Mary-Jesus dynamic within modern culture is quite frankly a brilliant yet tragic loop of cisheteropatriarchal survival. The mother, seeking safety and validation in a world that devalues her for simply not being a man, constructs a god in her living room. In doing so, she inadvertently unleashes an agent of patriarchy who will continue the cycle of extracting from women, marginalised people, non-humans, and Earth.Correcting this global misconception does not mean slipping back into biological essentialism to claim women are inherently superior (though, looking at the current state of the world, this may not be a bad idea after all!); rather, it dismantles the pseudo-scientific justification for male preference. It proves that the Jesus behavior of the entitled son rests on an artificial construct designed to claim ownership over a biological future that he fundamentally cannot reproduce.To break this cycle from a de-essentialized ecofeminist standpoint, the domestic altar must be dismantled. Mothers and caregivers must be structurally supported so they do not have to rely on male proxies for social validity, and boys must be socialised out of divinity and into humanity: taught that they are not saviours standing above the world.References Cao, J., Luo, Y., Chen, Y., Wu, Z., Zhang, J., Wu, Y., &amp; Hu, W. (2024). Maternal mitochondrial function affects paternal mitochondrial inheritance in Drosophila. GENETICS, 226(4), Article iyae014. https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyae014Kosmicki, M. (2017). Marianismo Identity, Self-Silencing, Depression and Anxiety in Women from Santa María de Dota, Costa Rica. UNED Research Journal, 9(2), 291-297. https://doi.org/10.22458/urj.v9i2.1895Plumwood, V. (2019). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. In Ideals and Ideologies (pp. 487-493). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429286827-77Sato, M., &amp; Sato, K. (2012). Maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA. Autophagy, 8(3), 424-425. https://doi.org/10.4161/auto.19243Urbina-Garcia, A. (2025). Parents’ wellbeing: perceptions of happiness and challenges in parenthood in Latin America. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 20(1), Article 2454518. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2025.2454518

Give me a son? A de-essentialized ecofeminist critique of the Marian mother-son paradigm

What if the terminal collapse of the Thwaites Glacier, the accelerating desertification of the Sahelian belt, the unprecedented marine heatwaves bleaching over ninety percent of the Great Barrier Reef, the thermal expansion driving sea-level rise in low-lying Pacific atolls, and the structural deceleration of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation are not the primary disease, but merely the planetary psychosomatic symptoms of an unexamined human madness? What if the compounding crises of the Anthropocene are, in fact, psychological and psychiatric disruptions rather than mere environmental externalities?An evolving body of research suggests exactly this: that the climate crisis cannot be adequately understood through traditional empirical, positivist, or economic frameworks alone, because it is inherently an institutionalized psychiatric crisis<a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8499625/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8499625/"> (Dodds, 2021).</a> While quantitative methodologies accurately measure the material breakdown of the Earth’s biosphere, they tend, more often than you think, to fail to account for the psychological, psychoanalytic, and psychiatric dimensions driving human vulnerability to contemporary climate challenges. Beyond the immediate psychiatric trauma caused by acute environmental disasters, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive episodes, and generalised anxiety directly correlated with extreme weather events, the overarching reality of a degrading biosphere threatens human ontological security. This chronic exposure to ecological degradation causes systemic <a data-mce-href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-03219-5_2" href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-03219-5_2">eco-anxiety, collective grief</a>, and an inevitable state of existential paralysis that conventional psychiatric diagnostic manuals struggle to fully categorise. The psychopathology of climate inaction, institutional resistance, and societal denial cannot be decoupled from the ideological constructs of power. When synthesising contemporary psychoanalytic theory, ecofeminist critiques of the logic of domination, and the political-ecological concept of petro-masculinity, we can examine the climate crisis as the systemic symptom of a pathologised master identity rooted in dualistic exploitation, structural psychic disavowal, and compensatory violence <a data-mce-href="https://r.jordan.im/download/environmentalism/daggett2018.pdf" href="https://r.jordan.im/download/environmentalism/daggett2018.pdf">(Daggett, 2018)</a>.<h3>The psychoanalytic matrix of ecological distress and structural disavowal</h3> To map the psychological dimensions of the climate crisis, one must analyse the spectrum of distress that operates between conscious affective states and unconscious, pathological defense mechanisms designed to preserve the socio-economic status quo. The continuous (non-consentual) exposure to anthropogenic ecological loss erodes what <a data-mce-href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0803706X.2025.2586563" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0803706X.2025.2586563">psychoanalysts define as ecological subjectivity, </a>a state wherein the unconscious boundary between the human ego and the non-human environment is recognised as permeable and interdependent (Dodds, 2021). <blockquote>When the biophysical systems supporting life are systematically and neglectfully degraded (mostly for profit), this permeability results in a fragmentation of the self: One experiences a persistent, low-grade trauma characterised by psychological numbness, learned helplessness, and an inability to properly mourn planetary loss, an inhibition of grief that subverts adaptive action.</blockquote>Rather than stemming from a simple deficits-based model of public understanding or a lack of scientific information, societal climate inertia is mediated by what psychoanalytic literature identifies as disavowal, or <a data-mce-href="https://psychotherapie-wissenschaft.info/article/view/1664-9583-2022-2-45/html" href="https://psychotherapie-wissenschaft.info/article/view/1664-9583-2022-2-45/html">Verleugnung (Haseley, 2019)</a>. Repudiation represents a psychological state where there is a simultaneous acknowledgment and repudiation of reality. On a cognitive level, one accepts the validity of climate data and recognises the impending existential threat; however, on the emotional, affective, and behavioral levels, this knowledge is severed from daily practice. This split allows humans and institutions to maintain a superficial alignment with scientific reality while psychologically neutralising its disturbing implications, thereby protecting the ego from overwhelming guilt, existential anxiety, and the catastrophic destabilisation of their consumerist lifestyles (Lewis, 2014).To evade the unbearable realisation of what can be termed an unpayable ecological debt (think of it as the realisation that modern industrial civilisation has consumed the future of subsequent generations and non-human species) the human ego resorts to primitive defense mechanisms, most notably<a data-mce-href="https://reachlink.com/advice/defense-mechanisms/understanding-splitting-black-and-white-thinking-explained/" href="https://reachlink.com/advice/defense-mechanisms/understanding-splitting-black-and-white-thinking-explained/"> psychological splitting </a>and narcissistic entitlement. Within this psychological paradigm, a person partitions the psychic world into idealised and devalued segments. This splitting manifests macro-socially through the externalisation of blame, the pathologisation of environmental movements, and the generation of conspiratorial narratives designed to ward off the untreated anxieties associated with systemic structural change. As a result, the pathologised ego maintains a fragile illusion of control and innocence, thereby reinforcing a sense of narcissistic entitlement that demands the continuation of extractive lifestyles regardless of the ecological cost.<h3>Ecofeminism, hierarchical dualisms, and the epistemological logic of domination</h3> To understand why contemporary human societies default to these destructive psychic defenses rather than implementing adaptive, regenerative strategies, it is necessary to examine the need for power. Ecofeminist scholarship provides an intersectional lens for understanding this pathology by locating the root of ecological destruction in what<a data-mce-href="https://fitelson.org/piksi/plumwood.pdf" href="https://fitelson.org/piksi/plumwood.pdf"> Val Plumwood termed the logic of domination.</a> Historically, European and North American patriarchal frameworks (that have spread around the globe, thanks colonialism) have constructed and reinforced cisheteropatriarcal dualisms that do not merely categorise difference but moralise and weaponise it. These dualisms separate and value culture over nature, heteronormativity over natural sexual diversity, the rational mind over the emotional body, and the masculine over the feminine. Within this psychic and philosophical scaffolding, the dominant master identity establishes its self-worth, autonomy, and security exclusively through the subordination and backgrounding of the devalued half of the binary.This dualistic architecture pathologises our psychological relationship with the biosphere through two distinct, reinforcing mechanisms. First of all, it establishes an epistemology of mastery wherein nature is conceptually stripped of its animacy, subjective agency, and intrinsic value. Under the gaze of the master identity, the biophysical world is reduced to an inert, passive, and distinctly feminised backdrop designed solely to be penetrated, mastered, and consumed by the rational, masculine agent. This psychological reductionism creates quite the estrangement, one that renders a person incapable of perceiving the non-human world as a co-constitutive partner in life and evolution. Consequently, the destruction of ecosystems is not felt as a self-inflicted wound, but rather celebrated as a triumph of human rationality and technological dominance over external chaotic forces.Second, this dualistic framework results in the systematic pathologisation of care within patriarchal social structures. Psychological traits that are essential for ecological stewardship and collective survival (think about a world where interdependence, emotional vulnerability, receptivity, and a commitment to long-term care are normalised, encouraged, and rewarded) are culturally coded as feminine, submissive, and weak.&nbsp; Conversely, traits such as consumerist individualism, emotional stoicism, and unyielding mechanical control are reinforced as hallmarks of psychological maturity and political authority. This gendered distribution of psychic traits blocks the emotional receptivity and empathy required to respond adaptively to environmental trauma. When care is pathologized and mastery is idealized, the institutional capacity to grieve for the environment or to implement policies based on ecological mitigation is castrated, leaving society structurally predisposed to accelerate the very processes causing its demise.<h3>Petro-masculinity, extractive desire, and the necro-patriarchal refusal to yield</h3> The convergence of these psychoanalytic defense mechanisms, hierarchical dualisms, and the material imperatives of fossil-fuel capitalism crystallizes in the political-ecological and psychological concept of petro-masculinity. As articulated in contemporary peer-reviewed political ecology and psychoanalytic critiques, fossil fuel systems do not merely yield economic profit or mechanical energy; they historically secure cultural meaning, establish specific political subjectivities, and undergird white patriarchal identities (Daggett, 2018). The historical archetype of the industrial breadwinner, the autonomous pioneer, and the elite geopolitical decision-maker is materially and metaphorically anchored in the extraction, combustion, and conspicuous consumption of fossil energy. Within this framework, the burning of carbon becomes a profound psychological proxy for physical mastery, socioeconomic status, and unyielding dominion over the earth.When the material realities of the Anthropocene, the demands of global climate treaties, and the scientific imperatives of economic degrowth threaten this carbon-intensive social order, they do not simply challenge a set of economic practices. Rather, they trigger intersecting anxieties related to both gender identity and ontological security. <blockquote>Because the master identity has tied its existential validity to the continuous exercise of extractive power, any attempt to limit carbon consumption is unconsciously perceived as a direct threat to the self, a form of systemic castration. Instead of leading to self-reflection, ecological grief, or adaptive behavioral modification, this profound identity anxiety triggers a hyper-masculine, psycho-affective compensation (Daggett, 2018). </blockquote>Petro-masculinity functions as an aggressive, regressive psychological defense mechanism wherein climate denialism, the hyper-acceleration of resource extraction, and a turn toward authoritarian political desires are weaponised as violent compensatory practices to protect an endangered sense of self and systemic privilege.The psychological refusal to transition to sustainable, post-carbon economies can therefore be understood as an escalation into what I am coining here today as necro-patriarchy ( coining patriarchy, a system of male domination and gender-based hierarchy, with necropolitics, a concept developed by <a data-mce-href="https://pact.egs.edu/biography/achille-mbembe/" href="https://pact.egs.edu/biography/achille-mbembe/">&nbsp;Achille Mbembe</a> exploring how sovereign powers decide which populations are valued and empowered to live, and which are deemed disposable or killable.). This represents a highly pathologised psychic framework wherein the biological death of the marginalised other, of non-human species, and the collective self, is subconsciously accepted or even accelerated rather than surrendering the illusions of the master identity. Because calls for climate mitigation (adaptation at this point, really!) demand a relinquishment of historical privilege and a dismantling of hierarchical dualisms, they are unconsciously registered by those invested in petro-masculinity as an existential defeat. <blockquote>The anxiety of deprivileging triggers a destructive, self-reinforcing feedback loop. Instead of mourning the loss of a carbon-reliant identity and transitioning toward care-based paradigms, the collective psyche of the dominant class (from an oil company CEO, a country's president, to your uncle who refuses to replace his oil heating with PV or thermal energy) doubles down on extractive destruction. </blockquote>The pathologized ego chooses planetary self-destruction over the relinquishment of its perceived dominance: This mutates a manageable ecological and technological transition into an intractable, global psychiatric crisis.&nbsp;The climate crisis is a mirror to our species: Humanity is not merely fighting an excess of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but is, in fact, locked in a struggle against an institutionalized, psychological refusal to yield power. Maybe, just, maybe, the restoration of planetary equilibrium requires (and may even be dependant) on the deconstruction (and hopefully the healing) of the pathologised master identity itself.

The Psychopathology of the Anthropocene: Petro-Masculinity, the Logic of Domination, and the Psychic Disavowal of Climate Collapse

a bridge over a river with buildings in the background

It does not rain often in the city. But when it does, the rain does not ponder. The thick pattering soon turns the flat concrete roofs into small ponds because of dead leaves or plastic clogging the drains. The street cats seek refuge under cars, in ruins, or house entries, sometimes meowing until a human companion lets them in. The doves squat under bridges and on the nearby school’s window sills. As a tenant opens the door for a street cat, gusts of rain enter with the furry. The strong thunder lets the neighbor's dogs howl. The tenant shivers. Not from the cold, but from the storm’s rumble, reminding her nervous system of previously witnessed sounds of destruction and death; of exposure to the sky and the violence it may have in store from neighboring countries.<h3>The Mental and the City</h3>(More-than-)Human beings experience cities very differently. For some, they can’t be loud and buzzing enough; for others, a busy street or a subway ride may be of unbearable mental or physical strain. While cities surely offer several advantages (such as more jobs, social networks, and entertainment), they also expose their citizens to a variety of environmental stressors. Among these are noise, light, smell, air, soil, water, and electromagnetic pollution (Hellbrück and Kals, 2012; Toronyi, 2021; Tota et al., 2024). The highly unequal access to and lack of green urban spaces, as well as the overall disconnection to a more-than-human world, only exacerbate the stressors experienced in cities (Anguelovski et al., 2020; Braubach et al., 2017; Haase et al., 2017; Kua and Sia, 2016; McAllister et al., 2022). Then again, (sonic) warfare, conflict, and extreme weather events, among other crises, directly affect the mental health of urban residents, leaving a vast amount of citizens with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or, at times, with traumata that last for generations (Arafat and Hossain, 2026; Tota et al., 2024).&nbsp;In other words, city environments and urban upbringing can affect and trigger new and existing mental health issues (Costa E Silva and Steffen, 2019; Okkels et al., 2017). However, while city designs and planning keep favoring so-called ‘neurotypical’ and ‘mentally healthy’ citizens, critical urban scholars and activists increasingly look at how the neurodivergent community and those grappling with mental disorders perceive their urban environments; and how we can live up to the community’s spatial justice and right to the city (McAllister et al., 2022; Sarraf, 2025; Toronyi, 2021; Vanolo, 2023).&nbsp;After a few days of rain, the sun is back over the city. Some roofs have fully dried off; others are covered with sparkling green moss or short grasses. During the rainy days, the ‘cat rescuer’ had spent the days inside. So did the cat with her. But the tenant stays inside also during the sunshine. The outside is too loud, too bright. Some days, she forgets the passing of time by glaring for hours at the walls in her shadowy yard. They are green from moss, lichen, and mold. Sometimes a yellow flower peeks through the rough and crumbling walls. Last week, she lost another job. Three months before, another. She couldn’t make it outside. Just the idea of it was too dreadful.<h3>Mold and Housing Inequality</h3>Certainly, urban environmental stressors are coupled with at least as many socioeconomic ones. These can include finding a, staying in, and ‘feeling at’ home (Gotby, 2025). They can also include finding and staying in a job (or managing several at once), to name a few. In this context, the urban neurodivergent community and those suffering from mental disorders experience more difficulties accessing housing and face a higher risk of housing instability and homelessness (Newman and Goldman, 2009; Padgett, 2020). Vice versa, poor housing conditions, including mold or toxins exposure, inadequate sanitation or heating, overcrowding, too high rents, or eviction threats, can trigger mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, or sleep issues (Bentley et al., 2025; Mason et al., 2024; Padgett, 2020).&nbsp;The tenant stares at the mold in her kitchen and above her bed. The landlord had painted over it before she moved in. However, the rain gave the thick, damp mold enough nourishment to eat through the white paint of her one-bedroom apartment. In the kitchen corner, the tenant sticks her finger into the black, moldy coating on the wall. To her dread and simultaneous exhilaration, the finger vanished almost fully in the damp wall.&nbsp;‚This moldy thing must be feeling soo stuffed to the gills!‘ She chuckles, indulging in this imagination of her moldy companion. Then chuckles again, catching herself having such an imagination in the first place. This morning, she got a letter from the landlord. The bills are due. And he also wants to renovate. In short, she has to leave the apartment before July, in no less than two months.&nbsp;<h3>Diagnoses and Public Stigma</h3>Diagnoses of neurodivergence and mental health disorders can have a devastating effect on the person receiving it, while for others, they can be of enormous relief, finally delivering an explanation for why they ever felt off (Aftab, 2024). Some feel the need to talk their everyday challenges out loud and share them publicly, others just prefer silence, preferring not to give their mental companion such power and spotlight (Degerman, 2026).&nbsp;Even if there is a diagnosis, sometimes overlapping ones, none look the same, are experienced the same: Autism equals not autism, schizophrenia not schizophrenia, PTSD not PTSD, borderline syndrome not borderline syndrome, depression not depression. The list is long. All lie on a vast spectrum, in line with “the broad commonwealth of earthly life“ (Abram, 2024: 342).&nbsp;However, no matter how the neurodivergent community and those suffering from mental health disorders experience or address their diagnosis, the subject remains exposed to public stigma and discrimination, disenfranchisement in policymaking, or, as we saw, to uninhabitable living conditions (Corrigan and Penn, 2015; Filer, 2019; Shorter, 2017; Telles-Correia et al., 2018).&nbsp;Once, there was a tiny tree breaking the asphalted ground in the tenant’s beloved shady yard. But her neighbor cut it. How angry and sad she got! She was blindly mad at him but did not find the courage to say anything. The incident left her ruminating for days. First, because of the lost young tree, then about her discouragement not to confront the neighbor and her social anxiety; her anxiety about anything and everything!<h3>An Abacterial Binary</h3>From a personal perspective, the beauty of my neurodivergent loved ones or those marked by a mental disorder helped me create my own definition of love and acceptance – and of seeing the city. I also witnessed how it is particularly those of my fellow people who require the more-than-human world more existentially to calm their nervous systems in overstimulating city environments; who are particularly equipped with the sensitivities to see, hear, smell, touch, cherish and emphasise with their more-than-human urban inhabitants; who are humble enough to experience “those moments of imaginative overwhelm wherein we lose ourselves in […] the graceful, collective swerves of a flock of starlings, or while watching a spider spinning its web“ (Abram, 2024: 345).&nbsp;Until today, the topic has left me wondering: is there anyone who can actually be said to perceive their urban environment ‘in default mode’? Are we not all perceiving on a wide spectrum? Without disregarding the actual (and often tremendous) challenges experienced by people with neurodivergence or mental disorders, in my opinion, this artificial, ‚abacterial‘ binary between the ‚neurtotypical’, the ‘mentally healthy’ and the ‚rest’ remains an increasingly moldy thing to grasp - a bit slimy and, most of all, destructive to our health and what we call a ‚home‘.&nbsp;Not only inside the apartment, but also on the walls of the ruins of the adjacent nine-story building, black mold has proudly expanded its territory. However, it is closely accompanied by the green and grey lichen, which seems to have found all the more grip on the ruin’s bullet-ridden walls, its abandoned balconies, and broken windows. Whose memories must be living there, bouncing between the empty rooms that were once full of bustle, music, fights, and laughter?<h3>Moss on urban asphalt</h3>What does ‚mentally fitting in’ mean in the first place? Apart from the definition provided by ours truly, the ‘Capitalocene’ (Haraway, 2016), where the ‚fit-ins‘ represent those who feed into the capitalistic system based on their ‘productive’, able, market-curbing performance with the ‘right’ looks, sexual orientation, age, nationality, race, class, and gender (to name a few possible factors for discrimination in the Capitalocene). Similarly, Gotby (2025) speaks about the so-called „surplus population“, a term coined by Renwick and Shilliam (2022), in the context of the UK’s housing system. The notion refers to those people perceived as ‘disposable’, comprising “those who are not working or those in low-waged, precarious, and unskilled work” (Gotby, 2025: 67) and thus cannot (or not any longer) satisfy the Capitalocene’s thirst for constant accumulation and commodification. The discriminating and selectively disvaluing force of the Capitalocene also affects the more-than-human: as long as plants, animals, rocks, water bodies, winds, or the sun provide resources, they’re in the game. Otherwise, discarded. Rip it off, please, this ugly moss on the asphalt road! The hope of this semi-fictional urban snapshot is therefore to nudge our seeing of the city beyond neurotypical-neurodiverse binaries, beyond stigmatizing policies, and an urban design for those ‘fitting in’. Instead, it calls for spatializing the emotions, sensations, mental overstimulation, and stress; for the neurospicy, those with mental disorders and the more-than-human living in the city; for the loud and silent ones, for those navigating cities - excited, exhausted, excluded – day in day out.&nbsp;About the author:Bruna Rohling is a PhD candidate at ETH Zurich. Trained as an urban planner, she researches the urban humanitarian governance of forcibly displaced people in times of polycrisis, focusing on Beirut, Lebanon. Apart from her PhD project, Bruna hopes to make the city experiences of the neurodiverse community and our more-than-human fellow critters more visible, especially by combining creative with academic writing. ReferencesAbram D (2024) On the Origin of the Phrase ‘More-Than-Human’. In: Rodríguez-Garavito C (ed) More Than Human Rights: An Ecology of Law, Thought and Narrative for Earthly Flourishing. New York: NYU Law, pp. 341–347.Aftab A (2024) What a psychiatric diagnosis means – and what it doesn’t mean. Available at: https://psyche.co/ideas/what-a-psychiatric-diagnosis-means-and-what-it-doesnt-mean (accessed 9 April 2026).Anguelovski I, Brand AL, Connolly JJT, et al. (2020) Expanding the Boundaries of Justice in Urban Greening Scholarship: Toward an Emancipatory, Antisubordination, Intersectional, and Relational Approach. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 110(6): 1743–1769.Arafat SMY and Hossain S (2026) War, socio-political conflict and Geopsychiatry. Geopsychiatry 3: 100043.Bentley R, Mason K, Jacobs D, et al. (2025) Housing as a social determinant of health: a contemporary framework. The Lancet. Public health 10(10): e855-e864.Braubach M, Egorov A, Mudu P, et al. (2017) Effects of Urban Green Space on Environmental Health, Equity and Resilience. In: Kabisch N, Korn H, Stadler J and Bonn A (eds) Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas: Linkages between Science, Policy and Practice: Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 187–205.Corrigan PW and Penn DL (2015) Lessons from social psychology on discrediting psychiatric stigma. Stigma and Health 1(S): 2–17.Costa E Silva JA and Steffen RE (2019) Urban environment and psychiatric disorders: a review of the neuroscience and biology. Metabolism: clinical and experimental 100S: 153940.Degerman D (2026) What mental health campaigns get wrong about silence. Available at: https://psyche.co/ideas/for-some-with-mental-illness-its-not-always-good-to-talk (accessed 9 April 2026).Filer N (2019) The Heartland: Finding and losing schizophrenia. London: Faber &amp; Faber.Gotby A (2025) Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing. London, New York: Verso.Haase D, Kabisch S, Haase A, et al. (2017) Greening cities – To be socially inclusive? About the alleged paradox of society and ecology in cities. Habitat International 64: 41–48.Haraway D (2016) Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene. In: Haraway D (ed) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, London: Duke University Press, pp. 30–57.Hellbrück J and Kals E (2012) Umweltbelastungen, Stress und Gesundheit. In: Hellbrück J and Kals E (eds) Umweltpsychologie: Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 33–46.Kua EH and Sia A (2016) Green Environment and Mental Health in the City. In: Jorgensen PM, Okkels N and Kristiansen CB (eds) Mental Health and Illness in the City: Singapore: Springer Singapore, pp. 1–20.Mason KE, Alexiou A, Li A, et al. (2024) The impact of housing insecurity on mental health, sleep and hypertension: Analysis of the UK Household Longitudinal Study and linked data, 2009-2019. Social science &amp; medicine (1982) 351: 116939.McAllister K, McBeth A and Galway N (2022) Autism spectrum condition and the built environment. Cities &amp; Health 6(6): 1164–1178.Newman S and Goldman H (2009) Housing Policy for Persons With Severe Mental Illness. Policy Studies Journal 37(2): 299–324.Okkels N, Kristiansen CB and Munk-Jørgensen P (2017) Review of Urban Mental Health. 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(2024) Environmental pollution and extreme weather conditions: insights into the effect on mental health. Frontiers in psychiatry 15: 1389051.Vanolo A (2023) Autistic cities: critical urbanism and the politics of neurodiversity. City 27(1-2): 190–208.

Moss, Mold, and the Mental: A City Snapshot

Many of us tend to think of the environmental and climate polycrises as a distinctly modern nightmare. We trace its roots to the industrial revolution, capitalism’s obsession with exponential growth, or the recent acceleration of disposable culture. In response, brilliant modern frameworks like ecofeminism have emerged, rightly arguing that the exploitation of the Earth is linked to the patriarchal oppression of women and other marginalized bodies. Nature, in this view, has been treated as a feminine passive resource to be drilled, conquered, and owned.But if we are going to fix a broken world, we need to ask ourselves a provocative question: What if the world was born broken, and what if an entire civilization has spent 3,000 years building the toolkit to repair it?This is the intersection where modern queer ecofeminism can learn from ancient Judaism. The realization here (what I will explore in this post) is that the Jews' entire theological framework is built on the assumption that continuous healing is the primary purpose of being human.<h3>Tikkun Olam: The broken world axiom</h3>The concept that has captivated modern social justice movements is Tikkun Olam, often translated simply as repairing the world. But to appreciate its true nature, we have to understand its origin myth within <a data-mce-href="https://newkabbalah.com/kabbalah-and-psychology/freud-jung-and-psychoanalysis/the-lurianic-kabbalah-an-archetypal-interpretation/" href="https://newkabbalah.com/kabbalah-and-psychology/freud-jung-and-psychoanalysis/the-lurianic-kabbalah-an-archetypal-interpretation/">Lurianic Kabbalah</a>.The mystic <a data-mce-href="https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm" href="https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm">Isaac Luria </a>described creation as a cosmic catastrophe. God needed to contract God’s own essence to make space for the universe. To fill this new world, God poured divine light into sacred vessels. But the vessels, unable to contain the intensity of the divine flow, shattered. The divine sparks fell into the mundane world, became trapped within material shards, and darkness entered reality.As academic scholarly analysis suggests, Tikkun Olam, interpreted ecologically, offers insight into just sustainability. This serves as a model and guide for a more sustainable future by emphasizing the interdependence among God (not necessarily a monotheistic one), human needs, and the claims of nature. Early rabbinic discussions of <a data-mce-href="https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/history-culture/2023/may/tikkun-olam-history.html" href="https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/history-culture/2023/may/tikkun-olam-history.html">mipnei tikkun ha-olam</a> (for the sake of the betterment of society) were initially focused on maintaining social order, but have evolved through Kabbalistic thought into a cosmic responsibility where humans are active partners with the concept of the divine in gathering the trapped sparks and restoring wholeness to the cosmos.For a modern reader, this may be relatable: We feel the brokenness. We see it in polarized communities and a deteriorating planet. Judaism offers an axiom: You are not imagining the fracture. It is real, it is ancient, and it is your - and our- job to fix it.<h3>Ecofeminism and the indwelling shekhinah</h3>Here is where the connection becomes potent. Because many religions, especially Islam or Christianity, absorbed and enforced a whole set of hierarchical dualisms: heaven and earth, good and bad, men and women, mind and body, emotion and thought, humans and nature, nature and culture. One of the dualisms is matter and spirit. Ecofeminism argues against a transcendent logic,<a data-mce-href="https://broadview.org/professor-says-connecting-ecofeminism-and-faith-can-change-the-world/" href="https://broadview.org/professor-says-connecting-ecofeminism-and-faith-can-change-the-world/"> the idea that spirit is up there and matter is down here to be used.</a>Judaism counters with the concept of the <a data-mce-href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-divine-feminine-in-kabbalah-an-example-of-jewish-renewal/" href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-divine-feminine-in-kabbalah-an-example-of-jewish-renewal/">Shekhinah</a>. While gender in Judaism is complex, the Shekhinah is traditionally understood as the indwelling, feminine presence of the Divine that lives within the created world, not distant from it. In Jewish mystical literature, the Shekhinah emerges as a distinctly feminine quality of divinity, often compared to a mother, sister, or daughter.<a data-mce-href="https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/486147?lang=bi" href="https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/486147?lang=bi"> Kabbalistic cosmology views her as associated with the lowest of the divine emanations (sefirot), serving as the intermediary closest to the material world</a>. The potential to create a phenomenology of holiness engendered respect for the value of other creatures and things, unifying phenomena with their source.When we pollute a river or destroy a forest, from a Jewish ecofeminist perspective, we are doing more than just breaking a law (if there are laws against that in that jurisdiction in the first place!): we are exiling the Shekhinah. We are wounding this Divine Feminine present in matter. While I have my own conflicting views on the term 'divine feminine', the gender binary here is not what's under the spotlight, but once simple idea: Repairing the world is not a matter of corporate policy or green washing, but a spiritual desecration that demands a spiritual response.<h3>Shabbat as a tool of degrowth</h3>If ecofeminism seeks to dismantle the patriarchal mastery model of nature, Judaism provides the ultimate practical tool: Shabbat (the Sabbath).Shabbat is not just a day off to catch up on sleep. I remember my first Shabbat, where I was privileged to experience it with a global jewish community a few years ago: In my experience, it's a weekly ritual designed for rest, balance, and degrowth. In other words, a weekly cessation of mastery. On Shabbat, Jewish law prohibits melacha, which are activities that work or transform the environment. Historically, this meant no lighting fires, no harvesting, no building. Jewish people gave themselves, others, the planet, and the non-human a break once a week, and they still do today.&nbsp;There is an ecological web of interrelationships within the Sabbath, consisting of the concept of God, humans, the rest of physical creation (land and all living beings and matter), and time. I see the Shabbat and the associated <a data-mce-href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-is-shemita-the-sabbatical-year/" href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-is-shemita-the-sabbatical-year/">Shmita (Sabbatical year) </a>depicting God's identity as one who gives rest or lets be. I interpret this as a perspective of political/ecological power that could be enormously important for addressing climate change by challenging the political-theological framework that defines existence through continuous action and production.Shabbat is the original, continuous strike against the extraction economy. It is a day to practice being a partner with creation rather than its manager. Ecofeminism can find in Shabbat a built-in, repeatable ritual for disrupting the logic of exponential production and consumption.<h3>A duty to the future: Continuous healing</h3>The final lesson ecofeminism can absorb is the persistence of the duty that is, at this point, crucial for our species' survival (and all other species too). What many government heads and political leaders are failing to do is planting trees in whose shade they shall never sit: Their inability to think for future generations is greed-induced, and they can learn a thing or two from jewish ecofeminism. Modern activism suffers from burnout, the feeling that the problem is too big and our time is too short.Ancient Judaism provides the antidote to this fatigue through <a data-mce-href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-613-mitzvot-commandments" href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-613-mitzvot-commandments">mitzvot (commandments)</a>. One key commandment is <a data-mce-href="https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1892179/jewish/Judaism-and-Environmentalism-Bal-Tashchit.htm" href="https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1892179/jewish/Judaism-and-Environmentalism-Bal-Tashchit.htm">Bal Tashchit </a>(which is the prohibition against senseless destruction) or waste. Crucially, this law applies even in times of war. This sets clear, absolute limits on how humans may interact with the non-human world, emphasizing that we are temporary care takers, or stewards, tasked to till and protect the Earth, not control it. While some <a data-mce-href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0034673X251386819" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0034673X251386819">scholars trace the prohibition primarily to earlier concepts linked with self-harm</a>, contemporary scholarly analysis has increasingly recognized Bal Tashchit as a strong and much needed environmental ethic prohibiting wastefulness and destruction of resources, asserting that to harm the environment is inherently to harm oneself.The work of healing is not contingent on winning the battle tomorrow. It is a perpetual mandate. As <a data-mce-href="https://www.jtsa.edu/meaningful-quote-pirkei-avot/" href="https://www.jtsa.edu/meaningful-quote-pirkei-avot/">the aphorism from Perkei Avot</a> teaches: "It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it."The Jews always knew the world was broken. But they also always knew that the very brokenness is what gives human action its ultimate significance. Intersectional ecofeminism can find in Judaism not a historical footnote, but a powerful, resilient ally in the continuous work of gathering the sparks and mending the sacred whole.

What ecofeminism can learn from Judaism and rabbinic literature

Contemporary struggles against patriarchy, heteronormativity, white supremacy, and ecological extraction are, more often than not, narrated as a cultural awakening or moral progression. Yet emerging research in social neuroscience, <a data-mce-href="https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/health/envepi" href="https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/health/envepi">environmental epigenetics</a>, and <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11463847/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11463847/">holobiont theory </a>suggests a more complex transformation: these struggles are entangled with shifts in neural architecture, affective regulation, and multispecies co‑evolution that reconfigure what counts as adaptive life. Drawing on feminist and decolonial science studies, this article theorizes an emergent biocentric orientation, organized around symbiosis, interdependence, and planetary embeddedness, in tension with an extractive orientation that remains invested in cis-heteropatriarchy, dominance, and anthropocentric control. Rather than positing biological essentialism or literal speciation, I argue that these orientations can be understood as divergent, plastic assemblages of neural, hormonal, epigenetic, and sociopolitical patterns that differentially shape fitness in an era of climate catastrophe and systemic crisis.<h3>Neural architectures of hierarchy and plasticity</h3>Social neuroscience has begun to map how adherence to hierarchy, system‑justifying ideologies, and authoritarian worldviews correlates with specific structural and functional properties of the brain.<a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11519434/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11519434/"> A large preregistered voxel‑based morphometry study</a> found that endorsement of conservative, system‑justifying ideologies is positively associated with amygdala gray matter volume, whereas more progressive orientations correlate with reduced amygdala volume, replicating and extending earlier work on political attitudes and brain structure. The amygdala is centrally implicated in processing threat, salience, and affective responses to social out‑groups, and convergent evidence suggests that greater amygdalar volume and activity support the learning, maintenance, and acceptance of hierarchical social systems and dominance relations. These findings resonate with political psychology research on <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5381105/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5381105/">social dominance orientation (SDO</a>), which conceptualizes a preference for group‑based hierarchy and inequality as a stable attitudinal dimension that predicts support for patriarchal, racist, and heteronormative policies.By contrast,<a data-mce-href="https://www.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/jnp.23.2.jnp121" href="https://www.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/jnp.23.2.jnp121"> the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC),</a> and in particular the <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4885021/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4885021/">anterior cingulate gyrus (ACCg)</a>, functions as an integrative hub for social cognition, error monitoring, and flexible updating in response to social feedback. <a data-mce-href="https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)30077-0#:~:text=Highlights,and%20errors%20during%20social%20interactions." href="https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)30077-0#:~:text=Highlights,and%20errors%20during%20social%20interactions.">Reviews </a>of human and non‑human primate data indicate that the ACCg is specialized for processing other‑oriented information, encoding vicarious motivation, and tracking prediction errors about others’ intentions, which underpins capacities such as empathy, perspective‑taking, and context‑sensitive cooperation. Variability in ACC structure and connectivity has been linked to individual differences in socio‑cognitive abilities and to disorders characterized by callousness and diminished concern for others. This suggests that political and ethical projects oriented toward unlearning hierarchy, such as queer, feminist, and decolonial movements are supported by, and may further cultivate, neural architectures that prioritize social monitoring, relational accountability, and the decentering of the self as the primary locus of value.Crucially, these neural profiles are not fixed types but dynamic products of developmental histories, socialization, and ongoing experience. <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2823480/#:~:text=Gene%E2%80%93environment%20interaction%20is%20defined,this%20strictly%20statistical%20definition%2C%20the" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2823480/#:~:text=Gene%E2%80%93environment%20interaction%20is%20defined,this%20strictly%20statistical%20definition%2C%20the">Gene-environment interaction </a>work on SDO and related ideological constructs <a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6731660/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6731660/">indicates</a> that both heritable factors and shared cultural–political environments shape the propensity to endorse hierarchy‑enhancing beliefs. From a queer ecofeminist perspective, we can thus conceptualize reactionary and integrative orientations as historically situated neuro‑political assemblages rather than hardwired essences. This leaves open the possibility of neuroplastic unlearning of dominance and the cultivation of biocentric dispositions across the lifespan.<h3>Holobionts, epigenetics, and biocentric fitness</h3><a data-mce-href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.662878/full" href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2021.662878/full">Recent developments in microbiome research</a> and evolutionary theory challenge the notion of the human as a bounded, autonomous individual, instead framing humans as holobionts, multi‑species collectives composed of host and symbiotic microbial communities whose genomes, metabolisms, and signaling systems co‑produce phenotype and adaptive capacity. <a data-mce-href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2023.1279938/full" href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2023.1279938/full">Holobiont frameworks argue</a> that host–microbiome interactions generate substantial phenotypic variation, modulate gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms, and can influence rapid evolutionary trajectories and transgenerational inheritance. Microorganisms have been shown to alter host gene expression via DNA methylation and other epigenetic pathways, thereby affecting development, immunity, and behavior in ways that are heritable across generations.This reconceptualization of the human as a composite organism destabilizes patriarchal imaginaries of man over nature, revealing instead a condition of structural dependency on microbial, vegetal, animal, and abiotic relations for basic survival. Environmental epigenetics demonstrates that exposures such as pollution, dietary changes, and psychosocial stress can induce epigenetic modifications associated with chronic inflammation, metabolic disorders, and mental health conditions, some of which exhibit intergenerational persistence. In contexts of racialized and gendered environmental violence, these findings show how systems of extraction and domination are inscribed not only in landscapes but also in bodies and genomes, and therefore function as <a data-mce-href="https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/slow-and-fast-violence-a-feminist-critique-of-binaries/" href="https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/slow-and-fast-violence-a-feminist-critique-of-binaries/">what feminist scholars have called slow violence that accumulates over time.​</a>Within this holobiont paradigm, biocentric orientations, those that treat ecosystems as co‑constitutive rather than external resources, can be understood as adaptive strategies for maintaining the homeostasis of the wider life‑support assemblage on which human bodies depend. <blockquote>When political–economic orders organize around aggressive extraction, they are basically operating analogously to virulent pathogens that damage or destabilize their host, eventually undermining their own conditions of existence. </blockquote><a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4547252/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4547252/">Evolutionary work on cooperation </a>emphasizes that major transitions in biological organization, from single cells to multicellular organisms and complex societies, depend on mechanisms that stabilize cooperation and suppress unmitigated competition. Interpreted through a feminist, decolonial lens, the current ecological crisis thus exposes extractivist, patriarchal infrastructures as biologically self‑terminating, while elevating symbiotic, care‑centered practices as central to long‑term holobiont fitness.<h3>Rethinking selection: From competition to cooperation</h3><a data-mce-href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8288455/" href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8288455/">Classic r/K‑selection theory</a> distinguished organisms that maximize reproduction under high mortality (r‑strategists) from those that invest in fewer, higher‑quality offspring near carrying capacity (K‑strategists), but this framework has been <a data-mce-href="https://www.albert.io/blog/k-selected-and-r-selected-species-ap-environmental-science-review/" href="https://www.albert.io/blog/k-selected-and-r-selected-species-ap-environmental-science-review/">heavily critiqued </a>for oversimplifying life‑history variation and neglecting causal mechanisms. <a data-mce-href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17158317/" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17158317/">Contemporary evolutionary biology</a> instead foregrounds multiple, interacting mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation, kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection, each with simple rules under which cooperative behavior can invade and stabilize within populations. These mechanisms demonstrate that, under many conditions, cooperative strategies can outcompete purely selfish or exploitative strategies, particularly in structured populations and repeated interactions where reputation, relational memory, and network topology matter.Rather than mapping human political orientations onto a discredited r/K binary, it is more precise to conceptualize extractive and integrative trajectories as distinct bundles of behavioral, cognitive, and hormonal patterns that occupy different regions of the cooperative, competitive landscape. <a data-mce-href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612472682?utm_source=researchgate.net&amp;utm_medium=article" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612472682?utm_source=researchgate.net&amp;utm_medium=article">Social endocrinology research</a> shows that hormones such as oxytocin and cortisol participate in feedback loops that shape social bonding, trust, and responses to conflict: oxytocin can facilitate empathy and attachment and dampen amygdala reactivity to social threat while reducing cortisol, but chronic stress and persistently elevated cortisol can blunt these effects and entrench defensive, vigilance‑oriented states. <blockquote>In hierarchical, patriarchal contexts that normalize violence and precarity, endocrine systems may be continually driven toward high‑stress, dominance‑oriented profiles, whereas relational cultures of mutual care and equity are more likely to support hormonal patterns conducive to cooperation and repair.</blockquote>From a queer ecofeminist standpoint, these data invite us to theorize sexual selection and social organization not as biologically fixed outcomes but as contested terrains where cultural norms, institutions, and ecological conditions co‑produce what appears natural. For example, <a data-mce-href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J056v18n02_05?utm_medium=article&amp;utm_source=researchgate.net" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J056v18n02_05?utm_medium=article&amp;utm_source=researchgate.net">patriarchal mating scripts that valorize dominance, rigid gender roles, and fertility signaling</a> can be read as one local attractor within a broader space of possibilities, in which more egalitarian, fluid, and care‑centered sexual cultures represent alternative adaptive peaks. In this sense, movements that redistribute care labor, challenge binary gender, and cultivate multispecies kinship are not merely ideological projects; they are experiments in reorganizing the selection pressures that shape which relational styles and embodiments are sustainable.<h3>Survival, speciation, and the ethics of symbiosis</h3>Framing the present conjuncture as a divergence between an “Integrated (Symbiotic) Species” and a “Toxic (Extractive) Branch” is analytically provocative but biologically imprecise if construed as literal speciation, which requires reproductive isolation and genetic divergence that are not currently evident in humans. It is more accurate to speak of incipient biocultural lineages: clusters of practices, institutions, and embodied dispositions that differentially align with cooperative or exploitative evolutionary dynamics and that may, over long timescales, contribute to patterned genetic and epigenetic differentiation. Under conditions of accelerating climate change, resource instability, and cascading health crises, extractivist infrastructures are generating the very stressors, chronic psychosocial stress, polluted environments, disrupted microbiomes, that erode the resilience of those who remain tethered to dominance as a primary mode of relating.Conversely, biocentric, integrative lineages can be understood as investing in the maintenance of the planetary commons, soil, water, air, microbial diversity, social trust, without which human and more‑than‑human life becomes untenable. Evolutionary work on major transitions emphasizes that new levels of organization emerge when entities relinquish some autonomy to participate in collective regulation and benefit from shared robustness. This resonates with Indigenous and feminist cosmologies that foreground reciprocity, relational accountability, and the personhood of land and non‑human beings, offering frameworks in which “adaptation” is not a competitive race but a deepening of mutual responsiveness across species and generations.​<h3>Final thoughts...</h3>The ethical stakes of this divergence are worth noting here. If adaptation in the Anthropocene hinges on the capacity to inhabit holobiont interdependence and to reconfigure neural, hormonal, and institutional architectures away from punitive hierarchy and toward symbiotic care, then refusing to unlearn patriarchy and ecological dominance becomes not only a political choice but a commitment to a mode of life with diminishing viability. Yet because neurobiological and epigenetic systems remain plastic, the future is not a simple winnowing of two fixed branches but an ongoing struggle over which lineages of relation we cultivate, protect, and pass on.

The biocentric divergence: A neurobiological and evolutionary argument for the unlearning of cisheteropatriarchy

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