David D. Kidner's Nature and Psyche: Radical Environmentalism and the Politics of Subjectivity
A positive vision of a future natural world contributes to our own psychological survival. Joanna Macy has written of the despair frequently experienced by environmental activism, a despair that is entirely authentic and understandable given the speed with which the natural order is being demolished, and our apparent powerlessness when faced with overwhelmingly powerful interests. However, as Erik Erikson pointed out, one cannot adequately define one's sense of identity by what one is not. While promoting a positive vision integrates and heals one, devoting one's life purely to opposing what one is against is an act of nihilism in which the culmination of one's own success is self-destruction. (285)
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