Joe Brewer wrote in this space about one particular flawed mode of thought that shapes environmental discourse: hero myths. I'd like to add another inaccurate way of thinking that causes environmental destruction: individualism. The idea that we are individuals outside of nature, is flawed. Nature is often understood as something else, something out there, something that is out to get us. This is why we can justify taking antibiotics and using pesticides and herbicides: using chemical warfare against nature. We fight a war against other things, because we are individuals, unconnected to Nature. We're capable of doing this because nature is so foreign to us. We don't feel safe in our own forests and fields, and we don't know our local flora and fauna. Even the water we drink is packaged and sold to us as a plastic wrapped 'commodity'. I'm not the first to decry disconnection from the environment on this website.

But the more we study nature, and the human body, the less we see individual organisms acting in ways unconnected from each other. This semester, I studied biodiversity with ecologist Shahid Naeem. We discussed all the wonderful things biodiversity does for us, from filtering water to providing clean air. My research project for his class was about the biodiversity of the individual. The individual 'I', contains incredible biotic diversity: 100 trillion organisms, including all five kingdoms of life (bacteria, archea, fungi, plants and animals) live in our guts. There are over one thousand species, 80% of which have not been described. Non-human organisms synthesize essential amino acids and vitamins, and processes otherwise indestructible foods, like plant cellulose. The fat level of our bodies and the insulin levels in our bloodstream are intimately connected with this little understood community of non-human organisms flourishing inside our bodies all the time. We can help preserve this gut biota by avoiding unnecessary antibiotics and eating a diet rich in whole, unprocessed foods. But understanding this point is about more than just diet. It's about realizing that instead of an individual, the human body is a diverse system relying on countless organisms to function. Realizing ourselves as the product of a complicated interdependence without which we could not live, ought to change the way we look at ecological interdependence. Thinking about our interdependence with the natural world has lead many to experience a realization that it's impossible to tell where 'out there' becomes different from 'in here'. I call this a state of radical identification with the world. The reason this identification is so radical is that most people don't feel this way. Instead we feel alienated from nature itself. This state of alienation enables us to wage chemical warfare against our land and bodies. It leads to the eco-anxiety discussed on this site, and the need for ecopsychology to help people restore a healthy conception of themselves and the world. Ecopsychology, as a field "situated at the intersection of a number of fields of enquiry, including environmental philosophy, psychology, and ecology" can benefit from scientific results on interdependence and diversity.