WTR Network Webinar: Thinking Like a Mountain – Reflections on Forty Years of Deep Ecology Work

July 20, 2024 – In this two-hour webinar John Seed and Pat Fleming reflect together on 40 years of deep ecology work, its origins and development, its worldwide reach and on where their current enquiry and edges are now. The webinar includes video of a recent conversation with Joanna Macy, as well as archival footage of the fourth author of the book, Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings, the Norwegian eco-philosopher and founder of the deep ecology movement, Arne Naess. This webinar follows the spiral form of the Work that Reconnects with an opportunity for participants to engage in a deep ecology exercise.

Resources shared during the Webinar:

Earth First – Australian environmental activist movement in 1970s & ’80s
Conversation with Joanna Macy, John Seed, Pat Fleming (September 2023)
Dr. Dan Siegel on M We (Me + We)
Sarvodaya reference + Dharma and Development: Religion as Resource in the Sarvodaya Self-Help Movement, Joanna Macy
Arne Næss (1994) about the difference between deep ecology and ecosophy
Gaia Meditations – John Seed and Joanna Macy
Cairn Of Mourning Ritual
Joanna Macy on Deep Ecology Climate Change as Spiritual Practice
Joanna Macy on Deep Ecology – some notes on the name (Nov 15, 1988)
The Deep Ecology Movement, Bill Devall
The Universe Jam, Drew Dellinger

Additional resources:

John Seed’s websites: www.johnseed.net and https://www.rainforestinformationcentre.org/john_seed
www.instagram.com/johnseed_deepecology/
www.facebook.com/johnseed.deepecology/
www.youtube.com/rainforestinfo

For the Cairn of Mourning ritual, participants were placed in small groups in breakout rooms. Participants brought objects to share with each other. Many participants sent images of their objects in ahead of time. Frieda created a collage of those images/objects.

Cairn Collage, image: Frieda Nixdorf

John Seed is founder of the Rainforest Information Centre. Since 1979 he has been involved in the direct actions which have resulted in the protection of the Australian rainforests. John has written and lectured extensively on deep ecology and has been conducting Councils of All Beings and other deep ecology workshops around the world for 35 years. With Joanna Macy, Arne Naess and Pat Fleming, he wrote Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings which has now been translated into 10 languages. In 1995 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) by the Australian Government for services to conservation and the environment.

Pat Fleming grew up in England with Irish roots, and has Australian nationality from her time working in mental health services in Sydney in 1980’s. She recently moved with her partner to northern lutruwita (Tasmania) – an island of much wild beauty below the SE coast of mainland Australia. Since meeting and training with Joanna Macy in the early 1980’s she’s worked in many countries facilitating deep ecology work and the Work that Reconnects workshops. Her writing includes co-authoring Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings and a chapter in A Wild Love for the World – Joanna Macy and the Work of our Time.

Also a passionate plantswoman, educator, musician, poet, she been an active advocate for protecting wild places, biodiversity and indigenous peoples. She set up the poetry publishers, Wylde Publications, in Devon, UK, and also instigated Moor Poets – a network of local poets which has published a number of anthologies over 20 years. She has a Masters in Psychology from Edinburgh University, and an MSc in Botanical Conservation from Plymouth University, which led to her working with Botanical Gardens.

Shar Malloy lives in Australia and spends half her time in Darwin, Northern Territory and the other half of the year on the East Coast of Tasmania. Shar first trained with Joanna Macy in 2001 and has been engaged in community engagement work and activism for over 25 years. Shar is currently the Acting President of the Australian Conservation Foundation and is committed to creating and supporting change which does not recreate the past. Her training in the Work that Reconnects, Nonviolent Communication and being a friend of Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) informs her action in the world. Shar can be contacted via her email.