Avatar and Virtual Solastalgia

As the real world is being desolated (climate change, ecosystem distress etc etc), real people experience solastalgia. When, in Avatar, they can 'see' an alternative world, which is beautiful, diverse and complex, one that meets their aesthetic, spiritual and ethical needs, they want to live within it. During the movie, they experience a virtual solastalgia as they become virtual participants in the attempted destruction and desolation of the Na'vi and other life forms in this pristine environment ... all for the sake of a meaningless materialism. The movie becomes, for such people, an existential experience of negative environmental change (defined as solastalgia). At the conclusion of the movie when they must accept that such a world is virtual only, they experience a virtual nostalgia for it and become depressed.

The irony of humans finally seeing the value of life, different ways of being 'human', non-human beings and living systems via a movie about a virtual world and its destruction is not lost on me. That a brilliant movie with all of its digital special effects can be more powerful as a change agent than the environmental writers and commentators of the world says something important about environmental education in critically important domains such as global warming, environmental and animal ethics, and habitat destruction.

Solastalgia: The Origins and Definition

As an environmental philosopher at The University of Newcastle I had a reputation within my region as an activist and advocate for environmental conservation and I had published a number of academic and media articles on the environmental history and sustainability of the Hunter Region.

From about the year 2000 onwards, residents within the region would often ring me at work and talk to me about their concerns about particular environmental issues and I would advise and help as best I could.

However, I began to notice the increasing number of people who were concerned about the sheer scale of the environmental impacts in the Upper Hunter Region of NSW. In their attempts to halt the expansion of open cut coal mining and to control the impact of power station pollution, individuals would ring me at work pleading for help with their cause. These people were clearly distressed about the relationship to their home environment and the threat to their identity and well-being from changes to their environment. A visit to the Upper Hunter and close examination of the mining affected landscape confirmed the sheer scale and intensity of the negative changes to the environment.

I had been thinking about the relationship between environmental change, ecosystem distress and human distress for some time. Under the influence of Canadian ecosystem health guru David Rapport and his concept of ‘ecosystem distress syndrome’ I had been working through some of the influences on my own thinking about this relationship. The two major influences at this time were Aldo Leopold and his own concept of ‘land health’ and the Australia’s own pioneer environmental thinker, Elyne Mitchell.


I sought a suitable concept to describe the distress the people in the Upper Hunter were suffering. One word, ‘nostalgia’, came to prominence as it was once a concept linked to a diagnosable illness associated with the melancholia of homesickness for people who were distant from their home. It seemed very close to the condition that Upper Hunter people were manifesting yet had an obvious limitation in that I was dealing with people who were not distant from their home.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia (from the Greek nostos - return to home or native land - and the New Latin suffix algia - pain or sickness from the Greek root algos) or literally, the sickness caused by the intense desire to return home was considered to be a medically diagnosable psycho - physiological disease right up to the middle of the C20. Found in the English language from 1757, nostalgia has been defined differently in different epochs. In 1905 nostalgia was defined as “…a feeling of melancholy caused by grief on account of absence from one’s home country, of which the English equivalent is homesickness. Nostalgia represents a combination of psychic disturbances and must be regarded as a disease. It can lead to melancholia and even death. It is more apt to affect persons whose absence from home is forced rather than voluntary" (William Fiennes 2002:122).

Nostalgia was particularly evident in soldiers fighting in foreign countries who experienced homesickness to the point where they became ill and unable to perform their duties. The cure for nostalgia was a prescription for afflicted soldiers to return home to recuperate and restore their well-being and health. According to Feinnes, nostalgia was still being discussed in journals such as War Medicine in the 1940s and “as late as 1946 was termed a possibly fatal ‘psycho-physiological’ complaint by an eminent social scientist”.

However, in general, reference to ‘nostalgia’ as a sickness resulting from a longing or desire to return home while one is away from ‘home’ is no longer in common use. The more frequent modern use of the term loses its connection to the geographical or spatial ‘home’ and suggests a temporal dimension or ‘looking back’, a desire to be connected with a positively perceived period in the past. Typically, there is a longing for a cultural setting in the past in which a person felt more ‘at home’ than the present. For individuals who see the past as better than the present there is the possibility that nostalgia remains a very real experience that can lead to deep distress. For example, for Indigenous people who have been dispossessed of their lands and culture, the nostalgia for a past where former geographical and cultural integration was both highly valued and sustainable is an ongoing painful experience.

In the Upper Hunter, people were suffering from both imposed place transition (place pathology) and powerlessness (environmental injustice). In overview, there seemed to be some justification for the creation of a new concept that captured the conceptual space or territory connected to this particular constellation of the factors that define place and identity. The people I was concerned about were still ‘at home’, but felt a similar melancholia as that caused by nostalgia connected to the breakdown of the normal relationship between their psychic identity and their home. What these people lacked was solace or comfort derived from their present relationship to a ‘home’ that was being desolated. In addition, they felt a profound sense of isolation about their inability to have a meaningful say and impact on the state of affairs that caused their distress. ‘Solastalgia’ was created to describe the specific form of melancholia connected to lack of solace and sense of desolation in the everyday and lived experience of people within their ‘home’. The English language lacked such a concept.

Solastalgia

Solastalgia has its origins in the concepts of nostalgia, solace and desolation. Solace is derived from the Latin verb solari (noun solacium or solatium), with meanings connected to the alleviation or relief of distress or to the provision of comfort or consolation in the face of distressing events. Solace has connections to both psychological and physical contexts. One emphasis refers to the comfort one is given in difficult times (consolation) while another refers to that which gives comfort or strength. A person or a landscape might give solace, strength or support to other people. Special environments might provide solace in ways that other places cannot. If a person lacks solace then they are distressed and in need of consolation. If a person seeks solace or solitude in a much loved place that is being desolated, then they will suffer distress.

Desolation has its origins in the Latin solus (noun desolare) with meanings connected to devastation, deprivation of comfort, abandonment and loneliness. It too has meanings that relate to both psychological and physical contexts … a personal feeling of abandonment (isolation) and to a landscape that has been devastated.

In addition, the concept of solastalgia has been constructed such that it has a ghost reference or structural similarity to nostalgia thereby ensuring that a place reference is imbedded.

Hence, solastalgia has its origins in the New Latin word ‘nostalgia’ (and its Greek roots nostos and algos), however, it is based on two Latin roots, ‘solace’ and ‘desolation’, with a New Latin suffix, algia or pain, to complete its meaning.

Solastalgia is the pain or sickness 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. It is that feeling you have when your sense of place is under attack. While I claim responsibility for creating the concept of solastalgia and its meaning, I am aware that that the existential experience underlying it is not new ... only that it is newly defined in English (but possibly represented in many other languages). The experience of solastalgia might well be ancient and ubiquitous and under the impact of relentless environmental change, ecosystem distress and climate chaos, it may well become much more common. It is my sincere hope that the negative experience of solastalgia can be overcome by the restoration of ecosystem and human health via every form of creative enterprise at our disposal.

Solastalgia: A new psychoterratic condition

Cultures all over the world have concepts in their languages that relate psychological states to states of the environment. The Hopi have used the word koyaanisqatsi to describe conditions where life is disintegrating and out of balance. The Portugese use the word saudade to describe a feeling one has for a loved one who is absent or has disappeared. The North Baffin Inuit of the Arctic have applied the word, uggianaqtuq, ((pronounced OOG-gi-a-nak-took) is) to the climate and weather. The word means to behave unexpectedly or in an unfamiliar way and has connotations of a “friend acting strangely” or in an unpredictable way. The weather has become uggianaqtug for them.

Worldwide, under the relentless impact of development and climate change, humans are experiencing epidemics of physical and mental disease that have connections to the environment, yet we have very few concepts in English that address environmentally induced distress and illness. I propose two new categories; psychoterratic and somaterratic illness that make the connection between the state of the earth (terra) and mental and physical health. In addition, I suggest that one very old concept, nostalgia, needs to be re-examined as a legitimate psychoterratic disease to be seen along side solastalgia, an important new concept in our understanding of environmentally induced health and illness. What with relentless development pressure and climate chaos (global warming + climate change = climate chaos), both somaterratic and psychoterratic illnesses are likely to increase dramatically.

Nostalgia
We have one word in the English language that very closely connects human distress to the place where we live, our ‘home’. The word, ‘nostalgia’, was once a concept linked to a diagnosable illness associated with melancholia experienced by people who were distant from their home and wanted to return. Nostalgia (nostos = return to home or native land, algia = pain or sickness) or literally, ‘homesickness’, was considered to be a serious medically diagnosable psychosomatic disease with the potential to cause death in those afflicted right up to the middle of the C20.

The indigenous peoples of the earth who have been dispossessed of their lands and its cultural meanings are also likely to experience the pathology of nostalgia. The nostalgia for a past where former geographical and cultural integration was both highly valued and sustainable is for them an ongoing painful experience. Worldwide, displaced indigenous people experience physical and mental illness at rates far beyond those of other groups of humans. Their social problems; unemployment, alcoholism, substance abuse, violence, disproportionately high rates of crime and incarceration, lead to community dysfunction and crisis. People, who are dispossessed, either by force, or via disaster, will experience the serious distress of nostalgia.

However, in general, reference to ‘nostalgia’ as a sickness resulting from a longing or desire to return home while one is away from ‘home’ is no longer in common use. The more frequent modern use of the term loses its intense connection to the geographical ‘home’ and suggests a ‘looking back’ to a positively perceived period in the past.

Dispossession is one trigger for environmentally induced distress. But what about the idea of environmentally induced distress in people who are not displaced? There are places on earth that are not being completely ‘lost’, but are being ‘transformed’. People who are not voluntarily nor forcibly removed from their homes can also experience place-based distress in the face of the lived experience of profound environmental change.

It seems that we lack an appropriate concept for the distress humans directly experience that is caused by environmental change. There is therefore justification for the creation of a new concept that captures the space or territory connected to this particular constellation of the factors that define environmentally induced distress. The people of concern are still ‘at home’, but feel a similar melancholia as that caused by nostalgia connected to the breakdown of the normal relationship between their psychic identity and their home. What these people lack is solace or comfort derived from their present relationship to ‘home’, and so, a new form of psychoterratic illness needs to be defined.

From Nostalgia to Solastalgia

There are few words in English that closely connect psychological and environmental states. One such word is, ‘desolation’ and its meanings refer both to a personal feeling of abandonment (isolation) and to a landscape that has been devastated. The word ‘solace’ also relates to both psychological and physical contexts. One meaning refers to the comfort one is given in difficult times (consolation) while another refers that which gives comfort or strength to a person. A person or a landscape might give solace, strength or support to other people. Special environments might provide solace in ways that other places cannot. If a person lacks solace then they are distressed without the possibility of consolation. If a person seeks solace or solitude in a much loved place that is being desolated, then they will also suffer distress. In both contexts there is anguish or pain (algia).

Therefore, I suggest ‘solastalgia’ to describe the pain or sickness caused by the loss of, or inability to derive, solace connected to the present state of one’s home environment. Solastalgia exists when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under assault (physical desolation). It can be contrasted to the spatial and temporal dislocation and dispossession experienced as nostalgia. Solastalgia is the ‘lived experience’ of the loss of the value of the present as manifest in a feeling of dislocation; of being undermined by forces that destroy the potential for solace to be derived from the immediate and given. In brief, solastalgia is a form of homesickness one experiences when one is still at ‘home’.

Any context where place identity is challenged by pervasive change to the existing order has potential to deliver solastalgia. Transformative technologies and emergent disease (for human and non-human life) have enabled change to occur to cultural and natural environments at a speed that makes adaptation difficult if not impossible. While some might respond to such stress with nostalgia and want to return to a desired past place or time, others will experience solastalgia and express a strong desire to sustain those things that provide solace.

The factors that cause solastalgia can be both natural and artificial. Natural disasters such as drought, fire and flood can be a cause solastalgia. Human-induced change such as war, terrorism, land clearing, mining, rapid institutional change and the gentrification of older parts of cities can also be causal agents. The concept of solastalgia has relevance in any context where there is the direct experience of negative transformation or desolation of the physical environment (home) by forces that undermine a personal and community sense of identity, belonging and control.

In areas affected by prolonged drought desolation to both farmers and the landscape occurs. Research undertaken on the mental health aspects of the drought have concluded that it is not just large scale landscape change (loss of vegetation, dust storms, dead animals, starving animals etc), it is also smaller scale events like the loss of a much loved farmhouse garden that finally trip people over into solastalgically induced depression and illness[1]. Similar situations occur when citizens and communities experience severe impacts from open caste mining. Dust, noise, machines, explosions and pollution all have their effects and a once much loved landscape can be dramatically transformed by such activity. Research in Australia conducted by the author and colleagues has found clear connections between the loss of ecosystem health and felt declines in both physical and mental health of those affected by large scale industrial activity.[2]

The concept of solastalgia can also be applied to understanding the social impacts of disease epidemics. For example, in the epidemic of foot and mouth disease in the UK in 2001 between 6.5 million and 10 million animals were slaughtered prevent the spread of the disease. The loss of the animals and their absence in the rural landscape and economy was a cause of great distress in rural England. A study from Lancaster University found that the epidemic had far-reaching psychosocial impacts. Those farmers and people in their communities directly affected by the sudden change to the environment felt “distress, feelings of bereavement, fear of a new disaster … flashbacks, nightmares, and uncontrollable emotion”[3].

With an increasing incidence of emergent diseases such as HIV AIDS, Asian Bird Flu and SARS, whole social environments can be rendered rapidly ‘at risk’ of complete devastation and transformation. When, for example, thousands of animals must be slaughtered or whole communities and institutions (e.g., hospitals) must be isolated from the rest of the world, solastalgia is a likely outcome for those affected. The HIV pandemic in Africa affects community integrity so profoundly that all sense of ‘home’ and family relationships is desolated. In such circumstances ‘home’ becomes pathological and those who are living with the disease as well as those who are their carers experience acute solastalgia as well as a devastating disease burden.

The most poignant moments of solastalgia occur when individuals are directly involved in or directly experience the transformation of a loved environment. Living through the terrorism of 9/11 2001 or a hurricane such as Katrina in 2005 and watching houses and whole urban landscapes of New Orleans devastated by subsequent flooding would be a traumatic case of solastalgia. Those who were voluntarily displaced but then return ‘home’ to such devastation would manifest distress of a solastalgic kind. Equally, those who survived the tsunami in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand in December 2004 and remained in their utterly transformed environments would have experienced deep solastalgic distress. At a less directly traumatic level, witnessing the removal of much loved trees for new development in an urban environment can be the cause of a profound distress that can be manifest as intense visceral pain and mental anguish.

A diagnosis of solastalgia is based on the recognition of the degree that distress within an individual or a community is connected to the loss of an endemic sense of place. All people who experience solastalgia are negatively affected by their desolation and likely responses can include the generalised distress and feelings of loss and bereavement outlined above but can escalate into more serious health and medical problems such as drug abuse, physical illness and forms of mental illness. So powerful is the connection between a loved place and the experience of negative transformation, that for some people, suicide is seen as the only form of relief from psychoterratic distress (particularly indigenous people).

Positive outcomes from the negative experience of solastalgia stem firstly from the recognition of the psychoterratic cause of the distress. There is potential empowerment in the clear acknowledgment of that which needs to be confronted. Secondly, a commitment to engage in action to cooperate with and support distressed people and heal distressed environments is itself a profoundly healing act. As was found in the British context of foot and mouth disease, engagement in human support networks is an important counter to the solastalgic distress caused by various forms of disaster.

In Australia, voluntary land care groups have formed to offer mutual support for each other (solidarity) and engage in direct action to restore and repair of distressed environments. Indigenous communities in Northern Australia have been able to achieve important advances in human health while at the same time actively repairing their damaged biophysical environment. In all cases, it is clear that good human health (mental and physical) is intimately tied to ecosystem health.

Many people sense that something is wrong with our relationship with the planet and their unease just might be an expression of deep-seated solastalgia about non-sustainability. Climate chaos is already causing profound changes to our sense of place. The intense desire to be organically connected to life and living landscapes is, in part, a desire to overcome solastalgia by finding an earthly ‘home’ in the connection with living things and life processes on this planet. As put simply by Albert Schweitzer, “ethics is nothing else than reverence for life”.[4] In all aspects of life; social, cultural, psychological, political, scientific and economic; humans need to redirect their energy and intelligence to an ethically inspired, urgent practical response to overcoming the causes of solastalgia.[5]

Notes
[1] see News in Science, Judy Skatssoon, Drought Prompts New Type of Mental Stress (accessed 22/08/2006) http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1374921.htm
[2] See L. Connor, G. Albrecht, N. Higginbotham, W. Smith, & S. Freeman, (2004) Environmental Change and Human Health in Upper Hunter Communities of New South Wales, Australia, EcoHealth Vol. 1, Supplement 2, pp. 47-58. (Published online: 28 October 2004, Hard Copy Vol. 1 (Suppl. 2), 47-58)
[3] see BMJ, UK foot and mouth epidemic was a human tragedy, not just an animal one (accessed 22/08/2006) at http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-10/bmj-ufa100605.php
[4] Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics translated by C.T. Campion. (London: Unwin, A & C Black, 1967), p.11.
[5] See Glenn Albrecht, Solastalgia: A New Concept in Human Health and Identity, in PAN (Philosophy, Activism, Nature) 2005 Issue. 3, 41-55.