Nature and Experience in the Culture of Delusion―How Industrial Society Lost Touch With Reality

Industrialism has alienated us from nature, disconnected us from our own embodiment, and blinded us the character of the technological society we have ourselves produced. This book brings together ideas and research from both social and natural sciences to throw light on the hidden dimensions of industrial life, showing how the emerging global economic system has dissolved our embodied subjectivity into industrial processes. The symbolic abilities that have allowed us to dominate all other creatures have now entrapped us within systems that we do not understand and have little control over, making us as vulnerable to the extension of economic and technological ideologies as our ancestors were to the natural threats that surrounded them. If we are to regain our humanity and integrity, the essential first step, outlined in this book, is to recognise and challenge the sources of our own powerlessness.

DAVID KIDNER is Senior Lecturer in Social Theory in the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University, UK, having worked for many years as a psychotherapist in private practice. He has published numerous papers in psychological and environmental journals and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Environmental Ethics. He is author of Nature and Psyche: Radical Environmentalism and the Politics of Subjectivity (2001).