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How Deep Nested Communities Foster Cooperative Companionship instead of Competitive Detachment

A Presentation by Darcia Narvaez to the Scientific and Medical Network

By Darcia Narvaez, PhD
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What can we learn from deep nestedness?

Our species-typical existence was one of deep nestedness. Deep nestedness has three elements:

(1) ongoing communal nestedness which includes providing evolved nest nurturing to young children to optimize normal development;

(2) intergenerational nestedness that honors ancestral wisdom and the wellbeing of future generations; and

(3) cosmic nestedness that involves practices that maintain a sense of rootedness in Earth’s cycles and systems as well as a sense of connectedness to the cosmos.

The modern world has forgotten or intentionally degraded these forms of nestedness to the effect of multiple ecological and social crises. Restoring deep nestedness is critical for human futures.

This presentation was for the Scientific and Medical Network. The Network is devoted to helping bring forth a new world view in which the wisdom in religious and mystical traditions complements and extends naturalist models proposed by the currently dominant paradigm in science, medicine and technology. We are a worldwide community of scientists and other professionals who seek to integrate evidence-based science with inner knowing cultivated by spiritual practice and embodied in living values. Members of the Network are dedicated to this transformative and educational task.

RESOURCES for Deep Nestedness

Read more about Deep Nestedness for All.

  1. WATCH the Evolved Nest film collection here.

  2. READ the foreword to the book, The Evolved Nest,  by Gabor Maté, MD, here.

  3. READ the First Chapter for the book, The Evolved Nest.

  4. DOWNLOAD the Evolved Nest Curriculum for free.

  5. VISIT the Evolved Nest Self-Directed Learning Center to discover our nine components of our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing, our Evolved Nest.

  6. DOWNLOAD the Kindred Worldview Chart by Four Arrows for free. This worldview chart, and understanding WORLDVIEW will help us create the meta-cognitive skills for our meta crisis. Our Kinship Worldview is where the Evolved Nest resides as a holistic theory for change. And our Evolved Nest is what is needed for us to move into a Kinship Worldview, that makes a sustainable, peaceful world possible.

  7. READ the introduction to the book, Restoring the Kinship Worldview, here.

  8. JOIN the Mighty Networks platform for more discussion at www.KindredCommunity.org.

 

Watch the Presentation

 

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Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Darcia Narvaez is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She is the founder of the public and professional educational outreach project The Evolved Nest Initiative whose nonprofit mission is to share her science research into developing appropriate baselines for lifelong human wellness by meeting the biological needs of infants. This wellness-informed baseline is imperative at this time as the United States ranks 41st out of 41 developed countries in public policies that support families.

In a 2020 analysis of top scientists, Narvaez emerged in the top 2% of scientists worldwide. Of the eight million scientists in the world, the analysis concerned those who had at least five articles published in scientific journals between 1996 and 2017-- over six million scientists. Individuals were ranked according to various criteria, including number of citations of their work.

In 2022, she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS), the largest international body of professional scientists in the world and publisher of the prestigious journal Science. Narvaez was honored for her distinguished contributions illuminating typical and atypical development in terms of well-being, morality and sustainable wisdom. Narvaez examines how early life experience — the “evolved nest” — influences moral functioning and well-being in children and adults. She integrates evolutionary, anthropological, neurobiological, clinical, developmental and education sciences in her work. The election of AAAS fellows is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers.

Narvaez’s book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, was chosen for the 2017 Expanded Reason Award from among more than 360 total entries from 170 universities and 30 countries. Narvaez received the prize, including a substantial monetary award, at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City on September 27, 2017. The book also received the William James Award from the American Psychological Association in 2015.

Narvaez hosted interdisciplinary conferences at the University of Notre Dame regarding early experience and human development in 2010, 2012, and 2014. In 2016 she organized a conference on Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous KnowHow for Global Flourishing. (Click on the links to see the full conferences in video on the Evolved Nest's YouTube Channel.)

She is the author or editor of numerous books and articles, see The Science page for listings.

She is the president of the venerable American nonprofit, Kindred World, a contributing editor to Kindred, the first global eco-parenting magazine, an advisory board member of Attachment Parenting International and the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health, APPPAH.

Her recent book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom (2014), won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association, as well as the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. She is former executive editor of the Journal of Moral Education.

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