CultureDecolonization/Re-wildingEditor's Picks

The Nested World Film Launches: Integrating the Trilogy and Its Messages

Darcia Narvaez introduces each of the Evolved Nest's films and reveals their interconnected messages.

By Darcia Narvaez, PhD

 

In the Nested World film below, Darcia Narvaez introduces and expands on the messages of the trilogy of films created by the Evolved Nest Initiative over the past three years. The footage of Darcia introducing and exploring the films was shot on the beautiful campus at the University of Notre Dame in fall 2024. Kindred World is grateful to UND’s media officers for their help in staging the film shoot by Reagan Studios.

Learn more about the Evolved Nest’s trilogy of films below, and visit the websites to discover the science, downloadable materials, and resources for self-study and communal learning. The films and most materials are also available in Spanish and German, and a recent translation into Turkey.

Evolves Nest’s Trilogy of Films Include:

Breaking the Cycle illustrates our capacity for breaking our current Cycle of Competitive Detachment and returning to the pattern of 95% of our human history: a healthy, peaceful Cycle of Cooperative Companionship. Breaking the Cycle is based on the multi-award-winning book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, by Darcia Narvaez, PhD.

Breaking the Cycle contrasts the two basic ways societies can function: the optimal approach, which most human societies through time have followed, is the Cycle of Cooperative Companionship where children’s basic needs are met; they grow into well-functioning, cooperative community members (from neurobiology and on up); and as healthy adults, they maintain the cooperative system.  Currently in the USA, the opposite pattern is in place: children’s basic needs are not met, ill-being and dysregulation ensue, creating adults who are detached and distracted and keep this Cycle of Competitive Detachment going. The United Nations ranks the USA as 41st out of 41 developed countries for child and adult wellness.

See film discussion guide and resources on this website, www.BreakingtheCycleFIlm.org 

The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children. From the immense Whale to the intriguing Octopus – all Animals share with humans brain structures and processes that give us the capacities for life’s rainbow of experiences: consciousness, thinking, feeling, loving, and dreaming.   Perhaps most importantly, we share common ways of raising our young: what is called the evolved nest. Evolved nests are practices that nurture physical and psychological wellbeing. Each child is “nested” with mother, family, community, and the rest of Nature as one seamless whole. Passed from generation to generation over millions of years, each Animal’s nest has been perfected to meet and match the needs of their young. Nestedness is evolution’s way of ensuring that everyone thrives. Each Animal’s evolved nest shares basic similarities but also unique differences.

The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children is the second short film in a series that includes Reimagining Humanity and Breaking the Cycle. This short film in an accompaniment to the acclaimed book, The Evolved Nest, by Darcia Narvaez and G.A. Bradshaw.

Reimagining Humanity. The goal of this film is to expand human imagination, based in deep history and transdisciplinary science, about human potential. We have not always been so stressed, disconnected and mindlessly destructive. For most of our species existence we have lived in cooperative companionship. The film illustrates what this looks like.

Discover the sections of the short film, script, explanations, discussion questions, and bibliography at www.ReimaginingHumanity.org

 

Join our monthly LIVE Nested World discussions about the films, and the science of the Evolved Nest by registering for these events below, and on the front page of Kindred, and in our quarterly issues.

 

Watch the Nested World Film

 

Filming on Notre Dame Campus

It's a wrap!
Ian, Collins, Darcia, and Dan Lapsley.
Ian O'Connell and Collins Reagan of Reagan Studios.
Kindred World is grateful to Tracy Destazio, University of Notre Dame's media officer, for facilitating our filming day!
Ian O'Connell, Collins Reagan, and Darcia Narvaez.
Darcia Narvaez in UND's quad.
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Related Terms:
Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Darcia Narvaez is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She is the president of Kindred World and the co-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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