Recent generations of humans in societies like the USA have inadvertently been conducting two vast experiments. The results are coming in.
The first experiment asked this question: How long can we treat Nature like it is a set of dumb, separable parts for human-only ends? A few centuries ago, this attitude would have been unheard of. Before the rise of mechanistic thinking, which has taken over the dominant culture in recent centuries, the non-human world was felt to be full of soul, of sentient agents who were to be treated with respect (Naydler, 2018; Redfield, 1953).
The answer to the question is breathing down our necks today with the multiple horsemen of the environmental apocalypse upon us (Wilson, 1991): atmospheric breakdown (NOAA, 2001); global warming leading to climate breakdown (Richardson et al., 2023; Steffen et al., 2018); mass species extinctions (Kolbert, 2014); omnipresent toxicities of pollutants in air, water, soil, food, bodies (Bormann & Kellert, 1991); and pandemics (Garrett, 1994). It doesn’t take that long to break apart the ecological gift economies of Nature when you put yourself outside Nature and build technologies to tear it apart.
We must then ask: “What evolutionary and developmental processes led some humans (the dominant ones today) to become so uncooperative with the natural world [unlike all other animals] so much so that they/we have broken previously resilient [biological and cultural] ecologies all over the planet?” (Narvaez et al., 2022, p. 434).
How did separation consciousness and ecological uncooperativeness come about?
Ah, that is the result of the next experiment.
The second experiment, coming to fruition today as well, is also about desacralizing life and natural systems. How little support can be given to mothers and babies and yet society can still “progress” technologically to control and commodify Nature for economic gain? Over the last 10,000 years or so (1% of human species existence on the planet), and especially accelerating in recent centuries and decades, species-normal nurturance of mothers, babies and children has deteriorated. The pressure to be detached towards others, especially babies’ evolved needs, has been growing.
Thus, the break from natural systems starts early. The results of undernurturing brain/body/mind development in early life leads not only to separation consciousness but is carried forward in physiological illbeing, psychopathologies of all kinds. Social and emotional intelligences are crashing leading to widespread social disorder.
This is happening not just among the economically poor or those in the Global South, as many scientists and political leaders seem to assume, it’s happening among all groups. I’m always surprised at the resistance to nurturing babies in the species-normal way of the evolved nest among members of the Global North. But I should not be surprised. Being raised disconnected, without evolved nest provision, plants a deeply embedded individualistic orientation. Thus, for a committed individualist to shift toward communal nested nurturing a chasm must be bridged in psychological, physiological and even brain functions (e.g., Luo, Zhu & Han, 2022).
Species-abnormal outcomes have been globalized.
“For a species whose sociality across species and with kin and non-kin has been adaptive, how do people become accustomed to disconnection, distrust, and antisociality?” (Narvaez et al., 2022, p. 434).
We have the answer: the breakdown in humanity’s communal evolved nest—the removal of scaffolding needed to grow into full humanity, from cell function, to neurobiological system function, to sociality and morality.
How then can we return to species normality? The answer is humanity’s full evolved nest: communal, intergenerational, ecological, and cosmic (Narvaez, 2024, 2025).
Deep nestedness is how our ancestors fostered and maintained their humanity. Deep nestedness is how we can return to our compassionate human nature. Deep nestedness is how we return to a unitive consciousness.
Start the journey with the Kinship Worldview, WorldviewLiteracy.org.
Find more tools and information at EvolvedNest.org.
Join our Nesting Ambassador Program.
References
Bormann, F. H. & Kellert, S.R. (Eds.), (1991). Ecology, economics, ethics: The broken circle. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Garrett, L. (1994). The coming plague: Newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Kolbert, E. (2014). The sixth extinction: An unnatural history. New York, NY: Henry Holt.
Luo, S., Zhu, Y., & Han, S. (2022). Functional connectome fingerprint of holistic-analytic cultural style. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, 17(2), 172-186. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab080
Narvaez, D. (2024). Returning to evolved nestedness, wellbeing, and mature human nature, an ecological imperative. Review of General Psychology, 28(2), 83-105. https://doi.org/10.1177/1089268023122403
Narvaez, D. (2025). Overcoming climate havoc with inner development from deep nestedness. Ecopsychology, 17(3), 201-215. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2024.006
Narvaez, D., Moore, D.S., Witherington, D.C., Vandiver, T.I., & Lickliter, R. (2022). Evolving evolutionary psychology. American Psychologist, 77(3), 424–438. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000849
Naydler, J. (2018). In the shadow of the machine: The prehistory of the computer and the evolution of consciousness. Temple Lodge.
NOAA. Ozone Basics. 2001-03-20. Archived from the original on 2017-11-21. Retrieved 2023-06-01.http://www.ozonelayer.noaa.gov/science/basics.htm
Redfield, R. (1953). The primitive world and its transformations. Ithaca, NW: Cornell University Press.
Richardson, K. et al. (2023). Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Science Advances, 9, eadh2458. https://10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
Steffen, W., Rockström, J., Richardson, K., Lenton, T.M., Folke, C., Liverman, D.,… Schellnhuber, H.J. (2018). Trajectories of the earth system in the Anthropocene, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (33) 8252-8259; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1810141115.
Wilson, E.O. (1991). Biodiversity, prosperity, and value. In F. H. Bormann & S.R. Kellert (Eds.), Ecology, economics, ethics: The broken circle (pp. 3-10). New Haven: Yale University Press.