A handful of psychologists are starting to conclude that human consciousness has a deep interconnections with nature — and that interfering with our sense of place and love of nature can cause severe emotional distress.

A few years ago, Glenn Albrecht, a philosopher and professor of sustainability in Perth, Australia, coined a word to describe a phenomenon that he has seen repeatedly when people’s local natural environments have been damaged or changed — “solastalgia.” The word is a combination of the Latin word solacium, which means comfort, and the Greek root algia, which means pain. To him, “solastalgia” means “the pain experienced when there is a recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault.” It is “a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home’.”

Albrecht coined the phrase after studying the psychological distress of people in the Upper Hunter Valley of southeastern Australia. A huge increase in open-pit coal mining in the region — complete with frequent explosive blasts of rock, airborne coal dust and rumbling coal trains — was causing a “mournful disorientation” among people. Their natural, everyday world was being radically disrupted, leaving them with a deep psychic pain despite being “at home.”

A recent piece in the New York Times Magazine by Daniel B. Smith explored the growing subdiscipline of “ecopsychology” that is attempting to chart the ways in which nature is critical to our mental health.

After Albrecht coined the word solastalgia, it was quickly picked up because it applied to so many similar circumstances — in Smith’s words, “the experiences of Canadian Inuit communities coping with the effects of rising temperatures; Ghanaian subsistence farmers faced with changes in rainfall patterns; and refugees returning to New Orleans after Katrina.” Home is being destroyed. You can’t leave, you can’t do anything about it, and it makes you heartsick. As global warming continues, it’s a condition that is likely to afflict most of us.

While many traditionalists in psychology regard the notion of solastalgia as empirically nebulous and spiritually vague, others regard it as a return to basics in studying the human psyche. After all, humans for millennia have lived in very close proximity with nature. Only in the past several decades has human dominance of nature reached such proportions that people spend typically more time in front of an electronic screen than in the outdoors. Children now spend more than eight hours a day in front of a screen, which promoted author Richard Louv to invent the term “nature deficit disorder” in 2005.

The most fascinating part of Daniel Smith’s article was his citation of Gregory Bateson’s 1972 book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, which, among other things, deals with human consciousness and complex systems. Bateson believed that “the tendency to think of mind and nature as separate indicated a flaw at the core of human consciousness,” in Smith’s words. “Humankind suffered from an ‘epistemological fallacy’: we believed, wrongly, that mind and nature operated independently of each other. In fact, nature was a recursive, mindlike system; its unit of exchange wasn’t energy, as most ecologists argued, but information. The way we thought about the world could change that world, and the world could in turn change us.”

Bateson argued that our epistemological fallacy is to believe that nature is separate from us, when in fact it is part of our consciousness: “You decide that you want to get rid of the byproducts of human life and that Lake Erie will be a good place for them. You forget that the ecomental system called Lake Erie is part of your wider ecomental system — and that if Lake Erie is driven insane, its insanity is incorporated in the larger system of your thought and experience.”

When we are purpose-driven, and our technology allows our purposes to be played out on a regional or global scale, and those purposes are primarily the monetization of nature, then our despoliation of nature is tantamount to despoiling our mental habitat as well. Solastalgia results. “There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds,” said Bateson (quoted here by Smith), “and it is characteristic of the system that basic error propagates itself.”

I love this analysis because it points out that a better kind of economics or public policy or science is not enough. None of those are likely to deal with our inner, psychic lives — how we feel. Activating that dimension of ourselves holds more answers than might be imagined.

I like to think that the commons offers a point of access to our psychic lives because it asks that we participate and feel moral and social connections to shared resources and to other commoners. We can get past the comforting delusion that “if only the EPA would get things right” or “if only we voted in more green politicians,” then the Earth could be made safe and sustainable. Surely we do need a more capable EPA and more green politicians, but it is arguably our “ecopsychology” that will be more powerful and consequential over time.

Albrecht has coined a new term for that psychological counterpart to solastalgia — “soliphilia.” By that, he means “the love of and responsibility for a place, bioregion, planet and the unity of interrelated interests within it.”

Eocpsychologists don’t quite know how to foster soliphia …. but they suspect that it will hold some important answers to reclaiming ourselves and restoring nature. Having a word at least helps us name the phenomenon and begin to grapple with it. We can begin to recognize eco-destruction is indeed a pathological force in our psychological lives, and perhaps start to imagine new “therapies” for re-uniting our minds and the Earth.

Kennedy’s new book, When Art Worked: The New Deal, Art and Democracy, is a sumptuous immersion in the murals, music, paintings, photographs, posters, architecture, monuments, civic parks, books and travel guides, and countless other artifacts of public culture sponsored by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. The glossy coffee-table book, published by Rizzoli, is illustrated with hundreds of stunning images selected by editor and designer David Larkin. (Full disclosure: I’ve enjoyed Kennedy’s hospitality on several wonderful occasions.)

Kennedy’s text recovers a period of American life that was grim and desperate — yet also enlivened by great hope and resolve. Should one say that art sponsored by the New Deal reflected that hope — or generated it? Both, obviously, but Kennedy is skillful in showing how art helped the American people recognize their shared predicament and enter into a social covenant to reinvent the country. He also explains how artistic visions changed public attitudes and mobilized political support for New Deal policies.

Kennedy calls his subject “actionable art.” Whether it was murals in post offices, writers hired to write region travel guides or the Civilian Conservation Corps building hiking trails and public amenities in the national parks, the net effect was to engage large numbers of citizens to work on behalf of large numbers of citizens. The art that was created help express the “peoplehood” of Americans and the constructive role that government could play to alleviate misery.

The New Deal did not just hire painters, sculptors, landscapers, architecture, carpenters and other jobless people to “rake leaves,” as modern conservatives would sneer. It wanted to unleash the creative energy of artists to change our image of ourselves and mobilize public support for public policies to protect our commons.

Photos of rural poverty taken by photographers for the Farm Security Administration helped call attention to the plight of farmers and migrant workers (while making the careers of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange). Ansel Adams’ photographs of Yosemite and other natural wonders gave witness to our wilderness spaces as a precious national inheritance.

The Interior Department commissioned paintings, murals and artwork that helped Americans see American Indians in a more positive image, which was part of Roosevelt’s policy of reversing the long history of expropriation and abuse of Indians and their lands. To bolster support for the achievements of the Rural Electrification Administration, graphic artists made a series of handsome, colorful posters — “civic graphics” — that showed how electricity was helping farmers and other rural residents.

Kennedy writes that the arts “contributed mightily to building public support for the renewal of federal civil rights legislation, for Horace Albright’s reorganization of the National Park System, for the preservation and protection of other common ground, and for John Collier’s transformation of federal Indian programs. Artists had long been busy acquainting the public with Indians as individuals worthy of respect and of inclusion in the American covenant. Art had presented landscapes the deserved and required protection, celebrating magnificence.”

FDR “had no interest in art for its own sake or in history that had no message for present action,” writes Kennedy. “When he could decide among styles, he turned to an actionable historic realism, answering a national aspiration stated by the novelist John Dos Passos: ‘We need to know what kind of firm ground other men, belonging to generations before us, have found to stand on…. Great art is a living record….Most important it helps form and shape our beliefs’ about what community is, and ought to be.”

The scope and ambition of New Deal art is truly astounding, especially when seen in the context of contemporary politics. Could ennobling public art be created today to re-energize the American people and forge new images of common purpose? Or would fringe extremists and political critics torpedo any art that reflected an individual voice or political message?

In 1936, the Treasury Department’s Section on Fine Arts (yes, a Treasury office devoted to fine art for the public!) commissioned George Biddle to paint a series of five murals for the stair corridor at the U.S. Justice Department. Biddle did not choose glorious images of lawyers, judges or a blindfolded Lady Justice. Instead he painted images of women working in sweatshops and people living in tenements, with the idea that these were the people and circumstances that would be redeemed through the workings of law and public policy. Biddle entitled the murals “Society Freed Through Justice,” and added a caption, “If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.”

For some critics, such images were too radical and inappropriate for a government-sponsored building. But as Kennedy notes, Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, hardly a radical, helped protect the murals as a member of a commission overseeing the process. Stone, who at one point in his life had been a “circuit riding” judge, once encountered a mural by a Peter Hurd in the Dust Bowl town of Big Spring, Texas. Stone later wrote, “What a lovely composition the Hurd mural is, how important it is that the humble people of this country should be impressed with the fact that the artist finds beauty and dignity in their life, and one of the many things we need to be taught in this country is that our lives, however simple or humble, may be both beautiful and dignified.”

The idea that government — through its sponsorship of art — could help convey such ideas and make them public through various artistic ventures, is, quite simply, an amazing achievement. When Art Worked is a ravishing revelation of this relatively brief episode of American history — a time when government could be the patron for art of stunning populist grandeur and diversity without it degenerating into propaganda or kitsch.

Kennedy’s book is a welcome reminder that art has the capacity to speak to the deeper feelings and aspirations of people. It can rally the spirit and give us courage. It can make our shared heritage and values more vivid and articulate who we are. It help us summon the imagination to see the world anew. It can be both visionary and practical.

Reading through Kennedy’s book and lingering over the beautiful public art that it depicts, I could not help but mourn the mean, vulgar political culture in which we live. It is hard to imagine anyone in a position of power in Washington, D.C., today understanding the needs of the human spirit and how art might help us re-imagine our political culture. But FDR and his top lieutenants did. When Art Worked is a powerful testament to that time and the glorious art that still endures and informs our sense of ourselves as a people.

The manifesto has already garnered endorsements from thousands of people and dozens of organizations. It has also been translated into seventeen different languages, including French, Czech, Chinese Mandarin, Portuguese, Italian, Hebrew, Serbo-Croation and Turkish. This powerful show of support is helping to mobilize the many constituencies that depend upon the public domain. It also puts the corporate armies of copyright maximalists on notice that their attempts to enclose the public domain will be actively resisted.

At one time the public domain was regarded as a wasteland for dusty government documents and cultural curiosities from the 1920s and 1930s — a place of virtually worthless junk. Now that the Internet and digital technologies enable us to build our own commons and therefore share and re-use the music, images, writing and other works that we make, the public domain is properly seen as a rich cultural legacy and reservoir of shared value. It is a vital foundation for civic life, education and culture. We actively need to protect it.

As James Boyle put it in his 2008 book, The Public Domain, “Our markets, our democracy, our science, our traditions of free speech, and our art all depend more heavily on a Public Domain of freely available material than they do on the informational material that is covered by property rights. The Public Domain is not some gummy residue left behind when all the good stuff has been covered by property law. The Public Domain is the place we quarry the building blocks of our culture. It is, in fact, the majority of our culture.”

It’s nice to be reminded: Just because are no price tags associated with the public domain does not mean it’s worthless. In this sense, understanding the public domain means developing a deeper insight into the serious limits of “market valuation.”

The manifesto is no windy set of platitudes, but rather a substantive statement about why the public domain matters. I liked the five key principles of the public domain cited by the document:

1. The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception. Since copyright protection is granted only with respect to original forms of expression, the vast majority of data, information and ideas produced worldwide at any given time belongs to the Public Domain. In addition to information that is not eligible for protection, the Public Domain is enlarged every year by works whose term of protection expires. The combined application of the requirements for protection and the limited duration of the copyright protection contribute to the wealth of the Public Domain so as to ensure access to our shared culture and knowledge.

2. Copyright protection should last only as long as necessary to achieve a reasonable compromise between protecting and rewarding the author for his intellectual labour and safeguarding the public interest in the dissemination of culture and knowledge. From neither the perspective of the author nor the general public do any valid arguments exist (whether historical, economic, social or otherwise) in support of an exceedingly long term of copyright protection. While the author should be able to reap the fruits of his intellectual labour, the general public should not be deprived for an overly long period of time of the benefits of freely using those works.

3. What is in the Public Domain must remain in the Public Domain. Exclusive control over Public Domain works must not be reestablished by claiming exclusive rights in technical reproductions of the works, or using technical protection measures to limit access to technical reproductions of such works.

4. The lawful user of a digital copy of a Public Domain work should be free to (re-)use, copy and modify such work. The Public Domain status of a work does not necessarily mean that it must be made accessible to the public. The owners of physical works that are in the Public Domain are free to restrict access to such works. However once access to a work has been granted then there ought not be legal restrictions on the re-use, modification or reproduction of these works.

5. Contracts or technical protection measures that restrict access to and re-use of Public Domain works must not be enforced. The Public Domain status of a work guarantees the right to re-use, modify and reproduce. This also includes user prerogatives arising from exceptions and limitations, fair use and fair dealing, ensuring that these cannot be limited by contractual or technological means.

Please consider adding your name and/or organization to the list of endorsers. The website can be found here. You may also be interested to learn that there is now a Public Domain Day every year, on New Year’s Day. The site helpfully identifies hundreds of authors who died 70 years ago (in 1939) whose works are therefore expected to enter the public domain in 2010. (Copyright terms for individual authors are the lifetime of the author plus 70 years.)

It will take some time before the public domain is given its full due as a matter of law, but it is encouraging to see vigorous new types of support for the public domain.