Overcoming Climate Havoc with Inner Development from Deep Nestedness

How do these societies raise a thriving inner human nature and an ecocentric community?

There are four aspects of our ancestral lifeway described here whose absence plays a role in derailing inner development and contributes to climate havoc. Moderns can restore these practices to help reverse the destructive pathway that they have been following. First, immersion in communal evolved nestedness is vital for healthy development of the human child. Communal evolved nestedness is deeply relational for all ages, maintaining respectful connection to life, to nature, to community, and to self. Second, communal nestedness is grounded in intergenerational nestedness where elders and others support mothers and children; ancestral wisdom is passed on and honored; and actions aim for the well-being of future generations, human and nonhuman. Third, spiritual nestedness connects each and all to universal energies and holistic meaningful purpose. And fourth, these experiences foster ecological nestedness, a grounding in nature’s ways, partnering with the local biocommunity. These four aspects comprise deep nestedness, heritages that many moderns have forgotten or never experienced. Each is briefly described, with an emphasis on the first, communal nestedness.

Communal evolved nestedness

Like every animal, humans have a developmental system that optimizes normal development as it matches the maturational schedule of the young (Oyama, 1985). It is one of several human inheritances beyond genes (Jablonka & Lamb, 2005; Stotz & Narvaez, 2018; West-Eberhard, 2003). Unique in the ape lineage, humanity evolved cooperative child raising (Hrdy, 2009), which simultaneously fostered characteristics that distinguish humanity from its chimpanzee cousins: greater epigenetic sensitivities (Gómez-Robles et al., 2015) and a large social brain with capacities for mindreading, egalitarianism, and lifelong sharing with others (Burkart et al., 2009).

Ethnographers have identified humanity’s communal nest characteristics worldwide among hunter-gatherer societies (Hewlett & Lamb, 2005; Konner, 2005). In psychology studies, it has been called the evolved developmental niche or evolved nest (Narvaez, Gleason et al., 2013; Narvaez, Wang et al., 2013; Tarsha & Narvaez, 2019). First, life centers around the well-being of mothers and young children (Hrdy, 2009). At the same time, all members provide and share the communal nest, benefitting from being nested together throughout life. Second, humanity’s communal evolved nest is especially intensive for the young because human infants at full term are born with only 25% of adult brain volume, resembling fetuses of other animals until nearly 2 years of age (Montagu, 1968; Trevathan, 2017). For young children, communal evolved nest characteristics include soothing perinatal experiences and infant-directed breastfeeding for several years. The rest of the nest components are vital for healthy development until adulthood (nearly age 30) and are experienced by all ages throughout life (Narvaez, 2024). These include a mutually enhancing, welcoming social climate; affectionate touch and no negative touch; social free play with multiaged others; responsive relationships; allomothering or mentoring; nature immersion and connection; and regular restorative healing practices. Converging evidence indicates that each of these practices cultivates a healthy brain and body in early life (for reviews, see: Gleason et al., 2021; Narvaez, Braungart-Rieker et al., 2016; Narvaez, Valentino et al., 2014; Narvaez, Panksepp et al., 2013; Tarsha & Narvaez, 2022, 2023;, 2024).

The critical aspect of communal nestedness for young children is that it is ongoing and constant, like breathing oxygen, not an off-and-on-again experience. In every moment throughout the day and night, someone in the nested community is available to meet the needs of the child. Needs are satiated instead of denied or minimized so that a peaceful, nonneurotic personality is fostered. Importantly, there is no coercion nor inducement of pain or fear. Nest practices cultivate trust in self, others, and nature.

The communal nest represents love in action, shaping inner human nature with a biology of love, which archeological studies confirm in our deep ancestry (Spikins, 2015). Loving treatment shapes the child’s biopsychosociality to be one of a loving nature (Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 2008). Growing up with ubuntu, “I am because we are,” is foundational to species-typical human being and becoming (Nagel, 2024). In this view, everything of import is rooted in relationship; the depth, breadth, and qualities of connections influence all one is and does. From the beginning of life to its end, loving interbeing fosters well-being at the psychological, biological, and social levels. For example, vagus nerve function, which innervates every major body organ and facilitates social engagement, is shaped by breastfeeding, comforting touch, and play in early life (Tarsha & Narvaez, 2024). Indeed, communal nest components support the development of prosocial behaviors in children (Narvaez, Gleason et al., 2013, 2021; Narvaez, Woodbury et al., 2019; Tarsha & Narvaez, 2024) and in adults (Narvaez, Gleason et al., 2016; Narvaez, Wang & Cheng, 2016; Narvaez et al., 2019). Nestedness, then, provides a cultural commons for the development of a prosocial human nature (Narvaez, 2014) and the flourishing described earlier.

Intergenerational nestedness

Intergenerational nestedness honors the basic needs of community members, including nonhumans. It also respects the ancestors, human and nonhuman, and their wisdom (Deloria, 2006). Not only do hunter-gatherers live in multiage groups much of the time, they maintain connection with deceased ancestors, express gratitude through ceremony, and by following longstanding traditions such as the communal evolved nest. Wise elders are critical to community well-being. They provide considerable amounts of nest provision (allomothering), especially for young children. They have the experience and the stories that can guide decisions and actions. Intergenerational nestedness also means acting in such a way that attends to future generations, human and nonhuman, and does not imperil their well-being.

Spiritual nestedness

Deep nestedness involves knowhow for establishing and maintaining an ongoing renewal of spiritual connection. Community ecstatic experiences, which simultaneously foster healing and embrace the unmanifest, are routinely practiced in extant hunter-gatherer cultures, such as those of the San People (Katz, 2017; Katz, Biesele & St. Denis, 1997). These practices preserve a sense of humility, and an ongoing awareness that the self is “inseparable from the web of relationships that sustain it” (Macy & Brown, p. 148). Humility is a developmental process that is initiated at the beginning of life, coconstructed by family and community members who are humble before the needs of the child, providing the communal evolved nest (Narvaez, 2019). Humble adults raise humble children who are ready to fit into their human and ecological communities.

Ecological nestedness

Extant hunter-gatherers move respectfully among the entanglements with all life (Forbes, 2008; Wolff, 2001). Living in a web of kinship, deeply nested individuals develop instinctive biophilia and receptive intelligence, a listening orientation to land and life (Topa & Narvaez, 2022; Van Horn, Kimmerer & Hausdoerffer, 2021). The community lives regeneratively with Earth in mind, always responsive to nature’s ways. The human species, like all species, evolved to coordinate with Earth’s cycles and systems. Traditional Native American communities maintain nature connection and respectful actions through ceremonies that follow the rhythms of the day, the month, and the season (Hogan, 1994). They ask permission to harvest and then listen to the answer (Kimmerer, 2013). Sharing, gifting, and gratitude are habitual (Kimmerer, 2024). The other-than-human entities have been on Earth much longer than human beings and have much to teach. “Each animal has its own power or gift to convey because they were so endowed by Wakan Tanka. Does not a mountain lion tell us that we can become independent and walk those lonely chasms of change undaunted? Doesn’t a portrait of the owl, the eagle of the night, tell us not to fear the dark or mysterious places? Surely the beaver conveys a serene security and peace brought forth by a steady endeavor if we can be so fortunate to find our own bliss. And yes, we all need endless scenes of the freedom of hawks, eagles, wolves, and the great orcas of the seas to forever implant a resolve that we must never lose our connection with the vast soothing solitude of nature. Each winged, four-legged and finned has a meaning to convey that can be beneficial to our intricate two-legged lives. Yes, even a common field mouse or a disciplined, dedicated badland ant has a message to convey if we will stop to study and look for it” (McGaa, 1995, pp. 36–37).

Deep nestedness thus is comprised of communal, intergenerational, spiritual, and ecological nestedness. Among those who still live in our ancestral context of hunter-gatherer civilization, deep nestedness is lifelong, shaping inner capacities for a holistic ecological relational consciousness (Narvaez, 2024). Notice how deep nestedness fosters Earth4All’s inner dimensions, embodied in attitudes and behavior, from heart-minded imagination to resilience against othering. Still today, these communities follow a pathway rooted in deep nestedness that promotes human and nonhuman wellness, a clear contrast with the dominant culture’s ways.

Communal unnestedness

In the modernized context, the species-normal needs of the very young are often overlooked or minimized. In fact, the dominant system’s structural enforcements of infant disconnection may be one of the most fundamental causes of the destructive orientation to life especially visible in the last few hundred years. These days it begins in early life with traumatizing birth (Bergman, 2014) in “baby-unfriendly” hospitals (Baby-Friendly USA, 2025) that separate babies from mothers and, for example, give them sugar water to keep them quiet, undermining the healthy development of the microbiome (immune system; Mokhtari et al., 2024). At home, hospital practices of physical isolation and adult-scheduled care continue, encouraged by professionals. Too often, parents lack community support and are unable to provide nurturing companionship care.2 Forced by social structures (e.g., low wages and high costs of living), many parents return to work, sending newborns to daycare when a few weeks old where they do not receive species-normal moment-to-moment, baby-directed care. Instead of 24/7 physical connection to caregivers, babies spend a great deal of time isolated and untouched, especially at night, as some parent advisers still condone or recommend (e.g., Oster, 2019). The dominant cultural narrative contends that children are born to be resilient and who they become is largely guided by genes. Babies thus spend time in despair right when their worldview and capacities are being shaped (Winnicott, 1990) and when neuronal connections are growing or being pruned from lack of experience (Sakai, 2020). The body keeps the score, with early stress sowing inflammation, the source of all diseases (Karr-Morse & Wiley, 2012; McEwen, 2012; van der Kolk, 2014). Babies develop existential anxiety (Schore, 2009) and a worldview of isolation, greatly contradicting ubuntu.

Whereas a nested life shapes a biology of love, a degraded communal nest can shape a biology of fear that persists into adulthood (Karr-Morse & Wiley, 1997; Lanius, Vermetten, & Pain, 2010; Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 2008). A biology of fear, rooted in early experiences of infant terror and felt abandonment (Perry and Pollard, 1998), leads to habits of dissociation, absenting oneself from one’s body or treating it like an object (Diseth, 2005; van der Kolk, 2014). Habitual numbness, an extinction of spirit and emotional presence, may result. Toxic stress in early life leads to a propensity to brace against the world rather than be open to learning from it (Porges, 2011). Unnestedness promotes implicit biologies and psychologies of fear, aggression, and/or arrogance (Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 2008). Habitual excessive stress in babyhood leads to self-protectionist habits in the face of stressors later (Narvaez, 2014; van der Kolk, 2014). Self-protectionist orientations rely on innate, prehuman, primate propensities, such as domination and submission, psychologically manifested as superiority or inferiority (Panksepp, 1998). One builds large ego defenses to survive the disregard experienced as a child. Ego defenses impair capacities for kinship consciousness and the “Common Self” consciousness of the Indigenous worldview (Martin, 1999; Topa & Narvaez, 2022). The growth of social-emotional intelligence and receptive intelligence toward nature, which occurs after birth, is impeded (Louv, 2005; Schore, 1996, 2001, 2002).

The “othering” of babies is just the beginning of a detached lifestyle where splitting from the inner dimensions of self, from others and from nature, becomes “natural.” When children experience being treated as objects instead of persons-in-the-making, they learn to treat others similarly. Nature becomes an “other,” distant, and inferior. Mindsets and actions of domination are attractive (Narvaez, 2014). Human entitlement toward nature is a step away and climate havoc a few steps further.

Intergenerational unnestedness

Modernism is about ignoring or improving upon traditions rather than honoring them (Sherry, 2017). Instead of providing the ongoing support of the community and wise elders in raising children, mothers (and fathers) are often left on their own to figure out how to raise their babies. Instead of immersion throughout life in multiage groups, parents are isolated, and children are placed in same-age classrooms. These are contrary to our species’ natural pedagogy of observing and informally learning from elders, human and nonhuman, in mixed age groups (Biesele, 1993; Hewlett et al., 2024). Moreover, consideration for future generations—for example, seven generations of both humans and nonhumans—is a low priority when work and profits take priority. In a secularized society, money became sacred rather than the living Earth (Korten, 2015).

Spiritual unnestedness

Although there are various interpretations of humanity’s “fall,” historian Calvin Luther Martin (1999) indicted the loss of spirit—the loss of faith that the spirits of Earth would take care of the community, and the disbelief that animal relatives would give themselves as gifts. With urban life, humanity walled itself away from the living rhythms of the local landscape, spending less and less time in touch with nature and cosmos. Western European culture increasingly lost connection with a sentient Earth (Harvey, 2017), becoming inattentive or unwilling to learn the language and songs of plant and animal kin, a fundamental attribute of preconquest consciousness: “by learning the songs of other-than-human beings, one became joined to them—more properly, one recollected one’s ancient kinship (communion) with these beings” (Martin, 1992, p. 18). With an emphasis on material wealth and extractivist, utilitarian use of Earth, it became commonplace to believe that only humans have spirit, that the rest of nature is largely an inert set of resources for human purposes, and that humanity can separate itself from natural laws (and live ignorant of them) without risk (Redfield, 1953). With a “spirit against the wilderness” (Turner, 1994), “icy and detached” settler-colonialists reaching Turtle Island created “a civilization strangled by fear, measuring everything in fear,” knowing nothing of the spirit of each entity, forgetting the ethic that nature conserves us, instead of the other way around (Martin, 1999, p. 151, 107).

Two years before he passed, ecologist Paul Shepard gave a talk called, “The Origin of the Metaphor: The Animal Connection.”3 His talk concluded with “a letter delivered to me by a Bear,” which was addressed to humanity from the others, the ANIMALS.

Dear Primate P. Shepard and interested parties:

Ecological unnestedness

Theodore Roszak (1992, p. 320) wrote that “repression of the ecological unconscious is the deepest root of collusive madness in industrial society.” He noted that animism may be the critical lost feature that “disciplines the relationship of humans to their environment, imposing an ethical restraint upon exploitation and abuse…Is it possible that the loss of this sensibility accounts not only for our ecological crisis, but for our crazy-making discontent?” (Roszak, 1992, p. 82). The disconnection from knowing and relating to the local landscape, to its well-being, has become commonplace and is an area ripe for transformation (Grenz, 2024). Eileen Crist (2019) points to human supremacy as the deepest cause of ecological destruction. “In a world dominated by Western civilization, industrialization, and domestic animals, human supremacy has come to manifest as three invisible shared beliefs: that Earth belongs to humanity; that the planet consists of resources for the betterment of people; and that human beings are of distinguished stature by comparison to all other species” (Crist, 2019, p. 51). The human supremacy assumption is powerful because it is tacit and unspoken but acted upon without awareness. And it is violent, inflicting grave harm on others with a sense of entitlement to use others at will. “The human-supremacist worldview is the deepest causal layer of the biosphere’s plight, for it makes humanity’s expansionism appear acceptable and inevitable” (Crist, 2019, p. 47). For example, Columbus expressed the European view that as a God-directed colonizer he had the right to modify a tropical climate by cutting down the forest to make it more temperate for colonizing forces (Fressoz & Locher, 2024).

What does it mean to understand and practice partnership with the rest of nature? It begins early. Mothers and other nurturers are the bridge to relational connection and trust (or distrust) of others, including the rest of nature. Notice the difference between how an Indigenous mother introduces her baby to the rest of nature in comparison to a non-Indigenous mother, as described by Cordova (2007, p. 82):

The westernized parent’s introduction to the rest of nature encourages the “othering” of nature, perhaps thereby promoting nature deficit disorder (Louv, 2005) which results from a lack of familiarity with or alienation from local landscapes. In contrast, the Indigenous parent’s approach encourages the opposite, kinning (Van Horn, 2021). Helping children fall in love with their landscape, with Earth as kin, starts in babyhood if not before. Anthropologist, Colin Turnbull (1984), documented Mbuti mothers singing to the child in the womb a unique song about the forest’s goodness and protection, a song that continued to be sung to the child as they grew up. Animism, the sense that all is alive, is supported (rather than derided as magical thinking by scholars, e.g., Piaget, 1929), encouraging the development of the animal mind, the intuitions and receptive intelligence of being an Earthling (Song, 2016).

Overall, the dominant culture has driven us into deep unnestedness. Thus, it is important to recognize the trauma-inducing pathway that civilized humanity has been following. The dominant culture’s practices and policies reflect a slippage in baselines for what is species-typical, not only for raising children but also for human well-being generally, both in terms of treatment and outcomes. When nestedness is degraded in early life, the body is inflamed and set on a trajectory for ill-being, and the psyche takes forward a sense of alienation from the matrix of life. Living against nature encourages a sense of separation, which is bolstered by a sense of superiority from the advancement of machines and technology employed against Earth, leading to an increasing waste world instead of a promised technological wonderworld (Berry, 1999).

But, as Martin (1999) pointed out, humans only left Earth and their nested ways in their “fevered imaginations.” Humans are not separate from nature but part of it, a part that makes consequential decisions.

Having moved away from species-normal ecocentric baselines, cultural attitudes and practices have impaired outer and inner dimensions for living well as members of the Earthling community. Nearly every modern institution, from family to work life, is designed against developing humanity’s ecocentric inner dimensions. What can we do?

Three pathways

There are three simultaneous pathways for nurturing the inner dimensions needed to address climate havoc. First, we start with adults, with our narratives and models. We embrace our intergenerational nest, relearning our species-normal baselines and practices for development and flourishing (Narvaez, Moore et al., 2022; Narvaez & Witherington, 2018). We understand the contrast between the dominant (postconquest) worldview and the Indigenous or kinship (preconquest) worldview and move ourselves toward embodying the life-giving latter (Topa & Narvaez, 2022; https://worldviewliteracy.org). We open our senses to a relational, sentient world. We awaken to the intelligence and wisdom of plants and animals and learn to treat them with respect (e.g., Bekoff & Pierce, 2017; Gagliano, 2018). “The arts for living on a damaged planet demand sympoietic thinking and action” (Haraway, 2016, p. 67). We learn and share the stories of our evolved nested heritage, how it is aligned with animal nests tens of millions of years old (Narvaez & Bradshaw, 2023). We learn how nestedness shapes human nature. We understand that our intuitions and worldviews are shaped by experiences, whether intentional or not, so we pay attention to the environments in which we place ourselves and our children (Hogarth, 2001). We understand how a society’s structures and institutions, its stories and rationalizations, are built on intuitions grounded initially in childhood experience. We understand that communal nestedness provides the social infrastructure from which a species-typical cooperative society is built.

Second, we honor the chain of development. We understand that to be responsive to children’s needs is to provide the communal evolved nest, love in action. We learn what deep nestedness looks like and how best to provide it, especially to babies, children, and youth. We ensure that babies and young children always, in every moment, feel connected to loving others, thereby avoiding splitting the child’s mind from body, their being from nature. Instead, children learn the “us-ness” of being. Indeed, babies are ready to dive into IDG’s (2021) being, thinking, relating, collaborating, and acting (Delafield-Butt & Reddy, 2025). At the same time, each child’s unique developmental unfolding is honored, with adults providing companionship scaffolding but not manipulation (Trevarthen & Bjørkvold, 2016). Adults are provided guidelines for supporting each nest component in their own and their families’ lives and in the institutions and policies of the society. Mother, baby, and child well-being are centralized in policy and practice. Babies are brought to every boardroom to remind adult decision makers of their responsibilities. Children are recognized as having much to teach adults. Systems of care at birth and beyond are reordered and redesigned to promote wellness. Every infant, mother, and family is enveloped in nestedness rather than in distress and disconnection. Every child’s birthright is to be immersed in natural environments where they can develop participatory consciousness and sensibilities toward a dynamic living world, building the intuitions of their “animal mind” (Song, 2016). Throughout childhood, children are given the opportunity to learn and practice respectful and responsible actions toward the more than human (e.g., Medin & Bang, 2014). In these ways, they develop the skills for IDG’s being, thinking, relating, collaborating, and acting. Although a book could be written, see Table 1 for a few more suggestions for children’s nestedness.

Third, changes in awareness, perception, worldview, and caring are accompanied by knowhow for ecological nestedness. It is not enough to know things intellectually. Ignorance about how to respect the nonhuman around us has become widespread. Although it is easiest when cultivated from babyhood, with time and attention adults can learn to sense the lifeforce in the nonhumans around them. One must feel into them in such a way that it fosters skilled behavior (Polanyi, 1958)—like the experienced mother who feels the state of the baby and acts to meet a need before it is expressed, or like the mechanic who feels into the misrunning of the machine and knows where to tinker. For deeper wisdom on how to behave as Earthlings, we seek deeper connections to land and all our relations—the insects, animals, and microorganisms. We get back into our bodies, developing embodied relational intuition. A “daily practice of place” fosters intimate knowledge so that any changes in the landscape are immediately discerned (Grenz, 2024, p. 121). We relearn how to listen to the animals, plants, and landscape and take up the effort to nurture them as a human responsibility (Grenz, 2024). We empty ourselves of the “socially indoctrinated belief system that prescribes the boundaries of how we are expected to perceive and behave” (Gagliano, 2018, p. 16). We learn from plants and other nonhumans that “plants and nature can be heard. They are not property to be owned. They need not custodianship, but a commitment to a nonhierarchical respect, a space of communion in which we come to understand the world and take the pathway toward understanding each other” (Gagliano, 2018, p. 36). In fact, “we breathe each other in and out of existence, one made by the exhalation of the other” (Gagliano, 2018, p. 15). With our situated nonhuman kin, we learn and practice how to live respectfully, responsibly, and appropriately in that place (Grenz, 2024). We learn from native wisdom garnered over centuries through respectful relational science and ask for assistance from our Indigenous/First Nation cousins who have generations of landscape-based knowledge (Cajete, 2000; e.g., of the importance of regular brush burning in forests to prevent out of control wildfires). For significant decisions, we set up a “council of all beings,” with animals, plants, soil, and waterways represented by human representatives who speak for them (Macy & Brown, 2014). We use our imaginations for an inclusive communalism in the structures we design and the practices we endorse.

Ultimately, the interaction of worldview, actions, and knowhow shape our ethics, the behaviors we take that we think are good and right. When we fully embrace the Indigenous worldview, our perceptions change, as does our behavior. We nest together, grow together, and fulfill our humanity together. We foster biologies of love in our children and in one another. We act with love toward all our relations. We reconnect to the lifeforce in all. No longer do we treat the rest of Earth’s entities as dumb or inert objects for our use. We respect our nonhuman kin as subjects with their own purposes (Gagliano, 2018; Kimmerer, 2013). We restore our closeness to our landscapes, joining “in an intricate configuration of sacred associations with the spirit of place” (Shepard, 1998, p. 7). We behave relationally, ecologically, and spiritually, returning to soliphilia: “the love of the totality of our place relationships” with the “willingness to accept the political responsibility for protecting and conserving them at all scales” (Albrecht, 2019, p. 121).