Cynthia Morgan is a well regarded hypnotherapist in Los Angeles. She was recently interviewed for an article in Westside Today for an article about how one’s state of mind can bring opportunity where some believe there is none. ( http://www.westsidetoday.com/m1-770/mind-over-matter.html ). She states in the article that one “…cannot have emotional health without healthy thoughts. Emotion follows thought. It’s not the other way around. First the thought, then the emotion. In order to change the emotion, you must go back to the thoughts you are thinking. And not just conscious thoughts, but rather thoughts in your subconscious mind”.   

This idea touched on an area that interests me. As an environmentalist and a designer I think it is important to attempt to understand the impact of environment on our formation as human beings. Environmentalism, to be real, must go beyond the surface of 'saving the planet' to an understanding of how we relate to the environment. Karl Menninger was a well known child psychologist who's family founded a foundation and clinic in Topeka and in Houston. The Foundation does a lot of work with emotionally disturbed children. In tracking this topic, during his career Karl performed many studies of the effect of environment on childhood development. Some of his most well known studies were of identical twins who were separated at birth. Although genetically different, when raised in differing environments, they developed very differently with differing interests and habits. Of course there are also the effects of violent environments, war zones, religious extremeism and so forth.  

Karl's thesis was that environment affects the development of personality which is, to a certain extent, a reflection of how we relate to our surroundings and situations. This also implies that we can shape humanity through the environment that we create for living, at all scales. The home environment affects the development of a person while the global environment affects the development of humanity. Quite simply, environment is another lens through which we see different things when looking at the same thing from different places.