In an increasingly urbanized and industrialized society, people are deprived of any meaningful contact with nature. In the past, such contact was associated with a physical, emotional and mental state of groundedness conducive to a state of harmony with the environment. Civilization as currently practised leads to a detachment from nature, even in rural areas. This separation from nature leads to a state of ungroundedness which is compounded by a psychic separation from each person's innate 'animal' consciousness, depriving people of the wisdom and inner security that may have been experienced in generations past. This ungrounded state leads to insecurity and fear and to insensitivity to the condition of the natural environment.
When society loses its grounding, collective energy shifts from compassion and inner wisdom to a cold and rational approach to life which entraps people in compulsive patterns of greed, status, indifference and competition in an effort to find substitutes for that groundedness.