Dismissing ‘environmentalist’ perspectives, Wimberley takes an expansive, inclusive, embracing perspective on the predicament of people trying to be ‘at home’ in their environments. In order to represent this he invokes the hierarchy format of systems theory. His most usual perspective on ‘nested ecology’ can be represented as a compositional hierarchy: [universe [galaxy [solar system [Earth [ecosystem [community [household [individual body]]]]]], with emphasis on the individual looking outward toward the unknown. His own version is [cosmic ecology [environmental ecology [social ecology [personal ecology]]]]. An otherworldly perspective, perhaps, but his concern is with the psychology of individuals, trying to elicit and justify the habit of thinking/feeling outward from his/her own embodiment. His range of reference throughout the book is wide and deep.

The feel of this work is both ‘sweet’ and numinous, and there is a lengthy interesting chapter on how various religions have related to environment. Here he occasionally implies another hierarchy, namely the subsumptive hierarchy, with the form: {the unknown {physico-chemical realm {biological realm {sociocultural realm {individual psyche}}}}}, all of which are embodied within every individual. This well represents his message in the sense that the entire universe here comes into focus as an individual's consciousness; ‘I am that’.

In the logic of composition, with [A [B]], B is a part of A, while in the logic of subsumption, with {A {B}}, B is one kind of A. In both cases we have ‘downward causation’, in which the higher level interprets, regulates or harnesses the lower level. In composition this means that the individual finds him/herself within larger, (hopefully) affording environments. This means that, for example, our family, community, society and ecosystems hold us within them. In subsumption it means that all realms, such as physical and biological, are held within and launch us. Here we are the higher level, holding all realms (from which we sprang during evolution and in our personal development) within us. This roots us in the world from the Big Bang onward. These are indeed formats which, used as mandalas, could allow us to perceive ourselves as being personally centred and ‘at home’ in the universe.

Wimberley urges that persons with nested consciousness can undertake a search for consensus. This relates most obviously to composition, where it is possible to work outward toward collective agreements at several organizational levels. It relates more indirectly to subsumption, for example by concern with, say, community water supplies. We assimilate the water within us, where it functions to keep our consciousness afloat. So we need to try to influence our surrounding organizational levels in order to forestall fouling one of them (the physico-chemical), which Nature vouchsafes us.

More externally, both hierarchies afford ways of expanding our consciousness, as both have the structure of a tree. In composition, an entity at any level typically contains many component entities at the next lower level, and so, at whatever level our own consciousness appears we find others, each presumably with their own consciousness. For us, these could be other people, possibly animals, even plants. Composition is thus a potentially unifying concept. Subsumption is also a tree, with its trunk in the more general class (physico-chemical?). In this image, wherever we find ourselves, we are led to realize that there might be other coordinate branches where there could in principle be other kinds of selves, such as, again, animals and plants. With these tools we can become conceptually ‘centred’.

However, our surrounding levels not only afford us, they also constrain us (downward causation). In subsumption, consider this: {entropy production {animal aggression {warfare}}}. Because the universe is not at thermodynamic equilibrium, it is tending toward this at all times in every locale, harnessing and inviting every action in that service. In this regard meditation is not a welcome activity, while action of any kind is, the more strenuous the better because less energy efficient. Failing warfare, dam building could suffice, for the moment. My own predicament lies in a village in the Catskill Mountains. The area has been exploited by our greater society as a source of raw materials from the beginning, starting with furs, then taking white pine for lumber, then hemlock for the tanbark industry, then all the trees for acetic acid production, with bluestone being ripped off all along. Now it is the turn of the natural gas industry to have its ‘play’. These kinds of destructive activities are what Wimberley would cite as bad ‘householding’. However, local folks have always favoured such economic activities, being on this in consensus with outside interests at higher levels of society.

This book advances a different person-centred perspective on the major issue facing our culture, the construction of our environment.