In 1963, Boris Levinson, a psychologist and academic researcher, wrote a book called Pets And Human Development. Dr. Levinson had a theory that turned out to be both prescient and ground-breaking.

He was one of the very few scholars or animal lovers who foresaw the rise of the pet therapy movement, and the growing need for animals like dogs to support humans emotionally.

Levinson predict saw the growing alienation of many people from family, community, religion, politics and technology. In a sense, he was predicting the story of our times.

In what was a shocking argument a half-century ago, he predicted that disconnected and alienated humans would increasingly turn to animals and nature to heal their unease and their wounds. He said that once we cut ourselves off from animals and nature, we would become unmoored,  our spiritual strength would be drained, and we would turn to division,  argument and anger.

The veteran psychologist saw that our society was even then  becoming disconnected from nature and the animal world, and thus from one another. This book was very important to me as I began researching and writing about dogs, and then, living with animals.

I could see it happening, in myself, all around me.

And this prediction came well before the rise of the Internet, and cable news, and the extreme polarization of our political culture, It came before angry mobs on social media and Facebook, and trolls and thieves invading our lives and civic life, and a broken and divisive political system.

“Part of the alienation from themselves and society which men are experiencing today derives from the fact that we have withdrawn from contact with animal life and nature,” he wrote.

“We have been destroying the living tree on whose branches we sit. We have forgotten the language of elemental emotions and thus feel  a yawning chasm within.”

We are, he cautioned, leaving the genetic and other lessons of our past behind us when we live so far from nature and animals.  We are becoming unmoored from the fundamentals of life, the hidden lessons our past.

Levinson, who did exhaustive studies on animals working with people, believed that the reactions of our body and mind ought to remind us that we were  designed to deal with different types of stresses from those to which we are now exposed.

We were, he said, programmed to live in mutual adaptation with animals. Today, the big idea of many people who think they are  animal lovers is to take as many animals as possible away from us and drive them from the earth.

Thus, the carriage horses and ponies and elephants are mostly gone already, sent to extinction in the name of saving them from our cruelty.

“Our dreams  remind us of a past we personally may not have experienced,  but which is probably a symbolic residue of the travails of our ancestors,” he said.

We become instinctively horrified, he wrote,  when we learn that our environment, the cradle of human life, is being destroyed or polluted. Animals too, modify nature, Levinson said.

Beavers build dams, birds build nests to protect themselves against inclement weather; trees modify the local climate, the soil, and the temperature. But we are the only species that consciously destroys our very world.

“We need animals to reinforce our inner selves,” Levinson wrote. “We must revive our intimate associations with nature and its animals if we are to survive as the dominant species on earth. It is possible that man can survive without animals, he said but we would surely be a depleted race, shorn of most of our emotional strength.”

Today, the question isn’t just whether we can survive as a dominant species, but whether we can survive as a species at all.

I can’t help but wonder, every time I watch the news, if these predictions are  already becoming true. Every day I see depleted men, shorn of their ethics and emotional strength.

I believe that I am seeing Levinson’s predictions come to life right before my eyes. Most of us are living without animals and far from nature. We have a political system that is paralyzed by broken and disconnected people.

We have people who are unable to speak to one another any longer in a civil way. Our communities are being bulldozed and abandoned.

We are, as Levinson note, rolling evolution backwards, despoiling our very environment, driving animals out of the world in the name of protecting them from us, when we are their only salvation, and they ours.

This is an important subject to me, I have lived with some animals almost all of my life, in the past two decades I have left my ordinary world behind to be closer to animals and to nature. This has saved my life.

They have both – animals and nature –  affirmed Levinson’s predictions, they have healed me, connected me to my past, helped teach me how to live in the world, even as I have tried to teach them some of the same things.

In fact, I live in mutual adaptation with my animals, we change and grow together.

Look at our news and see how angry and alienated we have become from one another, one can hardly go online without encountering angry and broken people, hating and quarreling with one another, and with their very own souls. We live in the harsh glare of the “left” or the “right,” into which all thought and power is increasingly channeled and labeled.

I do believe we are broken when we live apart from nature and away from animals. I believe it because it happened to me.

I believe that trees and flowers and plants and dogs and donkeys can heal us in much the same way they have always healed us, we lived on the earth together.

You can trace this discord almost precisely from the time people fled the farms and lives with animals to work in jobs they hated for people who care nothing for them. People no longer have callings, only jobs.

Odd, but I have often thought that if member of Congress could bring their dogs and some donkeys to the Capitol, we would have a softer, more peaceful and compassionate government. One whose leaders could work with one another.

I hope to discuss this issue, among many others,  on Wednesday on my new radio show, “Talking To Animals,” on WBTNAM 1370. You can call the show anytime between 1 and 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the 24th. Please call if you want to discuss this or any other topic relating to dogs, cats, or other animals.

I believe we need an animal show that deals with this kind of topic, and I don’t care to host a show that isn’t a conversation with others. So if people don’t call, it won’t work.

If you live in the area, you can call 802 442 1010. If you live outside of the area, you can call 866 406-9286. There is no charge.

WBTN is an AM/FM station, but right now, only the AM is working. They hope to soon get an FM transmitter. This is a community radio station, they are long on heart and short on money and staff an equipment

If you wish,  you can live stream the broadcast here between 1 and 3 p.m.

Hope to hear from you, there is a lot for animal lovers to talk about and think about. I want my broadcast to be an oasis of dialogue and good information about animals.

If you have stories about how your dogs and cats and other animals have healed and grounded you, I’d love to hear them. Call 866 406-9286.

I don’t know of too many other places where you will be able to have a conversation about the connection between humans, animals and nature.