Humans and the Natural World Article 5
 

Humanity must acknowledge the immense importance of declaring a global emergency. It’s the first time that a species has ever known that, by its own actions, it could render itself extinct. This is the largest wake-up call that any species has ever had.

The “Protecting the Living Earth” website is concerned with three major concerns: environmental sustainability, spiritual fulfilment, and social justice. When talking about “spiritual fulfilment” we are talking about our lives having meaning and purpose regarding the sustainability of the Living Earth.

We must challenge the stories that are the substructure of civilization regarding untruths such as that we are separate from ‘nature’, or again that some people are naturally ‘superior’ to others. These myths are more dangerous in that in generally we do not see them as myths.

We are part of nature that is much richer than just simply something to be seen as a resource to be exploited. Thankfully, we are beginning to realize how deeply problematic is our domination and irrational based worldview really is. Many decision-makers and organisations who have been responsible for the destruction of much of the natural world are trying to sell us their services as repairmen. Nevertheless, the game is rigged against the vast majority of people living on Earth.

The central argument in ‘The Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way’ written in the second century by the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna, is simply that there is nothing that exists in itself independently from everything else.

When we see through the myths that foster our misperception of the natural world, it may once again be possible to improve the world without permission from the powerful organisations and rulers throughout the world.  One of the many problems of the world today is that many see themselves as dominant over the rest of humanity and the natural world. If you are drawn to power you need to pay attention to the dangers that result from excessive power. Do your interactions with the natural world leave you refreshed? Are you caring for others and for the Living Earth?

The environmental geographer Ruth DeFries in her book “What Would Nature Do?” writes that the modern technological, ultra-connected world is capricious and unpredictable. For her, the modern human world tends to overlook the benefits of diversity and the richness of various cultures. Sadly all too many of us have little, or no, knowledge of our genetic inherence. This is a great pity given the present sorry state of much of recorded human history, as well as having little understanding of the natural world.  

The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born following the agricultural revolution age when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of humanity alone. Interventions crop up again and again underscoring how the old idea of conquering nature has never really gone away, we have forgotten that  the Earth is already a natural marvel – and for now the only life-support system that we know of in the universe.

Without human disruption, ecosystems can thrive in rich abundance for millions of years, remaining resilient despite adversity. Clearly, there is much to learn from nature’s wisdom about how to protect ourselves. The question is: Can we do so before it’s too late?

Look beyond the day-to-day crises capturing our attention, and you realize that the magnitude of the looming ecological catastrophe makes our current political struggles, by comparison, look like arguing how to stack the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

How blind, arrogant and destructive must we become before the microscopic life on Earth, in its own way, decides that enough is enough in relation to our disregard for the ecological environments that sustain us? What happens if somehow all the microscopic life forms in the top layer of soil suddenly disappeared? Would humankind still be ‘masters of the planet” claiming that “nature is simply a human resource”? Indeed, would we continue to exist? Of course not, at least on the land. As for the oceans, here plankton is the basis of more complex forms of life, so what if all the plankton disappeared? Would humanity continue to survive? Not if all micro-life in the soil and plankton in the sea disappeared. Yet we continue to pollute both.

The problem is we have systems that attempt to turn nature into globalised circuits of capital. In doing so it cannot help but bring about new plagues, as it heats the atmosphere and poisons the air and the oceans. If we believe that most people cannot be trusted, then that’s how we will tend to treat each other, to everyone’s detriment. Few ideas have as much power to damage the world as our mistaken view of other people and the Living Earth itself.