“Caring for the Earth isn’t some ‘weird hippie’ thing. It’s more of a badass survival thing. If we don’t have a healthy planet, there won’t be a healthy anything” Give a shift about Nature.
I advocate that the only way to heal ourselves, and thereby save the planet from our further destruction is to rediscovery our spiritual connection to life. Before our societies became ‘civilized’ we all had that connection, as indigenous peoples all around the world still have it today. Once we became fixed on the notion that we were separate from nature, and that the natural world was just a scientific curiosity whose secrets could be plumbed by reductionist thinking, we also lost our connection to the divine. Western religions conspired in this idea by telling us we were above the natural world and that it was ours to dominate and use as we wanted.
The scientific worldview arising out of the medieval Renaissance coupled with the mercantilist and hierarchical capitalist economy of the past 500 years found this separation beneficial in the creation of the material-consumer mindset we find ourselves in today. With the planets ecosystems tilting on the edge of responses to massive disruptions of our making, we now find ourselves in that place where the solution of rediscovering our unconscious connections is critical. Before we spend more time thinking we can actually think our way of the myriad problems we human create we need to realize that solutions are there but not like we ‘technologically think’ they are.
As Eckhart Tolle explains; “We depend on nature not only for our physical survival. We also need nature to show us the way home out of the prison of our own minds” … All things in nature are not only one with themselves but also one with totality. They haven’t removed themselves from the fabric of the whole by claiming a separate existence: ‘me’ and the rest of the universe… You didn’t create your body, nor are you able to control your body’s functions. An intelligence greater than the human mind is at work. It is the same intelligence that sustains all of nature … The air you breathe is nature, as is the breathing process itself – realize that you are not doing it – if you had to remember to breathe, you would soon die, and if you tried to stop breathing, nature would prevail … When you perceive nature as only through the mind, through thinking, you cannot sense its aliveness, its beingness. You see only the form and are unaware of the life within the form – the sacred mystery. Thoughts reduces nature to a commodity to be used in the pursuit of profit or knowledge or some other utilitarian purpose.”
I am not alone in thinking this way. Over the past many posts, I have used many quotes from great scientific gurus (e.g., Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, David Suzuki, Richard Attenborough, Jane Goodall, etc.) over the past many posts that exemplify these same ideas. And it isn’t just ecological systems that are the problem, their problems are a consequence of the way we have organized our socio-cultural systems these past many centuries. “The climate crisis reveals that our civilization has never really been organized around science, contrary to the usual Enlightenment narrative. It is organized around [economic] capital. Science is embraced when it serves the interests of capital. And is often ignored when it does not” Jason Hickel.
Our global relationship to finances is as much the problem as our disconnection to the natural world. We have been conned into seeing money as the solution to our personal problems of lifestyle, safety and security, and that if we throw enough money at a problem, it will somehow be resolved. A very determined and indifferent hierarchical system has spent centuries selling us on the role of finances in human affairs. And we bought into it hook, line and sinker. Our human history, both ancient and recent, is a fabrication of insidious minds that want us to remain disempowered and ignorant of just how negatively pervasive the hierarchy has been in creating the modern world.
When you live within a paradigm of scarcity, it brings out the worst in people. “Money doesn’t change [people], it merely unmasks them. If a [person] is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that’s all” Hanry Ford. This fear of scarcity creates separation of humans from each other. Our modern media serves to entrench these fears every day – and they succeed all too well, and the fear grows when we perceive ourselves as only individuals struggling to survive in a dog-eat-dog world. “The greatest illusion of modern society is that freedom is purely individualistic, when in reality, out freedom is deeply interconnected with the well-being of everyone” Gary L Ellis. Personal sovereignty, as I have often said, is our greatest gift, but it works best when framed by unity within communities of our design. That means our intent must move our purpose from service-to-self to service-to-others – and that includes all of life, which comes from a spiritual perspective.
This needed spiritual perspective has been relegated to religiosity, yet while some religious people are spiritual, I know more atheists that are spiritual. It isn’t about any god, but a connection to a higher consciousness. While that may come to many through religion, our better angel comes to us through our deepest conscience. (Conscience is the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one’s own conduct, intentions, or character, along with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good.)
When we look at recent history, we can read about Tesla (see earlier post about him) and his amazing inventions that in the early 1900s promised us energy sources beyond fossil fuels, but big energy, focused on fossil fuels dominated at the time and Tesla was deliberately ruined. Tesla was not alone in his faith about a non-fossil fuel future. Before Henry Ford dominated the auto scene, electric cars were the most popular type of car (see link). Traditional renewable energy was also widespread at that time. I recall touring through Warwick Castle in the UK and was surprised to see the castle owners in the early 1900s had a small weir on the river below the castle that powered a small water turbine where energy was stored in large lead batteries in the weir’s adjacent gatehouse – this castle ran on renewable energy.
Another renewable energy inventor of this period was little known pioneering renewable energy scientist Frank Shuman, who already recognized the pollution and big business problems of fossil fuel generated energy. He envisioned a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. He is recognized to have built in 1913, the first solar powered energy plant. His innovative design used mirrored troughs to concentrate sunlight onto tubes filled with water. The heat from the sun created steam; which then powered an engine to pump water for irrigation. We use this energy generation system today, e.g. the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert of Southern California, although this plant was not built until the 1980s.
Shuman believed that solar energy could help combat reliance on fossil fuels and improve lives in sun-rich but resource-poor regions. He had significant challenges from the growing fossil fuel industry and despite his successes his renewable energy work was overshadowed by the need for more readily available fuel for WW1 war vehicles. Economically, his work was all but forgotten for decades. Shuman and Tesla, along with many unsung others, are a reminder that even today, forward-thinking innovations are overshadowed and manipulated by powerful industries. “The human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism” Frank Shuman.
I suppose the crux of this post is that if we think about the natural world as we develop and utilize technology, we will realize that our innate wisdom divined from our spiritual connection to nature will guide us. But, the decision for using this wisdom will have to come from us for it will not come from profit driven systems that will never relinquish their power by themselves. We have to empower ourselves and stand up for our rights. In our current world dominated by power hungry and controlling financial interests this seems daunting. Yet, I see an imminent collapse of the current system that will make such a change to localization much more likely. Parallel societies (e.g. see link) already exist, and we can lessen the chaotic period coming by acting now to re-localize what we can before the full chaos arrives.
To Be Continued ………..
0 Comments