If you are reading this blog, you obviously have hopes for a sustainable future in which humanity and the planet are destined to thrive. I use that word, thrive, deliberately. I am not talking about just surviving, or somehow morphing into to some high-tech civilization that continues in a materialistic mindset but has managed to harness ‘green technologies’ while still allowing greed and corruption to exist. I cannot see a viable future where greed, corruption, and unabated material consumerism continue to exist. Sorry if this sounds negative, but we have arrived on the brink of the proverbial abyss.
All my writings have essentially been about the need, the only need, to change our worldview. Most of us do not need convincing. We see it all very clearly, even if the powers that be want to convince us otherwise. And they expend great effort to keep us confused and in the dark about the realities of the hierarchically driven world. A sustainable future will arise from us, and only us. Hope isn’t a savior except for ourselves. If your exponentially growing recent grocery and energy bills haven’t shown you how close we are all to a deconstruction event, then perhaps just recognizing that the old ways have run their course may help. The rich get rich while the poor (the majority of us) get it in the teeth has been way to acceptable for too long. I would say 6000 years too long. But it was what it was, and hopefully we learned a lot about what works and what is an utterly insane way to live – destroying the very global system that allows us to thrive.
We were all complicit in this destruction simply because we didn’t know any better and followed the hierarchical control and falsehoods without question. I think this explains humanity well. Deep down, we believe in the overall goodness of people and the system. It is written within our DNA. While we can be manipulated to be as bad as the controllers, even in the worst of times, humanity overall has shown itself to be caring and compassionate, even to those in which we have been driven into conflict and violence. Time to stop following socio-psychopathic leaders and begin building our new world. No need to overthrow them – that’s how they have caught us in their traps before – time to just ignore them – they can’t deal with that. Sovereign individuals thinking for themselves with transparency is our way to this newer and truly sustainable world in which humanity and the planet all thrive.
Long ago, knowledge of how to thrive on this planet was followed by our ancestors. This knowledge has been kept alive by our indigenous cousins around the world, even as the puppet masters tried to eradicate it. I said I would share some of the old teachings through the worlds of indigenous ecological professor Robin Wall Kimmerer (RWK) as an example of the way to think for thriving. It’s not how our ancestors or the indigenous peoples lived – they didn’t have the technology to do otherwise – but how their worldview helped them thrive under any changing conditions they encountered. It must have worked well, for modern humanity thrived for all of its 300,000-year history until the psychopaths tricked us into thinking that we owned the world.
What modern ecology tells us is that the illusion of the strong survive and dominate – a competition mindset- is completely mistaken. The world thrives is a state of mutualism. “Balanced reciprocity enabled [the natural world and our ancestors] to flourish under the most stressful of conditions. Their success is not measured by consumption and growth, but by graceful longevity and simplicity, by persistence while the world changed around them. It is changing now” RWK.
As our climate changes, primary plant colonizers show us the ecological succession of nature as it rebuilds ecosystems. “Our indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; they’re bringing you something you need to learn” RWK. If we listen and study the natural world we can relearn how to thrive. “If not, then [these plants] will cover the rocky ruins of our time long after the delusions of separateness have relegated us to the fossil record, a ruffled green skin adorning the crumbling halls of power” RWK.
As an example of how ecological connections are intricate and complex, yet mutualistically interconnected in ways modern civilized humanity has long forgotten. We are now relearning, but economic considerations still control our thinking. “The forest canopy for example, “…is a multilayered sculpture of vertical complexity from the lowest moss on the forest floor to the wisps of lichen hanging in the treetops… This seeming chaos belies the tight web of interconnections between them all, stitched with filaments of fungi, silk of spiders, and silver threads of water. Alone is a word without meaning in a forest” RWK.
As we consider the ways we will start to live as we reconstruct our new communities, remembering the mindsets of the old ones before the ‘rise of civilization’ as we consider it today helpful. “Some people consider sustainability with a diminished standard of living, but the aboriginal people of the coastal old-growth forests were among the wealthiest in the world. Wise use and care for a huge variety of marine and forest resources, allowed them to avoid overexploiting any one of them while extraordinary are, science, and architecture flowered in their midst. Rather than to greed, prosperity gave rise to the great potlach tradition in which material goods were ritually given away, a direct reflection of the generosity of the land to the people. Wealth meant having enough to give away, social status elevated by generosity” RWK.
Globally and locally, we see the changes. We know the main facts of how separateness as a way of living harms us and the world. We all know how focusing only on economic considerations merely escalates the problems, despite our desire to reduce them. “Ruined land was (is) accepted as the collateral damage of progress” RWK. Yet we blunder forward in this myth of ‘global progress’ unable to stop ourselves; “Suppression of our natural responses to disaster is part of the disease of our time” R.J. Clifton, catastrophe psychologist. Philosopher Joanna Macy writes, “We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings… The participatory role of people in the well-being of the land has been lost; our reciprocal relations reduced to a KEEP OUT sign.”
My five items are focused upon us taking actions that matter, especially at the local level where we can control them. We can’t control the hierarchies and corporations no matter how many elections we hold. That system is too entrenched for us to change, and we don’t need to, for they keep us focused on despair not real hope. “Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth…Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities material and spiritual” RWK.
What is our future? We intend that future through our actions. I offer five steps (five items) where we can remake the world and heal it and ourselves. If the mouse sees the trap but still goes for the cheese, what does it say about the mouse? How are we different?
To Be Continued …………….
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