I am often baffled when people talk about nature as if it’s removed from us – as if it’s a kind of luxury to experience now and then, or a kind of remote appendix, or a place primarily to get a few resources like timber and fish.
In reality, we are nature. Our life fully depends on the living systems we are part of. Nothing we are or value would exist without these living systems.
Our health and well-being is intimately dependent on the health and well-being of the larger living systems we are part of. Our existence depends on it.
The biggest issue in the world today is that we have a civilization that assumes a separation between us and nature, calculates the value of nature in terms of the market value of natural resources, and assumes infinite nature in terms of its resources, its ability to regenerate, and its ability to absorb the waste of our civilization.
Because of this, we are in massive ecological overshoot. Our collective ecological footprint is larger than our Earth. We are living off natural resources accumulated over very long timespans, and they are not being replenished nearly fast enough to keep up with our use. That’s a recipe for disaster.
It’s ecocidal and suicidal, and it’s astonishing to me that this is not at the forefront in just about any discussion in society – whether it’s politics, economy, business, science, art, philosophy, or anything else.
It is the context for everything, and it’s on the periphery of our collective conversation and what we are focused on.
What’s required is a profound transformation of all aspects of our civilization to take ecological realities into account, and that requires our collective will.
As it looks now, we are nowhere near to finding that collective will. We are, collectively, focused on everything and anything else. We prioritize just about everything else.
Everything we actually prioritize has been made possible by this amazing living system we are temporary and local expressions of, and we marginalize this living system that makes it possible.
So what’s the solution? What can we do as individuals and groups?
For me, Joanna Macy’s three types of actions are a guideline: (a) Stopping actions, (b) creating and living life-centered alternatives, and (c) creating and living from more life-centered worldviews.
I explore more life-centered worldviews and allow them to shape and transform me. I especially like the Universe Story, the Epic of Evolution, Deep Ecology, systems views, integral models, and indigenous wisdom.
I live a few more life-centered alternatives. I eat local, organic, seasonal, and low on the food chain, as much as possible. I avoid toxic chemicals in soaps and so on. I am a member of and vote for the Green Party in Norway. (They are represented so it’s not a “wasted” vote.) I am fortunate to have land in the Andes and we are developing a food forest here.
I seek out like-minded people and groups. It feels good to know there is a community of us, even if we live in different parts of this planet.
I find that living some of the solutions – whether it’s worldviews or practical solutions – gives hope. It shows it’s possible. It makes me feel like a small part of the solution. It helps nudge us all slightly in the right direction.
That makes it more than worth it.