What happens to the web of life happens to us, and what we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves.
We are part of one seamless living system, so it’s inevitable.
INSECT COLLAPSE
I am in Norway these days, at my childhood home, and I am reminded of one aspect of this.
What happens to the insect world happens to us.
When I grew up here, the yard was full of insects of many different kinds. We had ladybugs, lacewings, all kinds of spiders, butterflies, ants, bumblebees, wasps, swarms of tiny flies, and so on. We had many kinds of birds, including large flocks of swallows.The yards in the neighborhood, and in Norway in general, were full of trees, bushes, flowers, and wild patches and edges.
These days, the yards are manicured lawns. Most of the trees, bushes, and flowers are gone. Almost all the insects are gone, apart from the occasional bumblebee or wasp. The only birds left are a few magpies and pigeons, and even those are almost gone. We have the doors and windows open during the summer, and no insects come inside because there are none outside.
This collapse has happened over the last few decades, with a marked drop even over the last ten years.
Most likely, this is happening through a combination of habitat loss (less nature, more houses, roads, and manicured lawns), pesticides used in agriculture and yards, and a few other factors.
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
What happens to the insects happens to us, so where is the outrage? Where is the urgency?
Why do people seem so complacent about it?
Why don’t people throw their robot lawn movers in the garbage, and create wild, alive, and beautiful natural gardens – full of trees, bushes, and wildflowers?
Why do they choose to buy and eat food grown with toxins and support that industry?
I am genuinely baffled by it.
COMPLACENCY AND THE BANALITY OF EVIL
Where is the outrage over this civilization that’s not only ecocidal, but suicidal?
How can people continue to live as if nothing is happening?
How can they continue to vote for the same old parties that don’t take this seriously?
How can they continue to focus on the next vacation, the next dinner with friends, the next movie to watch, when the world is collapsing around them?
How can they continue to buy food grown with toxins, maintain a green desert around their house, buy things they don’t need, and so on, when this is how the web of life collapses?
This is the banality of evil in our age. This is good people and good citizens doing what’s expected of them, and doing what they expect of themselves, and actively being part of the collapse of life.
SOME ANSWERS
I have explored this in other articles, and really since my teens in the ’80s, and I am still baffled.
At the same time, there are some answers.
It has to do with…
Shifting baselines, and getting used to the gradually eroded web of life.
Social expectations, norms, how we think we should live, and what we imagine the neighbors think.
Seeing others appearing to not take it seriously, so we think we don’t need to take it seriously.
Politicians thinking in four-year time spans and the next election.
Assuming others will take care of it, now or later.
Assuming it’s happening “out there” separate from us, and won’t impact us too much.
Identity and not wanting to become like those green party folks, lefties, hippies, or tree huggers. Not wanting to admit they may have been onto something. (Is pride or survival more important?)
A system and civilization set up this way, which means that doing it differently takes effort, and changing the system takes numbers, effort, a sense of urgency, and maybe an even more obvious collapse.
A civilization with an assumption of separation at its center. We are separate from nature and the web of life. Nature is here as a resource for us. We can export the consequences of our behavior and civilization, and it’s gone. We are inherently more important than the rest of the web of life. If we win, the rest of life loses.
A civilization and system where what’s easy and attractive to do, as organizations and individuals, is often inherently destructive to the web of life.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can create a system that comes from an understanding of the web of life and seeks partnership and win-win solutions. The unfortunate news is that changing requires a collective will to change it, as well as diagnosing the problem correctly.
WHAT CAN I DO?
So what can we do?
Here is some of what I am doing.
I recognize that the problem is systemic, it’s a civilizational problem. It’s not (primarily) about corporations, greed, or any one particular group. It’s about all of us.
It’s about our fundamental mindset and assumptions of separation.
I buy organic as much as I can, even if it’s more expensive (another sign of the fundamentally flawed priorities in our society). I eat low on the food chain. If I can, I buy from local farmers.
I have educated myself on the ecological footprint, global ecological overshoot, and our idea of separation and its history (going back to the agricultural revolution).
I have educated myself on a simple and powerful framework to understand what’s happening: domination vs partnership orientation, power-over vs power-with, and the consequences of each for us, society, and the web of life.
I connect with like-minded people in real life and online.
I vote for political parties that take this seriously. In my case, I vote for and am a member of the Green Party in Norway.
We have 15 hectares in the Andes that we are regenerating, rewilding, and protecting, and we are developing a food forest around the houses.
Here in Norway, during our short stay, we are letting the lawn grow wild in May to encourage the wildflowers so they can feed the few insects left.
If I lived in Norway with a garden, I would do something similar to what we are doing the in the Andes. I would create a food forest – with native flowering trees and bushes, fruit trees and berry bushes, wildflowers and more – to feed wildlife and us.
The photo is from our garden / food forest in the Andes.