Lately, whenever I ride past that horror of a “campground construction zone,” I think of Earth Day. Right now, it’s two days away. By the time you read this, it will have been yesterday. Close enough — it’s still Earth Week.
It should be Earth Year. Earth Decade. Earth Millennium. When will we put Earth first? And by Earth, I don’t mean “the planet as a whole.” I mean the ground under our feet, the creatures we share it with, and our fellow humans. When will we put what is best for life itself first?
“Life” includes all life: the animals, the plants, the living biosphere, the Wood Wide Web, the intelligence and interconnectedness of the natural world. When did humanity begin to pry itself apart — to set itself above other life forms, to view itself as exceptional and privileged to dominate, use, control, and destroy, regardless of the harm done to the natural world?
But wait. Was that really “humanity”? Tribal cultures have always valued the natural world and viewed themselves as part of the web of life, responsible to, not merely users of, those who share their environment. It is the rich ruling classes, the businessmen, the profit-makers, the warmongers, the conquerors, the corporate overlords who have driven this bus roughshod over the needs and desires of “the people” of all species since the beginning of ruling classes.
I’m reading a fascinating book called The Dawn of Everything. It challenges the erroneous framing of human history that claims domination and control were the inevitable and necessary result of humans gathering in large cities. Recent discoveries in modern archaeology make clear that this is simply not true.
Ancient humans gathered in large population centres for millennia in social groupings that were egalitarian, defined by three basic freedoms that were once common: the freedom to leave one’s surroundings and move away, the freedom to disobey arbitrary authority, and the freedom to reimagine and reconstruct one’s society in a different form.
These freedoms kept human society fluid and evolving, and prevented the kind of global domination that has become the “norm” today, so thoroughly normalized that few question its necessity. Why try to escape when we believe the prison is the world itself? Where can you go when the walls are made of stone and tower overhead? We are told that such a large population simply must impose top-down controls, arbitrary authority, and punishment for disobedience, and powerful elites must be the ones to make the decisions. Otherwise, we’d have anarchy, which means chaos and destruction. Right?
Yeah, right.
The archaeological record proves there are, and have always been, other ways to live — in harmony with each other, with and within the natural world, in social forms that include freedom and flow. Right now, we are locked into a trajectory leading straight to a hard crash against the limits of growth. There is no Planet B.
Here we are. If we destroy our nest, that will be the end of us. Perhaps a few will escape in rockets to Mars, but the vast bulk of humanity will share the fate of the rest of the natural world. Is this necessary or right?
Hell no, it isn’t. There are signs of change, subtle hints that bottom-up growth is solidifying underfoot, as science begins to prove what the tribes have always known: Earth is alive, nature is intelligent, and if we get out of the way, nature will heal itself with astonishing speed.
Technocrats and transhumanists are simply wrong about humanity’s right role relative to nature. Earth does not require human intervention to fix the problems human intervention has created. It requires that humans stop intervening so much. Slow down.
The best thing the Covid shutdown did was slow the pace of industrial ravaging of nature, at least for a while. The skies cleared, wildlife began to venture back into the silent cities, and you could feel the Earth relaxing, taking a collective breath. Ahhh.
We are not bad for the Earth. Earth can handle humans. Technocrats, the military-industrial complex, corporate culture, and transhumanism are bad for the Earth. Billionaires are bad for the Earth. Western civilization is bad for the Earth. Something must change, and soon.
Can we turn this thing around? Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe the groundswell of awareness of the life we share, its variability, its intelligence and the growth of new technologies that prioritize harmonizing with nature’s ways, that value ancient forests for more than the board feet they contain, will continue to grow. Maybe, when the top-heavy towers of hierarchical domination fall and the oligarchy’s disconnection from reality becomes undeniable, we will simply step aside, let them fall, and be there to catch one another, building back something better, different, stronger, and more resilient in how we relate to each other and to Nature.
Maybe. Just maybe. I hope.
Bless this Earth, and the people of all species that share it. May the animal, vegetable, and mineral intelligences bring their teachings into our sphere, so our children can learn to include and cooperate with all beings, to embrace wholeness and real inclusion.
That’s what I think. What do you think? Email me at phoenixonhornby@gmail.com
