It’s been long, far too long, in this idea of our survival-of-the-fittest existence; that is, one in which we live according to a false code of humans vs nature—with us fighting, in a zero-sum game, for our primacy over all other species and organisms.
We have been persistently resting in the hubris of our own magnified reflections and so seem to have left all environmental awareness behind at the door from whence we came into this world.
We have forgotten what it means to be in generous relationship with our ‘natural’ environment, and often think of stewardship as an unnecessary reminder of some heavy responsibility for the well-being of a planet, which is too insignificant for us to concern ourselves with.
Some, in fact, might say that our forgetting is intentional—as opposed to inadvertently learned as part of our socialization into a process of competitive civilization that is founded on conquest—avarice even. Our world is based on the worst kind of narcissism that has us hiding behind multiple fulfillment of material wants (at times masquerading as needs), while we extract just about everything at whatever cost to all species, including our own.
Yes, we have forgotten.
We have chosen to be amnesiacs, sleepwalking in our modes of being ‘busy as the bees’ we make extinct—through multiple willful choices, much of which we describe as progress and so ardently strive for with GDPs and other such economic measures; all at the expense of key concepts such as happiness, love or kindness.
We have indeed forgotten, especially those of us who are learned and so should supposedly know better. And it is this absence of memory, or really conscience, that has now become our rude awakening—because that which we were (and are still responsible for), clearly demands to be heard over the din of our constant consumption.
Planet earth is a living organism. And it is telling us, definitively, we will find ourselves in a long and tough fight—one of our own making—if we choose to keep being in this forgetting.
And you and I both know that this is the unfortunate truth, as we currently find ourselves (in varying degrees) on the other side of we’d rather not have this sight, this sound, this taste, this feeling, this sartorial encounter with a reality other than the one we have come to cherish and know so very well.
Yes, it has come to this: our being forced into thinking seriously about new (or, in fact, rather ancient) ways of being in symbiotic relationship with the ‘natural’ environment. Or else we would have to confront a continued suffering from the arrogant existence of mostly a few, which has come to negatively affect so many around this globe.
It is time to seriously consider bailing out of any next round of this losing fight.
It is time to think and do things differently. It is time for a paradigm shift. It’s an occasion to really pursue the idea of how to ensure that we can all learn to thrive in the Next Economy. Because another world is possible. We just need to get on with the hard work of carving it out of the current mess we got ourselves in.