Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This condition of wondering is still absolutely intact in us. It is. Amongst the loaded shopping trolleys of Walmart and Tesco, the fluorescent tech hubs, flicker-screens and finger-beckoning apps, it’s still there. This raw, imaginative, holy thing.
There’s an audacity to it, but it’s what we’ve always done.
Immersion in nature has a wide range of human health benefits. It has been found to do amazing things for our mood as well as our nervous, endocrine and immune systems. But as with anything, it’s important to bring a critical eye to claims made about nature’s healing powers, as some of these claims have been known to stray into the absurd.
Having acknowledged these connections, what steps can we take, as scholars, activists, and humans, to cultivate those connections in ways that empower more-than-human beings and ourselves in our collective struggle for Climate X? What does it look/sound/feel like to build climate solidarity beyond the boundaries of the human species? It’s time to find out.
As I have learned about the social life of trees and the intimate bonds that indigenous peoples have with various lifeforms and rivers — as I pore through recent ecophilosophy that explains aliveness to the western mind — I’ve concluded: We really ought to be talking more about animism and commoning.
We live in a culture that is embedded in unquestioned beliefs passing as truth. These beliefs are the source of our current crisis. We attempt to solve the problems of degradation of our environment and climate disruption, but we do not look at these core beliefs.
The minute there’s an orthodoxy of language and an orthodoxy of thought, which we all feel we have to stay within otherwise we’re going to get punished, or cancelled, then that’s the end of expression, that’s the end of any attempt to explore outside the boundaries. It’s what every orthodoxy from fascism to communism to theocracy tries to impose on the people to purify the culture, by forcing out anyone who thinks or speaks incorrectly.
Though a varied and complex story, the widespread separation of humans from nature in Western culture can be traced to a few key historical developments, starting with the rise of Judeo-Christian values 2000 years ago.
The only way an ecocentric (or any) belief system spreads is from person to person, as all missionaries have understood from the days that Buddha’s disciples walked from India to China or sailed to Sri Lanka or Japan.
This book is not about pre-cooked solutions. It’s about building on what has already been done, in our various social and cultural histories, and on what’s being done, right now, in diverse contexts around the world.
The question of consciousness continues to devil us. If consciousness is distributed throughout the universe, then its appearance in humans is just one manifestation. Does it matter one way or the other how we think about this question? I think it does profoundly.
To me one of the most important things is mental sovereignty, is that you really think for yourself rather than be made small, be made constrained, by the narrowness of the dominant culture.
How do we live our lives, enmeshed as we are in this increasingly-toxic soup of early-stage civilization collapse, to make the most of today and perhaps bestow upon our children a livable tomorrow? And the answer for me comes down to strengthening relationships.
