Systemically

Understanding the problem

What went wrong?

My premise is that we as humans became out of right balance with Mother Earth, and from there out of right balance with everything else (e.g. other humans, and other species). What has inspired me to create this website has been the drive to understand what went wrong and why, and then to move to exploring what we need to do to solve the problem.

I am certainly not the first to “parse” the question in this way. Thich Nhat Hahn, in his book Love Letter to the Earth, 2013, addresses this exact issue, where he says that the most “natural” healthy human state would have been to have remained in attunement with, and in alignment with Mother Earth.

Page 27, “We can all see that Mother Earth is a great bodhisattva. When we see her in this way, with all her many virtues, we will walk more gently on her and treat all her children more gently. We will want to protect her and not harm her or any of the myriad forms of life she has given birth to. We will stop wreaking destruction and violence on Mother Earth. We will resolve the question of what we mistakenly call ‘the environmental problem.’  The Earth is not just the environment. The Earth is us.”

“We’re no longer in touch with ourselves, our family, our ancestors, the Earth, or the wonders of life around us. We have become alienated and feel lonely. This alienation is a kind of illness that has become an epidemic. So many of us feel empty inside and are searching for something to fill the vacuum. We try to fill the void by taking pills or intoxicants or by consuming things. Yet our addiction to consumerism, to buying and consuming things we don’t need, is causing so much stress, so much suffering, both to ourselves and to the Earth. Our craving for fame, wealth, and power is insatiable, and this puts a heavy strain on our own bodies and on the planet.”

We are part of Nature, and our best arrangement would have been to have remained in an “I-Thou” intimate sharing and equally respecting such a balance.

Early pre-industrial communities held these values. Hunters and gatherers held these values. Goddess cultures held these values. But at a certain point in time, as we humans moved toward agrarian communities, we moved toward “owning” the land and “extracting” from the land, rather than retaining an “I-Thou” reciprocal caring relationship to the land.

Indigenous practices around the globe have retained the values of our staying in community, and the value of remaining aligned with the needs of the Earth.

Instead of our doing that, however, there was (among way too many strands of our “being human”) a catastrophic rupture between “Nature” and ourselves.

Once that rupture occurred, additional ruptures followed, as we began “othering” one another in more and more awful ways. We humans “decided” that we got to exploit other living beings, other species, and we “decided” (as articulated in many books including Overcoming Patriarchy by Robert Jensen) that we got to exploit one another.

Men decided they could “own” women and children, hence the beginning of Patriarchy. They decided that they could “use” women and children to enhance their personal gain, prestige, property and power.

Men decided that they could “own” one another and take lands from others, and/or take others from their lands (hence colonialism and slavery). Organized religion and capitalism fostered justification for these acts. Greed and selfishness added fuel to these flames.

Soon there were MANY ruptures, with MANY consequences.

Understanding the Consequences

Disconnection from Mother Earth