When all those street trees were felled in Sheffield because of non-existent health and safety risks and maintenance cost cuts, when trees are being felled with apparent glee to make way for HS2 even in the middle of a national health crisis, with humans on all sides for and against, did anyone ever think of it from the tree’s point of view?
Well, perhaps some of those protesters standing in the way of the chainsaws did, because maybe part of their motivation in stopping them being cut down stemmed from a deep intuition that the trees had a basic right to exist, to be left alone and not to be felled because of some reason, whatever it is, based on our human convenience, maybe.
I guess it’s very hard to think on behalf of a tree or any piece of habitat, a species other than our own and try on its behalf to assert that it has equal rights to its place and role on the Earth as we do.
For who are we to say? And what we do we know anyway, it’s not as if we have presided over nature in such a caring and harmonious way in most parts of our globe now for thousands of years. We are poor caretakers and have in fact no right at all to say what elements of nature should be allowed to live and die. We forfeited that dubious entitlement a long time ago, if we ever should have assumed it at all.
So, what can we do to try and recognise that life on Earth apart from Sapiens has a right to be? Do we even accept that idea? No, on the whole we do not.
But indigenous people’s all around the world have always done so, as we all once did, and they still do and express it in their cultures, rituals and daily lives. From Sami and Inuit and Native American, Aboriginal, Himalayan and Pacific cultures, in parts of the cultures of the Indian continent, Japanese and other Asian peoples and even in Scandinavian and other European cultures, for centuries and before, no separation was recognised between ourselves and nature.
Indeed, ‘IT’ was deemed to be in charge of us and everything that happened. If we wantonly disregarded it, did not give gracious thanks for what it provided, disrespected it in any way, there would be negative consequences.
In direct phrases Chief Seattle of the Suquamish, summed up this karmic relationship between people and planet, ‘If you spit on the Earth, you spit on yourself” and “the Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth” and by implication, if things went on like that, with our disrespecting nature, the Earth would spit back, with potentially devastating force.
We may in the West in particular feel uncomfortable with the thought that the Earth could have a mind of its own and like some egoic wrathful god inflict pain on us when we step out of line, or even that there is any other force in existence that could possibly inflict unwanted disharmony upon us.
But nature does just that, uncaringly, unminding, all the time, with its volcanoes and earthquakes and extremes of weather, which we now are making even more unpredictable by our actions, adding to its potential for catastrophe.
These things happen as the Earth simply, without any mindful act or intention, gets on with the job of creating a dynamic planet on which life can take hold, as it has for billions of years, pretty much from its outset. We are so lucky to live on this living planet, the only one perhaps that there is. But we also know what it is capable of and that it can and will hurt us, whether we believe it has an intention to or not.
All this is telling us, these ageless philosophies, faith practices and sacred respectful ways of living with nature, is that it is wise to live as lightly on this Earth as we can. In that way we may benefit more than we suffer from the natural processes that we are part of, depend upon and also at times threaten us. Its about being good Earth citizens, maintaining a healthy balance between ourselves and the rest of the biosphere.
We don’t need to have a belief for that to make sense, but maybe it can help, perhaps that gives us more motivation to be compassionate to nature and ourselves. Maybe we need to be able to at least visualise the Earth and all it holds as being part of a system we too function entirely within.
Better then to respect the Earth, whether you regard it as a living metabolism we call ‘Gaia’ or a fully animated god or being, as in many ancient cultures, where people still revere the Earth. Or at least regard it as an amazing, massively super-connected, geological and biological system, which it undeniably is. What or who is behind it all is a bit of a side issue.
But that is not going to happen anytime soon it seems, apart from in those small pockets of what might be regarded as especially enlightened human communities that still survive on the edges of our modern world, that are still fundamentally connected to nature.
Some other peoples have the potential to demonstrate this great respect for life. But they appear to have gone backwards, the amazing Shinto culture of Japan where every aspect of nature is celebrated and ritualised is let down by its countries’ unedifying hunting of whales in a world that needs whales more than it does whale meat.
Scandinavian countries have a proud history of working and living in harmony with nature, and yet they too hunt even endangered species including whales. The Chinese with their Taoist and Confucianism traditions which regard universal connectivity as a guide to how to live sustainably, increasingly disregard these teachings, so that landscapes are revered, but animals are seen as having no worth but for food and medicine.
This is not about shaming these or any countries, we have a collective responsibility and many peoples don’t have hardly any real links in everyday life to nature any more, especially in the West, at least some still retain a semblance of a tradition. But in these examples and more, including the UK, it is easy to see how a deep nature respect could be reinvented. We could act decisively now to end these infringements and others and get back in line with our once held sense of equilibrium with nature.
In a few countries, like Ecuador, where the relationship between people and nature is paramount and seen as such, where the whole economy and culture rests on it, they have legislation that says no development is allowed that does not respect the Earth and its living systems and processes. They recognise as best they can in law the rights of all living things. Now that is a great start, if only we could make that happen and apply it across the world.
If we did that, we would be in a new era, a new paradigm, in terms of our relationship with nature. We would immediately start to see a change in how we work more in balance with the natural world and things like the climate and ecological crises we face today, and even some of the health problems we are experiencing and may in the future, would be addressed much more effectively.
It is no coincidence that Ebola came from overexploiting primates and other rare and what should be seen as sacrosanct protected animals for bush meat, or the Covid-19 virus started on Chinese food markets where rare animals like the pangolin and even bats were treated horrifically to the point where disease could flip from one species to another, including to us. If you spit on the Earth it will spit back, if you push it too far. That’s not a threat, it is a fact, the result of Earth rebalancing itself.
Our out of control population worldwide is already pushing hard at every level the resources this one planet can provide for us. We have to be careful and sensitive from now on if we want to be part of a biodiverse future.
You could even argue our modern day industrial livestock farming has, by a less brutal route than outright viral pandemic, caused much of our health problems as humans, making us more vulnerable as a species, making us dependent on meat and dairy products that are fundamentally unhealthy for us and taking up massive areas of land that could otherwise be wild and natural and help us breathe.
It’s not that we all have to be non-meat-eating purists, it’s just we have the balance completely out of kilter with nature, to our increasing disbenefit, creating great inequalities and hardship in food resources, health, climate and ecology.
You might not agree, but I’m just saying, it looks to me that our species’ ability to fight off disease has gone downhill since the start of major livestock farming in the Neolithic, at the same time our link to the land was partly severed, something made even more severe in the Industrial and now Technological revolutions. We sometimes act as if we don’t need the Earth and nature anymore and yet we need its natural processes or so called ‘services’ more than ever. We grossly underappreciate what nature does for us and give little in return it seems.
So, what about those trees in Sheffield and other sites and on HS2 and other infrastructure projects which threaten to take out not only a few trees but swards of ancient woodland and veteran trees? All this and more is happening exactly at a time when everyone is realising and even government is resourcing tree planting on a massive scale to combat climate breakdown? What are we doing?
Will these trees that somehow got in our way be respected and have their rights recognised? For many it’s too late already. Under cover of the virus lockdown, contractors have felled most of those that were being defended. Will it be the same for those in the next place of inconvenience for us, further down the line?
For now, unfortunately, the answer will have to be yes. No change is imminent, despite all we see around us and the challenges as a species we face. Instead of working towards being in balance with nature we continue to exert our will at its cost. In the end it could actually ‘cost us the Earth’ we need to survive upon.
But maybe, just maybe, there is a glimmer of hope after all this virus fear and pain is eventually managed out. Maybe the obvious links between how we have acted against our own nature and comfort, to the point of endangerment, will be taken up and we will have scared ourselves globally enough to make more people stop and think, then demand that governments act together to change things for good.
Maybe, after all this, and hopefully before the next abhorrence kicks in, as it surely will, we will start to build that new mutual understanding between ourselves and our planet, before it so too late for us and other species.
After the virus, after the social distancing between ourselves, after we appreciate just how much nature has given us in these times, in terms of its natural health services, its’ ‘life support’, perhaps we will cut nature some slack.
Maybe we will listen and learn finally from the indigenous peoples around the world, who have been telling us non-stop we are in danger and have upset the balance already, as we lurch from one nature-based crisis to another.
Then we may once again respect the fundamental, intrinsic rights, of every tree, animal, every part of living Earth, alongside ourselves and we may live a happier, healthier, future existence, more in balance with our own planet. Maybe.
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