A. Humans are the problem
Any discussion of the state of the planet is going to fall on a spectrum. At one end, are the uncaring military-industrial types who don’t seem to give a damn how their agenda and greed are ravishing Gaia – and, ‘incidentally’, impoverishing and killing millions of humans as ‘collateral damage’. And, at the other end, are those, whom I will call, ‘Nature Nazis’, who also don’t seem to give a damn about homo sapiens sapiens; and are quite happy to wipe us all out in order to liberate Pacha Mama from our destructive behavior. One gets the impression that these particular activists lie on their own spectrum. At one end are the kamikaze pilots who are willing to go down with the passengers in order to save the ship. And, at the other end, those who plan to get rid of all of us, so they themselves can survive in order to enjoy the benefits of exterminating us vermin and getting an “Attaboy!” from Mother Nature.
In between the nature Nazis and the military-industrial demons lie the rest of us, mindlessly raiding mother’s fridge and never thinking to re-stock it by doing our own grocery shopping.
B. Nature is the problem
Somewhere in our discussion, we have to realize that we are part of nature. Life is not a binary equation with homo sapiens sapiens on this side and brute nature on the other. This realization has two consequences. Firstly, it makes no sense, nor does it have any practical, problem-solving value, to view ourselves as distinct from all other creatures. And, secondly, it means that nature itself must take some responsibility for who we humans are, and how we’re acting. Children who misbehave are always operating under two forces: first, personal pathology and, second, family (particularly parental) dynamics. So, there’s both enough blame to go around and enough intelligence to move forward.
Let’s look, then, at nature’s part in this situation. Not everything nature creates makes sense; take mosquitoes or poison ivy for instance. Or realizing that dinosaurs were killing and eating little mammals long before Adam. Moreover, nature can sometimes be a moody teenager herself – from her day-long wind squalls to week-long hurricanes. At other times, she is positively perimenopausal as she oscillates between millennia-long ice ages and devastating hot flashes that cause hell-like seasonal wildfires. Sometimes she suffers from tummy upsets or heartburn and the results are earthquakes and volcanoes.
Nature evolves, as we do through trial and error. Darwin called this, “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Strongest.” So, we – mother and child – are growing each other up. She continues to learn how to be a mother, and we continue to learn how to be mindful, respectful, grateful children, even as we ride our bicycles out of the planetary neighborhood towards the stars.
C. The Fractal Nature of the Cosmos
From individual atoms to full galaxies, we are all holographic fractals – quarks of nature! We are a solar family; children of mother Earth, under the energizing gaze of father Sun, who is himself a member of a galactic tribe (the Milky Way). We are denizens of the garden of Eden, called, “the multiverse.”
D. Conclusion
All incarnations are voluntary assignments we’ve undertaken in order to grow in love and compassion for all of the other souls on safari. We are here for both Tikkun Olam (the healing of the world) and for personal, spiritual evolution. We invented time in order to gauge growth but, in the process, we forgot that we are timeless spirits on a quest to remember our eternal divine origins and nature.
Thus, the original ‘nature’ is not the world nor even the cosmos that we see around us but the Word and the Kosmos that we re-discover within us.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In