Seeing with New Eyes

As humans continue to ‘eat away at our own life support systems‘ at a rate never seen before in the last 10,000 years, it appears we need to fundamentally change our perception of our place on this planet and and our relationship with living systems. This is not for some abstract cause, but for our own survival.

Putting out our recycling every Monday is not enough. Nor is a hopeful reliance on future technological fixes. We need to challenge current cultures, religions and perceptions of the “good life” with the human as number one who has a right to dominate all. This does not mean discarding all developed thought, but rather interpreting all in a wider context, a context that includes the Earth as the central participant. We need to contemplate our role and express this to our communities and leaders.

As Thomas Berry notes, ‘Our present situation is the consequence of a cultural fixation, an addiction, an emotional insensitivity, none of which can be remedied by any quickly contrived adjustment…The naive assumption that the natural world is there to be possessed and used by humans for their advantage an in an unlimited manner cannot be accepted. The Earth belongs to itself and to all the component members of the Earth community’.

We even need to challenge concepts such as sustainable development. For certain places on Earth there should be no development. Ironically here, our survival depends on holding ourselves back, and letting nature have space to do what it does best.

We will have to change our ways, or our ways will be changed for us, and the latter will be an experience far more painful.

For Teratrees, after one year of testing the market place in different ways, we believe we will be able to launch a product which will help communities green themselves. Watch this space 🙂

What is our relationship with other living things on this planet?

What is our relationship with other living things on this planet?

 

 

 

 

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