Today's newspapers report on high food costs, damaged
rainforests, melting glaciers, fresh water shortages, mountain destruction,
petroleum decline and climate change, all indicating growing problems.
These discourses, however, tend to avoid the interconnectedness of the symptoms:
mass extinctions of species, global warming, depletion of minerals and fossil
fuels, escalating social inequality, toxic pollutants in the Earth's soil, seas
and atmosphere and the globalization of the Western industrial model penetrating
the deepest reaches of the earth's ecosystem. The current view is that the
Earth's complex living biosphere is nothing more than the a resource open to
exploitation.
Media, education, government and corporate sectors have promoted the idea that
progress equates to money and things, that consumption brings happiness, and
that economic growth will trickle down to the poor.
Other cultures still resist this onslaught; cultures where different aspects of
human nature are nurtured: co-operation, community and reverence for Nature.
Here are some of their voices.
“(The Western industrial process) is very young, and from what I see, it will
not last because it does not understand or abide by the governing laws of the
Earth.”
-Hakim Abebech, traditional healer of Ethiopian lineage going back thousands or
years
“Westernized people behave like teenagers, rebelling against the laws of Mother
Earth, taking as much as they can. This cannot go on...eventually they will get
sick – physically, emotionally and spiritually.” -Aulton Kenak, Brazilian
indigenous leader
“The industrial process fragments society and Nature; it then creates
bureaucracies to organize the fragments, and human laws to control them. Our
challenge is to rebuild communities in which the living Earth is understood as
the primary source of law and order.”
-Lionel Cerruto, Bolivian indigenous leader
To face its myriad challenges, the Western industrial mind needs to consider
these words. By learning the language of the Earth and endeavouring to live by
her immutable laws, we will find ways to reconnect with the intelligence and
simplicity of the natural world.
