The Once and Future World

J. B. MacKinnon grew up on the edge of a Canadian prairie.  “I knew the prairie in the hands-in-every-crevice detail that only a child can, and it was, for me, a place of magic.”  He developed a healthy relationship with the living ecosystem, an experience that is no longer ordinary.  Years later, as an adult, he returned to visit home, and his sacred prairie had been erased by the Royal Heights subdivision.  He could find no trace of the red foxes that he had loved so much.  It hurt.

By and by, curiosity inspired him to spend some time studying books about the days of yesteryear.  To his surprise, he learned that the foxes of his region were not indigenous, nor was much of the prairie vegetation.  His childhood home bore little resemblance to the wild prairie that existed several centuries earlier.  Before he was born, the land was home to caribou, elk, wolves, and buffalo, all absent in his lifetime.  What happened?  Could the damage be repaired?  MacKinnon explored these questions in The Once and Future World.

The world we experience in childhood is typically perceived as being the normal, unspoiled state.  We can comprehend the damage that has occurred during our lifetime, but not all that has been lost since grandma was little, or grandma’s grandma.  This ecological amnesia is called shifting baseline syndrome.  It whites out the past.

Thank goodness for the venerable grandmothers of the temple of history.  They can take us to sacred mountains offering views of eons past, and help us remember who we are, where we came from, and how much has been lost.  We can see the Pleistocene cave paintings, aglow with reverence and respect for the family of life, created by a culture in which humans were “just another species on the landscape.”  Later Greek paintings illustrate a culture of total disconnection — human gods, goddesses, warriors, lion killers — starring the one and only species that mattered (as does our culture).

Like MacKinnon, the world of my childhood has been erased.  Three hundred years earlier, it had been a paradise of forests dotted with many pristine lakes, home to unimaginable numbers of fish, turtles, waterfowl, and assorted woodland critters.  Thousands of years earlier, in the wake of the melting glaciers, Pleistocene Michigan had been home to giant beavers, walruses, whales, mastodons, mammoths, peccaries, elk, moose, caribou, musk oxen, and bison.*  I had been completely unaware that they belonged in this ecosystem, and that their absence was abnormal.  I did not dream of their return, since I didn’t know they were missing.

MacKinnon says that we have inherited a 10 percent world, because 90 percent of the planet’s wildness is largely gone.  We can’t begin to comprehend all that has been lost in the last century or three.  But the tragedy can also be medicinal.  “The history of nature is not always a lament.  It is also an invitation to envision another world.”  Indeed!  Our current vision is suicidal.  His mantra is remember, reconnect, and rewild.  “We need to remember what nature can be; reconnect to it as something meaningful in our lives; and start to remake a wilder world.”  Great!

The rewilding bandwagon is picking up momentum now.  Twenty years ago, it meant reintroducing missing species, like elephants, mountain lions, and wolves, acts that would spark firestorms of opposition.  Lately, it has expanded to include smaller, doable tweaks that can be done right now, around the neighborhood, to make the ecosystem a bit more wild — reconnection.  Tiny successes are likely to feed the soul, and inspire bolder acts of healing.  It all adds up.

Importantly, rewilding directs some of our attention to the ecosystem that we inhabit, a form of awareness that’s getting close to extinction in consumer societies.  MacKinnon doesn’t fetch his paddle to spank capitalism, greedy corporations, corrupt politicians, incompetent activists, or the consumer hordes that live high impact lives whilst dishonestly denying all responsibility.  Instead, he suggests that most people simply don’t get it.  Industrial strength cultural programming makes it difficult or impossible for most people to wander beyond the mall parking lot.  Listen to this:

“Standing on the globe as we know it today, among people who are predominantly urban, who often spend more time in virtual landscapes than in natural ones, and who in large part have never known — do not have a single personal memory — of anything approaching nature in its full potential, it is hard to even wrap one’s head around where to begin.”

Most people are focused on short-term human interests, and nothing else.  They have been taught to inhabit a world of pure fantasy.  On the walls of their caves are paintings of trophy homes, SUVs, smart phones, tablet computers, big TVs, and on and on.  Most of them will never find their way home.

The tiny minority of folks who have found the power to think outside the box, like biologist Michael Soulé, feel “profoundly alienated from mainstream society.”  Communication is nearly impossible.  He says, “We are different.  We’re wired to love different things than other people are.”  I know what he means.  We don’t feel at home in this society.  Maybe we’re pioneers, scouting a new and safer path.

Mark Fisher is one of the different ones, an advocate for rewilding.  He works with the Wildland Research Institute in northern England, a devastated nation where people sometimes strongly oppose even the reintroduction of trees (let alone vicious man-eating beavers).  On a visit to America, he was overcome with emotion when he saw wolves running wild in Yellowstone.  When he stood on an overlook at White Mountain National Forest, and observed 800,000 acres of woodland, “I just cried my eyes out.”  Ancestral memories returned with great beauty.

Once upon a time, MacKinnon met a mother and daughter who had lived for 30 years in a remote region of British Columbia, in grizzly bear country.  The mother had had two brushes with the bears, and perceived them as “highly spiritual experiences.”  Being reminded that humans were not the Master Species helped her remember who she was.  “It was just like coming home.”  The daughter had no notion that living near grizzlies was unusual.  MacKinnon found hope in this, “We are always only a single generation away from a new sense of what is normal.”

Finally, I was fascinated to learn about our olive baboon relatives of Ghana.  Like us, their diet is omnivorous.  Like us, they evolved in a tropical climate, where they needed no clothes or shelter.  Like us, they can inhabit rainforests, deserts, and savannahs, but prefer savannah.  On average, males weigh 53 pounds (24 kg), and females weigh 32 pounds (14.5 kg).  Despite their size, they have been able to survive for millions of years in a world of powerful carnivores — without tools — without becoming hopelessly stuck in the toxic tar baby of innovation and technology, with its enormous bloody costs.

Instead of chasing large herbivores with spears, baboons hunt a wide variety of small critters with their bare hands and teamwork.  Hunting provides a third of their food.  Unlike us, they never migrated out of Africa, into chilly climates where they could not survive without techno-crutches.  Unlike us, they didn’t exterminate the predators that kept their numbers in balance.  They have never had any need for fire, psych meds, or cell phones.  Might there be a lesson here?

* Wilson, Richard Leland, The Pleistocene Vertebrates of Michigan, Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, Vol. LII, 1967.

MacKinnon, J. B., The Once and Future World — Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2013.

Earth Alive

Stan Rowe (1918-2004) was a Canadian scholar whose career meandered from forestry, to botany, and finally to ecological ethics — a new field of study in which he gained attention for his outside-the-box thinking.  His book Earth Alive is a collection of essays that explore the importance of ecocentrism, a mode of thinking that embraces the entire planet, and is committed to its healing and wellbeing. 

Ecocentrism is a healthy alternative to the worldview that’s killing the ecosystem — humanism.  Almost everyone in the modern world suffers to some degree from morbid humanism, a belief that humans were created in the image of God, are the best and the greatest, and can do whatever they wish with the Earth, because God made it just for them.  “Among infantile beliefs, the idea that Earth was made for the pleasure and profit of the human species ranks first.”  It’s like worshipping sacred fish while rendering their pond uninhabitable via toxic pollution.

Rowe was careful to distinguish between biocentric (yuk!) and ecocentric (yum!).  A biocentric view is limited to living organisms only.  But life is far more than organisms.  Organisms cannot survive without sunlight, air, water, and soil.  Ecocentric embraces the whole enchilada.  We need to care about everything.  Rowe recommended that we call ourselves Earthlings, so that we could form an identity with this planet, the mother of our existence.  We should think of ourselves as Earthlings first, and humans second. 

In his college years, Rowe studied prairies, and they fascinated him.  The wild prairies of Nebraska were essentially unchanged by the passage of thousands of years, while the lands of his European ancestors were a never-ending hell broth of raiding, raping, pillaging, and ecological destruction.  During the ‘40s, his professor was horrified to watch the sacred prairies plowed out of existence and converted into cropland.  A precious treasure was senselessly destroyed, and the health of the land was diminished with each pass of the tractor.  Ecocentric Earthlings naturally harbor a deep and passionate contempt for agriculture.

Agriculture was the most radical change in Earthling life since we learned to control fire, and it led to the emergence of cities and civilizations.  Cities are absolutely unsustainable.  The average adult spends 95 percent of his life indoors, and the new world of digital telecommunication isolates us even farther from the family of life.  Eco-psychologists refer this alienation as EDD, Earth Deficiency Disease.

Cities are also crazy.  Urban culture is a nightmare of unsustainable fantasies that are completely disconnected from ecological reality.  “In short, Western culture — more and more city-based, further and further removed from any grounding in Earth-wisdom — systematically drives its citizens insane.  A society that renders its citizens mad must itself be mad.”

Earthlings should regard nature as being sacred, so we will treat it with care and respect.  Instead, we indulge in magical thinking about “sustainability” and “good stewardship.”  But in the real world, we are heading for disaster because our God-word is “growth.”  We will not protect what we do not love. 

Ideally, everyone should live in wild places, surrounded by nature.  But the herd is migrating to cities.  “The city is an unhealthy place for those who want to come home at least once before they die.”  Not surprisingly, soon after Rowe retired, he promptly abandoned the big city and moved to a remote and gorgeous hamlet, population: 650.  He had a powerful love for the natural world, and he enjoyed walking. (“Our two best doctors are our legs.”) 

Children are far more open to forming a bond with the natural world, if they are ever exposed to it.  This bond is a normal and healthy Earthling experience, and it can last a lifetime.  What is not normal is growing up in a humanist culture, where they unconsciously absorb the toxic worldview by osmosis.  Humanist education is a central cause of the problem, because it devotes little or no attention to ecology or natural history.  Illiterate people harm the planet far less than the well-educated.  And multinational religions tend to direct our attention away from the living creation that surrounds us, and have us look inward, to contemplate other-worldly dimensions.

The humanist culture is extremely proud of the wonders of modern technology.  Modern living is seen to be a great advancement over the primitive lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.  But is it really?  Not if our standards of judgment focus on sustainability — by far the best standard of excellence and high intelligence.  Self-destructive cultures are for losers, despite their smart phones and big screen TVs.

Our pre-civilized ancestors had an ecocentric worldview. But modern Earthlings can’t acquire a healthier worldview by popping a pill, watching a PowerPoint presentation, or reading anthropology books.  A good worldview is rooted in place, and consumer society resides in a placeless world, where every main street looks the same (McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Toyota…).  Healthy change will take time.

What can we do?  Rowe concluded this book with A Manifesto for Earth, in which he describes the changes needed, none of which are quick and easy.  Humanism simply has no long-term future, it’s a dead end.  We need ecocentric spirituality, ecocentric education, and ecocentric living.  We need to escape from our miserable boxes, race outdoors, and return home.

For most of us, our worldview is as invisible as the air we breathe.  We accept it without question and rarely think about it.  Our entire society is on the same channel, everywhere we go, which reinforces the misconception that our worldview is normal. 

Green thinkers are searching for a new vision, but it’s really not a great hidden mystery.  Rowe shouts the obvious:  “Look!  The new vision surrounds us in the trees and the flowers, in the clouds and the rivers, in the mountains and the sea….  The new vision is out there and always has been.  It is the spring of inspiration, the source of whatever good has been discovered within the human mind.”

Rowe, Stan, Earth Alive — Essays on Ecology, NeWest Press, Edmonton, Alberta, 2006.  A number of Rowe’s essays can be accessed at:

http://www.ecospherics.net/

Man and the Natural World

Keith Thomas published Man and the Natural World in 1983.  It was based on a series of lectures by the famous English historian George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876-1962), an upper class outdoorsman who was sickened by how the Industrial Revolution was mutilating the natural world, and ruining a precious spiritual resource.

The subject of the book was how the relationship between humans and the natural world changed in England between 1500 and 1800, and Thomas documented these changes with fascinating thoroughness.  Prior to 1500 was the medieval era, a time of endless turbulence, bizarre superstition, and devastating plagues.  After 1800 came the hurricane of the Industrial Revolution, the world wars, the brief era of cheap and abundant energy, and the tsunami of hysterical insatiable consumers.

The period between 1500 and 1800 was also a time of explosive change.  Europe was being flooded with vast wealth and cheap food from a network of new colonies.  The rising age of modern science was reshaping our perception of the world, leaving obsolete religious beliefs in its dust.  Population was exploding, the human realm was spreading across the countryside, and England was speeding toward the elimination of nature.  It was three centuries of growth that enriched the greedy, exploited the powerless, and tormented tender-hearted nature lovers.

When Trevelyan delivered his lectures prior to World War II, he was deeply pessimistic about the future.  He fantasized that before 1800, the works of man had only added to the beauty of nature.  After 1800, the process reversed course and became rapid destruction.  His lectures tried to present the era between 1500 and 1800 as a time of awakening, of gradually spreading changes in awareness.  Unfortunately, the improvements that he noted did not change the course of civilization.

In 1500, the English commonly treated animals in a brutal manner — not because they were jerks, but because the notion of being respectful of animals had never occurred to them.  The church had programmed society to believe that humans inhabited the realm between angels and brutes, and that nature was created for the use of man.  So, the lords kicked the peasants, and the peasants kicked the critters.  Horses were often worked to death, and then pushed into the ditch to feed the ravenous packs of mangy dogs.

Thomas presented a theory that the miserable loneliness of growing urbanization created a pet fad, and that close contact with submissive doggies and kitties showed us that animals were not dumb lumps of walking meat.  Because of this new sensitivity, many people became more aware of animal abuse.  This led to the creation of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824.  Some came to believe that the killing of any animal was wrong, and these became vegetarians.  Thomas was sympathetic with the fair treatment of animals, but he was taken aback by those who referred to the deliberate systematic extermination of wolves as a holocaust. 

Most of the book examined the relationship between humans and animals.  But Thomas also discussed the countryside, the green world.  Prior to 1500, forests were extensive.  They were home to scary animals and mean outlaws.  Deforestation was seen as beneficial, converting wild chaos into civilized order.  Both farmers and industry rapidly gobbled up the trees, and as the forests vanished, people began to regard the survivors with increasing fondness.  Laws were passed to protect them, and to encourage tree planting.

In 1500, cities were the hip place to be.  By 1800, they had become filthy, crowded, and creepy.  Urban living inspired a growing number of people to escape to the countryside whenever possible.  Over the years, a trickle turned into a torrent, and the nobility became alarmed that their country estates would soon be surrounded by a rash of tourist traps.  They opposed new railroads in their homelands.

Wildness became trendy.  Geometric gardens were out, as were identical trees planted in straight lines.  Weeds were in.  Landscaping that resembled wild nature was totally cool.  Artists got rich painting gorgeous panoramas showing little or no evidence of human society.

Trevelyan’s pessimism was sane and reasonable.  In the years following 1800, nature has taken her worst pounding ever, and animal misery has reached breathtaking new heights.  There has never been a generation more isolated from the natural world than our own.  With his book, Thomas gave us a revealing glimpse into a forgotten era when life was filled with animals, a time when civilization was muscle powered, and every breath was sweetened with the intoxicating aroma of steaming fresh manure.

Today we are suffering in the final decades of a tragic experiment with fossil powered civilization.  Sane people eagerly await the year when the lights go out, the cell phones die, the machines go silent, and we return to a muscle powered way of life — the end of a long, miserable, stunningly destructive war on life, and the beginning of a much needed healing process.  The future will be filled with animals once again.  We will have no choice but to live in a radically different manner.  Many horrid habits will be impossible to continue.

This book is a feast of material for creative people who are busy imagining the new stories and visions that will inspire the herd to wander in healthier directions.  It provides us with perspective on how trends have flailed and floundered over the centuries, and it helpfully marks numerous approaches as failures.  Attempts to reform civilization have enjoyed little success — its swift currents always sweep away intelligent ideas.

Obviously, the only “solution” for the problem of industrial civilization is to summon a priest to perform the last rites, and then take it off life support. We have been stumbling and staggering for centuries, lost and confused.  Many powerful new stories will be needed to help us remember what it means to be human, to remember the long-forgotten treasure of wildness and freedom, to remember what it feels like to be fully alive.  Go for it!

Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World, Pantheon Books, New York, 1983.