The central question is, given the world as it is today, what’s now possible?
Our planet is no longer the pristine paradise it was “in the time before writing,” which is to say when humans first appeared, because as a species we have done an extraordinary amount of damage to it. We have depleted its soils and its oceans, polluted its atmosphere, and mined its crust for minerals and fossil fuels. We have destroyed more than half of the natural habitat that sustains us as well all other living species, on whose continued healthy existence we absolutely depend. We face what is clearly humanity’s greatest existential threat, as dangerous and as real as the possibility of a nuclear winter, but one that is unfolding in slow motion and will overtake us simply if we do nothing about it.
But of course we are not “doing nothing” about it. A great number of scientists, scholars, activists, entrepreneurs, and public officials are doing something about it on a daily basis, and it now seems clear that we can avert catastrophe if we choose, collectively, to take the necessary actions to reduce emissions, restore the environment, and re-establish the balance — the balance and reconnection between humans and nature, and between humans and other humans.
In reality it is the separation that is the illusion, and this illusion is at the source of much of our present dilemma. We experience ourselves as separate, as individuals, as tribes, as language groups and cultures, as distinct and different from other life-forms, as capable of subjugating them for our own ends. But such subjugation will in the end be our end also, for we are ultimately engaged in trying to subjugate and subdue parts of ourselves.
That we are inseparable from Nature and the Earth becomes obvious as soon as we recognize the “big story” of how we ourselves came to be, of how life began on this planet and how it has evolved over 3.5 billion years, and we have arrived on the scene only very recently and are only now beginning to understand our roles and responsibilities, having devastated large swaths of the planet, as now being “junior planetary engineers.” As David Grinspoon writes, “We suddenly find ourselves sort of running a planet — a role we never anticipated or sought — without knowing how it should be done. We’re at the controls, but we’re not in control.”
At some level, however, we do know what should be done, because it’s as deeply embodied in us as in the rocks and the trees and the oceans. We know intuitively when both we and our environment are thriving, and that are conditions and our experiences are inseparable. (The desertification of the Middle East — which was once the Fertile Crescent — is an obvious example.) If we pay attention, we can begin to discern and distinguish “healthy” and “unhealthy” conditions, and realize that our primary responsibility is restoring the health of the biosphere we inhabit.
The “possible planet” we’re talking about, then, is one that works, that is prosperous, sustainable, and regenerative for everyone. “A world that works for everyone, with no-one and nothing left out.” Evidently this is not likely any time soon, but it is useful to consider what it might look like. A world that works for everyone is a world that works for you and me, as well as for everyone else. And nothing in your life or mine is ever “left out.” If we experience it, it’s real, i.e., it’s a real experience of whatever it is that we’re experiencing.
There is a philosophy which holds that all of what we call “reality” is a sort of illusion: it’s being created in each moment out of quarks that can be both there and not there. But we’re also the ones creating it. Much of the world we believe is there, like “money” or “government” or “philosophy,” is there because we believe it, and it has no other reality. Each of these is in reality a body of thought, not of things. But there are also real things, things we taste and drive around in and bump into — like the Earth, and its atmosphere, and its habitability for human and other life-forms. We need to take it all in, and imagine it working to benefit everyone, or at least a majority of the Earth’s citizens, rather than simply a select few.
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