Only Connect — Why Environmentalism challenges the core values of our civilisation
We live in a two-dimensional world of individual achievement, individual wealth, and individual freedom. Our systems of politics, economics and business are all founded on the principle of individualism.
Individualism denies any connection between one human being and another human being. You are a lone, isolated being adrift in your own lone, isolated world. Perhaps this is why we are always “looking for love”, investing in another lone, isolated individual all our yearning to connect, to belong somewhere. To feel fulfilled.
Our global civilisation denies even more that we have any connection to the rest of life on earth. Animals, plants, minerals, even the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we till are just “resources” to be “consumed”. They can be bought and sold, utilised or destroyed as our systems demand. When they are deemed to be no longer “useful” they are discarded. Thrown “away”.
There is no such place as “away”. Planet Earth is it, guys.
The scale of this disconnect to the natural world that gives rise to human life is, I believe, unique to the 20th century. 20th century global civilisation, led by America, has created a vision of life that is so narrow it is destroying the conditions for life itself.
American culture and thinking has its roots deep in the Imperialism of European civilisation, it has grown and flourished on a narrative of conquest and dominion. “Americans” are the white settlers from Europe; not the native Americans who understood their land and had their own deep traditions of spiritual connection to it. The white settlers settled and conquered. They brought their own religion, which likewise settled and conquered, imposing a dogmatic religosity totally disconnected to the land. The land was no longer the repository of the ancestors it was just a “resource”. It could be doctored, poisoned, enclosed and abused as the white man saw fit.
If we are to survive the 21st century, we need to reconnect our global civilisation to the Earth which gave rise to it. We need to liberate humanity from the death-grip of its own superficiality. We need to focus more on expressing love and less on demanding it.
Alongside the privilege of individual freedom comes the responsibility for the life we share, with other human beings and with all life on Earth. Only by growing into more whole and connected human beings can we survive as a species.
Here in the UK, we are entering into a titanic wrestling match between the forces of entropy which cling to the old mindsets and the old ways of doing things that are taking us down the road to extinction, and the new thinking which recognises our connection to each other and to all life on Earth — a joyous place from which an unknown cornucopia of new experiences might spring. The US is already disintegrating in the throes of this conflict, clinging to the guiding mantra of individual freedom no matter how many lives it costs.
Sadly, it is a fact of human nature that the majority will not change habits of mind and behaviour unless or until they are forced to change by adversity.
There is a big, big dose of adversity rushing over my horizon right now. I do not know quite how big the storm will be nor how long we will have to endure it. It may hit in one massive blow, devastate everything in its path, and then move on, allowing us to rebuild along more enlightened lines. More likely it will continue as it has up to now, pounding away relentlessly at our defences, driving us further and further back into ourselves, shredding hope day by endless day.
All I can say to my fellow Brits is stand by to anchor fast to those things you know to be good, and true, and enduring, and hold on to those you love. The tsunami is building.
