Listen to the ancient voices.

 

When the ancestors walked the earth they new this world as a living being. Their “mother” who gave them life.

Indigenous peoples around the world understood this and learned to live in harmony with their environment. The elders heard the ancient voices and regulated the use of the land and the of other creatures who shared it with them. They could not conceive of a people who would rape the mother and take as much as they could from her. They spent more of their time in community than in gathering food and knew the meaning of wisdom.

In time cities grew. Nations flourished. Rulers dominated. Crowded together, they needed more food and land to sustain them. They took it from their neighbours and enslaved the less fortunate to till the soil and care for the food animals for them.

Huge machines grew from the intelligent species. Advancement brought freedom for some and greater poverty for others. Wars were needed to create more “free-holdings” and cement the power of those in charge. Economics required possessions and consolidation.

The earth became an object to fulfil the needs of these human militants. Erosion and degradation, loss of habitat for other species, pollution of the waters and the aid were all part of a countries developing. Those nations who did not, knew even more disparity and poverty.

Refugees were a problem to be solved. Hunger was unavoidable. From the 1960 Freedom from Hunger campaigns and shouts to Feed the World tickled the edge of the problem. Bold statements that no Australian child would live in hunger were never realised in fact.

People spent more of their time in gathering food and possessions and less in community and wisdom become lost or distorted to fit with self-preservation.

In the 1970’s some again discovered the world as a living being. Gaia, as it was called, was seen to be a self-regulating living system responding to the assaults on its heath and survival. Some predicted that this Gaia would perhaps throw off these humans that were attacking and destroying it “as a dog shakes off its fleas.” Was the drop in pollution during Covid one of these signs that we hardly noticed? Are natural disasters and weather changes a last desperate struggle of Gaia in its death throws?

Yet humans have continued to treat the world as an object rather than respecting it as a life-giving Mother. The biggest difference is that they now know what is happening and seem powerless to change.

Living in harmony with the environment as a way of life somehow doesn’t fit with progress, ownership and development. We are left grabbing for the things we want and turning them into needs. It seems obvious to some that in the end this will mean no earth left for anyone.

Perhaps it is time to listen to the ancient voices.

 

 

Bob is a retired minister and psychologist concerned for the future of his 8 grandchildren and their grandchildren beyond them.