It’s like every conversation has to be about Covid-19, which in this digital age means the viral has gone viral. So what’s the ecomythic angle? What would we hear if we heard Nature Calling, if we tuned into the stories that are arising out of the earth, communicating to us about how we live on this planet? How we live as human animals, but also beyond the limited consciousness of the mortal; in the body, but also from the imagination, which flies beneath, below and above the physical frame, from the stars to the embers, as cosmic consciousness embodied here and now …
Well, think of it like this. What do you call an invisible enemy, which attacks your life support system from within, can be contracted by touching a surface that shows no sign of the infection, either stops you breathing altogether or merely gives you a dry cough, mutates occasionally as it crosses hosts, appears and disappears without a trace, sometimes not even showing up for the diagnosis, even with the best of modern medicine at hand? And what about when it creates total chaos around the world, shuts down the capitalist system, keeps nearly everyone cooped up at home and inspires panic buying of essentials like toilet paper, even when it can’t be seen?
Covid-19 has been talked about in terms of its symbolic potential (eg by Charles Eisenstein), and most importantly its ‘meaning’ in terms of the ecological crisis, but what about its ecomythic spirit? What kind of creature is this, that appears out of nowhere and has such powerful effects, completely rearranging human life almost overnight? A superstitious witness to such events would want to know what demonic spirit let this evil force loose upon the world, as well as what the victims did do to deserve it. This touches on the karma of the situation too, which points us back to the rise of the various plagues that have afflicted humanity over time. An objective observer would have to ask – has this got something to do with the way humans treat animals; seeing as living in close contact with them has something to do with it, and you’re doing this in order to eat them, skin them and trade them?
The existential level of questioning gets pretty brutal pretty quickly, but this is appropriate if you want to look the truth in the face (or as closely as you can get to this before you feel the need to look away). Joseph Campbell pointed out that compared to the human ego, the mythic universe is ‘adamantine’ in its challenge – harder than a diamond and as unflinching as nature when it comes to dishing out just rewards. If the human race is about to reap what it’s sown, over millennia of ecocidal abuse, then we should prepare for a near future of disastrously epic proportions. This looks like apocalyptic sci-fi on steroids, as the oceans begin to repel excess carbon and heat (its time of being a passive soak for our bad behaviour is effectively over). The only reason we can’t face the reality of this situation is because it is too horrible to digest; such a truth would make a mockery of all our plans, our love for our children and grandchildren, our hopes for the beautiful life this planet supports. But now that climate scientists have taken the gloves off, having admitted they’ve been too polite for too long, it’s time to face the future and its ecomythic power – to upset our dream of never-ending human glory, as even conservative commentators are now admitting (even if sometimes begrudgingly).
The dream of endless growth is closely associated with fantasies of immortality and these can be tracked across the history of human myth. Although such wishes exist in every culture, the dream of living in everlasting peace with an ultimate power (for example a Christian God) or in a field of deathless energy (such as the Buddha’s nirvana) seem like harmless fantasies compared to the scale of what modern, technologically developed societies do with the human lust for immortality. Because our modern world rejects both Gods and the liberation offered us by a mythically-informed depth psychology, we make our desires manifest instead, in desacralised rites of consumption.
That’s right folks, if we can’t have eternal afterlife we’ll just fill up right here, thanks. The sensual thrill of satisfying appetite – of fancy foodstuffs, of cars and hotel rooms and exotic holidays and sofas and sex & drugs & rock ‘n roll and electric light and everything – fills in for the spiritual paradigm we lost on the path to our materialistic paradise. This one, which is costing us the earth. Ironic, no? But wait, there’s more …
The paradox of ephemeral satisfaction – of feeling we have overcome the limits of life in the body, life on earth, in a materialistic orgy of consumption – is an ‘all feast, no famine’ deal we made with technology. It comes as a historical result of the agricultural myth (from around 10,000 years ago), that we can profit from the earth and not pay the ultimate cost, which is then dialled up by the machine age of the industrial revolution (starting around 250 years ago), then made global by colonisation, then exponentially skyrocketing over recent decades, as digital technologies concentrate our dream of being both primate and god at once. How about that? The more worldly and less seemingly religious we have become, the more the great spiritual ideal of living free and forever has taken hold of our imagination, like a feverish dream.
This is the karmic law of Covid-19. It’s not just that we reap what we sow, that we deserve to die en masse for treating the earth and its other animals like disposable resources for our profit. It’s also an Oedipal paradox: as we try to escape the traditional versions of our subliminal desires (for God/Nirvana), they revisit us in exotic new forms, from behind and below, in our dreams, when we’re not looking. We treat the earth like dirt and it gives birth to new lifeforms, some of which threaten to wipe us out in its name. It’s viral karma, joining the unprecedented bushfires and magnified superstorms and every other fury unleashed by the earth we thought we’d controlled for our own purposes.
Just as Freud saw, the primal desire of ‘man’ (if not all men) to consume the mother’s body in a pervasive rite of carnal satisfaction cannot often be fulfilled by the individual male at large in society; but we can find myriad other ways to feel filled up on mind-blowing power, to feel fully nourished and filled with love, warmth and self-fulfilment. Sadly, many of these ways are not so wholesome or respectful of ‘the other’ that is required to satiate our desires. Many of the ways a patriarchal capitalist framework like ours offers to satisfy our inner needs are very far from being kind to others, or to our planet.
We cannot help wanting stuff, as embodied beings, but we have a choice as to how we satisfy our desires. Sure, if we are born (or ‘fated’, as the ancients would say) to be a certain type of person, to want certain things as a way of feeling satisfied, it can seem almost impossible to change that. Put another way, we are coded towards certain predispositions, both as a race and as individuals. We seek nourishment, shelter, company, as a species; and perhaps lust, intoxication, the thrill of the gamble, any other sin to any degree, or none of them – perhaps the quiet life, a simple family existence, escapism or hard work. In any number of ways, we have a program from birth, a personality type, things we can change and things we cannot. As the old saying goes, wisdom is the capacity to discern which is which, to try and change what we can for the better and to accept what we cannot. The aim of a wisdom tradition is to offer guidance so that we don’t get lost in the labyrinth of our own desires, so that we come through the darkness of our challenges and find new light, integrating what we learn from our weaknesses and foibles and expanding our sense of self, so that we become greater and more spiritually generous, not giving in to our base desires and becoming more mean and selfish.
By contrast, contemporary capitalist society is 360 degrees of influence aimed at exactly the opposite outcome. It directs you to your cheapest thrill, your most immediate appetite, offering to satisfy it so long as you play the game. Likewise, modern politics – especially since the rise of the ‘Big Man’ era [find link?] – is designed to appeal to your fear of the other, to target difference as the problem, to become more judgemental and aggressive about your opinions. It’s only a small step from fighting over toilet paper to supporting war, and the same drive informs both – we are right, they are wrong, and we have a lot to profit from beating them. War is the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, riding across the horizon, following the Fires, Plague and Floods let loose by anthropogenic climate change. And all of this acts as a reflection and a logical result of how large-scale, colonising, capitalising societies like the West and China have been treating nature for millennia. Only now do we see what our unleashed power looks like, in the mirror of the world, as it unravels to reveal the hidden desire beneath those ads on television, that screen you’re reading this on, the constant news of the destruction of our world: the horrible irony that we have unleashed the demons of death by trying to run away from them. Only this time, according to the global power of unrestrained corporate greed and the military industrial complex (as we used to call it), the death we wanted to avoid is revisiting us on a planetary scale.
Oedipus was warned he would kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he ran to escape his fate, thereby making sure it happened, just as the seer predicted it would. We were warned too, by the sober deliberations of climate science, yet rushed headlong to our collective demise in the rush to satisfy the gamut of our desires, as if there were no limit. Ultimately, the ancient Greek tragedy has its redemptive aspect; Oedipus ends up a lot wiser and even has a sacred place named after him. It’s unlikely, short of a miracle of transformation, that our esteemed leaders will be afforded any such respect by future generations, if they are even to appear.
The dead wombat has been there for a couple of days now. The stench tells the story, as do the flies. The painted stripe down its back is another thing – a sign to those who care, that this one has been checked. Its pouch is empty; no babies need to be rescued from its dead body. Drive on, like everybody else does. We’re in a rush, or going too fast, or we’ve just seen it so often it doesn’t register anymore.
Roadkill – it’s an everyday reality for those who drive, especially long distances on country roads. It’s the collateral damage of the road trip. And it’s a sign of the times, a symbol of how we live, the things we can’t change, the fast pace of modern life and the way we treat the rest of the world (aka nature). We cut straight lines across the land, just as we do across the seas and skies, in order to get from one place to the next as fast as humanly possible.* Because we have business to do, people to meet, more immediate concerns than caring for the land and the planet that is our home. More important stuff.
That’s how we got here – to the precipice of the ecological emergency, which afflicts the entire earth now, the cliff over which we are hurtling since the feedback loops started to kick in. We burn greenhouse gases and turn the plants and animals into agribusiness and treat them all like grist to the mill. Any cereal grain or docile beast unfortunate enough to be domesticated has been ‘farmed’ – or more accurately, industrially exploited – to the point of complete depersonalisation.
You couldn’t do to battery hens, pigs, or feedlot cattle what is routinely done on behalf of obscene profits if you actually had to face what these animals feel. We couldn’t decimate the insect population and pour countless trillions of litres of chemical run off, of pesticides and fertilisers, into the sea, creating desolate coastlines and Great Barren Reefs, if we cared about the rest of the earth’s population.
It’s all about the wheat, the rice, the cotton; not the birds, the bees, the native grasses or traditional remedies that used to grow here. Where? Anywhere.
This dead wombat is one of the dozens I see every week on my work commutes. Smashed to death by a metal bullet hurtling down the road at 100kmh, another human being at the wheel. Almost inevitably, we won’t stop to witness the passing of another life at the hands of modern society. It’s just what we do. Kill thoughtlessly, randomly, impersonally, as an inevitable side effect of our hustle and bustle. This is what we have done to our planet and home.
Roadkill is a symbol for our times.
For more on the mythology of straight lines, see the ecomythic doco “City Living, Nature Calling” here.
Here is a letter that is less than 1 page long and is designed to gather support for the Global Climate Strike on Friday 20th of September. Please feel free to adapt, sign as your own, share widely and use to initiate a conversation in your workplace or with anyone.
On Friday the 20th of September, we have an opportunity to show our support for a movement that is focussed on building a new way of life for humanity: one that does not take our planetary home for granted and works to protect it for future generations and for other species. Without this transformation, we will continue to do irreparable damage to the environment, to our soils and rivers, seas and fellow creatures.
This is just one day of the year, dedicated to the biggest issue facing the entire human race. No matter how important our work is, we can find a way to strike in support. If we work in a caring field, or anywhere that safety is an issue, we can suggest that those who don’t want to strike are rostered on to work. Management may be open to this, if they recognise the unparalleled danger that we face. If not, we can apply for leave. But however we do it, we have to strike. We have to show that business as usual is a death sentence for life as we know it.
The devastating impacts of human-induced climate chaos are increasing daily. Animals and plants are becoming extinct in frightening numbers. We are involved today in a struggle that is no longer ideological (about beliefs or ideas), or historical, but scientifically validated as an existential threat to living species on this planet right now. This is the most important moment to be alive in the history of humanity. No longer do our actions only matter to our local communities – although they still do. We must now give in to the call to “Think Globally and Act Locally”, for this emerging crisis affects us all.
On Friday the 20th of September, we are being asked – by leaders in the environmental movement, by school students who can see their very future crumbling before them, by climate scientists and communicators the world over – to strike for climate action. I call upon you now to
commit to this action and to make your commitment public;
talk with your colleagues about how to keep everybody safe (rostering staff who are prepared to stay on at work to ensure public safety while others strike);
make a statement of support for the general strike’s aims, which are to call upon world leaders in politics and industry to support serious and immediate climate action such as complete transformation of energy to a carbon neutral world; and to
enable your organisation, department or corporation to professionally and compassionately manage this day in support of climate action, as meaningful participants in the most important movement of our times, in ways that promote the transformation of our own work practices in alignment with a carbon neutral global society.
Yours in civil disobedience, Geoff Berry [*NB: adapt and sign your own name here freely!]
The School Strike for Climate started by climate action heroine Greta Thunberg has spread to the adult world (as predicted here in March). So now we can throw ourselves into support of the movement without worrying about whether or not we’re supposed to wait for our children to lead. Salutary times!
In an attempt to get as many people across the world to join the strike, to normalise civil disobedience and turn the insane tide of self-destruction to a global mobilisation of climate action, i have drafted a letter. It’s designed to get our colleagues, bosses, clients, customers and everyone involved in our workplaces and households to join with us in support of planetary care, without risking harm to the vulnerable in our communities.
Please feel free to adapt to your workplace and share widely! Start with the CEO or top management, see if you can get organizational support, then share with everyone else. If we follow the protocols of our workplaces we might just help to transform ‘business as usual’ forever!
*NB: this letter is written for the allied health and caring professions. Contact me for help with adapting it to your industry or field! naturecallinggeoff@gmail.com
General Strike for Climate – Friday 20th of September – a call for support
We in the allied health, mental health, social work and community development spheres do important work. We help people: to heal and find wellness, to grow as individuals and together, to make a better world. Through our work we show we care and because of this simple fact, our work is important, to us and to those we help. In our fields, we also have to take time to take care of ourselves, to avoid burnout or compassion fatigue. How we find that balance between self-care and helping work is a matter of personal import, which can be helped or hindered depending on our workplace and its culture.
Beyond this personal level of helping and healing work, staff and carers in these fields may also find alignment with a position that critiques the structural inequalities that make magnify the damage we encounter daily. The ‘facts of life’ that create inequality in the first place; the systems that marginalise those who don’t fit mainstream ideals, or leave behind those who aren’t on the side of the ‘winners’ in a competitive society, that let them slip through the cracks when someone else can’t be there to hold them together. There are historically traceable reasons why so many members of modern society are simply left behind by impersonal forces of ‘progress’ and development. We can choose whether or not we want to be more informed about these factors, just as we can choose to side with inner faith and our resolute determination to help regardless of the history that out us here.
But there is one situation growing more deadly by the day that none of us can afford to ignore anymore. This is anthropogenic climate change – the way the planet is heating up, due to the enormous amount of greenhouse gases being burnt by modern society, and the devastating impacts this is already having on people, on the environment and on the animals and plants that are becoming extinct in frightening numbers and with increasing rapidity. We are involved today in a struggle that is no longer ideological (about beliefs or ideas), or historical, but scientifically validated as an existential threat to living species on this planet right now. This is the most important moment to be alive in the history of humanity. No longer do our actions only matter to our local communities – although they still do. We must now give in to the call to “Think Globally and Act Locally”, for this emerging crisis affects us all, including our environment, our atmosphere, and the living world of plants, animals and other lifeforms that make up our beautiful jewel of a planet.
In the areas of allied health and social work, we already focus on the immediate needs of those around us. We work with love, compassion and kindness to alleviate suffering and promote healing and growth. On Friday the 20th of September, we are being asked – by leaders in the environmental movement, by school students who can see their very future crumbling before them, by climate scientists and communicators the world over – to strike for climate action. I call upon you now to
• commit to this action and to make your commitment public;
• talk with your colleagues about how to keep everybody safe (rostering skeleton staff who are prepared to stay on at work to ensure public safety while others strike);
• make a statement of support for the general strike’s aims, which are to call upon world leaders in politics and industry to support serious and immediate climate action such as complete transformation of energy to a carbon neutral world; and to
• enable your organisation, department or corporation to professionally and compassionately manage this day in support of climate action, as meaningful participants in the most important movement of our times, in ways that promote the transformation of our own work practices in alignment with a carbon neutral global society.
Yours in civil disobedience, Geoff Berry
*NB: Please feel free to use this form and sign off with your own name, to adapt in any way you see fit as long as you don’t edit out the environmentally activist intent, and share as widely and freely as you can.
Greta Thunberg rules! Listen to her speak truth to the world direct.
I’m going to the strike. I’m taking my kids out of primary school. I don’t care if they get it yet or not. They need to know that i care and that they are going to. Why? Because climate scientists have been pointing this out for over 25 years, since they said (at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992) that overwhelming indications pointed towards massive damage being done to the earth’s biosphere by modern industrial society. Since then, unfortunately, it’s been mostly business as usual: mass media has supported politics aligned with global corporations, to continue supporting the damage done, in the name of profit. It’s frustrating to know this and to watch people – even intelligent, open-minded adults – clutch at straws and try to believe that we can continue to destroy the earth and not pay the ultimate price.
Sometimes, it takes an innocent or an outsider to destroy our illusions and smash the bubble of lies we have woven for ourselves. The Emperor has no clothes! Now, again, a child has come to wake us up. This is kinda embarrassing. How is it that a strike has to be called by children, who want to leave school to try and make political leaders realise that they have to act now if we are to save the environment from irreversible damage? It’s not like we have lacked credible science or anything … no less than the IPCC – that’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, and a source of scientific information and technical guidance for Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – has been trying to wake us up for years.
But we all love a good story, especially when it means we can enjoy creature comforts and believe we are chosen to live in the lap of luxury, not merely by the good fortune of technological development and historical serendipity, but because … we are special. That is the power of myth. A powerful myth convinces you that you can have it all; you can enjoy life here and now and in the body, as well as knowing that you are destined by the forces of the universe to carry on in splendour and majesty beyond this mortal coil. Doesn’t that sound great?! Yeah!
And to think, without destroying our planetary home, we could have all of this, with a sophisticated understanding of how myth works within and without. In the world and in our hearts and body/minds, we are star dust, evolving to be at one with eternal consciousness, unlimited … unless we choose not to. And then we become forgetful, worldlings, limited, socialised, attached, adult. And then, we need the children, the fools, the artists, the whimsical, the poets, to remind us. That we are more. As Marianne Williamson put it, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
So don’t just let the kids lead the way! Strike! Join them (and us). Why can’t we organise and resist the devastation of the world as adults? Because we are so caught up in the myth of technological progress and plenty that we are drunk on it. We can’t always see the truth so obviously dangling before our eyes. But Greta can. The kids can. And we can wake up to it too. It’s about time. Let’s speak out and make our kids proud. They’ll remember this, when the damage really starts to hit in the near future. They’ll know that we cared enough to strike out, against the mainstream, for change. And that we never gave up.
You couldn’t do to battery hens, pigs, or feedlot cattle what is routinely done on behalf of obscene profits if you actually had to face what these animals feel. We couldn’t decimate the insect population and pour countless trillions of litres of chemical run off, of pesticides and fertilisers, into the sea, creating desolate coastlines and Great Barren Reefs, if we cared about the rest of the earth’s population.
This dead wombat is one of the dozens I see every week on my work commutes. Smashed to death by a metal bullet hurtling down the road at 100kmh, another human being at the wheel. Almost inevitably, we won’t stop to witness the passing of another life at the hands of modern society. It’s just what we do. Kill thoughtlessly, randomly, impersonally, as an inevitable side effect of our hustle and bustle. This is what we have done to our planet and home.
