In case you missed it, the planet’s insects have now joined the planet’s other animal groups, its rainforests and oceans, its climate and mammals, in a catastrophic collapse that puts the entire biosphere (aka life on Earth) at risk.
By now you no doubt know the routine: humankind sets out to ‘fix’ a problem – in this case, crop-eating, disease-carrying insects – only to discover that the supposed nuisance we’ve been carpet-bombing with pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, and various other chemical and genetic agents, is actually a support beam upon which life itself depends.
The biosphere’s roof sags a bit more, and the same short-sighted species that created the problem races to find a fix for that original fix.
Along the way, the same judgmental mindset that instituted that fix seeks also to mollify itself by identifying and crucifying the usual suspects (e.g. evil corporations, paid-for-politicos, cultural ignorance, etc.).
So that’s the formula. Humans identify a problem (drugs, disease, poverty, intolerance, pestilence, etc.). Humans conjure up plans to solve said problem. Humans discover their solution comes with side effects. Repeat.
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you recognize this formula doesn’t work – never has, never will.
In fact, humanity’s never-ending aspirations to fix, solve, improve (and, in more recent times, save) the world have, if anything, succeeded only in making things worse. How else to explain why, after so many generations of human ‘advancement,’ the planet teeters on the edge?
At this stage of the game, it’s safe to say humankind is bad for Earth’s health. Every newborn probably should be affixed with a warning label.
So – dare I ask it – what’s the ‘solution’? What are we getting wrong?
Consider, for a moment, where the human experience truly begins: childhood.
From the start, a child is taught a variety of subjects across various disciplines: history and mathematics, language and science, art and athletics.
But – and here’s the important part – what is subtly implied throughout all of that education, is a subject-object mindset. The child isn’t just being taught those subjects, she’s also being taught to consider herself a subject in relation to those objects.
In other words, the child learns not just about insects and neutrinos, cirrus clouds and elephants, pancreases and watersheds – she learns that she, and they, are separate and apart from each other.
She HAS a pancreas. Neutrinos BOMBARD her body. Cirrus clouds scud across the sky ABOVE her.
ME + LIFE.
Me LIVING a life.
Me is a human being living on planet Earth.
You get the gist. It’s how ‘you’ and I and every other human being were programmed. And each and every moment of each and every day, we completely and utterly overlook it.
Even in such instances when a child is taught that he depends on water and food, atmosphere and gravity, for survival, he remains the subject that depends on (and, in many cases, holds dominion over) that same world/universe of objects.
Which is why we should not be surprised that children grow into adults who understand themselves to be separate and apart from everything around them.
Isn’t this where all human suffering originates?
Isn’t this, too, where our malignant treatment of the earth and its myriad life forms begins?
Now imagine, instead, a world where children are taught, from the very start, that they and life are one and the same thing? That far from being separate and apart from life, they and everything around them are manifestations of that One intelligent expression known as existence.
Play that one out and see where it leads you.
