Becoming

...A field of Flowers

Photo by Noemí Jiménez on Unsplash

** Audio Version**

A recurring theme in my thinking and writing is that we humans need desperately to change our ways if we are to survive the catastrophes that we have unleashed upon ourselves and the world. Actually, it is so much more than changing our ‘ways’. ‘Ways’ suggests tweaking a few things, when what is actually required is a profound rethink (Re-feel?) of what it is to be human.

Humanity, or rather, a particular segment of humanity, has pushed our demands on the planet far beyond what the planet can provide. The last time we lived within our means was 1970: 55 years ago. Since then, we have breached planetary boundary after planetary boundary until now, in 2025 we have exceeded seven out of the nine identified by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Had we paid heed of our situation all those decades ago (Limits to Growth was published in 1972), we would certainly be in a better situation, but I suggest that we (we-the-wealthy I mean), could not properly pay heed of our situation, because for most of us, the vision of who we are, and what humans are ‘for’ leads us inexorably down a path of utilitarian destruction.

There are of course, many, many examples of more wholesome and genuinely sustainable ways of being human, but ‘we’ (that wealthy-we again) set ourselves the task of ‘helping’ those poor benighted folk through the project of ‘development’. Wealthy, industrialised people were seen to be the pinnacle of humanity. Everyone else was cute, but faulty. Unless they were dangerous and faulty. The project was to teach, lure or coerce all the world into a ‘rationalist’, capitalist and extractive mode of living. Alas, it worked. Albeit that 40% of the world remain food insecure. But it is not the achievement of wealth or security that the project required. It is the ablation of meaning, connection and responsibility. A recasting of humanity’s place in the world, and in the greater cosmos. Of course, not everyone fell for it, not even in the wealthy-west. But too many did, and none of us are untouched. The promises of comfort and exciting visions of ‘progress’ bent entire societies to the maw of the machine. The machine gobbled their forests, their fish and their futures.

A few years ago, I tried to talk to my friends about this. I held a dinner, under a great Corymbia tree, and I proposed that they all imagine how their lives, and particularly their professional lives, would look if they behaved as though all things were sentient. If they behaved as though we humans are accountable to other intelligences. I suggested that we all examine first ourselves, and then invite our colleagues in the conversation, forming occupational nodes of thought and change. I imagined that we would come together in congregation every six month or year, each sub-group a petal, as it were, of a great flower, that would bloom and cross-pollinate and cast seed out into the world to grow more flowers.

It fell completely flat. Of course. But seeds can lay under the ground for a long time, waiting for the right conditions. I blow some in your direction.

      She loves me. 

                  She loves me not. 

                                      She loves me…

What follows is the tract that I printed and laid out around the table.

Basic Assumptions

Panpsyche/Pansentience: All life (and who knows, perhaps all matter) is imbued with intelligence and intentionality, albeit often foreign and mysterious to human understandings.

Since at least Descartes¹, European society has laboured under a Delusion of Separation that has placed humans apart from, and above the rest of nature, men above women, whites above colour etc. This delusion, or Disenchantment is at the root of the catastrophic collapse of our planet, and is at least partly implicated in much of the religious, racist and gendered violence that afflict our societies.

Humans are an integral part of nature and have a crucial role to play². Humans could be seen to have lived for most of our species’ existence under a contract with the rest of nature – with the Cosmos - Live according to First Law (Tjukurpa) (or a local variant thereof). This contract was built around an understanding that Relationality is a Structural Feature of the World. This contract recognises that All things are connected and calls for humans to undertake Stewardship, Renewal and Sacrifice. To Love the World.

Qualities of Life

Separation has hollowed out the human experience and denied the World much of our creative potential, yet the world herself stands ready to welcome us back into the contract. The door stands open for us to re-enter a communion. What might this feel like?

We would embrace life in all things, be they of earth, water, fire or air. We would know who we are and be content with that. We would trust. In people. In the world. We would be present, and live in a passionate, compassionate world, awake to the rhythms in all things. We would live lives of frugal hedonism enjoying the fruits offered by, or respectfully coaxed from the Earth. We would take only what we need. We would value the Heart over the Head, and through a somatic homecoming, coupled with attentive awareness, ritual and openness to Ontopoesis, come, perhaps, to know ecstasy.

The false freedom of our post-modern world will be replaced by the freedom to grow: in a context of responsibility to the world, to human and other-than-human kin and to past, present and future.

Ways of Working/Living

We would develop and follow a personal/professional ethics that recognises the animate in all things and our fundamental responsibility to preserve and protect the integrity of Earth’s living systems.

We would seek, as a matter of daily practice, to deepen our consciousness – to be awake to the rhythms and currents of the world and the collective unconscious of our fellow creatures, and of ourselves. We would actively invite the lives (human and more-than-human), and the numinous into our human deliberations. We would discuss plans that affect the forest in the presence of the forest. We would resolve to talk not “about” the other, but “with” the other.

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1Some say Socrates and Plato. Some blame Prometheus... And Descartes was breaking the stranglehold of the Vatican, (The Magisterium to the well read), so we cannot be too hard on him.

2Though we could also be another in-the-scheme-of-things insignificant answer produced by Gaia in response to a particular need in a particular eon.