Healing broken relationship with nature
WWF's mission is “to stop the degradation of the Earth's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature…”
In their Living Planet Report published in 2020 it is noted that global mammal, fish, bird and amphibian populations have declined by 68% in less than 50 years. Genetic degradation isn't covered in the report.
People the world over donate billions of dollars to WWF each year. Despite this, the reality is that after 60 years at the forefront of conservation, WWF (and professional conservation in general) have failed to fulfil their stated objective.
Environmental degradation is in freefall and animals in their natural habitats are likely to be wiped out within a matter of one or two decades.
Which is not to say that the position might not have been worse without the efforts of conservation agencies, or that their failure to stem the tide of destruction is not understandable.
Human numbers in my lifetime have gone from 2.5 billion to a staggering 8 billion, and in 2020 alone (notwithstanding Covid-19) births exceeded deaths by 80 million.
And if you don't recognise all of this clear evidence of disease in the social organism, and get a glimpse of the joyless, polluted, dangerous and unsustainable world that will be occupied by our children – should they survive, of course then as lawyers are inclined to say, I rest my case.
It's insane and the approach to the unfolding catastrophe by conservation professionals appears to consist of what the medical profession might describe as symptomatic diagnosis and treatment.
In other words, cause unknown and remedial treatment aimed at easing pain and symptoms – rather than eradicating underlying cause.
Carl Jung proposed that all human neurosis and psychosis stems from division from nature. And if Jung has it right, then does it not follow that in-depth understanding of the human condition that gives rise to environmental destruction, must precede and dictate remedial action?
Neurosis doesn't mean barking mad but rather a relatively mild altered state of reality. I'm not a psychologist but it would seem to me that division from nature essentially triggers a loss of synchronicity between two distinct faculties of memory.
The first of these being instinct and the second being reason.
Instinct can be defined as prenatal, genetic, evolutionary or ancestral memory function. Reason is postnatal, experiential or socially acquired memory function, and in nature this dual memory function combines seamlessly to optimise survival prospects and transfer of advantageous genes.
Division from nature disrupts brain function synchronicity, resulting in suppression of instinct and elevated levels of dependence or dominance of reason. Homo sapiens sapiens or “wise wise Man” is how we see ourselves. IQ is measured by reasoning ability alone. Instinct is generally seen as primitive if not superfluous.
What it amounts to is a muting of the guiding influence of an ancestral lineage that transcends species barriers – as a result of which we are disoriented and essentially lost.
Domination of reason is also recognisable in the concept of dominion, which in turn is the soil in which the roots of private property lie buried, and out of which extends a spider's web of dividing lines on maps that identify reason-based assumptions of superiority, and licence to exploit and abuse our animal companions.
Nelson Mandela once said “love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite”.
It is so – for the simple reason that love is innate and derives from immutable genetic hardwiring or instinct. Dominion is the polar opposite of love.
It is a socially acquired and consequently mutable world view that,in the absence of counterbalancing instinct amounts to a reprehensible idea, passed on through childhood conditioning from one generation to the next.
With symptoms known variously as a contest between good and evil; love and hate; male and female energy, or as an imbalance between reason and instinct, what is beyond doubt and crystal clear is the deep fracturing of the human psyche that springs directly from the tail of division from nature.
Exacerbating this altered state of consciousness and loss of balance is a similarly debilitating condition that in the natural world promotes survival – but threatens survival when natural conditions are supplanted by artificial or virtual circumstances.
What I'm alluding to is the inherently acquisitive nature of all primates. A monkey trap consists of a simple cage, baited with fruit and a hole in the top big enough to allow passage of the animal's hand, but too small to allow withdrawal of the hand clutching the fruit.
Under such conditions greed overcomes reason and the monkey's fate is sealed.
And if a monkey will choose life at the end of a chain or death for the sake of a banana, then what chance do we humans have of moderating or abandoning our desire for houses, cars and smartphones? Material possessions we would literally die for – and almost certainly will.
Is there any hope? Probably not. But in the wake of Covid-19, coupled to increasing awareness of environmental destruction and climate change, is an emergent grassroots impulse to establish a new normal and in that resides a glimmer of hope.