The web of life

We must accept the reality that we are a part of, not apart from, this web that hold us, every single one of us. Or, the web will collapse.

Driving across our beautiful state twice this past week, I became even more aware of the danger humans have created for ourselves.

We must correct an essential category error in our human thinking since (at least) the Enlightenment, impacting (at least) the modern Western/European/American consciousness.

Our very big brains hold tremendous imagination and ingenuity, the twin foundations of our ability to contribute and to destroy our own world. These same big brains also allow for equally large egos that want to set us apart from the world we live in.

Our mistake - that the natural world is “out there,” a thing or system separate from us, upon which we act, manipulate for our benefit - has had dreadful consequences. Carbon, climate change, spoiled land, air, and water.

From the window of an automobile fuelled by fossils, spewing carbon into the atmosphere, I gazed on the lovely terrain split and spoiled by asphalt, poisoned by fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and wondered what would be different if we allowed ourselves to know.

To know that we are all held within the web of life, that cutting any thread threatens the whole, that exploitation of resources leaves no “winners,” only an increasingly hostile home for us all.

We must accept the reality that we are a part of, not apart from, this web that hold us, every single one of us. Or, we know the web will collapse.

Sent with gratitude for all you do to cherish and hold the web.