Traditional societies have long harmonized their lives with the patterns and processes of Nature, building a spiritual relationship with the Earth that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all things. Nothing exists in a vacuum, after all.
We in the commercialized world have lost touch with this relationship. Does it feel right? Don’t we try to fill that disconnect with our inner selves with material goods that, in the end, give nothing back? With a nod to the 80s movie Wall Street, how many yachts can we water ski behind?
Look at what happened to the Plains during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Greed that arose out of inflated wheat prices caused excess cultivation, destroying the soil and threatening to turn the nation’s bread basket into another Sahara Desert. The Earth was exhausted by the get rich quick fever. I’m certainly no expert in agriculture, but I do wonder whether the crisis would have been so severe if fewer people had jumped on the wheat bandwagon and not cultivated en masse and so heavily.
I sincerely hope that we can learn to slow down and reconnect with Nature. I’d like to believe that we’ll feel more fulfilled and do less harm to the Earth if we respect her and her gifts and structure our lives around a more measured consumption of her resources.
Excellent piece. Let us only hope that in this New Year this is one of the things we strive to attain – being one with our own Earth.