A Pagan's Incantation

I have a long-winded friend who was a very committed environmentalist in the 1980s, an Earth-First member who never missed an opportunity to warn those around him about the terrible things we are doing to the land.

One day my friend was visiting a professional colleague in Belgium, a plastics manufacturer who designed processes in many large factories. Sensing an opportunity to influence someone powerful, my friend proceeded to explain the ecological consequences of PCB pollution, the growing effect of plastics on the oceans, the accelerating rate of species extinctions, and so on.

The plastics manufacturer listened politely to these facts as they were explicated over a number of days. Finally his patience wore thin and he turned to my friend and simply said, "come with me".

The two proceeded to the manufacturer's car and drove out through the dense forest of the Ardennes. The manufacturer would not explain where they were going. He would not engage in any conversation at all and my friend began to worry that his enthusiasm for nature had given offence.

The two drove on in silence for almost an hour. Then the manufacturer stopped the car, repeated "come with me", got out, and strode directly into the woods.

My friend felt he had no choice but to follow. The two hiked in silence for several minutes. Eventually they came upon an astonishing sight, a great clearing in the middle of the forest filled with tulips of all colors in full bloom, growing wild. The sky between the old growth trees was clear, the air heavy and rich, the only sound the wind and birdsong.

"Yes." declared my friend, "This is exactly what I've been describing. This special place is filled with the spirit of the land. This is sacred. It is what we must work together to protect."

"Look down," said the manufacturer.

My friend looked down. At his feet there was a weathered plaque. In large letters and several languages, it read:

Do Not Lie Down Here!

In 1915 this site was bombed with mustard gas. The soil remains impregnated with this weapon. If you lie down here, you will die.

"But the tulips love it. You see," said the manufacturer, "the land evolves and adapts. Here, it took a few generations. Usually it takes a few millions of years. But that is a blink in the history of the land. We cannot do anything to harm nature. We can only harm ourselves."

My friend is no longer an environmentalist.

The story sounds very contrived because while there are Deep Ecology environmentalists who hold not-entirely-different views, even they concede the difference between actively doing damage to the Earth, and giving the Earth the wherewithal to continue on. Our society is now both doing damage, and standing in the way of Earth doing its wherewithal.

If you don't believe me, go ask a Dodo.

And as far as: "We can only harm ourselves." Well. Since when were we not also a part of nature, then? Our intelligence is not a given - it is not a specified goal of evolution that is somehow "better" or "the next step" - and indeed may ultimately prove maladaptive. There is nothing inherently "more evolved" about intelligence than there is about an elephant's trunk.

But you don't see elephants using the fact they have trunks as an excuse to exercise the wholesale genocide of countless species. Which is what we, with our "intelligence", have most decidedly done.

No dice.

I wish you would specify which story you find contrived.

Peter's. I find that either the story is untrue, or, if true, the friend was never an environmentalist in the first place.

Your friend is no longer an environmentalist? He probably died from some of the fumes in his buddies plastics plant. I live near Lake Michigan,it never quite adapted to the PCB,s that Outboard Marine Corp. dumped into it. It is recommended that you eat no more than one fish a month from its waters. If your pregnant none. Bad story, sorry I wasted time reading it.

I repeat the story as I heard it. I have no way of knowing if it is contrived. Knowing my friend as I do, I don't believe it is - but that's not to say it is not more poetic, in his mind, than it was in reality.

There is no profound reason in that story that justifies giving up that vocation. Turn Earth into a giant cesspool and it will keep on spinning around the sun - without us. This is very true.

We know, from the fossil record, that there have been several great extinctions in Earth's history. Times when the Earth could support very little life, of very restricted variety, for hundreds or thousands of years.

And yet we inherited a garden. Over millions of years spinning around the sun life turns cesspools into gardens. It doesn't matter to life that this takes millions of years. It only matters to us.

To our knowledge, we are the most advanced sapient beings alive in this corner of our small galaxy. Life has only flourished here, as far as we know. We represent a flower at Nature's lapel, or a wart on its chin.

We have no such knowledge.

Everything we observe in the universe appears imbued with energy and self-organizing chemical processes. Indeed it appears most likely to me, based on the limited evidence we possess, that life is itself a universal - that it is not some epiphenomenon of inert elements, but that it is the fundamental of physics itself . That living processes organize the universe on all possible scales and timeframes.

The conceit that only Earth is alive, and that only we are intelligent, is both modern and unscientific.

Our society is now both doing damage, and standing in the way of Earth doing its wherewithal.

Then our society is temporary. As is natural to most species, ours will have its end. The accident of our self-awareness will have proved futile. Humans will slide away on the tide of life, to be replaced with new forms. Life is eternal decay and renewal.

But you don't see elephants using the fact they have trunks as an excuse to exercise the wholesale genocide of countless species. Which is what we, with our "intelligence", have most decidedly done.

If we didn't do it, within the next hundred million years some big falling rock would have done it. Genocide and genesis happen over and over, whether we're involved or not.

Your friend is no longer an environmentalist? He probably died from some of the fumes in his buddies plastics plant.

He's still alive but has only one lung. That's not from PCBs, however - it's from smoking. If you also find this story unlikely, remind me to repeat my friend's story about how smoking is actually good for your health.

In any case I apologize for any offence given. I like Karl_'s article very much. I just think it needs to take more of the picture into account. It's not that we would not harm a fly. It's that we cannot harm a fly. And if we keep going the way we're going, the flies may evolve into bees and butterflies all over again. None of this is happening for the first time.

Karl! So weird! I had comments on this seed that are no longer there? I wonder how that happened?

I loved the poem and the pictures you chose. I said on the disappeared comment that I thought of the Native Americans when I read it, like phoenix said on hers further down. I really missed out today. This is beautiful! ♥

We know, from the fossil record, that there have been several great extinctions in Earth's history.

Name one - from the fossil record - that was caused by a single species. Oh wait. You can't. And see, that's the problem. Even though evolution doesn't have intelligence as a goal, we nevertheless have it. And, like so much else, it needs to be used wisely. Can it be used to destroy countless ecosystems? Surely. But a gun can just as surely shoot my neighbor. That doesn't mean it should. And one would hope that the very same sort of intelligence that can invent the gun in the first place would also know that, you know what, probably it would be unwise to shoot the elderly, kind old lady next door, right in the forehead. So try again with that logic. That line has been trotted out for, what, twenty, thirty years now? Time for a new one.

If we vanished from the face of the earth tomorrow, the world will recover. This is true. It may not look the same as if we never existed but whatever, it'd exist, and repopulate. But, with intelligence comes the responsibility to do as little harm as possible. And if you don't believe that? Then you know what, common sense dictates we don't do ourselves in. Ourselves. And that's what we're doing, slowly, but surely. You talk about the bigger picture, but miss the forest for the trees. And, in that, you give yourself away.

@Chasing,

Name one - from the fossil record - that was caused by a single species

I think the oxygen catastrophe caused by the evolution of cyanobacteria fits the bill. Obviously there were diverse species of cyanobacteria, but likely they all evolved from a single progenitor. Cyanobacteria caused the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere to suddenly flip from 0.2% Oxygen to 20% oxygen, destroying almost all life-forms on the planet at that time. And incidentally coloring the sky blue - though no one had evolved eyes to see it.

with intelligence comes the responsibility to do as little harm as possible. And if you don't believe that? Then you know what, common sense dictates we don't do ourselves in.

I'm a parent. I'm not at all interested in anything which promotes the destruction of our race. I find humans, on a personal basis, fascinating and wonderful. I prefer to think of human demise as something far distant, and none of my child's concern.

Nevertheless, I recognize that that is a fantasy. As it is not in our power to do anything to harm the spirit of the land, if we oppose it, as we are doing, it must overwhelm and destroy us. We have created an environment in which we are about to die back.

No belief, not even in deep environmentalism, changes this fact. As a race we have bred, exhausted, and polluted ourselves into a corner. We have no resource, technology or strategy that can save us from a catastrophe that beggars the imagination. We cannot conserve our way out of this. We cannot fight our way out of it. And we cannot fly away to the stars.

So much for common sense. The alternatives whereby humans could possibly survive lie in uncommon sense. We might invent new technologies to heal or replace dying global ecosystems, effect global human sterilization to halt our runaway population growth, capture and recycle all our carbon through artificial photosynthesis, engineer our weather through ocean fertilization and simulated volcanic clouds, and so on ... we are in need of a Tesla, a Newton, a Leibniz, a Feynmann, a Fuller, Von Neumann and Da Vinci all at once. Wild new technologies - fusion reactors, AI and molecular nanotechnology, a living transhumanity - maybe that could save us.

Most likely we won't get that. If we don't invent our way out of this, the Olduvai scenario will set our race back 100,000 years, at least. And even that is optimism.

So my friend is not an environmentalist now. He's a technologist. May the spirit of the land bless him.

Deep Ecology never attempts to claim any "facts" except that we should take a step back and let nature take its course, sans both overt attempts to sully it and overt attempts to "fix" it. These both being homocentric. Rather it suggests we provide nature with as clean a slate as we can to do with what it will. We most assuredly are not doing that. Note the "clean slate" bit. It doesn't suggest - at all - that we should just carry on, business as usual, nor does it suggest we should do nothing to "help" the environment. Rather, we should remove human-made impediments to natural healing of human-caused trauma. That is both logical, and at odds with your anecdote, above. Ergo, your friend may well be a technologist, but I doubt he was ever as true an environmentalist as you claim - although there is nothing that says you can't be both.

Peter Merel, I see where you are coming from now but your logic seems circular, to me. You are kind of arguing both ends to the middle. There is no reason why we can not do both, conserve and engineer a healthier world.

What is wrong with limiting pollution, with addressing what we consume so that we don't leave our children and our greatgrand children a garbage dump for a world?

IMHO your argument is like why keep my house clean, buildings exist long after the humans that occupy them are gone so if my house is inhabitable because of my filthiness, so what? In a sense you are right so what, except your wife may leave you, your children contract diseases and die for most people that would be tragic.

Most people love their family, wife included and want to provide a home that is conducive to the health and well being of their family. Most people don't take the stance that I am not going to clean my house until we have technology that makes my home self cleaning.

We do have big problems but I say lets do some house cleaning, change our habits to promote cleaner living and yes invent some apparatuses that clean for us.

we should take a step back and let nature take its course, sans both overt attempts to sully it and overt attempts to "fix" it

The facts of our situation suggest nature's course involves the extinction of our civilization, and likely our species. Perhaps you're right, and that would be best.

I doubt he was ever as true an environmentalist

I don't know if he was. I know he believes he was.

What is wrong with limiting pollution, with addressing what we consume so that we don't leave our children and our greatgrand children a garbage dump for a world?

This is not a problem for our children or great grand children. This is our problem, right now. You see, "the greatest shortcoming of the human race is its inability to understand the exponential function". So it is our generation that will choke. If we go just a little further down this path our surviving children will be few, and there may not be any grand children. That is the spirit of the land healing itself - eternal decay and renewal.

Does this mean we should not limit pollution? No, it means limiting pollution is futile. To survive, we require a technological and social change that consumes our pollution for our living purposes, and brings our unsustainable exponential growth to a soft landing. Right now these changes are inconceivable - they're a science fantasy. But so too is conservation a science fantasy - it is not possible to meaningfully conserve any environmental condition given our present global population.

your wife may leave you, your children contract diseases and die for most people that would be tragic.

I don't know whether you've come to grips with the scale of the tragedy facing us. Look again at Karl_'s inspiring photos. Do you see any humans there? Monument valley cannot support us. Jasper might support a small population of hunter-gatherers - say a few thousand - without intensive agriculture. There are enough places like Jasper left on the planet for, perhaps, a few million humans to adopt a comprehensive culture of self-sufficiency. Can we do that? Will we?

The billions of the rest of us require exponentially increasing quantities of oil and fertilizer to survive. The extraction rate limits of these substances are already upon us. It is too late to conserve. It is perhaps too late to invent. The spirit of the Land will have its justice then.

Your comments recall to me LeGuin's exquisite "Always Coming Home", If you enjoyed Karl_'s poem you'd adore that work. LeGuin envisions a future relationship between humans and the land that is heart-breaking in its loveliness, intimacy, and absence. Then, suddenly, she is consumed with remorse:

Have I burned all the libraries of Babel? Was it I that burned them? If they burn, it will be all of us that burned them. [...] Many as we are, there's still too much to carry. It is a dead weight. Even if we keep breeding ten babies every second to bear the load of Civilization forward into the future, they can't take it. [...] So I killed them all off. You may have noticed that the real difference between us and the Valley, the big difference, is quite a small thing really. There are not too many of them.

Was it I that killed the babies?

[...] All I did was open the box Prometheus left with me. I knew what would come out of it!

The facts of our situation suggest nature's course involves the extinction of our civilization, and likely our species

Facts are mutable. Just ask Malthus. And we are a part of nature, so that logic is faulty on its face. I do not think the removal of our species would be "for the best" - because then you'd have to provide me a perspective that isn't homo-centric, and I think you'll have trouble finding one to communicate with, much less one that speaks for All Who Are Not Human.

We are agents of environmental change, and whether that is good or bad depends largely on your perspective. Hawks, raccoons, coyotes, are very much in favor of what we've done, so far. But, being agents of change, with rational minds, we can make choices about which direction that change is going. We will never turn Earth into a pre-man utopia - and we shouldn't try. This does not mean we should just use it all up and live life like its the end days and hope Mother Earth cleans up like the day after a messy party.

There is nothing that says, definitively, that what we have now, or had 100 years ago, or 1000, or 10,000, was the "perfect" Earth. That the diversity of life is exactly right - that we shouldn't have more, or less (or, conversely, that we should). These things are all assumptions - and we should not assume that the Earth itself does not change, just as it would change were we not here. But we are in a unique situation where we can both affect such change, and do something about it.

No one said it was going to be easy, or that any "solution" would be perfect. That would be a lie. But, as I have said again and again, we not only damage the Earth but stand in the way of its healing itself. And, as I have said again and again, we, too, are nature.

We have a right to be here. And diversity and climate control and the like seem, at present, to be the best bets to keep us here, longer. Giving up is not an option, and most certainly not a Darwinian imperative (species-wide). So we do what can be done, and hope for the best. But doing nothing? That's just a cop-out. And, you know what, if ever you get cancer and choose to do nothing about it, have right at it, I'll support your right to make that decision. But doing nothing when it holds, together, the lives of billions (of humans, and billions more of other of nature's animals) in its hands, is frankly the more presumptuous option on the table, IMHO, rather than the presumption that we haven't the power to make meaningful change. Because, you know, we haven't even begun to try.

Actually I do not find that this thread has gone askew, and it most certainly has not been threadjacked, as you accuse Peter (and perhaps myself) of doing. You posted a piece that sparked debate - that's what Newsvine is for. You say "Let us work for a better Tomorrow", yet stifle conversation on how to do just that (even though you seemed fine with it earlier). I take it you just instead were looking for a pat on your back involving this piece? Perhaps you should delist it from the "Climate Change" group, then. But desist I shall. Just beware in future that when you open a can, worms might come out.

Apologies, Karl_, I wasn't intending to threadjack.

My thoughts were inspired directly by your article but I'm happy to collect and move them. Please leave them in place until I have time to do that.

I'll post a link to the new article and you may delete my bits here after that if you want.

Namaste.

It's frustrating and annoying when people do not show any respect to the wishes of the seeder when He specifically requested/asked to bring the subject back to A Pagan's Incantation.

I'm sorry Karl, this happened to A Pagan's Incantation I wish everyone could see the plea in it.

I confess I'm a little confused, Roxy. As soon as Karl made his request both Chasing and I honored it. If any disrespect is apparent in this thread, it is unintentional.

gorgeous poem!

If only we would wake up and let it shine.

A quick search pulled up the MSDS for mustard gas. In it, it claims that mustard gas can stay active in soil for up to three years.

I very highly doubt there was any left in that ground by the 1980's.

@Cipher-0

Thanks! I wondered about that part myself.