By John Cryan
James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar has established and held the global box office record for many years. It resonated with audiences of all ages all over the world, chiefly because it brought to visible life the intricate interconnections of a mythological Gaia. A living planet where nothing happened without affecting everything, and everyone, else. Sentience, and compound composition, personified.
We here on Earth are beginning to apprehend those connections are real. They are mostly hidden, definitely mostly not performative in the theatrical sense, and in many instances, quite alien to our human senses and sensibilities. But science is slowly revealing them, and beginning to bind them.
As much as we’d like to think of ourselves as special and therefore apart, we humans are part of Nature. We are still fully embedded in the biosphere we emerged from, inextricably so. But like the invaders of Pandora in the movie, we are destroying it.
The biggest disconnect we have with the rest of life is the artificially sped-up pace of our lives, combined with increasing physical and psychic distance from Nature. This is tied to our clustering in ever-expanding cities, and most recently exacerbated by mass retreat into drug and internet delirium. Even our railroad suburbs and automobile exurbs are now ‘spread cities,’ sterilized of most Nature.
Even those most in touch with Nature are exploiters for human interests. Farming, mining, forestry, and other ‘resource extraction’ industries dominate most countrysides, leaving little of the original biosphere even semi-intact. Same increasingly holds true in the oceans, lakes, rivers and wetlands.
How can we re-establish our original connections to Nature? Doing this is part and parcel to healing them, and Gaia itself.
The Indigenous all over the world have risen up to show us the way. First, and foremost, it involves slowing down, way down. To a pace that mirrors Nature’s.
Then it involves opening our natural senses. All of them, including the ones we don’t use anymore.
In our small corner here in the Land of Manitou, we encountered black bears, most wondrous and mysterious creatures. They would often appear silently, as if by magic. They’d been here long before we came along, drawn to the abundant berries, nuts and flowing water. Over the years, we learned many new things about them. They are like whales, intensely social over impossibly long distances. They have maps in their heads, and know where their kin are and what they are doing miles away.
Every being on this planet has its umwelt, powered by senses and abilities far beyond our own. Trees communicate with one another across whole forests and beyond. Fungi communicate with the trees and the insects that inhabit them. Cecropia moths will fly twenty miles to reach a hidden mate.
There is a whole world waiting for us to discover what it truly is. It is not out there in space. It’s right here under our feet. We walk in it every waking day.
What we will find if we spend even a small part of our time in Nature is not as spectacular and hyper-integrated as the fantasy Pandora of the cinema, because the chaons won’t allow it. It is deeper than that, and slower. More subtle, full of quiet pleasures. Beautiful, and constantly changing. Adapting. Evolving. This is the world we live in. Gaia. The living planet. It is our birthplace and our legacy.
