In a moment of syncronicity, the Earth Hour challenge on Natural Medicine, hosted by @pavanjr and @holisticmom, is published the same hour I catch this video, which appears in my Youtube suggestions. If you don't have time to watch (do - he's a mesmerising speaker) I've summarised the gist of it below. I don't have a definitive response to Natural Medicine's Lotus Love for The Earth Mother Earth Hour Challenge - just an afternoon spent in contemplation, and quite a bit of sadness.
Balin Hobbs, an eco warrior and poet that lives in Devon, UK, argues that we're realising hell on earth through our actions - we create bombs and guns, that poisons the air, the earth and the sea and basically lacks respect for each other and all the life forms that support us and the earth, rather than being parasitic. He argues that simple things like looking down and realising we're all on a big ball together rather than focusing on our boundaries and divisions. If we can 'find a way of making friends' with the whole planet, of finding a sense of belonging with the whole earth, not just the 'fear based clubs' of nation states. And we're all guilty of it - every nation has a history of war, fear and violence. Unless we start acting out of love, we just continue toward the destruction of the world so that it cannot even support life. Unless we stop acting out of greed and having money as the driving force of all our lives, we're fucked (my words). What made me weep at the end of the video is that he couldn't name anything made him happy, as he saw himself on a train headed to Auschwitz, knowing the gas ovens are at the end. Worse, he said that the moment you start thinking, you have problems. Better, he said, get a job and a mortage and a wife and a family and work your ass off to keep them.
And that's the world we live in, isn't it? Distract yourself enough that you won't have time to think about the horrors at the end of the line.
On his website, Eco Sanity, a line of his poetry reads:
Driven down roads all leading to hell,
less chance to turn as each tree we fell.
And I'm weeping now - at least my heart hurts if the tears don't literally fall - because this is the path we're on, and it's hard to see that things will change.
In Australia, like most nations, we need to think about whether investing in war or investing in renewable energy tech is going to stabilse our future. With a population that lives on the sea, we risk being drowned - sea level rises are happening four times faster than the global average. Are we doing anything about it? Not really. We're still supporting new coal mines, despite the fact we are rich in sun, land, water and wind. Yet our emissions are going up, not down. No one is doing anything brave or unpopular to address the fuckery of a climate change policy we have.
The way I feel today, Earth Hour means nothing unless you're doing earth hours - living an earth focussed life with every decision you make. But arguably, what point is it to turn the lights off for an hour if you're ordering an Amazon package from China or America, participating in the flight of planes and other transport across the seas? What point is it to go vegan when our government's answer to the climate crisis is just to expand the gas industry? What point is it to recycle when the powers that be in this country are too weak to do anything radical and simply follow the gods of the Ecomomy less they be dethroned?
It's a kind of ecogrief I'm feeling, marked by a shrug of the shoulders and a marked cynicism that comes from deep anger and feelings of ineffectiveness, of despair that humanity is capable of anything else.
And so when I think about what I can do for the Earth - what I do do for the earth, it all feels so trivial and meaningless. Make my own compost. Raise chickens, grow vegetables and cut down on food miles. Think about what I'm getting delivered and where it's coming from. Research ethical companies. Donate to people who are running strong campaigns to bring about change. Recycle - no fuck that, don't cycle in the first place - don't add to the mess at all, and refuse. Don't buy plastic water bottles or use takeaway coffee cups. Raise bees. All very noble in print. And of course, important. But I can't help but think we're all just bloody blind, and what I do means nothing in the grand illusion we're all participating in to some degree:
We all try to keep up in our need to impress
By closing our eyes to the things that depress.
So by turning our heads and refusing to see
We all are the axe man who cuts down the tree.
And by not taking action to look after life
We all are the rapist armed with the knife.
But I'm being maudlin, and that doesn't help anyone or anything.
And although I cry for a new kind of economy, based on love and imagining a world that doesn't use money but has love and respect as a transaction basis, I'm busy checking my Bitcoin portfolio and looking to see how fast I can get this mortgage paid.
Whilst I'm busy helping a local economy with an alternative economy based on trading skills and produce, I'm selling crap on Facebook marketplace to earn a bit of fiat.
I think of how beautiful the world was with the planes grounded during the worst of the pandemic in the same breath that I desire to jump on a plane to fulfil my desire to travel.
And I think about how we need a new education system as I busy myself working within the one we have, that raises slaves to this economy in the same way I'm helping produce those slaves: study hard, score well, go to University.
Balin is right - we close our eyes to the things that depress. Because when we don't, it's deeply, deeply depressing.
So what do I do, in light of all this? Light is a joke, of course, because I feel shrouded in darkness on this day, sick with an infection and lost in my thoughts. Thinking about it is traumatic, and devastating. I'd do better to distract myself - zone out to Netflix, perhaps, or just sleep.
But perhaps turning my thoughts toward the ball below, the sky above, and the connections between us all that is the more healthy way to live my life. If I can focus the vast majority of my actions on kindness, love, and compassion, then I'm doing the best I can for the earth. That I can control. There is happiness, in between, if we don't allow ourselves to think about what isn't being done, and instead simply focus on what can be done - living our lives as ethically and as light as possible, and with love for our fellow man despite it all.
Because if you act out of love, that could save the earth - as corny as that sounds. Think about what this means. Is buying a plastic water bottle an act of love, or an act of violence? Think about what goes into it's manufacture. Think about the resources being used to produce it. Think about who profits.
Sure, alot of the time we can't get this right all the time. Hence my moments of eco-anxiety and self blame for being a part of this human race that has been so parasitic on this beautiful spinning ball.
But maybe if we thought of all our hours as earth hours, we might just make a little difference.
Oh, to step outside of the society I'm chained to right now, and live differently. One needs courage for that. All I can do is bunny hop between the boundaries and borders that mark mainsteam economies with the sacred economies of my heart, and look at the beautiful world around me and recognise that, as Hobbs argues, that:
At the moment man’s world is imposed upon the natural world, if anything happens to man’s world it happens to the natural world, if anything happens to the natural world and happens to man’s world. The two are completely dependent upon each other and affect each other. If man can, by changing his habits, find a sustainable way of living with this planet, instead of on it, the relationship Will change from a needy parasitic lust for power, to A harmonious, loving, symbiotic, relationship.
Oneness, right?
With Love,
