The really inconvenient truth - part I

Why, then, has it been so hard for us to address this reality? A powerful and random mix of ideas, systems, inherited traits and circumstance has prevented us from making a good fist of our relationship with the earth.

Evolution

Richard Dawkins, the famous geneticist, coined the term “The Blind Watchmaker” to describe evolution, its intricacy and its sightlessness. It is a term at once powerful and frightening, conveying as it does unconscious, robotic activity of great complexity - but without thought, direction or purpose. And yet, this is exactly what evolution is: it is the process of the present acting on the materials of the past whose “by-product” becomes the future.

Evolution is merely seeking the best fit between the conditions of the present and the organisms handed to it from the past through the process of natural selection and it simply cannot “see” the future, let alone prepare for it.

The consequence of this blindness is a terrible narrowness of perspective, a complete lack of accounting for the future, for other places, species or times, so that we, or any other species for that matter, are rewarded in the short-term for growing, consuming and procreating faster and better than anyone else, regardless of whether this is good for us in the long run.

Just as rodents are driven to massive booms in numbers when conditions are good, and then terrible busts when they overshoot these resources, so too are humans, with culture being our only hope of a brake on the blind force of replicating genes. We are instinctively driven to expand, grow and consume and have, for millennia, been rewarded for doing so.

Evolution will continue rewarding this strategy right up until almost the very end, when we, lemming-like, fall off the metaphorical cliff we have created for ourselves. Can we resist its push, its blind programming that will, in isolation, lead to self-harm?

Scale

Just as evolution is blind to the future, so too does the history of our human experience make it hard for us to see our congested present, let alone our over-full future. For most of human history we have been few and small and, except for the use of fire, relatively powerless against the enormous backdrop of nature. Even by AD1000 the population of England and Wales was only one million people and they could shape the natural world with little more than simple axes, oxen and human muscle-power.

In a local world still populated by wolves and bears, it must have been inconceivable that our actions could harm and degrade such immensity, could even one day affect the weather. How much has this “race memory” lived on in us to the present, no matter how out of proportion it is with our current circumstances?

Consciousness

The frustrating thing in an excursion across cultures, places and times is the fact that, with some notable exceptions, environmental disregard and a poor, unsustainable relationship with nature seem so common, certainly in larger, post hunter-gatherer societies. No matter what the prevailing economic, religious or political system, we seem to be unable to do other than consume or displace. If this is a problem in 16th century Easter Island, 20th century Australia and 21st century Nepal, then we have something fundamental going on, something to do with the very human condition itself.

Perhaps what makes it hard for us to form a more harmonious, reciprocal relationship with the natural world is, paradoxically, our greatest gift: consciousness, or self-awareness. There is a wonderful photograph by Darren Sylvester from an exhibition called “Awkward Silences” where two people stand in the foreground of the photograph with their backs to the camera and gaze upon an enormous, mountain and snow-filled wilderness. They are holding hands and wearing bright yellow parkas. Yes, they are literally and intellectually within this overpowering environment, but emotionally they are not; they are as much apart as a part. There is a terrifying stillness, an “awkward silence” as they stare at nature and nature stares back. They are separate, conscious human beings that must forever live at one-remove from nature; a gift and a curse so beautifully portrayed by the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

This distance that consciousness brings makes nature forever “the other”, an other that can be seen with awe, petulance, cruelty, love and respect, but mostly, it seems, with indifference and alienation.

Let our hopes and dreams be things we can achieve

Next fortnight the exploration of why we have great difficulty in our relationship with the natural world continues, with the focus shifting to the dominant ideas and systems that govern our lives and finishes by suggesting how we might live better.

Read The really inconvenient truth - part II