Saturdays during this pandemic have typically been for me a pondering day. Tasks around the home are completed, and if it is nice enough outside, then a walk in the fresh air is the only agenda item. The clean cool air seems to awaken the senses, and rather than listen to upbeat music to inspire a doctor-prescribed “brisk walk”, I find a sauntering’s associated sensibility serves a more cerebral and speculatively studious purpose. Sorry, Doc.
So today I pondered upon people patterns as I perambulated. Particularly, how as a human race we have moved more and more into a mindset where we have seen the created world -nature – as something to be dominated, to be controlled. And we have pursued that goal with such vigour that it was as if our very survival as a species depended on that domination.
Yet if the experience we are living through is teaching us anything, it is the exact opposite.
It seems to me that’s our species’ survival depends not on defeating nature (something we can never really do, because we are nature), but instead on learning to live in a state of intelligent, dynamic balance within Earth’s nourishing yet fragile and perilous complexity.
Our increased awareness of climate change, of our growing loss of biodiversity, and the toxic impact of our greed, has shown us how fragile nature truly is. And our experience with pandemic is more than revealing nature’s perilous complexity.
It is precisely that intelligent dynamic balance that must be the cornerstone of our thinking going forward, if we as a species are to learn from this experience.
Some Saturday Saunter ponderings for your perusal.