by Karen Henninger
“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature and therefore this holds for the action of people. Our task must be to free ourselves from our prison by widening the circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in beauty.” —Albert Einstein
We must have a solid foundation of scientific facts about human nature and the planet to fulfill goals for change.
Humans have disturbed human existence on the planet and amongst themselves and about themselves.
We have life; a vital life energy within us that comes from our connection to the earth. We have blind spots. We have studied the macro and the micro successfully with our technologies, but we have failed to put that information in perspective to a study about ourselves as humans. We are the containers, condensers, creators, repressors, restorers and destroyers of this life energy within ourselves and with those around us.
Just like all the miraculous patterns in nature we bear witness to—from butterfly cocoons, beehives, and bird migrations to cloud formations and the cyclical pattern of water—we also have an innate human harmonious pattern inherent in design by nature. We deserve to see ourselves with the same awe and wonder we so often experience natural world as an observer of the natural world. We are nature; our human nature is nature. We are in it and it is in us. There is an inherent design by nature.
But this is not honored or respected. It is man’s arrogance and creations that pollute and destroy and disrupt harmonious patterns of nature. It doesn’t have to be this way. Man has created a system of living that is alien to our human nature from a belief that man is not of it but above it and creator of it.
When you remove man’s macadam and concrete, and you expose the soil, life springs back into the soil. And even with concrete abandoned, nature works its way through man’s concrete. We live in such conditions.
As with concrete placed on nature, this life force and natural design by nature have been superseded, circumvented, and lost by an artificial structure based on our own species’ design and intelligence as if we could improve upon nature.
It’s the arrogance of man in which he places himself in a position not true to his nature‚ but an imbalance of honor and value. All as if he is above it and can control it and conquer it.
The mistakes that present themselves throughout our exterior world mirror the same mistakes in the human interior world that humans experience. We don’t know who we are or our proper relationship to the planet. Until we understand more fully ourselves, we won’t be able to stop the harm.
The natural laws that govern the creature we are, are embedded in living processes that naturally occur when untampered. But we have tampered. Tampered with insufficient knowledge.
Scientists who have studied our world have never gotten far enough in study to scientifically see and acknowledge human life energy patterns as they did with the rest of the natural world from tigers and frogs to clouds or water.
Psychology and psychiatry have failed to take into account the study of human behavior within ‘the environment’. They have studied the internal with no connection to the external.
Ancient, inaccurate beliefs have stood in the way creating our inability to see the magnificent design that is so profoundly evident in the world around us. We are left with a social and environmental structure that is inherently alien to our being and specifically destructive to our personal, creative, human life energy, to each other as well as the whole of the planet.
We can change this. We can change immediately. It requires we give up what we’ve learned and dare to take different action today and change what we think.
Imagine if we did see ourselves as a species as highly magnificent‚ with honor and respect. Not in the imbalances we live with today. But in a way yet unknown that takes our level of respect for ourselves, each other and planet to a whole new level.
Nature’s design in the human is yet to be known. But it doesn’t have to be in the future with mass studies needed. We just have to not try to fix what’s broken in our system. We instead need to position ourselves to honor nature in an entirely new way.
How do we get there? Simply by removing the falseness, like concrete, we are living in. The foundation of the truth of who we are lies just beneath the surface of the artificial functioning just as the earth lies dormant under the concrete.
If we remove the falseness, what emerges will be nature.
All we have to do is witness it to know it. But we can’t witness it until we give up our current beliefs and distorted lens.
In this extreme cultural mind-space we’ve inherited, no room exists for the whole of nature in beauty; the whole of human beauty. But we can find it, simply.
by Karen Henninger
Karen is an artist and writer whose creative work includes media literacy, violence prevention, and cultural environmentalism.
(Essays express the ideas of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Alliance.)