Natural sciences regularly provide new data showing that the world exists as an interconnected system. This lays the ground for a post-capitalist ethic, reflected in the long-ignored wisdom of indigenous people.
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On being ecological
Capitalism is culturally based upon the assumption that mankind is distinct and superior to nature, consequently implying that the latter is to be used at our immediate and exclusive convenience. This colonizer mentality has brought the living world as we know it to the brink of extinction. Feeling the urgency of a cultural shift, many people now agree that we are one with the world around us. What does this realization effectively lead to?
To the Achuar, an indigenous community living in nature along the border between Ecuador or Peru, “nature” does not exist. It does not need to. They see no distance between them and the jungle they are a part of by their way of living. To them, most plants and animals are other beings with the same agency, intentionality, and even self-consciousness as people. Hunting and gathering are, for the Achuar, governed by a sense of care and respect owed to relatives.
On the cultural polar opposite, our modern world tends to dismiss such animist views as quaint metaphors. Cut off from nature’s gift of life, this view is nevertheless the mistaken one. Far from being exclusively about extraction and exploitation, our relationship with nature must be explored from within. Seeing life’s creativity as what binds nature as a whole is, in that sense, a spiritual journey toward facts, not fantasies, the same way that personal relationships can only be genuinely understood when lived. Once recognized for the gift that they are, all relationships prompt a deep sense of reverence and gratitude. Life is a gift far exceeding one’s single body since it takes nothing less than the whole of nature to make individual lives possible.