Day 1 - Abundance
Friday, November 22
Nature is by definition abundant. But what does that mean, exactly? A materialistic view might describe it as: there's no shortage of anything, but I think that definition is a little too narrow. Because what we would describe as being short, or scarce, ultimately depends on what we need.
When starting a permaculture design, this is one of the first questions we ask. What do we really need? And answering this question is often also a process of letting go. We might keep telling ourselves that we really need wifi, or airconditioning, or a pickup truck... Sure, we enjoy them. But are they essential for our wellbeing? For our survival?
If our intention is to live in accordance with Nature, then we should consider that we don't really need all this industrial stuff. And when we learn to live with less, we will automagically discover that the world is much more abundant than we might have initially thought! And not just in natural resources, but also in compassion, love and beauty.
The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.
Abundance in nature is also about diversity. Look at any thriving ecosystem, and you will see that every creature, big and small, has some kind of purpose in this system. Plants and trees attract certain birds or insects, to protect themselves from certain pests or diseases. And in return, they nurture and shelter their protectors. Together, these symbiotic relationships make up the Web of Life. And even through death, and decay, energy is passed on to new life. In nature, nothing ever goes to waste.
So in a nutshell: if we apply our abundance lens to the outside world, we will see regenerative natural processes that just keep on giving. And if we apply the lens to our inner world, we can see ourselves being much happier with a whole lot less.
Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
At the end of the day, we gather around the campfire, free of worries, and perfectly at peace...
But then dark clouds gather, as thunder gains near...
Unfortunately, most of us don't live in places of abundance. Somehow, that pyramid got turned upside down entirely, and we ended up with industrial civilization. This has made us to compete over scarce resources, desire ever more stuff and believe we are the pinnacle of evolution. But the gravest of all our follies, is that we have adopted a worldview that sees Earth as a dead, inanimate object. A resource, that is there for us to be extracted.
Over the last few hundred years, European colonialism has spread out over most of the planet, wiping out many traditional cultures that lived in harmony with Nature. Where indigenous people saw abundance, the colonial settlers saw unproductive real estate. The new logic of capitalism dictated that these lands ought to be transformed into farms, cattle ranches, logging areas, mines and ultimately towns and cities. Nature was fenced in, commodified and ultimately replaced by the one resource to rule them all:
Money.
Day 2 - The money market