Why The Caterpillar Dominates Our World At This Time! We as human beings, at this moment in time, seem to hold dominion over nature. With each day that passes so the imbalance between our own population and the rest of the species upon the planet becomes ever more extreme.
Both through the continual building of our own numbers and the way that we choose to live, we impact on the rest of our ecosystem. This is proving to be detrimental not only to those other creatures that live alongside us but to ourselves now too. We can visibly see the influence we are having on the world around us with the melting ice caps and deforestation visible from space, as well as the plastic pollution that can be witnessed within our oceans first hand. We are a species out of control, out of alignment with the rest of the Earth. When Coronavirus came along, regardless of whether it was man made or came from nature itself, during lockdown, the rest of the planet was able to gain some temporary relief from our continual onslaught. Both the waters and the airs around the globe began to become clear again and the animals of the land and the sea started to venture out of the depths of the wilderness to reclaim their natural territory. It was like as if an electric shock was being administered to Mother Earth to pump new life back into her body and to help her fight back. Yet in this time of societal upheaval, if human activity was being restricted and we were less evident as a species on the surface of the planet, we were still growing within our own households, out of sight of everything else, the world over. In 2020, as a population, up to the time of writing we have birthed another 79 million people on to the planet, where only 33 million have departed in the same time span (a mere 644,000 of them being attributed to Covid - 19). That means we have created a net population increase of 46 million since the turn of the year. All those people need to be housed, fed, clothed and watered. This is space that is needed for the human being at the expense of nature. We are bullying the rest of the planet into submission with our continued expansion and consequent consumption. I believe there are some simple reasons behind this phenomenon. What lies at the heart of it all is a feeling of lack and fear deep within us, of people not being whole and fulfilled, always wanting more, be that stuff or children, in order to fill a massive void within us. This feeling of lack stems from our family upbringing, childhood, playground activity and reaffirmed society values, where we are bullied into a life determined by others whilst we remain unaware of who we truly are and our authentic place within the natural world. There is no rite of passage any more that encourages us to voyage out into nature to be able to gain the knowledge we require as to what our true identity is all about. Bill Plotkin states in his book 'Nature And The Human Soul' that we now live within a 'Patho-Adolescent Society'. My personal interpretation of this is that we live in a permanent state of adolescence without ever truly growing up. As many of our leaders exist in this state too, not ever having had any real affinity with nature themselves, we are being led down a cul-de-sac with nowhere to go except oblivion. Bill would say that 'in current Western and Westernised societies, in addition to the scarcity of true maturity, many people of adult age suffer from a variety of adolescent psychopathologies - incapacitating social insecurity, identity confusion, extremely low self esteem, few social skills, narcissism, relentless greed, arrested moral development, recurrent physical violence, materialistic obsessions, little or no capacity for intimacy or empathy, substance addictions and emotional numbness'. Any amount of this is brought on through bullying, criticism, control and abuse and the consequent trauma that happens to us as a result of all this. In effect what we are talking about here is what I class as a caterpillar way of being. Where we continue to eat up the world, consuming all the while, unaware of our true potential that lies within us, the ability to transform into the butterfly we are all capable of being. We have a whole mode of communication that connects us to the caterpillar growth model in existence every day that encourages us to compete at the expense of others, knocking people down and bullying them into submission so they are unable to do that to us. We need to be aware however that there is another way of relating that is more collaborative, supportive, encouraging and indeed loving that will take us closer to evolving into the more aspirational flighty form of ourselves that we ultimately desire, one capable of creating everyone as winners. If we are to heal the world and bring it back into alignment we must first heal ourselves, then change, develop and evolve into the more complete human beings we are capable of becoming. That way we can help nature do likewise but we first have to stop and take responsibility for ourselves again. For if we do not then Mother Earth will surely strike back more strongly than ever before, if not through another pandemic then famine, drought, flood or other extreme weathers and circumstances designed to test the survival spirit of the human being to the limit. We have a choice now to change and make long lasting amendments to the way that we have been living to bring us back into balance with the rest of the Earth. I suggest that we take this opportunity now before it is too late and the world is too far gone. If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.
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April 2023
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