Down to Earth Religion
by Chris Marsh
Quaker Green Concern is pleased to support Chris Marsh in the publication of this pamphlet. Whilst not all of us will agree with all that she has to say, we feel challenged and stimulated to fresh thinking, and believe we shall be enabled to shift in a deeper green direction. As Chris suggests, profound spiritual change is needed if humanity is to realise just how much practical change is needed in our way of life, and in our relationships with the Earth if we are to prevent our species destroying itself, and further disrupting life on this planet.
July, 1991
[First published by: Quaker Green Concern Publications, and printed by:
Quacks Booklet Printers, 7 Grape Lane, Petergate, York, YOl 2HU. Tel. (0904) 635967]
Down to Earth Religion
Contents:
3. A testimony to deep questioning
4. Further thoughts on down to earth belief
5. Testimony to living in harmony with nature
‘Green’ living organisations |
 |
5000 days to save the planet?
We have only ‘5000 days to save the planet’. So say the editors of The Ecologist magazine in the title of their recent book.
There are many possible reactions to this statement, and the many others like it which have been made over recent years. They can be dismissed as ‘doom and gloom’ – the modern day, secular equivalent of the doomsday predictions which have been made, and then failed to materialise, since Biblical times. Many people are too preoccupied with their daily cares and chores to take much notice. Those who do pay some attention to stories of forests destroyed, soils eroded and pollution of land, sea and air often support environmental pressure groups, and do their bit by living more simply and recycling some of their waste. In government and industrial circles, there is the expectation that technological solutions will be found to pollution problems and, indeed, there has been some progress made in the safe disposal of toxic wastes and improved energy efficiency. But in general, the response has been a lot of concern, a bit of reform and regulation, but no real change, and the damage to the planet continues.
Sadly, the reforms hard won by dedicated campaigning seldom last. For example: the president of Brazil has now reintroduced financial incentives for the deforestation of the Amazon; commercial whaling is planned to recommence next year; and the Netherlands is to lift its freeze on new nuclear power stations, despite opposition from the majority of the population (The Environment Digest, May 1991).
However, there is a growing network of people who are convinced that reforms will never be enough because the dreadful damage to the environment is an inevitable consequence of human domination of the world. Their response has been to challenge the right of the human species to abuse the planet, treating the earth as the source of ‘natural resources’ for our use, and disregarding the interests of other earth dwellers. These people grieve for the fate of forests, rivers and lands, and for those lonely humans who have lost their roots and sense of place, and the spiritual nourishment which comes from being in touch with wilderness.
-1-
The fundamentalist approach to environmental concerns may be called ‘deep ecology’, but naming it brings the expectation of fixed principles and practices, whereas this is an organic movement in which each individual has a different vantage point and a special role to play.
Biocentrism
Radical environmentalists have adopted a ‘biocentric’, rather than an ‘anthropocentric’ or human centred, involvement with the world. From a biocentric perspective we recognise the intrinsic connectedness and interdependency of all the elements of the web of life. We are aware of the exchange and flow which integrates living systems, including the whole earth, and extending beyond to the cosmos. Biocentrist thinking rejects any kind of hierarchy – such as putting ‘sentient’ creatures above other animals, plants and ‘non-living’ elements such as rocks and rivers.
Biocentrism can take many forms. Each form focuses on a different but complementary perspective on the central idea that a1l things have inherent value. Biocentrism can be viewed as a logical theory or science based on observation and study of the natural world. It can be a philosophy of life guided by principles of equality and justice towards all beings on earth. It can become a political mission with a manifesto of policies focussed on global ecological awareness and local economy and self-sufficiency. Biocentrism can also be a religion – and it is biocentrism as a ‘down to earth religion’ that I shall concentrate on in this essay.
Down to earth religion
My own spiritual exploration has led me to become a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which is itself a ‘down to earth religion’, not so much in the sense of being involved with the natural world as with being a simple, unpretentious, even humble, religion. It has deliberately dispensed with formal declarations of belief and elaborate ritual. Although its origins and most of its members are Christian, sincere seekers who could not call themselves Christians are also welcomed.
Quaker religious practice involves silent group meditation or worship. A group of people sitting together in quiet
-2-
openness to whatever may come to them, can experience a sense of union and uplifting, a sense which may be called ‘mystical’. However, no rules are imposed about how to describe whatever it is that we make contact with. Many Friends may feel the contact as involving a personal God or the person of Christ. Others, if asked, might speak of ‘the Source of all Being’, ‘Love’, ‘Light’ or ‘Truth’. For me, the experience is. simply one of connectedness, a sense of the unity of all that exists in time and in space, phrases which are often used by deep ecologists to describe their experience of communion with the natural world.
So then, my purpose in writing this essay is to introduce the idea of biocentric religion, which I feel has some parallels with Quakerism, and may resonate with other Friends’ concerns and experience. The deep ecology movement is, of course, not a Church, so this is my own view and version of what others sometimes call ‘green spirituality’. I recognise that my own position is quite extreme. However, readers may find it interesting in that it represents one end of a spectrum of environmental involvement. However, I feel my position is justifiable, and I hope it may cause readers to think about and discuss the ideas and issues it raises.
Down to earth belief
The centre of my ‘down to earth religion’ is the belief in, and experience of, what can be described simply as ‘the unity and equality of all beings’. Many people would question whether such a belief can be regarded as religious, they would require the equality to be ‘under God’, deity being essential to religious belief. Each person needs to find whatever words and imagery are meaningful to them, but I feel that the words we use are less important than the ‘knowing’ which comes from the experience of mystical union.
There is nothing more dreadful than the object of one’s religious belief being systematically torn apart, burned, and poisoned. The destruction of the natural world is brought about by misguided human priorities. Hence there is another side to the belief in the unity and equality of all beings. This is the absolute rejection and denial of anthropocentrism – the belief that humankind is in some sense the highest and most important form of life. For example, the fact that our species is the result of a recent evolutionary development, and is a complex organism, would not, from a biocentric perspective, make us
-3-
superior to, say, the microscopic fungi which break down rocks to make minerals available to plant roots.
The two aspects of the central biocentric belief lead to two ‘testimonies’, in the Quaker sense of declarations of truths or principles to live by.
Down to earth Testimonies
Deep questioning
Firstly, the denial of human superiority requires a testimony to deep questioning. This means that we have a duty to examine everything that humans have achieved (or perpetrated) through their dominance, in order to discover how we came to think of ourselves as superior. Only then can we bring to light all the unconscious assumptions, drives and habits that hold human society to its destructive path.
Living in harmony with nature
Secondly, the belief in the unity and equality of all beings leads to a testimony to living in harmony with nature. This makes it necessary that we restrict our activities and impact to the local environment and community, where we can observe and exercise some measure of control over the effects of all we do on other beings, and on the living networks of which we are a part.
Deep ecology or biocentrism is sometimes seen as hostile towards human beings, and it is true that some of the followers of the movement are so bitter about the destruction of places and life forms they love, that they are overtly antagonistic towards the human species. However, people are themselves vital parts of the web of life. Many suffer terribly as a result of the same exploitative activities which damage the natural world.
I believe that if we look at the problems of the world with concern for humanity as the focus, we shall find that the sort of ‘down to earth’ religion I have in mind is just as relevant to human problems as to ecological ones. I feel that it is important to explore this alternative route because not all readers will be
-4-
starting from a biocentric perspective, or even from a position of regarding environmental threats as being the most serious problems facing the world today. So, to begin with, I shall look at why a new religion is needed from the point of view of human welfare.
The function of religion
The word ‘religion’ derives from the Latin word ‘ligare’ to bind. So the original idea of religion involved the function of binding back together elements which are becoming separated. In this sense, It is the glue that keeps human groups together in mutually supportive societies. It is a package of beliefs and customs which helps to perpetuate the ways of life which have been found to work for the general benefit.
Early Quakerism provided very effective human glue. Responding to ‘that of God’ – or the good – in every person ensured mutual caring and respect, and proper conduct in human affairs. This is encapsulated in the Quaker testimonies to peace, equality, simplicity and truth. These mean that it is better to try to understand each other and build bridges than to fight; better to cooperate than to compete; essential to live simply, avoiding ostentation, and within the available means, so that all may have their share; and to be fair, open and honest in all dealings. Devout commitment to such ideals, enacted in a mutually sustaining community, was a highly successful formula for living and, for two hundred or so years, Quaker communities, Quakerism and individual Quakers thrived.
Ironically, over the period of Quaker history, humankind has been progressively abolishing the close knit community. Religions which worked successfully in that situation, seem increasingly irrelevant. But a curious schism has arisen in society which could mean a new role for religious binding back together. That schism is a separation between the provision of people’s physical needs and the provision of their emotional needs.
In simple human societies of the past, emotional and physical needs were closely coupled. Emotional needs served to keep a human group together so that they would willingly cooperate to provide for each others’ physical needs. However, in the modern world, most of our physical needs are met by a global network of production and trade, whereas our emotional needs, if satisfied at all, are met by very small local groups,
-5-
particularly the nuclear family or sole partner, but also various transitory connections such as friends, work colleagues, and fellow members of local churches and voluntary groups.
The Religious Society of Friends is now, in effect, one of the emotional support groups which nurture lonely individuals. Each Sunday Friends meet and then scatter. Although there is a network of contacts, and opportunities for busy involvement, these are separated from the serious world of shopping and employment.
Although Friends still try to live by their beliefs and counsels, our emotional need to care for others is often frustrated, for most of those we would help are known only through media pictures, not personal contact. We identify with, but we do not know, the person behind the drawn skin and fly infested eyes, or the soul within the terrorist or military dictator. And, dreadful to contemplate, though we care, we are actually part of the global system which is causing the hardship, the desperation and the cruelty we deplore. We give to famine victims through charity, but they may be landless and starving because their land has been taken to grow cash crops we benefit from, such as cotton, or ground nuts for animal feed. We cannot prevent our taxes being used to fund the arms trade which perpetuates war and oppression. Simple caring and sharing has scarcely any influence on the exploitative global machine which provides our physical, but not our emotional, needs.
In effect, now that we no longer fully provide and care for each other in local communities, we inadvertently cause suffering in the countries where raw materials are produced on our behalf. This is one manifestation of the alienation of the modern world that I believe an ecologically based religion would resolve.
There is a second kind of alienation which is more obviously ecological: the divorce between humankind and nature.
Separation from nature
In our complex world, it is easy to ignore the fact that our lives depend on natural systems: that we have to breathe and to eat. Both oxygen and food derive from biological processes: the oxygen primarily from microscopic plants in the oceans; our food energy and body repairing materials through chemical transformations which take place in plants and animals. We
-6-
forget the natural magic on which even artificially selected crop plants, such as cereals, depend, as we receive them highly processed through the food industry and via livestock.
Although there may be threats to the ocean microflora from toxic wastes and from short wave radiation penetrating the ozone shield, micro-organisms are extraordinarily resilient. We can probably continue to take oxygen for granted. However, food is an immediate and urgent concern. At least a fifth of the world’s human population is seriously malnourished, and land that could provide their food is rapidly turning into desert. At present enough food is produced to feed everyone in the world, and most hunger is caused by poverty, people not having the land to produce their own food or the money to pay for it. But we are rapidly approaching a situation where a combination of climate disruption resulting mainly from deforestation, and land degradation caused by inappropriate agricultural methods, will reduce the productivity of the land to such an extent that severe food shortages will result.
It has only been possible for the prospect of food shortages to creep up on us unawares because we do not inhabit the environment from which our food derives. Even the few remaining farm workers in this country consume food which comes from the supermarket, often imported from other parts of the world, rather than the food they are involved in growing.
And, again, our caring and our physical needs are separated. We care for the natural world as manifested in woods and hedgerows, rivers and hillsides, and the wildlife that inhabits them, but the provision of our material needs, even the cheese sandwich we may take on our walk, is destroying nature elsewhere on the planet, and although we may realise this, we feel powerless to change it.
Our need for a down to earth religion
Summarising what I have covered so far, if we look at the problems of the world today from a radical environmentalist perspective, or from the point of view of human welfare, we find destruction, breakdown, and separation: destruction of the natural world, breakdown of communities, humankind separated from nature. Religion means ‘binding back together’, but the religions established in the past seem increasingly irrelevant to our daily living, and have become a ritual for Sundays or a crutch for the lonely and sad.
-7-
I have suggested that a new kind of, very basic, religion may help in the task of re-integration. This religion would be based on the belief in ‘the unity and equality of all beings’. It would have two testimonies to live by: a testimony to deep questioning of human assumptions, attitudes, and habits of life; and a testimony to living in harmony with nature, aiming for local self-sufficiency. Although I describe this religion as ‘new’, it has deep and old roots, with many links and areas of resonance with other cultures than our own.
In the remainder of this essay, I shall explore further the central belief and the testimonies. On the subject of the testimony to deep questioning I shall question the following: civilisation, because the concept is central to human alienation and superiority; agriculture, because, over human history, it has caused the most damage to the natural world; and science and technology because of their uncontrolled progress, their unsound basis, and the threats their inventions have brought about, particularly in recent years. On the subject of living in harmony with nature I shall introduce an alternative philosophy centred on sustainable food production and community living.
‘Down to earth belief’ serves me as an alternative way of understanding the world. It is my personal belief, but I know it resonates with the beliefs of others. It is, in essence, very simple, and possibly its very simplicity makes it difficult for many people to accept, or even consider. In my own journey towards what is really a tiny and amazing gem of a truth, I threw out a lot of theories, factual knowledge and assumptions I had accumulated. Perhaps first of all I should try to describe the spiritual heart of ‘down to earth religion’.
A belief in the unity and equality of all beings
I remember when I was at school, children asking each other, ‘Do you believe in God?’ Some did, and others didn’t. There was no further discussion of the matter – it was similar to enquiring which side one supported in the University boat race. Many people at that time, and since, did not bother to go to church regularly. But I was deliberately brought up an atheist, because my father was concerned that his children should start life free in their thinking of ‘all that rubbish’.
I do not now regret being deprived as a child of God, Jesus and Sunday School. But I do feel I missed out through not being
-8-
introduced to the idea and experience of ‘belief’ or ‘faith’. The alternative I was given was the lonely task of figuring everything out for myself using my intellect.
What I have realised since then is that ‘belief’ is collective knowledge that is in some sense around about us – ‘in the ether’, as it were. When a lot of people believe the same thing, they come together as a synergistic unit, amplified by being part of a greater whole. Most people stop there, grateful for the experience of something bigger, beyond themselves. But the truth is, as I feel it, that everything is interconnected, whether we know it consciously or not.
I was a solitary child. I spent much of my early life wandering on my own in the woods, over the hills and down by the river. I knew then a timeless sense of connection with the beech trees and their magical layers of golden spring boughs, their elegant grey trunks, the deep thick carpet of crackly, soggy, mouldy stuff they gave to the earth year on year. Although, at one level, my mind was often busy with teenage frustrations and wounded pride, the woods and the grassy slopes beyond soothed those hurts, and indulged my hopes and dreams.
What I know now is that the whole universe is like a wood, growing a little, but mostly just being. Time does not pass there, it builds. Form forms according to its scarcely varying past form – more on more of almost the same. Lifetimes are like leaves, ever budding, ever growing, gold, green and brown, never dying, cycles on cycles in a never ending spiral, going nowhere in particular, and gloriously ever present.
I sense a wholeness in space and time. Everything that has ever been is present still, influencing the formation of each new moment. Whatever part that may be singled out as having its own identity is part of many wholes, and a whole of many parts. That is what the ‘unity and equality of all beings’ means to me. The very wholeness is what is real.
And so, the lonely skull-trapped mind is illusory: conscious thoughts which seem to flit away in a time-sliced fleeting ‘now’; memories which are faint echoes of patterns of reality disappearing into the past. But our wider being is fully aware and active in the timelessness of the universe.
Perhaps it is only human consciousness which hides behind the ‘here and now’ delusion. Other beings, free of the constraint of the linear intellect, may dance always in the light that our conscious selves only glimpse in tantalising mystical moments.
-9-
Blind to the comforting, embracing whole, behind, beneath and around us, human ambition is poised like the figurehead on the prow of a ship, eagerly thrust forward into a future whose foundations we destroy, by our striving and greed for some unfulfillable goal to come. Not knowing what we do, we burn down the magic wood, searing the growth points from which the new moment comes. Having lost our past, we drown ourselves in the liquor of forgetfulness, like aborigines who have lost their dream time.
Knowledge beyond words
It is not easy to express one’s deepest thoughts and experiences, but I find comfort in this quotation from the lovely book, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.
‘Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.’
I have not made a study of any theology because religion, for me, is not about words. But I have briefly dipped into Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism, and I was put off by her reverence for the mystic, and her dismissal of the ‘good churchman’ with his ‘unmystical piety’. I believe, as surely all Quakers do, that spiritual knowledge is as free and accessible as the sunshine or the air.
I arrived at my understanding of the way things are partly by direct experience, and partly by peeling off the layers of so much that I had once taken for granted. Questioning seems to me to be an essential area of religious practice, as well as being a vital stage of halting the powerful processes that are tearing our lovely earth apart.
3. A testimony to deep questioning
The last three hundred years
The scale of devastation in the world today is so horrendous that there must be deep flaws within us, who are collectively responsible through our membership of the most powerful
-10-
national and social groups, within the dominant species. We have to be prepared to subject everything we think and do to questioning in order to root out those flaws. Nothing must be too ‘sacred’ or too obvious to be questioned.
Most people who are already questioning the state of the world would point to industrial capitalism as the engine of environmental destruction, human conflict and injustice. Many of us recognise that we, as beneficiaries of that system, help to support and perpetuate it by consuming the goods it provides for us. Even knowing this, it is difficult to concentrate on what we, or rather ‘I’, think and do, rather than on what ‘they’ do. This is a process that goes deeper and deeper as it brings out unconscious assumptions and attitudes. It can, indeed should, be disturbing, but it can also be refreshing and enlightening, and enables us to throw out a lot of ‘baggage’ which is in the way of our own searching and growth.
To understand anything it is necessary to look at its origins and development. The rise of capitalism took place over the past three hundred years. This period also saw the origin and history of the Society of Friends. So with ‘looking at what we have done’ in mind, I shall start by skimming briefly over our part in the changes that took place during that period. Then I shall move on to a deeper level of questioning and examine civilisation itself -that phenomenon which makes us see ourselves as very different from ‘primitive’ people and other animals.
Reformation, capitalism, humanism
In the context of questioning anthropocentrism in favour of biocentrism, it is significant that the origin of Quakerism coincided with the Reformation. This period of religious purging led to the de-sacralisation of all but the human soul and God, when nature was declared to be mere machinery and resources. Early Quakers deliberately struck out from their calendar the holy days and festivals, which had originated in pagan cultures, and had then been assimilated into the Christian Church.
The history of the Society of Friends has coincided with the rise of capitalism and the full blooming of global trade. Through the past three hundred years, Friends, and many other well intentioned people, have participated fully in the human activities which have devastated nature, such as farming,
-11-
whaling and industry.
Such a history identifies the Society of Friends firmly with humanism, rather than animism. No spark of God lit the soul of any creature which was not human. No spirit resided in tree or river. Apart from Man and his God, the creative engineer, all was inanimate matter moving in the void. All was available for exploitation to meet men’s needs.
In making this association between a period of time in which Man devastated nature and the same period which encompasses the history of the Society of Friends, I am not implying blame. Given that humankind was going through this particular stage, Quakerism made the best of it, both in the sense of participating advantageously, and in the sense of developing good codes of conduct appropriate to the time.
I am not even suggesting that the changes in philosophy and religion that took place from the seventeenth century onwards were regrettable. I believe that they were necessary since they purged a corrupt Church and a mess of superstition and introduced a refreshing mode of clear thinking. To return to pagan beliefs in demons and spooks, witches and spells, would be absurd as well as horrible. To resurrect the beliefs and rituals associated with the seasonal cycles followed by early farming communities would make no sense unless we chose to return to their ways of life, which I do not believe to be a viable or a desirable option for humanity at this time.
Nevertheless, there is, I believe, a sense in which the last three hundred years of human history has been a ‘mistake’, something embarked on in error, in that it has been based on a set of major misunderstandings which are socially perpetuated, and are only now beginning to be questioned. Those misunderstandings did not originate with the Reformation or the rise of capitalism. They are as old as recorded human history. They constitute the world view of civilisation.
Questioning civilisation
‘Civilisation’ is defined in the dictionary as ‘a complex organisation of human society’ and ‘an advanced state in social development’. ‘To civilise’ means, ‘to bring out of savagery or barbarism into civilised culture’. The smug self-righteousness in these definitions has become apparent to us only in recent years, as we have come to realise that our way of life is depleting and disrupting the resources and processes of the planet. We now
-12-
prefer the term ‘indigenous’ to ‘savage’, and have a new respect for the knowledge and understanding that has enabled primitive peoples to live sustainably in their environment for thousands of years. Sadly, this does not stop our exploitative system continuing to disregard the interests of the few remaining native peoples, destroying the forests they inhabit, dragging them into the cash economy and infecting them with our diseases.
The root of ‘civilisation’ is ‘civis’, the Latin for citizen, or city dweller. Civilisation was originally the change from living directly off and within the natural world to living enclosed in cities. A change that happened in parallel with this was the invention of farming, since citizens required farm surpluses to provide for their needs. These two changes required a third, the separation of human groups into classes: citizens inside the cities, and peasants or slaves to work the land and provide the food and other basic materials. (1 shall be exploring farming in more detail later. Farming has, of course, often been practised without cities for it to supply, and without unjust social divisions.)
We do not know why this change took place. We do not even find it particularly puzzling, perhaps because of one of the fundamental assumptions underlying civilisation: the belief in ‘progress’. Significantly, ‘progress’ generally only has positive connotations, implying that new ways are always better than the old.
Questioning progress
Belief in progress can lead to the argument that it is pointless to look back, and that current problems require us to seek new ways forward. However, if the errors of past ways lie in assumptions which continue to influence us at an unconscious level, we are likely to make similar mistakes again.
The belief in progress has not only led to the assumption that agriculture plus civilisation is better than barbarism, whatever their relative effects on the environment, it has also led to the idea that progress can bring a net gain in benefits, that it is more creative than destructive, that there are more winners than losers in the game we call ‘development’. But once we start to question progress, we begin to see that at every stage of history there have been casualties, either marginalised people or degraded ecosystems; landless seasonal labourers, urban poor , depleted wildlife populations, vanished forests.
-13-
For example, ‘traditional’ farming in central England, with its little fields and hedgerows, was a development which displaced the feudal system. The jolly yeoman farmer, symbol of Englishness, benefited from the enclosures. Larger, more powerful landowners deprived peasants of their strips, and access to grazing on the commons, or evicted tenants. Those displaced became cheap wage labourers in the fields and in the new industries. Reg Groves’ book Sharpen the Sickle quotes William Plaistow recalling those days:
‘I knowed what they had suffered, and since they bin dead, I laid abed many a time and cried at what they went through.’ Groves then continues, ‘More and more the women and children of the labourers were driven to work in the fields to make up the scant wages: the younger men began that migration from the countryside that has gone on ever since: in squalor, poverty, harsh toil and oppression, the old country life in its cooperative ways and its festivities withered and died ...’
Today, most people are relatively well paid in countries such as ours. The marginalisation, which I believe is the inevitable price of progress, still takes place, but in the Third World. And although women and children no longer toil in English fields, the environment pays the price of our fossil fuel powered agriculture.
Looking over the whole period of civilised human history, many people would argue that humanity has gained in wealth and prosperity during the past ten thousand years. From a biocentric perspective, however, the total loss has been appalling. As a recent example of the effects of civilisation and agriculture on the planet, consider what has taken place in North America since European colonisation. A biography of the nineteenth century naturalist, John James Audubon by Alexander B. Adams describes in the prologue what the colonisers did to that once rich and beautiful land:
‘They shot the golden plovers by the thousands. They clubbed the passenger pigeons to death by the millions in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. They stripped the fields of their fertility in Mississippi and Georgia and Vermont. They poured their wastes into the rivers, because it seemed cheaper to get rid of waste that way than any other. They trapped beavers by the thousands.
-14-
‘They did not believe the buffalo herds could be exhausted, until they had been pushed to the verge of extinction, did not think the flocks of passenger pigeons could be used up, until the last pigeon finally died and the species vanished from the earth altogether.’
The fate of individual species is terrible enough, but the loss of entire ecosystems cleared for agriculture has not only resulted in vast numbers of species extinctions, but in climate change and desertification. The loss of forests in particular lowers the water table, exposes the soil to erosion, and destroys the mechanisms whereby rainfall is recycled and spread across the land.
For most people it may seem, at worst, a regrettable necessity that land has to be cleared for farming to provide food for human populations. But this is an indication of how deeply rooted are our assumptions about the absolute priority of our short term needs over any other manifestation of life on earth. Humanity must thrive, anything else that gets in the way has to go. No price is too high to pay for human progress.
Questioning agriculture: the pioneer model
One well known environmentalist who has questioned the concept of progress, and investigated its origins, is Edward Goldsmith, the editor of Ecologist Magazine. In his recent book, he describes an ecological model which he believes we have adopted in our agricultural methods. Goldsmith has gone on to develop from this idea the theory that our agroecosystem model has become the basis of the entire world view of Western civilisation. He believes that our agriculture and our world view follow a competitive and destructive ‘pioneer’ model as opposed to the alternative, cooperative and sustainable, ‘climax’ model.
An established forest ecosystem normally exists in a climax state. This means that its biological processes serve to maintain it in a state of dynamic equilibrium and perpetual renewal. Such growth as takes place replaces tissue broken down by normal processes of senescence and death, the chemicals released by microbial action on those dead tissues being recycled into the new growth. Occasionally, the cycles of the climax system are disrupted by some unusual event. There might be a forest fire sparked off by lightning or an ancient tree
-15-
might fall, exposing bare soil. A process of rapid repair takes over which constitutes a ‘pioneer’ ecosystem. Dormant seeds spring into life, new growth is abundant, species compete for space and light. Short lived, fast growing species flourish for a time, but eventually die back as more permanent plants are re-established, and the more stable climax state is resumed.
According to Goldsmith, our farming methods bring about a perpetual pioneer situation, in order to achieve the highest possible yield of new growth which is then removed as harvested crops. Cereals, being grasses, are pioneer species, and spring up readily in bared soil. But our pioneer agroecosystems, instead of providing temporary scar tissue to heal the land over after sudden trauma, are made to repeat their tricks time after time in totally unnatural and soil depleting cycles. And growing the same crop on the same land year after year provides perfect conditions for plagues of pests to decimate the crop.
In recent years, in order to overcome soil depletion and pest infestation, artificial chemical fertilisers and pesticides have been introduced. But these have destroyed the natural processes of the living soil, reducing it to little more than a sterile rooting medium of powdered rock. Modern agriculture is, in effect, large scale hydroponics.
Modern, mechanised, chemical based agriculture, with its huge prairie fields to accommodate big machinery, is subject to much criticism. Many environmentalists and conservationists advocate a return to traditional ‘organic’ farming. This was based on keeping the soil ‘in good heart’ through crop rotations and a combination of arable and livestock. Its small fields and hedgerows allowed wildlife to coexist with human food production.
Though they were more sustainable than modern methods, pre-industrial farming systems, in conjunction with deforestation for timber, have brought about horrendous destruction to the natural world over the last ten thousand years. One has only to take a trip in an aeroplane over Europe to see the unnatural, man-made, patchwork landscape. Tropical forest destruction, which is now so much deplored, is the continuation of the same process: clearing land for timber, or to make way for crops such as oil palms and soya for margarine and animal feed, and for grazing livestock. Soil depletion is accelerated when pioneer agriculture is carried out on tropical soils, which do not naturally retain organic matter as temperate soils do. So although there are differences in how sustainable it can be made
-16-
to be, the pioneer agroecosystem in general, not just its modern manifestation, has brought about dreadful damage to natural ecosystems and to the soils which underlay them.
A testimony to deep questioning requires digging all the way down to the roots, so it is important to consider how the pioneer farming model may have arisen, and the consequences for human society and our relationship with the world. Such an exploration means going back to times before recorded history, so it must be highly speculative. However, in an important way, digging out the actual ‘truth’ about what took place when the human animal first became civilised is not the objective. The very exercise of questioning loosens assumptions about ourselves and allows in new possibilities for living life more harmoniously.
The origins of pioneer agriculture and civilisation
Farming as we know it was invented by various human groups from about ten thousand years ago onwards. The idea may have arisen as a result of people observing the natural pioneer process in which new growth rapidly seeds over bared soil. There are still today farming communities which follow variants of the pioneer farming model which do not bring about large scale destruction. One example is small scale ‘swidden-fallow’ or ‘slash and burn’, in which patches of land are cleared, cultivated for one or two seasons, and then left for the natural plant cover to grow back, which may take as long as thirty years. Many tropical forest peoples cultivate some crops this way in addition to obtaining food by hunting and gathering. Some farming communities in Central and South America, West Africa, Asia and the Soviet Union still practise small scale mixed cultivation, often on terraces or mounds to aid soil and water retention and avoid water logging. These methods are sustainable and often highly productive, and many have been carried out for thousands of years.
There was something different about the invention of farming in the regions which eventually gave rise to Western civilisation, such as the ancient Near East, an area historians refer to as ‘The Cradle of Civilisation’. The scale and intensity came to be quite different from farming systems which work with nature and borrow from the wilderness. The objective was not to provide for the people who worked the land, but to produce surpluses to be transported to cities, from whence the
-17-
wastes were generally not returned to the land, so that the soil inevitably became exhausted. This outcome led eventually to the decline of the civilisation supported, or to cycles of migration, colonisation or conquest.
But how did this process begin? What gave rise to the first alienated city whose people lost sight of nature? What turned the cooperative hunting and gathering human animal into the only mammal which fights its own kind to the death? No one knows, we can only theorize, and then test the theory for consistency with what we do know about humankind, and for its usefulness in solving other puzzles about human thought and behaviour.
Catastrophic beginnings
It is conceivable that some sort of catastrophic event took place in the regions where the first cities were to emerge, such that the climax ecosystems which had been there, and which had provided a living for the people, were destroyed. A normal forest fire would not have been sufficient – the level of moisture in a natural forest stops any fire from spreading very far. Volcanic action can cause local and temporary devastation, but the ash discharged produces very fertile soil, and fairly rapid recovery. Also, native peoples generally know about forest fires and volcanoes, however infrequently they occur, and would not have been shocked into collective personality change.
Another possibility is that some drastic climate change took place which destroyed the forests. One’s mind leaps to an Ice Age as the agent, but it is not thought that the Ice Ages penetrated so far south. A drastic reduction in rainfall is a possibility, but why should that have occurred? The sequence is generally that large scale forest clearance disrupts rainfall patterns which deprives further trees of moisture, beginning a ‘positive feedback’ sequence which can make deserts.
I have been intrigued by Immanuel Velikovsky’s controversial book, Worlds in Collision, which suggested to me another possible causative agent, and one which leads on to productive speculation about what may have followed. Velikovsky describes how other planets in the solar system came into near collision with the earth, and caused huge floods and conflagrations. He calls on ancient writings from various parts of the world to back up his theory, for example, from Philo of Alexandria:
-18-
‘The mountain [Sinai] burned with fire and the earth shook and the hills were removed and the mountains overthrown,. the depths boiled, and all the inhabitable places were shaken ...and flames of fire shone forth and thunderings and lightnings were multiplied, and winds and tempests made a roaring: the stars were gathered together.’
The timing of the events Velikovsky describes is much too recent (the earliest only about two millenia BC) to have brought about the changes I am seeking to explain. But he does suggest that there was a series of such catastrophes, and that there were similar events thousands of years before those he describes in this book.
Velikovsky’s theories have been contemptuously dismissed by astronomers, in particular by the well known science writer Isaac Asimov in his book A Choice of Catastrophes. Science is itself an important element of the prevailing world view, which I shall be looking at in a later section. But let us assume for now that modern scientific expertise is questionable, and that the many stories, by people who were there at the time, of ‘battles of gods’ in the sky bringing devastation on earth, were based on reality. What effect might that have had on the few people who survived?
For the Palaeolithic peoples who had lived in the vanished forests, it would have been a time of pain and loss, and struggle and competition over what little food they could find. They could still hunt whatever wildlife had escaped the fires and floods but, without cover, this may have been difficult. Lacking fruits, berries, nuts, bulbs, roots and leaves, they might have taken to eating the seeds of grasses that grew over the wasted lands.
The longer term effect of large scale destruction of the natural plant cover could have been the emergence of extensive grasslands. Instead of providing temporary scar tissue, grass and other fast and low growing species could have formed an effectively permanent ecosystem. Certain animal species would have taken advantage of this environment, such that grazing herds. became widespread, and perpetuated the ecosystem by cropping tree seedlings.
We can see that this situation could lead to human groups domesticating grazing animals and cultivating cereals on a broad scale. And the new pattern of food production would be
-19-
associated with its history of fear and insecurity, struggle, competition, and the survival of the strongest. The need for security and protection from competitors could well have given rise to communities enclosing themselves in walled cities. Leaders and warriors would be based within the cities, slaves or peasants outside in the fields and pastures.
Civilised psychology and alienation
A sudden uprooting of hunting and gathering communities could have caused an important psychological shift over and above the effects of the trauma and readjustment to a life of territoriality and competition. Hunter gatherers live in intimate contact with the natural world. Their large mental capacity developed to accommodate the enormous banks of information needed to collect food from a wide variety of plants, insects and other animals, as well as for their complex, cooperative social organisation. The elite groups who became city dwellers probably had much less to occupy their minds. It is possible that their spare mental capacity, perhaps inspired by the celestial events which destroyed their former paradise, was redeployed in imaginary realms such as religion, philosophy, science and metaphysics, art and literature. The effort to reassure and explain, distract and amuse, the whole edifice of Western culture, may have arisen because the human animal was hurtled out of the natural wilderness into relative solitary confinement within city walls.
Tragically, having lost his animal nature, the city dweller never recovered it. The disease of civilisation spread beyond its spawning in the ancient Near East. Wilderness was never again home, but a source of ‘natural resources’: timber for building and burning, land to be stripped bare for the ubiquitous pioneer farming, or mined for minerals and masonry.
And yet, there remains a poignant yearning in the human soul for the outdoors, experienced by generations of naturalists, ramblers, campers, mountaineers, anglers and gardeners. Even today, we watch wildlife programmes on television, we respond to images of nature attached to products we buy, and we escape to countryside or coast at weekends and holidays. But the alienation is still present while we wander in the countryside. We are reluctant to pluck and munch the nuts, berries, funguses and herbs growing wild where we walk. We feel it is cruel to catch a fish or shoot a rabbit or pigeon to grill on a camp
-20-
fire. So we come with a packed meal, perhaps including a cheese sandwich, which is a product of cereals and cattle, and do not realise that, by eating this, we are conspiring to perpetuate the destructive pioneer system our desperate ancestors resorted to so many millennia ago.
Ten thousand years may seem a long time, but it is only about three hundred generations, not long enough for natural selection to have changed our genetic make up. The changes that have taken place have had a dramatic effect on the environment, but the change to human beings is only a social one, the product of upbringing and habit. Before civilisation, our species lived for, perhaps, a hundred thousand years in close association with stable, climax ecosystems. I believe that it is perfectly possible for us to live in something like that way in the future, and that such an environment is what human nature is suited to.
Changing through desperation or choice
It is possible that the global systems of production and trade that we now depend on will collapse within a few decades. This could happen as a result of schisms forming in international economic relationships, a collapse of world financial systems which are already teetering on the brink, or by some shift in the natural planetary processes, brought about by a build up of the stresses our global systems are imposing. If such a collapse did occur, people in the developed countries would probably suffer most because we have lost the skills and knowledge needed to provide for ourselves.
However, it would hardly be possible to build a new world of living in harmony with nature if we were driven to it through fear and desperation. I believe that there is still time for us to adopt that life pattern from choice. Such a choice involves cultivating a world view consistent with the flourishing dynamic equilibrium of a climax ecosystem, rather than the bleak, progress oriented, competitive world view associated with the pioneer ecosystem.
Our present world view and way of life are strongly influenced by the powerful twin products of civilisation, science and technology. Subjecting science, in particular, to questioning brings the opportunity to enlarge on an alternative understanding of the world, based on the belief in ‘the unity and equality of all beings’.
-21-
So, to begin this exploration, what are science and technology, and what has been their effect on human life and on the world?
Deep questioning: science and technology
It is possible that I have already relied too much in this exploration on my speculative theory based on Velikovsky’s planetary collisions. In science, of course, initial speculation is part of the process. Many scientific models which became highly regarded for a long while, were derided when they were first put forward, for example Newton’s mysterious force of gravitational attraction. But however bizarre the theory, in science it can be used for as long as it is consistent with observations.
So, to toy with my theory for one last time, imagine the idle citizen of an ancient civilisation, kept fat and comfortable by the labours of slaves outside his city walls. He worships powerful gods in the heavens, which all his people know can wreak havoc on earth. He knows that the world outside is flawed, dangerous and chaotic. He desires order and, as a citizen, he participates in the legislation which governs his city. With little to occupy their minds, he and his friends speculate on the meaning of life. They decide to figure out the transcendent laws of the gods which govern the universe, which they decide must be unchanging, eternal, dependable. They look to the heavens and devise regular geometric patterns for that realm. They fear and despise the confused real world outside which they have little contact with, and seek cosmic patterns, such as atomic solar systems, underlying that world, and ruling it by the same eternal laws that govern the heavens. Enclosed in his orderly city, the citizen is enclosed in his orderly mind, and in control.
Science still tries to ‘explain’ the real world in terms of underlying mechanisms which obey absolute, eternal laws. Even ecology, that science closest to the natural world, squares off its field of study, counts the organisms, builds models of food webs and population fluctuations, and uses mathematical methods to explain how parts of the ecosystem ‘work’.
One of the tricks which helps the success of science is to pick out particularly simple fragments of the world to study. So, the sort of thing science has studied in the past is why a stone thrown into the air traces a smooth parabolic path, rather than a wobbly one, before it falls to the ground. Scientific explanations
-22-
involve formulae, equations or expressions, into which numbers representing variables such as angles and speeds are inserted in order to predict outcomes.
But most bodies travelling through the air do not trace smooth parabolic paths. Birds, bats, butterflies or leaves in the wind trace all sorts of paths. Whether there are formulae to describe them is neither interesting or useful. The vast collections of formal expressions that the many scientific specialisms have devised explain very little about how the real world works. And, in any case, the ‘explanations’ are, in a sense, less real than the world they explain. They are models in the minds of scientists, often expressed in their specially derived languages collectively called mathematics. The models and laws do not exist within the systems they purport to explain – you will not find ‘E = mc2’ written in the stars.
Good scientists are well aware of this. Theoretical physicists, in particular, the people at the sharp end of science down to which all other scientific study is supposed to reduce, will sometimes admit that they cannot explain very much, if anything at all.
I have said that conventional science is about the search for ‘explanations’ for regularities in nature, and creating mental and mathematical models to represent those explanations. The alternative to science is experience, simply noticing the patterns and regularities which are there and are of interest, anticipating repetition when that is useful, and then fitting in to the patterns, accepting and enjoying them. All animals are capable of acting on experience. Since our departure from the wilderness, we no longer do it very well, but we could learn. So, to take an ecological example, experience might involve noticing that, in a natural ecosystem, fallen leaves, animal excrement and dead bodies get broken down and new growth keeps coming. We could then make sure that human waste and corpses are made available to these processes. In contrast, conventional science would take samples of the materials involved in these cycles into a laboratory, divide them up as small as possible, give the bits names and formulae, try to replicate the changes, turn one bit of matter into another in an experiment, and, when it succeeded, announce the discovery as a new understanding of how the world ‘works’.
Experience involves becoming aware of what is already going on. Conventional science is creating something new: an idea, a mental construct, which was not there before. But just
-23-
because the result of a laboratory experiment bears some similarity with what was happening in nature, we should not assume that the scientific model was working in nature before it was discovered. There is a similarity, that is all.
The ponderings of scientists would be just harmless speculation, mere hobbies, as was the case for the amateur scientists of past centuries, if it were not for technology. Technology turns a scientific model which was an idea in someone’s mind and some marks on paper into a new construction in the real world. The ‘laws’ governing stones thrown in the air are used to construct projectiles such as aeroplanes and rockets.
So if the scientific model suggests a useful application in the world at large, technology brings it into being. Something is constructed which was not there before, or an artificial process already in existence is modified in a new way. The world is altered as a result. To use the earlier example, there is a fertiliser factory which was not there before, and farmers have a new chemical to apply to boost their yields of some monocrop. In a sense, through technology, a science creates a world in its own image.
The new piece of reality is usually of benefit to some people. That is generally the intention. However, it is part of the mind set of scientists and technologists to take a narrow view of the effects of what they bring into being on the rest of the world, and even to declare that their activities are value free and unconcerned with morality.
However, when some new technology is capable of reducing production costs or giving rise to new products for the market, it seems to be unstoppable, whatever the environmental or social costs. And there always are such costs. Industry can only ever achieve the transformation of one set of material structures into another. Its creation inevitably causes destruction. The new worlds science and technology create are progressively displacing the naturally evolved world, to such an extent that the life support processes of the planet are put under stresses that they may not be able to withstand for much longer .
It is difficult to think of a single technological achievement, deriving from any scientific discipline, which has been universally beneficial. The nearest I can think of is the development of smallpox vaccine. Even in this case, and disregarding the interests of the unfortunate smallpox virus, the discovery of a vaccine against the disease has been a distraction
-24-
from the more important work of considering what social and economic relationships give rise to living conditions that make people susceptible to transmissible diseases. There is scarcely any funding available for such work, but only for more prestigious research into the ills of affluence, such as heart disease and cancer .
Science is one outcome of people’s desire to understand the world, largely in order to feel more secure and in control. If science is built on an unsound basis, we need an alternative way of understanding what it is that underlies the patterns and regularities that we observe in the world around us.
An alternative understanding: the habits or the universe
One scientist who has questioned the central scientific paradigm, with its basis on underlying mechanisms obeying eternal laws, is the biologist Rupert Sheldrake.
Sheldrake maintains that the primary causative agent in the universe is habit, the tendency for past patterns to be repeated. And the more times a particular pattern has been repeated, and the more recently and locally, the more likely it is to persist unaltered. This principle can be applied to the motion of bodies in space, the interaction and form of chemical compounds, the development and behaviour of organisms, including our own species, and so also to human thinking, activities and social organisation.
According to Sheldrake’s hypothesis, the universe is composed of self-organising systems, each guided by its collective memory, or ‘morphic field’. So, for example, the giraffe species has a morphic field which is the memory of the form and behaviour of past giraffes, and is inherited by living giraffes and giraffe embryos, guiding their behaviour and development.
Morphic fields are the memories of past patterns and regularities of nature. Since the universe is inherently habitual, past patterns tend to persist, hence ‘morphic resonance’. The more often a particular shape or behaviour occurs, the stronger the habit becomes, and the oldest habits, for example patterns of chemical interaction, have become so strong that they seems like absolute rules. The human assumptions and attitudes that I have been questioning in this essay, such as civilisation being a good thing and pioneer agriculture being the best way to produce food, are examples of habits of thought built up
-25-
through generations of repetition.
Past patterns persist, but they are not absolutely immutable. All the regularities of nature are subject to variation from time to time. By the intrinsic uncertainty of the universe, the improbable occasionally happens. Alternatively, repetition may sometimes build up to the point of collapse. Then new variants, entirely fresh patterns, come into being, and, once formed, pass on their potential to each emerging moment. In such a way change and evolution occur. This is how the universe is creative. Most encouragingly, in terms of the problems in the world today, although most people are still following the established social habits, the few people who are questioning and rethinking our relationship with the world have already made a new track in the shared memory of our species, which gets easier and easier to follow the more we follow It.
Sheldrake’s hypothesis is so consistent with our common sense experience of the world that it hardly qualifies to be called science at all, in the esoteric, expert-dominated sense we know it today. But Sheldrake is a scientist, though he describes himself as a ‘feral’ one, and he is actively seeking to have his paradigm taken seriously by the scientific community. There is now a considerable amount of experimental and anecdotal evidence to back up the hypothesis and, as one would expect if his theory is right, the more scientists he convinces, the easier it becomes to convince others.
In terms of the concerns I have been expressing in this essay, the recognition of the habitual nature of the universe by the scientific community may not be helpful in itself. It is perfectly possible to model morphic resonance mathematically, and to base technology upon it. However, the fact that the concept is so easy for anyone to understand could help people to regard science with more circumspection, and feel more confident in taking charge of deciding whether the benefits of any new technology justify its social and environmental costs.
Because of the authority that science has exercised over our lives, its conclusions are often referred to as ‘scientific truths’. But, as I have pointed out, science has tended to be focussed on astronomical, microscopic, or non-observable sub-microscopic realms, rather than on the ordinarily observable world. Scientific truths are, therefore, in a sense ‘supernatural’ truths, and share that domain with religious truths.
Earlier in this essay, I looked at religion in its sense of bringing people together under the influence of shared beliefs
-26-
and rules of social conduct. I have also suggested that shared belief unifies people into a synergistic whole, greater than the total of their individual contributions. Quakerism is a particularly clear example of people coming together in that way.
I feel that the object of belief is less important than the unity it brings about, and that in fact one can believe in the unity itself, without a deity, or any transcendent power, providing it for us. Since this unity or wholeness is something additional to our normal sense of who and what we are, it is ‘supernatural’, and therefore a valid object of religious belief. It is particularly appropriate as the basis of ecologically oriented religion, because all beings in the universe participate in it, not just human beings.
So to enlarge on the belief in unity and wholeness, I am including some ideas that have come from my own exploration of the essence of the world. I offer these, not to try to persuade anyone of their truth, but as possibilities people may find intriguing, and enjoy musing over .
4. Further thoughts on down to earth belief
I see the universe as formed of patterns that exist in time as well as in space. Patterns which have existed in the past tend to be perpetuated because the past form is still literally present, though our dominant conscious senses, such as sight and hearing, only perceive the present state of the local universe. So when we are influenced by the past, it is not so much via a memory trace somewhere in the universe, but by a process of growth in which the new moment is a continuation of a pattern which is building up in space-time. So the more extended in time and local in space a pattern is, the more likely it is to continue into the ‘here and now’. Space and time may be just secondary effects of the patterns, which are the primary ‘stuff’ of the universe, so that the patterns which are the strongest of all give rise to what we perceive as ‘here’ and ‘now’.
Wholistic consciousness
Wholistic consciousness includes the capacity to perceive the past, which is with us, literally and actually, all the time, as it was and still is. By this definition of conscious awareness, there is absolutely no reason why it should be the prerogative of Homo
-27-
sapiens, or even of the animal kingdom. If everything in the universe is influenced by patterns tending to persist, then everything is conscious. The fact that humans have perceptual senses which are focussed only on the present moment could be a handicap which hides us from the light. If mystical experience occurs when we penetrate those blinkers and experience the whole, we may be getting just a glimpse of the consciousness that simpler beings in the universe experience all the time.
In spite of our species’ general inability to perceive beyond the local and the present, there is a wealth of evidence to show that we are capable of sensing distant events and experiencing the past. What we call ‘imagination’ and ‘intuition’ involve dipping into the patterns of the past. Other instances are dismissed by conventional science as no more than chance coincidences, hallucinations or wishful thinking. But all are just what one would expect in a universe which is interconnected in space and time. They are examples of ‘supernatural’ perception, in the sense of beyond normal sense experience of the here and now.
It would take too long to go into these in detail, but the sort of experiences I have in mind are: telepathy, out of the body and near death experiences, channelling, healing, dousing, and memories of past lives. Sensitivity to past and present interconnections and influences could enable predictions to be made of likely future outcomes. So pre-cognition and astrology could also be instances of sensitivity to the past. But they may be more than this if time is not the straight line into the future our logical minds persuade us of. (Our apparent unawareness of distant and past reality can be thought of as similar to the fact that our normal senses are blind to light outside the ‘visible spectrum’, and deaf to air vibrations outside the normal range of hearing.)
It is significant that we are emotionally very attached to the past. We cling on to it through photographs, memorabilia and historic objects and places. Sometimes these links with the past bring an uncanny sense of their own time, an almost tangible aura or spirit. If the past is actually present, but invisible to our normal senses, perhaps old things and places can lead to our wider consciousness opening up.
-28-
Down to earth immortality
A particularly poignant example of being drawn into awareness of the past is sometimes experienced by people who have been bereaved. Many report a sense of the presence of the person they have lost, especially when they are in need or acute distress. I am sure, by my own experience, and from moving accounts from other people, that this contact is quite real. However, by the ideas we are considering, it does not mean that the dead person’s spirit has survived death, but that their actual life is still fully present, and part of the influence that brings the new moment into being. This idea offers us a kind of ‘down to earth’ immortality, without the need for heaven or reincarnation.
I have no wish to trespass on others’ spiritual exploration. We all have to find our own way and our own words and metaphors to describe what we experience. However, it does seem to me to be conceivable that the experience many Christians have reported of knowing that Jesus Christ is alive today could be an example of the expanded consciousness I have been describing. This particular path to the realisation of the presence and ongoing influence of the past may be specially accessible to people in our culture because it is a path so well travelled.
So impressive are religious and extrasensory experiences when they do occur that they can serve to reinforce the idea that our species is uniquely capable of such experience, the only species with a soul or spirit and relationship with the divine. However, if such experiences are simply brief glimmerings of a more wholistic reality, and only supernatural in the sense of transcending our dominant sense organs, they would be, as I said before, accessible to beings throughout the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. Such a recognition would help to bring about a biocentric world view and religion.
Heaven on earth
Biocentric religion is down to earth in the sense that it integrates the spiritual dimension into the material world, rather than envisaging a separate heavenly realm. But it is also cosmic in that it opens up the entire universe in time and space to conscious awareness, to an awareness of which mystical
-29-
experience has provided so many tantalising glimpses. However, I feel that it is unhelpful to think of the universe as infinite and eternal. These concepts are merely a product of mathematics and number theory. Since a number can be arbitrarily large, the idea of infinite extent came into being. Since we are accustomed to envisaging time as a linear dimension, stretching indefinitely in a backward or forward direction, the idea of eternity arose. But this does not mean that the physical universe is infinite and eternal. To imagine that it is perpetuates a cowed down and awestruck attitude towards the cosmos. To cultivate the attitudes we need for a wholistic world order, it is more appropriate to have a loving and embracing relationship, encompassing a vast but finite universe.
The spiritual sense of the connectedness of everything is not just the basis of an alternative religious belief, it is also a vital part of the transition we need towards a more sensitive, caring and responsible relationship with the world. We will have to continue, for some time to come, in being dependent on the existing systems of provision. As we develop our sensitivity to the links which are present across time and space, we can learn to tune in to the damage to the earth that our consumption is responsible for. It is likely that the beginnings of this form of conscious contact helped to bring about the interest in wholefoods in the 1960s. I am sure that I can taste the deadness in factory processed food, whatever vitamin and mineral supplements have been added to pep up its nutritional chemistry. Thinking about food really brings us down to earth, and back to the soil. Which brings me to the second testimony of down to earth religion, living in harmony with nature. The central focus on this new way of life is the climax agricultural ecosystem.
5. Testimony to living in harmony with nature
Pioneer agroecosystems based on cereal plantations and pastures for livestock, are not the only or the best way to feed people. Clearly we cannot all return to being hunter gatherers – there is barely enough natural climax ecosystem left for the few remaining tribes who live in this way. But it is possible to build new ‘climax agroecosystems’ to provide food and other basic materials from long lived, rather than from annual, plants. Forest farming, in which annual crops are grown between trees, is a step towards a climax system. But the principles have been
-30-
more fully developed by the people involved in an international movement devoted to what its originator, Bill Mollison, has called ‘permaculture’, Central to permaculture is a design methodology for setting up climax agroecosystems.
Permanent agriculture, permanent culture
To explain in as few words as possible what permaculture is, I cannot improve upon the description in a leaflet produced by the Permaculture Association (Britain):
Permaculture ... is the conscious use of ecological principles in designing self-sustaining food, fibre and energy producing ecosystems. The idea is to set up systems for human use that are sustainable because they learn from natural ecosystems the use of diversity (of species and activities), interdependence, recycling and conservation, and perennial plants (especially trees), to produce a stable and self-reliant system.
Permaculture is not about technique, it is about design. Within it, many techniques can be used – organic growing and pest control techniques; forest farming and old forestry practices such as coppicing; free-range poultry and animal raising; technology for energy conservation and the use of solar energy, and recycling of wastes. What is important is the way all the different elements are consciously designed to work together, creating an intricate web of inter-relationships that is both stable and high-yielding
The basic practical aims are:
1. Emphasis on perennial rather than annual crops, especially trees.
2. Combination of diverse activities: gardening, farming, poultry, aquaculture, tree and shrub planting etc.
3. Recycling all materials.
4. High species diversity, often with close planting.
5. Use of three-dimensional space – trees, shrubs, vines and low-growing plants using different levels of soil and light, and increasing total yield.
6. Minimum tillage.
7. Use of small scale machinery and hand tools.
-31-
8. Layout minimising walking and transportation.
9. Close relationship between land usage and climatic features and the location and design of buildings and their uses.
Permaculture is applicable to urban as well as rural situations, and can be practised on any scale: balcony or roof, glasshouse, garden, farm or estate. Its principles can be applied in any climate and can be used to reclaim spoiled or marginal land.
So permaculture is not a method of organic farming. It is, in fact, more than a climax agroecosystem design methodology. It is a complete philosophy of life. Although its followers have reinstated food production as a central human activity, permaculture is not only about permanent agriculture, but also about permanent culture. It is directed at forming a stable, sustainable, integrated human society living in close contact, and in harmony with, the rest of the natural world. In other words, it can become the new way of life that down to earth religion would serve to bond together .
There are actually many alternative philosophies with community food production as a central focus – such as Biodynamics, Voluntary Simplicity and the Movement for Compassionate Living the Vegan Way. I have singled out permaculture in particular because of its recognition of the importance of the climax agroecosystem, and the connection between the agricultural model and the world view of human society.
In a down to earth world, we recognise that food and food production are important. Permaculture provides a design methodology for establishing climax agroecosystems. It does not impose any rules about what we should eat. However, there are some foods which are easier than others to grow in a permanent agroecosystem and, perhaps not surprisingly, they are better for human health. But consideration of what it would be best to eat in our new harmonious world may require us to make some difficult adjustments.
-32-
Climax ecosystem diet
A very high proportion of the people who are concerned about environmental problems are ‘vegetarians’. Curiously, this word does not mean that they eat only vegetable foods, it usually means that they do not eat meat, but do eat dairy products and eggs, which are of course animal products. The motive is a worthy one, concern about animals, and not wanting to be involved in slaughtering and eating them.
This motive can of course be criticised on the basis that milk production requires the regular birth and early death of calves, the natural consumers of cows’ milk. Even choosing ‘vegetarian’ cheese, to avoid actually consuming rennet from calves’ stomachs does not sever the connection between dairy production, as practised in the West, from the fate of these poor babies.
There is also the argument that animal products of all kinds multiply our (indirect) consumption of vegetable foods as much as ten fold. For example, although chickens are fairly efficient food converters, they need to eat about four times the food energy of an egg in order to produce each egg. (Allowing for the inputs of fossil fuel energy needed for egg production in battery units, the ratio is about nine to one.) This means that more land is needed to produce animal products than is needed to grow vegetable foods of the same nutritional value, hence more land degradation.
These arguments can lead to two alternative recommendations. One is that we should all become vegan. The other advocates a return to traditional organic farming, abolishing intensive units and the huge international animal feed business, and returning to mixed farming. That would mean a little, rather expensive, organic or free range meat and dairy products, as well as a considerable increase in the proportion of vegetable foods consumed directly. Although the vegan option seems radical, and the mixed farming option seems moderate, they are both reformist options. They would reduce the damage to the land, and the cruelty to domesticated animals, but neither would completely solve the problem of land degradation, let alone reverse the damage already done, and there are doubts about whether they could feed the anticipated maximum global population of ten or eleven billion people.
We have seen in this discussion how farming based on the
-33-
pre-industrial Western farming model has been terribly destructive, and that this has been based on a combination of cereals and livestock, particularly cattle. Permaculture principles can, in theory, be used to design something better, but, hardly surprisingly, it is not very well suited to cereals and large livestock. Its followers try to devise the best systems they can for cereal cultivation. There is a ‘no dig’ system developed for rice growing, for example, by the Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, which is cited as a model. But it is little better than a bit of conventional pioneer farming tacked incongruously on the side.
A far better solution, to my mind, is to phase out the eating of cereals and cattle products, give up that cheese sandwich, and adopt a pre-agricultural revolution diet. I was fascinated to discover recently a book called Stone Age Diet by Leon Chaitow. This was written with human health in mind, rather than earth wellbeing. It claims that cereals, meat from domesticated livestock, and dairy products are bad for us, because our digestive systems evolved around a Palaeolithic diet of fruits, berries, nuts, bulbs, roots, leaves, and meat from wild animals. Apparently, most people stop producing the enzyme lactase, needed to digest milk, by the time they are adults, and a very large number of people are allergic to the gluten in wheat. The typical Western diet is high in sugar and refined carbohydrates, salt and saturated fats, and low in fibre and vitamins, especially vitamin C. This leads to the malnutrition of affluence which can result in obesity, diabetes, cancer of the colon and heart disease.
The Stone Age diet is very suited to permaculture-style growing. Everything we would need could be grown in our gardens, allowing us to make the vital first step towards local self-sufficiency. However, many of us would have difficulties with shooting and eating wild animals such as squirrels and pigeons, even if they would, otherwise, eat the food we need for ourselves. I do believe that this will be an important moral question to wrestle with as we put into effect the transition towards climax ecosystem food production. Should we participate in hunting for food, which is a natural occupation for the human animal? Surely enslaving animals and modifying them genetically for our use is far worse from a moral point of view. The question will be most important once the transition back to the climax ecosystem model is well under way.
-34-
A healing role for humanity
Permaculturalists have discovered that only a tenth of the land is needed, compared with conventional agriculture, once the climax agroecosystem is established. The remaining nine tenths would be returned to wilderness. Many deep ecologists are against any form of conservation or stewardship over the wilderness that other species occupy. However, those same deep ecologists declare that the earth cannot support more than five hundred million people. I profoundly disagree with this extreme view, and with the strong antipathy towards human kind that goes with it. If we adopt the climax agroecosystem model, we can recover degraded land and improve marginal land to such an extent that the expected global human population can easily be accommodated. I do not believe that we need to deprive the earth of human children in order to share it harmoniously with other life forms. Indeed, I can see an important role for however many hands we can muster, in helping desertified land back through its pioneer healing stages, then to be left for nature to take its course.
However, my optimistic imagination is leaping ahead of where we are now, still tragically on a ruinous path, caught in the habits of civilisation and conventional farming, and the world view of progress, economic growth and competition.
Happily though, the permaculture approach is taking root all around the world. One of its greatest strengths is that it can be adopted gradually. One does not need to ‘drop out’ of conventional society to make a start. The most interesting outcome of the organic growth of the movement, is that it is giving rise to nodes of permaculture community relationships, in amongst the alienating occupations of the conventional economy.
The permaculture community
The global system by which the needs of the people of the richer Western nations are provided for is held together by capitalist economics and the free market system. It could not work without money, although money is actually no more than tokens of purchasing power. The power relationships of the world are perpetuated by complex systems of trade involving capital, stocks and shares, futures markets and other speculative
-35-
dealings. Wealth in terms of natural resources, fertile land, and human labour is obscured under an impenetrable system of self perpetuating economic power.
The only way we can break out of this destructive system is to become self sufficient. However, it is very difficult for an individual or small family to provide everything they need from their own skills and patch of land. But a local cornrnuniy can go much further towards self-reliance through cooperation and exchange. To do so effectively, it needs a market, not just physical market stalls, though these are valuable, but a market system.
A number of well established permaculture communities have devised market systems based on ‘green’ money. This is money which serves simply as an exchange medium. It does not earn interest. It cannot be used to accumulate capital or gain power over others. The basis of the system is a ‘needs and offers market’, which could be a public notice board, but is usually a microcomputer database. Details are recorded of what each member of the community needs, over and above what they can provide for themselves, and what they can offer in terms of surplus produce or labour and skills. People can then trade with each other, and the green money cheques they write are entered into the computer system. The entire database, with everybody’s needs and offers and the position of their accounts, is open to everyone in the community to see and use. Members of the community can participate in the system as much or as little as they choose, combining it with jobs and shopping in the conventional system. Its strength lies in this flexibility; it does not impose any big commitment, except perhaps on the part of the two people it needs to operate the computer system, who are, of course, paid for their work in green money.
I see a potential role in the permaculture community for the ‘Quaker business method’. This is a process of coming together to make collective decisions in a spirit of worship. It is based on the use of simple words, listening with quiet receptiveness, welcoming and accepting differences. The synergy of the group brings about creative decisions that individuals might not have thought of on their own. Instead of a chair person to direct the group, there is a clerk to serve the group by putting ‘the sense of the meeting’ into words for confirmation at the time. I see this method becoming a model for an ‘organic’ way of achieving group decisions which would
-36-
be appropriate to a mutually-sustaining community.
It is particularly significant in terms of the poverty, injustice and serious land degradation in many parts of the world, that there are permaculture nodes in several Third World countries such as Nepal, India, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Botswana and Zimbabwe. The international network provides for the sharing of knowledge and skills, and very often it is the farmers in ‘under-developed’ countries who are teaching us. So the permaculture community is global as well as local.
In this essay, I have addressed a subject which really merits a full length book. So in conclusion, I shall summarise what I have been able to cover, mention associated topics that I did not include, and indicate what guided my choice. I will then say a little more about why this subject is particularly relevant to the Religious Society of Friends.
The story so far
The central purpose of this essay has been to introduce the idea of a ‘down to earth’ religion based on a mystical belief in the intrinsic wholeness of the universe, whereby humanity is integrated into the‘unity and equality of all beings’. The religion has two testimonies to guide us on the path to global harmony: a testimony to ‘deep questioning’ of the way we think and live now, and a testimony to moving towards ‘living in harmony with nature’ through local self-sufficiency within permanent agricultural ecosystems.
This exploration has been a journey through human history beginning with the Quaker community of three hundred years ago, touching on capitalism, then travelling back to the origin of civilisation and pioneer farming, and on to science and technology. Then followed the beginnings of a path to a more sustainable future, incorporating a new view of consciousness and spirituality, the climax agroecosystem, an alternative diet, and a healing mission for humanity in the task of helping the ravaged earth to re-grow. To complete the cycle, we arrived at the self-reliant local community, integrating its members in caring and providing, and itself a part of the organic wholeness of the earth.
To bring about a shift from the destructive path we are now
-7-
on to a sustainable one, we need to look beyond human interests alone. I believe that only if we see the earth as holy, as a sacred living whole, will we be able to see clearly what needs to be done. By cultivating our spiritual sensitivity to the interconnectedness of our world, we can increase our consciousness of the impact of our life style on distant parts of the planet, even when those effects seem lost in the past. We can then gradually draw away from the destructive effects of remote agriculture and industry and work on developing nourishing gardens and on using local materials to make beautiful craft products for our use, which will be durable enough to last until nature, with our aid, can replace the materials used.
The rest of the picture
I chose particular subjects to cover in the process of ‘deep questioning’ because I feel they are central to the attitudes and values underlying our present way of life at a deep, and often unconscious, level. There are other, equally serious, problem areas which I have left out because I feel they are more symptoms than causes. The test I used was to consider my own responsibility for the problems, and my power and freedom to initiate any changes. So, for example, I have not included questions of modern warfare and the arms trade because, after years of involvement with the peace movement, I have realised that there is little I can do but grieve and protest. However, the causes of conflict lie deep in the attitudes of civilised humanity, and those I am part of, and can change.
For a similar reason, I have not concentrated on problems of industrial pollution, serious though these are. I have focussed on human alienation from the natural systems which provide our basic needs, particularly food, and the destructive pioneer agriculture and its association with the progress obsessed, competitive world view of Western society.
Because food is a vital human need, and because its provision has caused so much damage in the past, I have concentrated on a solution involving a wholistic philosophy centred on permanent agriculture. However, other skills and knowledge will be needed to develop sustainable ways of providing for ourselves. Although science and technology were one of the subjects for deep questioning, I recognise that appropriate technology will also play an important part.
-38-
Of course, the transition along this alternative path will not be as smooth as my account may have suggested. There will be many traumas and failures, and many other equally difficult questions to wrestle with. But with the incentive of spiritual integration, and nothing whatever in the way of each of us making a start, I am sure the movement which has already begun will continue to grow.
A role for the Religious Society of Friends
I see many parallels between the down to earth religion that I have outlined, and the traditional beliefs and practices of the Society of Friends. The words may be different, but the caring heart is the same.
Early Friends were courageous and unashamedly radical. They were prepared to suffer imprisonment and even death to defend their right to worship in the way they found worked for them, rather than according to the dictates of the established church. For John Woolman in his day to be concerned about the welfare of domestic animals was extraordinary, at a time when most people had no idea that animals could feel or suffer as humans do.
Today, freedom of religious practice is taken for granted. Questions about religion now go deeper than a choice of Christian denomination. Also, concern about cruelty to domestic animals is very common, though it has insufficient effect. The radical position is now to question whether we should use (some would say ‘enslave’) animals at all, whether as zoological exhibits, circus performers, laboratory test victims, food production factories, or as pets.
There is still a popular perception that Quakers occupy some ‘moral high ground’, for example, it is assumed that all Quakers are pacifists. I think that this gives the Society of Friends a responsibility to be seen to be addressing the most serious issues of the day. The Society of Friends, as a body, has not yet formally adopted the area of environmental issues as a ‘Concern’. Quakers have always considered their conduct in every aspect of life to be part of their religious practice, and might therefore have been expected to embrace something so central to all our lives, and with such an all-pervading impact on the world. The fact that many individual Friends are involved in environmental pressure groups does not make good this omission. Failure to adopt this area may be construed, by those
-39-
who are sensitive to what Quakers are doing, and are influenced by what they do, as evidence that global environmental destruction is not a religious or moral matter, and can be given a low priority.
A welcome for the ‘green’ Quaker
I found my way to the Religious Society of Friends by a circuitous route via the Peace Movement. The nature of my religious exploration might have suggested that an Eastern religion, such as Buddhism, might have been more appropriate. But, in spite of not having a Christian upbringing, I wanted a spiritual home that had its roots in this country. I now see that need as part of my growing sense of the presence of the past as the formative influence on life. There are many people who have beliefs and concerns which resonate with my own, inside and outside the Society. I hope that when the Society of Friends does fully take on ‘green’ concerns, more people will realise that they are welcome to become ‘green Quakers’.
There are already many Friends who regard what are usually referred to as ‘environmental issues’ as more than just a series of practical problems requiring regulation and legislation. The phrase ‘the Integrity of Creation’ captures the spirit of this whole area of concern far better. I hope that, in such a spirit, more Friends will come to see the task of improving our relationship with the planet as being central to living with spiritual, moral and practical integrity.
I am very grateful for the loving support I have received from members of ‘Quaker Green Concern’ in writing this essay. I hope that it may encourage and confirm others who have discovered the mission to nurture and heal our damaged but still lovely earth.
-40-
Blaikie, Piers & Harold Brookfield, Land Degradation and Society (Methuen, 1987)
Carter, Vernon Gill & Tom Dale, Topsoil and Civilisation (University of Oklahoma Press, 1955)
Chaitlow, Leon, Stone Age Diet (Macdonald Optima, 1987)
The Environment Digest Panther House, 38 Mount Pleasant, London WC1X OAP
Fukuoka, Masanobu, The Natural Way of Farming (Japan Publications Inc, 1985)
Goldsmith, Edward et al, 5000 Days to Save the Planet (Paul Hamlyn Publishing, 1990)
Gradwohl, Judith & Russell Greenberg, Saving the Tropical Forests (Earthscan Publications, 1988)
Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha (New Directions Paperbook, 1951)
Lovelock, J E, The Ages of Gaia (Oxford University Press, 1988)
Margulis, Lynn & Dorian Sagan, Microcosmos (New York: Summit, 1986)
Mollison, Bill, An Introduction to Permaculture (Tagari Community Books, 1991)
Mollison, Bill, Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future (Island Press, 1990)
Simmons, I G, Changing the Face of the Earth (Blackwell, 1989)
Sheldrake, Rupert, The Presence of the Past (Collins, 1988)
Sheldrake, Rupert, The Rebirth of Nature (Century, 1990)
Velikovsky, Immanuel, Worlds in Collision (Abacus, 1950)
-41-
‘Green’ living organisations [as in original pamphlet]:
Life Style, Margaret Smith, Manor Farm, Little Gidding, Cambs PE17 SRJ
The Movement for Compassionate Living (The Vegan Way), Kathleen & Jack Jannaway, 47 Highlands Road, Leatherhead KT22 8NQ
The Permaculture Association ( Britain), Old Cuming Farm, Buckfastleigh, Devon TQ11 0LP
Whose World?, c/o St Ambrose Church, 395 Liverpool St., Salford M6 5RU
Chris Marsh graduated in mathematics and made her career in business systems analysis and management consultancy, with a break for child rearing and a period of school teaching. Early influences inclined her towards socialism, pacifism, environmentalism and atheism. After serious illness, she discovered the personal growth movement and spiritual exploration. She joined the Quaker Universalist Group in 1987 and became a member of the Society of Friends in 1989. She now divides her time between environmental education, studying and writing. She considers that the ability to communicate ideas is essential to full understanding, but that, at the deepest level, experience is more important than words.
The author can be contacted by email. (A few printed copies of this pamphlet are still available.)
In this thought-provoking essay the author explores the origins of the fundamental assumptions underlying our civilisation, and how this has led us to severely damage the environment in which we live.
We are invited to question the way we think and live now, and to consider the need for a new form of religion based on the unity and equality of all beings.
She argues that improving our relationship with the earth’s life support systems is central to living with spiritual, moral and practical integrity – and suggests an important role for Quakers in bringing about a shift to a more sustainable path, and a new human consciousness.
A permaculture design for a kitchen garden
Quaker Green Concern Publications
Price £2.20