Persephone Arbour

I did not inherit my mother’s green fingers. I know very little about geology, biology or ecology. However, I do know that this beautiful planet is being raped and pillaged, and I am one of the rapists and pillagers. This tragedy is also affecting the peoples of this planet and my unconscious behaviour is adding to that. This statement is not a public soul-searching extravagance. It is cold hard fact. We are all going to be inconvenienced – to an extent that could challenge our ideas of how we live on this frail planet forever.

It was 1996 and I was sitting at my desk, in Perth, Western Australia, looking out at the trees in front of my apartment, and further over the road in Kings Park. If I positioned myself, I did not see the walls of my apartment block or the busy road eight floors down. I just saw the trees, the pale blue early winter sky, and the morning sun glistening on the leaves. It was easy to forget that I was living in a city. Easy to forget that the trees I saw were for the privileged few, conserved and cared for, nurtured proudly, a tiny reminder of magnificent bush land that once grew where I sat. I turned on the radio and, by chance, the music playing was Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ from the Enigma Variations. This is passionate, grand and inspirational music – poignant – it fitted my mood as I attempted to write about the Earth.

That this Earth of ours is in deep distress is unarguable. That we, as one of the species living here, are also in deep distress is unarguable. My mind was shouting “I DON’T KNOW”. This is still true; I don’t know what the solution is.

I do know that it won’t be found in anger or fight. They have been tried. Education, ‘though vital and helpful, currently does not go deep enough, far or fast enough. My grandchildren may be imbued with a creative and loving attitude towards the earth, but will that come too late, will there be an Earth for them to care for?

It has been suggested that to be fully enlightened we need to find the place within us that can also love the anger, hate, greed, hunger for power that abounds in human form. I have not reached that place but can sense the pain that causes these passions and have compassion for that. But I cannot love the acts of violence, degradation, and war – in myself or in others. Everything that we humans do or think affects the Earth – it has to, we are interdependent. At best, maybe I can accept that this is how it is.

Once I had a conversation on this subject with an engineer friend of mine. He neatly, concisely and scientifically explained why, over the millennia, this era is no different from any other and why my fear and despair is ill founded. He explained that nature is a self-balancing system, and has always taken care – stays in balance. This self-balancing of our planet will happen anyway – with or without us. You could say that it has already started. Almost immediately after that conversation I happened to read these words:

“This (the state of the planet) is not an apocalyptic scenario, not a “scenario” at all. In fact, it is where we are; it is what is happening; it is terrifying and anyone not in a trance of denial knows it. No amount of wishful thinking and sophisticated drawing of pseudo-historical parallels can make this agony go away.” This is a quotation from Andrew Harvey’s Dialogues with a Modern Mystic. Harvey goes on to say “If we do not face our present danger in all its horror without consolation or illusion, we will never find in ourselves the passion and courage necessary to change. Catastrophe can become grace, and disaster possibility, only if we use their own energy against them by accepting what they have to teach us and acting with complete sincerity to transform ourselves.”

The whole equation is too vast for me to comprehend – and, deep down in my gut, the mystic’s words touch my soul, the scientist’s my intellect. The only way I know to marry the two is to follow my gut intelligently. I can only do what I can do and what I can do is to be willing to change myself, to increase my awareness, to deepen my love. We can all do these things. And, if enough of us make that our commitment – then change will happen, the 100th monkey effect if you like.

In June of 2005 I had the good fortune to go to the premiere of the movie An Inconvenient Truth in Los Angeles. Al Gore was there to talk to us as with great sincerity about his life-long concern with what is now actually happening to this planet. OK, yes, this man has been an extremely prominent politician – but don’t let that put you off! Those of you who have already seen the film will have made your own minds up, those of you who haven’t – go and see it.

In clear unvarnished language it gives information that we have to heed.

I realised, when putting out my recycling box the other day, that the title of Al Gore’s uncompromising film has a most important word in it: INCONVENIENT – how very true!

This movie touched a deep chord in me to do with my resistance to being bothered, concerned, put out in any way when living my quiet, reasonably well-ordered existence. Currently, I have a roof over my head and food in my belly. I have no inclination to be a martyr to a cause – I am too old and don’t have the courage. However, I do have grandchildren who will inherit the mess we, as a species, have got ourselves into. I cannot anymore separate myself from that species, by seeing myself less responsible than others – in this coming showdown we are all equally responsible.

There is a point of view that says: “it’s too late already so why bother?” Or: “it’s no good us fiddling about with our petrol and power usage and recycling our household rubbish. That is much too small an amount to make any difference.”

It seems to me that what is needed is the willingness to be inconvenienced, starting with you and me – then business and agriculture also politically and globally. The time for leaving it to someone else is well over. Can each of us from the poorest to the most wealthy find within ourselves the willingness to expect a little less, buy a little less, eat a little less, waste a little less, even earn a little less? In other words, can we all be willing to be at some inconvenience in order to help minimise the certain effects of our collective behaviour?

In a talk to the Social Investment Forum, Daniel Quinn, author of “Ishmael”, winner of the 1992 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship said

“. . . If we continue to pursue our (the ‘First World nations’) plan to consume the world until there is no more to consume, then there is going to come a day, as sure as hell, when our children or their children or their children’s children are going to look back on us – on you and me – and say to themselves, “My God, what kind of monsters were these people?” That idea doesn’t appeal to me at all. If you are like me and would like to avoid looking like a monster to your grandchildren, then I suggest you stop being silent about our plan to go on consuming the world until there is nothing left to consume”

That is something else I can do – I can stand up to be counted, to be counted in my frailties as well as my strengths. If I can forget this “me” that I think I am for just a few moments and speak out, without fear of censure or ridicule, the truths that I feel and see everyday, then maybe I will be able to live more fully what I speak.

When I die I want to be able to have looked my grandchildren in their eyes and be able to say: “I did my bit.” We did it in the world wars. This coming global change is potentially more damaging to the whole world than all the current and past wars put together.

So, continue to recycle, continue to speak out on environmental issues, continue to teach your children to respect this planet and each other – but most of all look within yourself, not with judgment, but with kindness. Encourage and be kind to yourself. Not to conquer mountains or do great deeds, these will happen on their own, but to flower and in that flowering everyone around you will be affected.

It is said that great oak trees from small acorns grow. I don’t mind being an acorn – do you?

Daniel Quinn’s ‘Ishmael’ is a groundbreaking and extraordinary book. The last paragraphs of the novel describe a poster and on one side it says

WITH MAN GONE,
WILL THERE
BE HOPE
FOR GORILLA?

The message on the other side reads:

WITH GORILLA GONE,
WILL THERE
BE HOPE
FOR MAN?

I have mentioned three people in this article, a scientist, a mystic and an environmentalist. In the current climate we need all three – the scientist to tell us how, the environmentalist to tell us why and the mystic to touch our hearts with compassion for every living thing.

All three have their place in the scheme of things. However if the scientist, environmentalist, you and me, are not willing to listen to the mystic, – then we may just be too late.