Today I stumbled across Harmony with Nature. The first thing that struck me was the image of the solar system with the planets in motion. It's mesmerizing. It is also humbling to see the scale so graphically and realize how small we are just in terms of our own solar system. The image label is fairly direct as well:
The solar system reminds us that, just as the Earth is not at the center of the Universe, neither are we humans the center of the Earth. We, along with the rest of the natural world, are all interconnected within the larger web of life.Harmony with Nature is framed by the perspective that Nature itself has an inherent right to exist, to thrive, and to evolve. This requires a non-anthropocentric relationship between humans and Nature, given our "shared existence on this planet." Earth Jurisprudence, the legal provisions that recognize the rights of Nature, is beginning to point to one of those rights as the right to well-being.
This is a new line of thought for me, but it fits very well into my current study of the relationship between religion and the environment. It appears to be a secular statement of the way in which our attitude toward the land beneath our feet supports/determines/reflects the way in which we treat that land.
Although I didn't initially find what I was looking for in regard to poverty, serendipity worked in my favor today to move me along the path to a clearer understanding about the relationship between the reality that we humans construct and the reality that is. We can quibble and argue about how much we, as humans, can really see of reality. After all, we are limited by our human senses and what our brain then makes of what we sense. Somewhere beyond the quibble, I believe, there is a concrete reality--a material universe--which we interpret in various ways.
One of the ways we in the Western world have interpreted that reality is to think--and then act as if--the world is ours to do with as we wish. It is ours to own, to make use of, to modify, to destroy. Sometimes we justify that with the notion that we were given the right to do so by a deity. Sometimes we justify that with the sure belief that we have the right of might (and science)--as long as we have the technology to reshape the planet and exploit it for our needs--why not?
Now perhaps we should look at human law (a human construct) and natural law (the final judge of our existence). Then perhaps we can consider reshaping human law to take into account the strength of natural law--the law that turns rain to acid and wind to destructive storms and green valleys to dust bowls. As Ethical Humanists we trust in the goodness and respect the worth of all human beings. We do not base our understanding of what is good, what is right, what is moral on laws given by supernatural hand. Nature, however, is an immensity that, I think, we ignore and disrespect at our peril. We won't, after all, destroy the planet, no matter how hard we try, but we can make it uninhabitable for humans. Perhaps human law should make it clear that violating Nature's laws puts us all in jeopardy.
