Retelling the story of humans and nature, ch. I-V
Deze schilderijenserie is onderdeel van mijn overkoepelende project 'Retelling the story of humans and nature', waarbij ik verbeeldingskracht en storytelling inzet om verandering in gang te brengen binnen het klimaat- en biodiversiteitsvraagstuk. Om naar een intrinsiek duurzame toekomst te bewegen zullen we moeten hereiken hoe we zijn als mens, en bevragen welk verhaal we als samenleving willen omarmen. Dit project vormt een gezamenlijke ontdekkingstocht naar nieuwe (kunst)belevingen die helpen ons wereldbeeld te kantelen.
'Retelling the story of humans and nature' is gebaseerd op de gelijknamige TED talk door Damon Ganeau.
Grootte: ca 2,3 x 1 m
CHAPTER I | THE BEGINNING
Once upon a time, the majority of people on planet Earth had a deep reverence and respect for nature. They saw very little separation between themselves and the world around them. Many cultures saw nature as a giving parent. The plants and the animals were their relatives. Indigenous Australians saw themselves as custodians of the land, while the ancient Chinese considered themselves reverent guests of nature. Even prominent figures of Rome, like Ovid and Seneca, argued that mining shouldn't be permissible as it was too abusive to the natural world.
CHAPTER II | THE OVERTURN
But then things started to change.
Word spread that one God had given the people dominion over the Earth. Sounds allright, said the people, passing on the news to friends and relatives, missionaries, kings.
But wait, there's more, said a couple of fancy-looking men in the early 1600s. They said that they were from the scientific revolution. We must hound nature in her wanderings, said the first man. Francis Bacon, the father of modern science. We must dig into her inner chambers. Make her your slave, shake her to her foundations. Yes, said the men. Sounds allright.
The second man then chimed in. His name was René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy. He added that animals were mindless machines to be mastered and exploited at will. Well, that's a relief, said the people.
This meant that nature was no longer seen as a living thing, but as a machine to be manipulated for the benefits of mankind.
The humans went to work, penetrating all of those inner chambers. They tunneled her bossom for coal and metals. They scraped and ploughed her skin with their tractors. They took chainsaws to her forests and filled her waters with waste. The new story had spread across the globe. Humans had asserted their dominance. They built wondrous things and improved the lives of billions of people, particularly in specific regions.
CHAPTER III | THE ANTHROPOCENE
Until one day, their scientists began to notice. Her animals are decreasing. Her atmosphere is heating. But still the humans carried on. You see, they couldn't hear the scientists because the facts don't matter much if they don't fit the story.
The story was so embedded that success was measured by financials alone, while the living world that allowed the gains was out of sight. And the story was so embedded that when researchers looked at the names of trees, birds, flowers, and other keywords relating to nature, used across millions of books, songs, and movies from 1900 to 2014, they found a dramatic decline. The humans were spending seven hours a day on their screens. So not only were they experiencing fewer stories and actual experiences of nature, but they were being bombarded by up to 10,000 advertisements a day, largely for products that were inflicting even more ecological damage.
Nature was being hounded in her wanderings, and yet the humans remained trapped in their story, trapped in their cultural programming, like goldfish in a tank. So when those same scientists were screaming that the Amazon rainforest was nearing a tipping point that would turn her into a savannah, still the humans did nothing.
Because to them, those trees that were home to thousands of species of animals, those trees that sent nutrients to each other via underground fungal networks, those trees that transpired moisture into the air to create rainfall that would feed crops in countries thousands of kilometres away. Those trees were just pulp for toilet paper or space for more cows. Those trees were worth more dead than alive because that's what the story had told them.
CHAPTER IV | THE RETELLING
But then something remarkable happened. It started with the children who began to take to the streets. It started with the farmers who chose to stop fighting nature and instead rebuild their soils. It started when the indigenous people, who for centuries had been reminding everybody of their story, were finally being listened to. And it started when nature herself, through fires and storms, through droughts and rising waters, forced her way back into the people's lives and demanded their respect.
A new regenerative story about human beings and nature was emerging. But of course, it wasn't a new story at all. It was the retelling of an old story. But this time, the old story was supported by the science. And it was telling the people that every breath they took was dependent on trees and phytoplankton, and that trillions of bacteria and fungi lived on them and in them and kept them alive. Viewing the natural world as separate to humans was now empirically false. Humans are nature.
But the science was also telling them that plants could see. They could smell, hear. They could learn and store memories. The dolphins gossiped and spoke in local dialects. Elephants held ceremonies for dead relatives, and that termites had built an underground metropolis the size of the United Kingdom.
The same scientific inquiry that had led to domination and extraction had gone so deep into nature's bosom that it was revealing her secrets. And her secrets were that she was anything but mechanistic, that she was deserving of the utmost reverence and respect, and that the original story had been right all along.
CHAPTER V | THE FUTURE
Nobody knows how this new but old story ends, because it is still being written. But if it is to have the Hollywood ending, if we are to break free from our cultural programming and pull off the miraculous comeback when all seems lost, then the new but old story will have to be rapidly spread and embedded throughout the culture. Therefore, it will need to be amplified by the storytellers, the musicians, the artists, those that can create the emotional connection to the living world once again and paint visions of a nature-filled future that people can see and feel and strive for. Because stories shape culture. Culture shapes leaders, leaders shape policies, and policies shape the system.
And perhaps, one day, a few hundred years from now, historians will look back to this moment and they'll see that amongst the chaos and the nihilism and the fear and the extinctions, that there were groups of people who chose to turn the page and begin to write a new chapter for humanity, a chapter full of diverse characters from a range of professions and places who came together to create a thriving, regenerative, ecological future.
