Original post from June 26, 2021 (and last of the archive posts!)
When you were two, you could use any means at your disposal to get what you wanted, even if what you wanted was utterly ridiculous. You could throw a tantrum and hit your parents with all your might, and if your parents had their wits about them, they could hold you compassionately until you calmed down, because you were too young to contain your emotions and you couldn’t really hurt them.
Of course when you got older, if you attacked your parents with all your might, you could do serious damage. Part of growing up is learning to contain strong emotions, and to consider others and the bigger picture.
As far as Gaia is concerned, humanity has grown. We’re at least at adolescent, if not teenage, strength. Today we are capable, through technology, of doing real damage on a planetary level. This demands far more discernment than what’s required of a toddler. But we continue to behave like little children, as if everything we desire is legit, as if there is no reason not to arrange the whole world according to whatever’s convenient for us. We can all find tons of examples in our own lives, myself included. We can all improve on a personal level, but the pattern requires a systemic response, on a collective level. It depends on all of us as individuals, but at the same time, at the level of the individual, it’s just not possible to do everything that’s needed.
In our society, it’s common for adolescence to include rebellion against parents. I don’t know if that’s also true in healthier cultures, but we all have to come to some kind of reconciliation in order for any continuous culture to exist at all. Humanity is like an adolescent who rebels against Gaia, believing they alone know how to run things. That’s called hubris, and the one sure thing about hubris is that it tends to end badly.
It’s not just a matter of strength. Charles Eisenstein notes that children play to develop their abilities, while adults use their abilities to serve the common good. What would it look like if humanity harnessed our abilities for the benefit of the entire biosphere? What miracles could we create? How satisfying would a life like that be, compared to the one we live now?