What does ‘I’ really mean? Even the most seemingly inoffensive and benign words can be a deep reflection of our unconscious perspectives. It’s obvious that we would identify with our physical bodies, our experience of life comes through our sensory information, and we only have direct cerebral control over our body. But under further examination the boundaries of what we refer to as the Self become blurred. Are you any less you if you lose a leg? If you come down with a nasty case of amnesia are you still you? If the self is not predicated on your personal physical being or memories, then what? Is it possible that the Self could extend past the physical limits of our sensory inputs to the entirety of our environment and the world as a whole?

We already see society in terms of the body (e.g. the NHS is the backbone of this country, the Queen is the head of state), it’s not that radical to see the Earth as a living being that we participate in. Can we not see that this metaphor of the body can extend ad infinitum; the forests as the lungs, and the water cycle as the blood/circulatory system). The future of the earth - and by extension, us - relies on the health of its organs: the trees, the fungi, the sea meadows, the insects, the animals. We are one with the earth, yet we continue to cut away at it, pollute our body, poison ourselves, with either no respect for this greater being, or an unwillingness to accept our connection to it.

 We refer to nature and the materials of the environment as ‘resources’, reducing its divinity merely to how much utility it has to humans, or how much market value it holds. Is there not something innately valuable – even sacred –  within the forests, the sea, the air? 

It is becoming increasingly acknowledged that the amount of timber we can extract from the earth is finite, there is only so much dumped plastic the oceans can put up with, there is only so much we can pollute our air before it poisons us. However, it seems that this utilitarian logic is counterproductive to the environmental cause, because it utilises the same underlying presuppositions of the system it opposes, namely, seeing nature and the environment purely in the ways it benefits or profits us rather than recognising its sanctity. This is a continuation of the pervasive individualistic logic; if ultimately the only thing that matters is the individual, then we can only see our relationships in terms of how it benefits us (comparable to the act of networking instead of forming a connection with someone).

We must recognise the symbiotic nature of our relationship with the planet and our place as part of the whole. A true connection with the Earth is imperative to our personal and collective wellbeing, especially in a time where materialism and post-enlightenment rationalism threatens the future of our planet, including us.