Regeneration and Recovery

 I'm sorry that this is yet another post about the worrisome circumstances in which we earth-dwellers find ourselves. I would rather be writing about something engaging like seagull eggs or earthworm castings! But the war in Ukraine has pushed me over the threshold, and I can't help wondering how we will be able to overcome all our obstacles to survival, given climate change, a deadlocked congress, wars, our philosophy of domination, valuing money before anything else, narrow thinking, and reluctance to change. So I've been delving deeply into things like regeneration and recovery as well as social, economic and governmental systems. I've also been reading about homo sapiens, what we were like when we first emerged from our long-ago ancestors, how we are different from other animals, how we have developed over the ages, what abilities we have. That last research was enlightening and somewhat calming. Despite all the warring factions in our populations today, we have so much in common. There is hope in that fact.

First I looked at the process that takes place when dramatic disturbances happen to individual organisms or ecosystems (wondering how much recovery capability we have). Some small beings like salamanders and newts have the remarkable ability to grow back whole limbs that are lost. Smaller multi-cellular organisms have even more adaptive regeneration capacity, growing a whole body from a small part. And as we move up to larger animals like us, we know from our experience that our bodies are always healing from injury, replacing red blood cells, re-growing skin, and many other responses to keep us healthy and functional. So earth's creatures on an individual level do have impressive abilities to restore themselves from injury.

Looking at the capacity of ecosystems to recover from catastrophic events was encouraging too. If the event was so profound that no soil was left, recovery can take thousands of years. But if there remains some soil, some seeds and roots, an ecosystem can repair itself relatively quickly (decades).  If a damaged landscape is somewhat contained so it is allowed to regenerate, nature can heal itself. Even without intervention by people, nature has a profound healing capability in ecosystems.

Then I looked at human systems. If I hadn't suspected this already, it was immediately clear that this is the sphere that is the most challenging, the area in which we need to make change in order to sustain our planetary home, at least for our particular species. From multiple sources, I read that we live in a society increasingly isolated, divided and angry. Our economic and social systems are extractive; our individuals deplete both tangible and intangible resources. Living within this framework emphasizes entitlement, individualism and apathy.  Jason Hickel writes: "We are a depressed, lonely and alienated society because we live in an economic system that is organized around artificial scarcity, exploitation and extraction." Sounds pretty grim. 

I read a number of recommendations from various individuals about how we could take on the massive task of re-organizing our culture, finding new values, new ways of getting along together. Some of them were impressive plans, but I couldn't help being discouraged. At least in our current atmosphere of non-cooperation here in the US, how would we convince anyone to undertake these huge changes? How could we find a way to help people trust each other enough to open their minds to new ways of life? Social change seems to only happen if people are allowed to participate in that change, let their imaginations look to hopeful and appealing ideas, work at it together. We need creative thinking and the willingness to leave at least some of the past behind.

In the beginning of this research, I was hoping to learn that our human cultures and societies, after getting into cataclysmic trouble, might eventually heal themselves. Maybe they have the capacity, as do our plant and animal ecosystems, to regenerate. Maybe our human dysfunction these days will get so bad that things have to collapse and a new and more balanced era will emerge. I would like to think this is true, though it would not be fun! I would like to think that our species, if deprived of our current lifestyle and attitudes, could slowly regroup into something more open and healthy. 

One thought emerges for me after all this study, and it's one that ecologists have been telling us for decades: we need to give up our self-centeredness and live as part of a wider family of life. Many Native American tribes lived this lifestyle before Europeans conquered them. And indigenous peoples from other parts of the world live as part of a wider living system. Perhaps the main cause of our troubles is that we have too often only looked to ourselves, to our personal needs, and have forgotten the natural systems that support us. We want to own, to dominate, to manipulate the world. We have tended to feel omnipotent, our heavy footsteps clomping over the planet in the pursuit of our solitary wishes. And in the process, we are destroying what sustains us.

Yet we all live within complex circles of living beings. We might feel lonely, but that may be because we don't see what is around and beneath us. We are indeed surrounded by miraculous cycles of birth, life, death. The natural world is full of fellow creatures.  We truly are not alone. If we started to pay more attention to the wealth and abundance of the earth, we might not have to hate people who disagree with us. Maybe our spirits would be replenished for we'd feel a visceral part of a wide community. 

I continually remind myself that I need to balance my awareness of the conflict and dysfuntion in the world with the positive happenings I see all around me: the people here at Prairie Hill who are planting soil-replenishing prairie, the folks who are working for peaceful interactions in their communities, the school children who are concerned about the environment and are doing something about it, the teachers and writers who inspire us to be better people, the huge wave of concerned earth-dwellers who together work for a more sustainable future.  Yes, we are living through challenging and sometimes frightening times. But it is also a time of hope and re-imagining. And no matter what the eventual outcome, the journey brings out our best.