Animism is the “primitive” belief that everybody, every animal, vegetable and mineral is sacred. That seems naïve to the current mind-set, influenced so thoroughly as it's been by the war-mongering religions, the religions that think “man” is the only creature worthy of respect, that the Earth is a dead and inert thing to be used. This mentality has so saturated the collective consciousness that even so-called environmentalists talk about “managing” the environment while promoting economic growth. And so-called feminists...white women...demand to be able to live up to the sick, dysfunctional model of white men.Nature and womankind have both been defiled by male supremacy (as have men...not that many would admit it). But environmentalists and feminists both foolishly cling to the idea that we can have it all...a petroleum-based, military-industrial complex with run-away consumerism and intact eco-systems? Hardly. And egalitarianism? In your dreams, sister. The environment is not an issue, a thing, somewhere out there, or a puzzle to work out. It's who we are, underneath the self-important blather. And women are only second-class citizens if they buy into the artificially created need to demand rights from something that is not right. Doing that is not feminism. It's misogyny.
Western civilization has made a mockery of Life, itself. It has brutally domesticated humanity into accepting the most ridiculous, unsustainable absurdities as truth. And being domesticated, we cannot see outside of our cage. We believe it necessary to our survival, trying only to make for ourselves a more comfortable captivity. Indigenous peoples had it right. But we've killed most of them. And the survivors...well, they're confined to unimaginably miserable reservations, situations no living thing should have to endure. The thing we call civilization, the past 5,000 years of arrogance, stupidity and fear is the problem. Nothing will get better until we get off our high horse, stop imagining ourselves the straw boss of every animal, vegetable and mineral in existence. The natural world is the only model that makes any sense because it's the only model that's real.
If we forgot the artificially constructed paradigms of the heteropatriarchal religions...and they're more a part of us than we like to believe, even when we've rejected them...and remembered Nature, everything would improve. Nature, who's been working on herself for Time Immemorial is Infinitely Intelligent. Compared to her, our foolish systems of logic, ethics and politics are a joke. The wisdom, sentience and eternal patience of a river or a mountain range or a desert can tell us everything we need to know, if only we had ears to hear. The perfection of the stars, the heart-breaking beauty in the veins in a leaf, the enduring phases of the Moon, the delicacy and strength of a spider's web, dewy in the sunlight, or the way a flock of birds move together with such synchronicity shows us, if only we had eyes to see, that we too are made of the same stuff, part of the circle of life.
If we lost faith in the medical industry and regained faith in ourselves, being again able to listen to our bodies, understand the wisdom of plants, we'd avoid the horrible sicknesses effected by our sick society. We wouldn't “need” to be cut, poisoned and burned.
There is a Voice crying out from what little is left of the Wilderness. Why can't we just shut up, already, and Listen?
Anne has finished her first novel and is busy peddling it to agents and publishers. She can be found wandering the streets of Crestone, CO and hanging out in Internet cafes. Contact her at annepyterek@gmail.com
