GAIA's SYNERGETIC UNDERSTANDING ...

[Michael Grove]

I write about planetary-scale ecosystem destruction but, importantly, I also focus on our species’ extraordinary capacity to adapt; this has been key to our success in the past – and it is key to surviving our future. There are radical, yet pragmatic, solutions to our crises. But fear of what will happen if we don’t act is imprisoning people in a mindset that makes alternatives seem unthinkable. I am frequently told my solutions are unrealistic and will never happen; that people would rather fight each other in wars than adapt to share food and land, for instance. We make our own future, even if it’s hard to see the process. So let me try to make the case for hope.

We are living inside the imagination of our ancestors. Everything we see around us exists only because it first took shape in somebody’s mind. Ideas such as democracy, public libraries, the abolition of slavery, municipal sewage, aeroplanes, seatbelt regulations, eating with cutlery, the very building you’re sitting inside right now … they were all birthed in a person’s imagination, then actively formed into a shareable vision that others could collectively mould, modify, reimagine and nurture in their minds. Eventually, a concept that once existed solely inside a person’s mind – an idea that may have seemed impossible, wildly unachievable, even crazy to that person’s society – became our unremarkable reality, part of what is normal.

This [IS] in[DEED] the very magic that
made our wonderful, imperfect world.

[Michael Grove]

[IN] the context of my own long-standing

connessione with trees, and most particularly my

soul-mate Linnie & I's custodianship of an ancient

oak woodland, in Wales, I can well empathise with

GAIA Vince's statement that even "Farmers are

fighting back by planting trees and shrubs that

help keep solis moist, buffer the winds and slow

run-off of rainwater."