Nature Disconnect in 7 "Easy" Steps (Part 2)

Yahweh

Last week's blog considered the first (of 7) steps in how we became disconnected from nature. This week presents the next 3 steps.

Step 3. Greek Duality,

Around 2,500 years ago, and concentrated very much in Greece and surrounding areas, a number of philosophers made important contributions to western philosophy. A key element in the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, and dozens of others, was the idea of duality. Plato it was who synthesized much of Greek thought into the dualism of body and soul.

Plato’s dualism however, was not value-free. Plato prized and privileged the soul over the body. He envisaged the soul as being trapped in the prison of the body. In one of his Dialogues Plato writes that, ‘we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself.’ The body, and by inference, all nature, was to Plato of little worth in this dualistic conception.

Plato’s student, Aristotle, was forthright in his conclusion that, ‘it must be that nature has made all things for the sake of man (sic).’

The Greek philosophers took us another step away from nature, and their dualistic thought quickly transformed spiritual ideas and concepts.

Step 4. Patriarchy, and Sky-gods

Greek dualistic thinking was being developed during roughly the same time period as the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) was being written. The influence of dualistic thinking on the writers of those texts should not be underestimated. Along with the undeniable fact that close to 100% of writing at this time (in both Greece and the Middle East) was undertaken by men, there was little impeding the step away from Earth-based gods and goddesses, towards sky-gods who were predominantly male in concept.

In doing so, the Earth and nature-based goddesses (primarily) were being systematically debased, disregarded, and discounted. None moreso perhaps, than Gaia (the personification of Earth in Greek mythology) driven out of human beliefs by the arrival of the sky-gods and later monotheism. More latterly though, Gaia has made somewhat of a rebirth via the Gaia hypothesis co-formulated by chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s.¹

Not only were goddesses being banished, but, centuries later, so too were those who remained loyal to the natural rhythms of the world and the female spirits that dwelt in nature. From the middle of the 15^th century through to the middle of the 17^th century, in Europe, it is estimated that up to 60,000 witches (predominantly women) were burnt, hung, or drowned because of their holding to the cycles of nature and the reciprocity in that relationship. 

Patriarchal thinking along with the dualism of body/soul (or body/mind) took the cultures of Europe and south-west Asia another step away from connection with nature.

Step 5. Monotheism and Transcendence

For many thousands of years the peoples living in Mesopotamia, the Levant, SW Asia, Egypt, and the eastern Mediterranean had been worshipping a number of gods and goddesses. The emergence of male-dominated sky-gods (referenced in the previous section) foreshadowed the appearance, in the first millennium BCE of monotheism.

The single God of the Bible appears to have been the joining together of two gods: Yahweh, a warrior god of the Levant, and El, the father of all other gods in Canaanite pantheons. From beginnings as pantheism, religion in this part of the world moved through polytheism, to monolatry (the practice of worshipping one god, but recognising that others exist) to an out-and-out monotheism and rejection of all other theologies. The prophet Isiah, for example, writes, ‘I am the Lord, and there is no other: There is no God beside me.’

This creed – that there is one and only one god – seems to have emerged only in this part of the world. The Biblical scholar, j. Snodgrass, a little sardonically, remarks that, ‘In three million years of humanity on earth, the idea that a father-god did it all himself popped up in (just) one spot three thousand years ago.’²

However, it wasn’t simply monotheism that took us a further step away from nature. It was the notion of transcendence that came with it, leading towards the idea that paradise was no longer here on earth, but was located in Heaven and the after-life.

(An aside: There is a scene in the doco-film Living In The Time Of Dying³ in which the Native American elder and author, Stan Rushworth, is being interviewed by the film’s host, who is of European heritage. In answer to a question, Stan wryly declares, ‘We are born into Paradise, you guys were kicked out.’ It is a poignant comment on the difference between the worldview of many indigenous and nature-based peoples and that of the dominant culture that arose in Europe and SW Asia.)

The denial of Paradise on Earth was a further step dislocating us from nature and intensified Plato’s distaste for the body.

Although those living during the first millenium BCE and the first millenium CE probably did not consider monotheism as having a significant impact upon how we related to the earth, the magnitude of the step can be clearly seen from our present-day privilege of hindsight.

Next weeks blog will consider the last two steps leading us away from a connection with nature: The Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.

Notes:

1. The Gaia hypothesis proposes that the Earth is a living, single, self-regulating, synergistic, complex system.

2. j. Snodgrass, Genesis And The Rise Of Civilization, USA, 2014.

3. Available for viewing at https://www.livinginthetimeofdying.com/  See also, my review of the film here.