For a while now, I have thought that maybe it’s time for a new kind of existentialist philosophy. A philosophy that doesn’t view the human being as the active, acting, controlling entity, and nature as a passive background.
We are connected to nature, and when nature is polluted, ill, and reactive in the shape of natural disasters, we are affected. This is obvious, and yet we choose to turn a blind eye to this interconnectivity.
Maybe nature is the proactive entity in our time era? Maybe it is time for unity and humbleness in order to repair the lost balance between nature and human beings? Maybe it is time to rethink the existentialist understanding of freedom, or at least to update it?
French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905- 80) said that “We are condemned to freedom”. We are responsible for everything we do, and it is up to us to give our lives meaning. But maybe rather than being condemned to be free, we are condemned to be connected — with each other and with nature. Maybe this connectivity even holds our freedom or is the key to our freedom. Or perhaps more correctly put: within our connectivity lies our freedom.
Another existentialist, my existentialist heroine Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86), is known for having added to the existentialist plea for freedom: “To will yourself free is also to will others free.”And I couldn’t agree more. But perhaps we need to add nature to this thought?
Maybe to will ourselves free is not only to will others free, but also to will nature free — free and intact, or free and uncultivated, rewilded? To exhibit deep respect for nature. To allow for it to flourish and grow, as it was meant to, without trimming it and farming it and making use of it for unnecessary products and excessive food production, and without polluting it with product waste and plastic packaging.
Trees can grow old, very, very old. Most trees will live 80-100 years (so more or less the same as human beings), but some up to thousands of years of age.
The great basin bristlecone pine is supposedly the oldest tree in the world, and can reach an age of nearly 5000 years! But even trees that don’t get nearly that old are interconnected and interdependent of a network of roots that is thousands of years old.
Recently there has been lots of research hereon, and it is becoming acknowledged scientific knowledge. But in animist religions and indigenous tribes nature has always been alive, always been synergistic, always been able to communicate. It’s only our late-modern culture that needs scientific proof for everything.
Nevertheless, the notion of the natural law of interdependency makes me wonder if we humans too are unified by a symbiotic network that is invisible or operates “below” the surface?
Yesterday I went past our house-project (we are in the process of building a house from upcycled wood and river stones). I was super excited to see the progress of the house, but as I was driving down the small road to the house I realized something was wrong, or different. The light was changed, the sky more visible… and then I understood why. The beautiful, enormous tree next to the temple close by had been felled! It was lying on the ground like a defeated giant. Dragonflies swarmed around its (now vertical) tree crown. Resin was flowing down the huge tree stump.
The tree must have been at least 150 years old. Why would they take it down?? It provided shade, beauty and shelter for a multitude of small songbirds. I was devastated.
“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.” states Richard Powers in The Overstory.
I don’t know what will be made from the remains of this magnificent giant. But I doubt it will be anywhere near as beautiful and miraculous as the tree itself.
I later on found out that the tree was cut down because the head of the village feared that it could fall on the temple. But how could that ever happen? The trunk was around 10 metres in diameter and the tree had already withstood several earthquakes and intense storms.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash