Divine nature

What is missing in modern ecology is the reverence ancient people had for the natural world. Peasants started their days with a respectful thought about the land, the seed and the divinities in nature. They may have made an offering in a rural altar. In contrast, our modern organic farmer using agroecology still thinks in materialistic ways: soil, organic fertilizers, insects, seeds, government regulations.

The Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians and other ancient people had imagined gods being part of the cosmos and the natural world. Aristotle and Theophrastus did their biological investigations at a time when Demeter, goddess of wheat, was one of the most powerful and beloved deities in the Greek pantheon. She was as close to being Earth as Earth itself. She was the mother of all things agrarian. The Eleusinian Mysteries honored Demeter. It was the greatest religious and agricultural celebration in Greece.

Dionysos, god of grape vines, wine, and rural life, was large in the life of the peasants and city rulers. Athens had two annual celebrations of Dionysos.

Athena, daughter of Zeus, goddess of wisdom, gifted the olive tree to Athens that named itself after this divine being. Athenians, in addition, honored Athena with the magnificent Parthenon, which they dedicated to Athena Parthenos (Virgin Athena). Pan was the god of flocks: domesticated animals. Artemis was the goddess of wild animals and the natural world. Aristaios, son of Apollo, was brought up by Gaia (Earth) and Horai (goddesses of the seasons). He was god of healing, prophesy, honeybees, beekeeping, shepherding, olive-growing, and cheesemaking.

These agricultural or ecological gods added an invisible and rarely spoken duty of environmental protection among the Greeks. The respect and love members of a family felt for each other metastasized to the broad and beautiful expanses of olive groves, vineyards, wheat fields, rivers, lakes, forests – the cosmos.

The Greeks, like the Chinese, worked with ethical traditions and politics infused with ecological wisdom. The idea of willfully driving a species to extinction was alien to them.

We need to revive this ancient ecology and make it a glue of our culture, transform it to ecological civilization. The Chinese have been trying to do that. And after Americans get rid of Trump, the country should join China in establishing a global ecological civilization.

The sooner this happens, the better. In 2019, Ecological civilization primarily means no more fossil fuels or pesticides and a rapid return to organic family farming.

Excerpted from: 'The Meaning of Ecology'. Counterpunch.org