Engaged Realism - Godzilla Vs Bambi

The father of permaculture, Bill Mollison, once said that the whole of human experience could be summed up in the phrase ‘think right or you’re dead’. He extrapolated from this survivors’ view of human history, the deductions that i) we have survived thus far and ii) we therefore have the experience, the nous, and the genetic predisposition to ‘right think’ our way beyond an increasingly bleak present. If we place these comments alongside the contemporary anthropological position, (that civilization has a pathological affect on human experience, not to mention the biosphere and all life within it, and that prior to civilizational modes of settlement and domestication of flora and fauna humanity existed in prevailingly healthy dynamic equilibrium with natural systems) we come to see that, as large mammals of the Pleistocene era, we human beings are embedded in a life-way that the vast majority of us have become profoundly ignorant about. And in our ignorance and traumatic ‘fall’ into a plethora of divisive ‘doings’ (e.g. the division of labour, within and without and the irredeemable alienation that flows thereafter) we have become creatures of ecocidal, destructive and life-fearing action. We have lost our being.

Yourmindfire wrote in his recent piece ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it…’ on this very site, of ways in which we can begin to engage with the scale and urgency of the issues we face as a species – and rightly drew our attention to many awareness-raising media and many first actions we can take. The purpose of this piece is to build on that lead, to begin the process of descent into the shadow territory of our slavery, our rage and our culpability – beyond which lie the farther shores of reclaiming our capacity to ‘right think’ and therefore survive and flourish. I contend that without this dimension, we are as good as lost – since any action we take will be partial, occluded, implicitly attached to fundamentally traumatised states – and therefore we will be acting from a hell-state, lashing out or rushing to fix surfaces, while diversities and depths unknown to us are ignored or even pushed extinct.

This piece is a candle flame in a cave – casting very little light, perhaps revealing the shudder of shapes that will terrify and haunt our imaginations, or awaken the primal fears in our bellies. It could blow out at any moment leaving us stranded in absolute darkness, perhaps on precipitous paths or in treacherous flooded sumps. There are no guarantees, no insurance policies, no–one to sue or complain to when reality bites. And the cave is no stranger to us either – once we lived here contentedly, sharing the space with the great bear and other teachers whom once we respected, and now we murder or exhibit as lifeboat gene-stocks in urban zoos. Older than Plato’s cave, deeper than Lascaux, further back than the petroglyphs and ochre marks can take us – we are beyond participation mystique, beyond our own ego-centred need for plastic convenience and motorway freedom – confronting our own innermost outer edge, between a world of death and a world of the potential of life. Back before evolution’s wrong turning.

Then suddenly there’s a film projected on the cave wall, who knows where its coming from – maybe your pineal gland, or that glowing crystalline intelligence way above our heads – a faun is eating green shoots of lush grass, while a huge and menacing shadow claw hovers ever closer to his beautiful innocent head. At this point the sage voice of Mollison cuts in again:

..most people are still irresponsible . . . and seem to be dangerously shortsighted when it comes to their ability to perceive the immutable barriers that we're bound to hit sooner or later. It's like that classic film short Godzilla vs. Bambi, you know. Humankind is flitting about carelessly — like the innocent Bambi — consuming enormous amounts of energy with no thought for the future. But Godzilla — those inescapable laws of nature — is breathing down Bambi's neck . . . the shadow of a giant foot, of the great paw that will soon come down, hovers over him..

This is the cave we sat in for decades with eyes closed, in deep meditation – whilst outside the world woke up to the wheel, and the plough, and the metallurgy of power, the 747 and every silicone hardware hi-tech breakthrough steam-driven nuclear techno-fix saviour that inhuman floridly stunted imaginations could concoct. Much beauty, much labour saving, a slice of ‘easier’ living, a growing distance from self and other, from all and nature, losing the rainforest for the sake of a flat-pack wardrobe. But in the cave there is still hope – as the Tibetan experience hints…

Tibet was very backwards and very violent until about thirteen hundred years ago. It was a violent, conquest-oriented place, actually. They had big dynasties and empires and harassed their neighbors and looted and pillaged and behaved just like we do now. This movement of inner revolution and nonviolence sprang up most powerfully in India, which is where the Buddha chose to be reborn in this cycle of history. It was a society that centralized enlightenment and made that the highest aim...

(Robert Thurman)

Something about an inner technology, humanely scaled, whether brought forth by Buddhas or preached by Christs gifted by Elders or whispered in scriptures of leaf and soil, these are reconnective clues – priest-surmounting, liberatory in their clearest expression – a doctrine of the cosmic child, the Age of Horus foretold by Crowley now arising in the folds of the medulla-cave-mind. ‘You’ve gotta get in to get out’ as Peter Gabriel told us, whilst animistically shamanising the daffodil.


The flame is flickering, I’m losing you, losing it – this was always the risk. A few last words before the light goes completely. Mollison moans again –

...there are two very distinct ways of looking at the land. One is to ask, "What can I demand this land to do?" That viewpoint — which is the prevailing philosophy of commercial agriculture — can lead only to the use of force on the fragile soil. A permaculturist asks instead, "What does this land have to give me?" Anyone who asks that question will naturally work in harmony with the earth to produce a sustained ecology...

And if we can’t love the soil, how can we love ourselves and our interdependence with the web of all earthly life? The soil that has no priest, no doctor, no ‘democratically elected’ representative to represent its interests, (just a growing army of ‘soil scientists’ to demarcate and document its passing) and yet without whom we all perish, taking a billion year branch of the life-journey with us, as we neuter the limb of life’s tree through our Bambi-like attachments to the image of our own specialness.

Or another drift of light across the dumbshow lens –

...the only sane response to the insanity of our postindustrial age is to gather together a few friends and commence to build the alternative, on a philosophy of individual responsibility for community survival...

But what? I’m not sure – I’m no expert, I don’t have the skills – I have no experience… I know these defences, they are also mine. But listen, who does it fall to to create the causes for survival and the thriving of life? Only You. And me. A final muttering from the troglodyte Mollison sheds a last candle daub on the matter, asked of responses to permaculture’s initial vision he responds:

Well, I can only say that there was a stunned silence at first, since the concepts were seen as being terribly radical. The ideas were intuitively accepted very quickly, though, by nonprofessorial people. And many of the enthusiastic responses came from women. In fact, 70 to 80% of the letters I now receive come from women . . . they seem to see immediately that we've got something here. On the other hand, scientists — male or female — don't see, mainly because they're used to teaching a passive and nonreactive system. Such individuals don't teach reactivity, and they don't practice activity. Everything is on the blackboard, and nothing is in the garden.

The light dies, darkness reclaims space – back where we came in – but are your eyes open or shut? Are we real enough yet? Can we please think right now?

KH
10.10.06

All Bill Mollison quotes from 'Permaculture - Ecosystems for the Future', interview in Mother Earth News (Issue #66 - November/December 1980).

Robert Thurman quote from 'Engaged Realism', interview in Mandala (October/November 2006).

IMAGES: Bambi Meets Godzilla, anonymous web-image in homage to the film Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969) created by Marv Newland; Permaculture Flower by David Holmgren