It’s the idea that a relationship to the vegetable matrix of the planet is what constitutes a Gaian resurgence; that it is plants that regulate the composition of the atmosphere, the temperatures of the oceans, so forth and so on, and that it is our lack of integration into that system that has precipitated the crisis of toxic twentieth-century potlatch civilization.
The whole planet is a vast potlatch: we are robbing our children and their children of any sort of recognizable future by basically grabbing it all for ourselves. No other society in history has been so callous to human values that it condemned generations unborn of its own children to live in a desert.
We’re trying to get a grip on who and where we are in the cosmos from a point of view not that of the American consumerist citizen. Something else—something larger, deeper, broader, more touched by the cosmic, more touched by a sense of the past and of destiny.
If you don’t know what’s going on—at a dinner party, in a corporation, in an environment—then the best course is to keep your mouth shut and pay attention and try to appreciate the situation. It’s ridiculous to attempt to seize the tiller of reality, because we don’t even know where we want to go!
The fact of the matter is: nobody knows what’s going on. Nobody knows. Nobody has the faintest idea. The best guesses are lies, you may be sure of it. And so to pretend that one human being will lead another out of the dark night of ignorance and into the shining light of truth is ludicrous. Absolutely grotesque! A product of this empowering of the human image that has gone on through several thousand years of dominator culture. If you want a teacher, try a waterfall or a mushroom or a mountain wilderness or a storm-pounded seashore. This is where the action is.
We have bought into the idea that we have to serve and behave and be enslaved, else chaos will engulf the world. We need to carry out our analysis of the situation to the point where we can embrace chaos, and see that chaos is the environment in which we all thrive. That’s how I’ve done it for years. You think I could have gotten away with this in the Soviet Union? I don’t think so. I require a society on the brink of social breakdown to be able to do my work. And I think a society on the brink of social breakdown is the healthiest situation for individuals. I don’t know how many of you have ever had the privilege of being in a society in a pre‐revolutionary situation, but the cafés stay open all night and there’s music in the streets, and you can breathe it, you can feel it, and you know what is happening. The dominator is being pushed. It never succeeds. It never is able to claim itself.
We’re talking about the fate of a whole planet. Why are people so polite? Why are they so patient? Why are they so forgiving of gangsterism and betrayal? It’s very difficult to understand.
