Sympoesis
Despite the widely inaccurate view that we live in or on an environment and must therefore protect what we depend on, we are made up of environments (4 billion years worth of co-evolving associations, living and non-living) and moreover, provide environments for trillions of bacteria, archaea, fungi, viruses, etc without whose active collaboration not a single process of our bodies’ processes would work. Every cell is literally dependent on others. Most of our bodies are full of DNA (such as it is) belonging to others. Even viruses make up close to 10 percent. They are the great manipulators and archivists of code. Ultimately, we cannot live without the active participation of innumerable others. Guess we need an internal statue of liberty welcoming immigrants!
We are not independent, discrete creatures, but are consortial beings, co-evolving and collaborating with all the fields of forces, living and non (both co-extensive participants) that are making things happen, change, and become. We too must change entirely our no longer quaint notion that God created the universe 13 plus billion years ago JUST FOR US all in preparation for his special creation MAN to exist for a brief spell.
Everything negative (not supportive of collective and intra-relating ecosystems) that humans do--our culture is particular aggressive--say warfare, is ultimately an assault on the ecosystems we are part of and shape. A very few nations, seem to have grasped that we are part of the processes and have given “Nature” (I don’t mind if you prefer a different term) full rights—that is, the nested sets of intra-connecting eco-systems have rights as any one of us do; I would argue that all laws and rights must come from that fundamental one…, not the other way around.
In short, we must develop a new paradigm of thinking, where human culture is a positive and functioning collaborator in the webwork of co-extension, across species, across kingdoms, across domains, across non-living but vibrant entities and fields that make life possible. We never go alone—always WITH others. I understand that this is a tall order, running counter to everything we’ve have been trained to believe. I am certain that it cannot be done without democracy and this can’t be done without an overhaul of the philosophical—and erroneous—notions that make this impossible. Then maybe would could begin to live with the problems we have created, work to make them healthier, and ultimately bring human culture into something worthy of its potential—an emergent form of beauty, an event worthy of note.