Humans at the center of the world

The days when we had to dominate nature and its wild behavior are gone, or at least they are for most people. After Covid, after feeling the effects of global warming on our skin we now have a better understanding of nature. We respect it more.

The relationship we had with nature has always been aggressive (at least in western countries): bend the wild thing to your will and if you can’t then let’s invent some new machine that can do that for us. This has been our mantra for almost all human history. If you look back at what we did in the past, every conquest, every discovery of a new land was a discovery only for us. The planet already knew about it and never had the need to shout it out. That’s because of the false belief that sees humans at the center of the world, a world that we thought was ok to dominate. Even more: it was something we had to do to make sure our species would last.

But what happened is that our species became too strong and overpopulated the planet. All the problems we are now facing with global warming, globalisation and fast products to be used and trashed come from this reality: we are too much and we want too much from the planet.

Canary Islands volcano force hundreds to evacuated in La Palma

“Over 6,000 people have fled from lava that has buried hundreds of homes since the eruption began on Sunday. The evacuation of El Paso was ordered after lava started spewing from a new crack in the Cumbre Vieja volcano. Four earthquakes hit the island after the new eruption vent opened.”  BBC News said with a tone that is typical for journalists but that we should revisit as times have changed. Nobody is injured, just rich homes washed away by lava, and that’s because we have no real power against nature, we are the ones that have to adapt to it. We can enjoy till She lets us enjoy and then we have to go.

I understand it is hard though, it’s hard to turn your back and leave after you spent so much money and energy on a property, after you worked so hard to chase that dream. The illusion of having that amazing villa in the Canary Islands vanished in seconds. And that’s because we have followed the wrong preacher: it wasn’t the economical system that let us build that house. The real owner is mother nature, she knows what to do and when so it’s better to listen to her instead. If we don’t we may end with nasty surprises like this one.

Natural catastrophes such as a volcano erupting are the voice of nature, a voice that is tired to stay in silence, and so it erupts, shouting out all it has to say.