A report by Ianthe Lauwaert on Think OutWord’s ecology conference “Evolving the Future: Nature in the Human Being, The Human Being in Nature”
The action the human being undertakes in the world is determined by his perception. His perception comes forth out of his thinking. If we want to create a world worthy for the human being and for every life on earth, we will have to change our thinking.
Probably the most significant presence in the world is life. Life is everywhere and everything. All of nature is life. Yet, the human being seems to be able to forget this, and instead of recognizing himself, nature, society… as living organisms he looses himself in dead concepts and manipulates living processes. It seems as if we have forgotten that we are part of these living processes, that we are part of nature.
We must overcome the untrue and purely conceptual separation of the human being from nature. We can do this by remembering and reconnecting. We need to walk on the world in a way that heals it. I use the word ‘world’ – and not earth – because I believe it describes the interaction of the human being with the earth. And it is essential to understand that not only the earth and the human being need healing, but also and especially the human interaction with the earth (the world needs healing).
This was a big insight for me this weekend: I care for the earth not because of itself but because of my relationship, my interaction with it. And it is this interaction in particular that needs healing.
This weekend and learning more about Goethean Phenomenology and Permaculture not only brought me to this understanding, it also gave me insight into the reason why I want (need) to heal this interaction and into the ways of how I can do this. Because Goethean Science moves in between pure perception (the phenomena) and the purely ideal (thinking about the phenomena) it develops a thinking which is in line with life processes and is always related to what we interact with. For me, this is the thinking of the future because it takes its way of perception from the objects themselves rather than carrying past ideas one wants to put on them. It is a way of thinking which is alive and therefore truly human and natural. If we as human beings could develop this living thinking and with it perceive the world, our actions would become very different. They would be so much more connected with our human nature and with life that they would be so much more respectful and true.
Events like this weekend conference are therefore so important, as they shine light on the future which only we can create.