It is a mild spring day in England, and I am on a passenger train headed for central London. I have a couple of unremarkable errands to run, and I am in no great hurry.
In my carriage, I overhear a young child ask a grown-up one of those deceptively challenging questions that infant minds like to slip into a conversation from time to time. The inquiry is this: “What is the world?”
The adult’s response is not especially illuminating, and so I begin to ponder the question myself, which, if nothing else, gives me an activity for passing the time. Staring through the train window, into a rolling blur of first suburbia and then inner-city high-rises, I consider and reject a series of possible answers, none of them seeming suitable for an infant audience.
Soon, the weak sparks of inspiration cease entirely, and I revert to my habitual distraction of track-side detritus. A snagged plastic bag here. Several crushed beer cans there. The discarded helmet of a railway worker. And, inevitably, some further entries into that unending succession of lost soccer balls: a small white one, a medium-sized blue one, large orange and red ones… The series grows, and I slip into a reverie.
At last, the train begins to slow, with my destination nearing, and I concede defeat with respect to the initial question. But I am reluctant to allow my cerebral exertion to go to waste, and so I decide to alter the question to something that I feel might be easier to answer, still in a way that would satisfy a young child. The new poser is this: “What is our place in the world?”
The view through the window is now backdropped by the decadent towers of financial empires – a familiar scene and one that I try to shut out. In the foreground, though, near the edge of the trackbed’s chunky gravel, something catches my eye. It is a lidded glass jar – miraculously intact – and from it a mental picture begins to form. The world, in my conjured-up image, is a tightly sealed container packed with innumerable spherical objects of almost-infinite variety – or, put more simply, a huge jar of marbles. And the place of humans? Just one of the orbs.
Here is a visual metaphor that represents us as one species among a vast number of unique beings – all contained within the same system, all living in the same home. I will happily concede that the analogy is far from profound; but it does give me something to play with as I step off the train and begin my stroll through London’s streets.
While I walk, it is of the following that I think.
* * *
We would not need to travel too far back in our history to encounter a prevailing worldview of humans as just one constituent within nature’s assortment of living beings (I will stress the word prevailing here, because such a worldview clings on till this day in Indigenous wisdom). However, during the most recent part of our species’ long timeline, the dominant viewpoint – owing to a variety of causes that I will not explore here – has slowly but radically shifted. Beginning with ideas birthed during classical antiquity, or perhaps a little earlier, we have somehow extracted our single marble from the sealed container and then, more remarkably still, turned this sphere inside out, so that the jar and all its remaining contents are now enwrapped by us. The enterprise of modern humanity has become the outline that circumscribes our conception of the world. Our perception of nature has been inverted.
This extraordinary distortion – with a sleight unrivalled by any magic trick – is evident when we talk of nature as being a component of our human economies (rather than the other way round). It is seen, too, when we describe the ecosphere in terms of ‘natural resources’. More subtly, it affects our perception of the world when we spend time outdoors. At least in more heavily developed parts of the world, nature has become something that we visit, demarcated as a scattering of islands in the human sea. We leave our homes; we drive our cars, sometimes for many miles; and only then do we step into a more-than-human province, with our maps confirming the boundaries of enclosure. All the while, the Earth as a whole is being steadily degraded and homogenized, in accord with our assumption of planetary ownership.
* * *
On my stroll, with the errands complete, I reach one of London’s royal parks – an area of green enclosed by grey. Finding an unoccupied bench, I sit down, spend a few minutes observing my surroundings, and then reach into my bag for some reading material. What I dig out is a classic environmental paper. I have cast my eyes over the artivle before, and I already know that it will resonate deeply with my present train of thought.
* * *
In a stark challenge to our acceptance of the current state of affairs, the environmental scholar Roderick Nash has attempted to gaze a thousand years into the future of our species’ timeline and outlined four possible realities (Nash’s article is available with a free account).
- The first, his wasteland scenario, describes a “trashed, poisoned, and used-up planet that can support only a pathetic remnant of its once-miraculous biodiversity and civilization.”
- In the second possibility, his garden scenario, “Our species has occupied and modified every square mile and every planetary process from the oceans to weather to the creation and evolution of life […] Dammed rivers flow clean and cold (but without much diversity of life) and waving fields of grain stretch to the horizon. The only big animals around are those we eat.”
- The third scenario is one that Nash labels future primitive. In it, a relatively small total human population pursues a hunter–gatherer existence. Nature can flourish once more, but “the extraordinary achievements and breathtaking potential of civilization are lost.”
- The fourth and final scenario, like the prevailing perception of nature today, is one in which boundaries are employed. This time, though, the limits are placed around human development. The vision, which Nash terms Island Civilization, sees technology not being discarded, as in the future primitive scenario, but instead being harnessed responsibly. A reduced global population of humans pursues technologically advanced lifestyles within 500 widely scattered units, each enclosed by a 100-mile circular perimeter. On the rest of the Earth’s surface, fences have fallen, dams have collapsed, and non-human life thrives. Humans are permitted to leave their enclosed units for low-impact holidays. Or they can forego modern technology to live as full-time hunter-gatherers in the wilderness. But a high-tech existence beyond the boundaries is prohibited.
By Nash’s own admission, this fourth possibility would rely on “amazing new technology,” not least in the domain of energy. For the more technoskeptical among us, it may seem dubious to hinge anything on such developments, but his speculation does at least serve as a useful thought experiment. And with both the future primitive scenario and Island Civilization, Nash has certainly undone the inversion of nature to which I refer above.
Nash also concedes the following: “Island Civilization may not be the only answer to the big questions hanging over our species, but you can’t deny it is an answer.” Crucially, then, while all four of the presented scenarios are plausible, they are not offered as an exhaustive set of possible futures.
Another possibility, I believe, is a future world in which human cultures have not only continued to flourish but done so without a retreat into small bubbles of civilization. Moreover, no seismic leaps in technology have been needed along the way. What we have done instead is simply this… For the sake of both our own species and the more general flourishing of life, we have resolved to take less for ourselves and leave more for others. We have rediscovered how to coexist as a member of an ecosystem rather than living as the master. We have repaired ecological degradation and fragmentation with continent-scale restoration. And we have regained our reverence for the diverse panoply of beings with whom we share this one exquisite home.
We can give this vision a name. We can call it a World Rewilded.
* * *
The time has come for me to head back towards the train station and leave the city centre. During the return walk, along street after building-lined street, nature does not gift me a fitting moment of symbolism with which I can conclude this piece. There is no peregrine falcon in freefall, ripping through London’s grey. Nor is there a dolphin cutting up the murk of the River Thames. But I want to end with a message of hope, nevertheless.
Yes, there are major factors – climate breakdown being one of them – that will continue to challenge the aspirations of rewilders. But through every new rewilding project that is begun around the globe, and with the strengthening of the philosophy that binds them, progress is being made towards a better world. This is one where we will honour our Earth-bound kin, making sure there is room for them to thrive, and in which they, in turn, will support us in leading mentally fulfilling and physically healthy lives over the long run. This is one in which our marble will sit securely inside the jar.
Joe Gray is a Founding Editor of ‘The Ecological Citizen’, Editor-in-Chief for Rewilding Successes and a writer for us at the GRA. In this series, which is named Rewilding Reflections, Joe is taking us on some thoughtful journeys through the wider dimensions of rewilding.