Along came Christianity and its Bible which in chapter one, Genesis, has 'God' saying "that Man shall have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth." and whole civilizations could be conquered and slaughtered in order to save the souls they didn’t even know they had. Jeremy Lent has written an excellant set of articles: Tyranny of the Prefrontal Cortex, Where he outlines the neuro-biologic functions of the prefrontal cortex, its ability to manipulate abstract thought and its role in shaping our worldview.
How the prefrontal cortex has come to dominate human consciousness is the biological side of the arguement that our worldview of division, body/soul, us/them, me/we is self imposed and totally wrong [bullshit]. It's wrong, but it is useful if you're interested in consuming the world, conquering and stealing its resources and fouling it beyond measure for your own gain: a capitialist, or a group of 'em:, a corporation.
Aristotle argued for our immersion, African, Asian, indigenous tradition embraced it. But self serving seperateness and the seductive power of dominion over all of creation has won out up until now in our western worldview. Along with our guns, germs and steel, we special creatures have dug ourselves into a hole so deep only the planetary forces of balance seem able to level it. The four horsemen may ride in on the horses of wind, rain, fire and drought but it's us who've bred, fed and trained those horses, its us who deserves to inherit the fury of Gaia's great leveling.
There could still be time for our insolance to dissolve, there might be time for a turning away from belief in the demon of dominion, from the capitialist/corporate greed for short term profits and their oximoron of endless growth. We might re-discover that we still live in the garden and that the one life we all share is 'the miracle'. We might yet turn over a better world to our children and grandchildren, but the Vegas odds on it happening before 'the big one' are real loooooooooooooong.
"Every seed is awakened and so is all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being and we therefore yield to our animal neighbours the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land." - Sitting Bull
