A thinking community? Yes!!!

 Cloudy, dreary, snowing. Bitter cold through New Years weekend. These are indeed the darkest days of the year, both literally and psychologically. And the pundits tell us the new year will bring lots of uncertainty. All of which, plus spending too much time on social media, has me wondering about taking  the shifting baseline syndrome from ecology, applying it to the natural, cultural, social and political worlds (economic fits in there somewhere) and working on restoration sociology or anthropology.

Aldo Leopold refers to a “thinking community” as he writes about a land ethic.

Leopold recognized that his dream of a widely accepted and implemented set of values based on caring – for people, for land, and for all the connections between them – would have to “evolve… in the minds of a thinking community.”

“It evolves in the minds of a thinking community."

Photo by J. Harrington

I believe we need to focus on creating a thinking community as well as "simply caring: about people, about land, and about strengthening the relationships between them.” Much of the behavior we see, read about, and too often exhibit is based very little on either thinking or caring. We have become reactors (other-directed) rather than actors (inner-directed, check The Lonely Crowd).

Slowly, we are learning how to do restoration ecology more effectively. Perhaps that means we can actually (re)create a thinking community that honors a land ethic and will be better prepared to respond to whatever the James Webb Space Telescope will soon begin transmitting.

I think I’ve just added to my New Year’s wish list.

Remember

Joy Harjo - 1951-

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

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