By Martin Hill, from Kosmos Journal, Fall/Winter 2008

Disconnection from nature is a recent occurrence. Humans have been deeply rooted in ecology and totally dependent on local climate and food sources for ninety percent of the time we have existed on earth.I think the need for direct connection with the natural world is dialed into our genes. Disconnection is making us dysfunctional.

Science has been telling us for some time that our way of life is threatening all forms of life including our own; unless we change direction we will end up where we are now heading—creating irreversible climate change, mass species extinctions and a collision with the natural limits of the planet.

However, there is another direction that I refer to in my ephemeral sculptures. They are made in nature and return to nature. In photographing and publishing these sculptures, I am trying to create a bridge that reconnects us with the reality of the natural world—a world that many of us now have little or no direct contact with in our modern daily lives.

Regardless, understanding and balancing our relationship with nature is now the most critical issue facing the world. How did we become so separated from nature, our source of life and inspiration? Many great thinkers, including Einstein, have suggested that the Newtonian mechanistic worldview that formed the basis of the industrial revolution is to blame. The machine metaphor holds that it is possible to understand whole systems by breaking them down and studying the parts. We have been doing this ever since, and we have become so specialized that it is difficult for us to see the effect we are creating on the whole system of the biosphere.

In order to change our collective consciousness towards nature we need a totally compelling new story. We need to embody that story into our lives and express it in different ways so that it eventually topples the opposing story, which presently is fueling our destructive culture.

The story must be simple, easy to identify with, emotionally resonant and evocative of positive experiences. I am passionately convinced that nature’s design principle is that story. The principle is based on cyclical processes; it is how nature has worked to maintain a dynamic balance on earth for 3.8 billion years. The recent human experiment with a linear take-make-waste industrial model of progress is proving inadequate for the 6.68 billion souls striving to live on the finite resources of our planet. Attempts at incremental improvement of this linear system may slow down its inevitable collapse but they will not turn it around—tinkering with the flawed model we have is never going to become the formula for a long-term sustainable future.

My ephemeral sculptures in nature are an attempt to communicate this story and draw us all closer to a deeper understanding of nature and the need to emulate her processes in our designed world. The sculptures are made from natural materials that return harmlessly to nature to become nutrients for new life. Sticks and leaves decompose to make soil, ice melts and flows to the sea, rocks are ground down into sand and so on. Discernible change is occurring around the world in communities who are acting in greater alignment with natural systems.

(image)

In her book Biomimicry, Janine Benyus described an emerging science that is creating innovations inspired by nature’s designs; they do not burn fossil fuels or disrupt biodiversity and outperform previous efforts in many fields of industry. By copying the systems nature has perfected through evolution we can dispense with our old and clumsy processes and learn new and effective ways to meet our needs fairly and in harmony with other life forms.

As a result, new design and manufacturing systems are being developed in which materials flow in continuous cycles from earth to earth, or product to product. All materials after a product’s useful life become nutrients for something else, either in nature or a new product. These new systems mirror nature in the way they work. They run on renewable energy sources with no poisonous chemicals or nature damaging processes. They also provide for human needs without the destructive effects associated with our traditional models of progress. When whole system thinking is deployed in collaborative endeavors, new levels of effectiveness are achieved with greatly reduced use of materials, energy and natural capital. Emissions to air, soil and water are safe and the concept of waste is eliminated.

By emulating how nature works to produce dynamic balance we will see positive, rather than negative, social effects. While we may be developing the technology to operate sustainably, I believe we still lack the collective will to do so. With so much invested in our existing mindset it is proving hard to throw off our old ideas and wholeheartedly commit to new sustainable thinking—thinking which is the only path to any kind of healthy future.

So what will it take? How many more wars, terrorist attacks, hurricanes, energy crisis, droughts, and famines do we have to suffer before we are prepared to change our disconnected collective consciousness and accept the reality that we are totally dependent on natural systems for everything that sustains us?

The inevitable question follows: what can each of us do? The answer is to think, learn and act. Nature teaches us that we, like all other life forms, are beholden to the laws of ecology. The most irrevocable of these laws says that a species cannot occupy a niche that appropriates all the resources. There has to be sharing. Any species that ignores these laws to support its own expansion winds up destroying its own community.

If we truly learn from nature, we will use this wisdom to redesign our lives. This will lead to the redesign of our work, our society, our products and our industrial economy. This is only the beginning of what we humans will achieve in collaboration with nature when we live as part of nature.