I continue to have hope and feel a shift in the way people view themselves in relation to the larger, global ecosystem. And reading Why we need ‘ecolocracy’ re-affirmed my belief in humanity’s ability to stop and reflect upon itself and the impact we’ve had on the natural world to meet our needs.

The recent wave of student protests sweeping across Europe needs our attention and our support.

Their protesting of governments’ neglecting to adequately address one of our most urgent challenges, climate change, clearly demonstrates that young people understand the need for change and want change enough to take to the streets and risk fines for not attending school.

Forgotten relationship

They realise the complexity of the situation and their sense of urgency must be a signal to us all that for us to more than exist in the future, there needs to be change.

Considering that we believe we need and value consumer goods to give our lives meaning drives the continued exploitation of Earth’s resources and each other, we are blindly tied to the delusion created by consumerism and use it as a measure of self-worth and success.

The article Capitalism has become a force of evil reinforces this and reminds me of the continued effectiveness of the advertising that feeds mainstream culture and the illusion that drives consumerism as represented in Manufacturing Consent.

How do we shift people out of, what I call, eco-vacancy and help them bridge the forgotten relationship with nature and understanding of ourselves and our interconnectedness with a higher ecological system – woman with nature as opposed to man over nature?

Collectively

Yes, we can use biomimicry to solve many of the problems we’ve created, but more people need to understand the bio and interconnectedness of all things universal.

For that to happen on a massive scale more schools and more educators must shift from teaching individual subjects which promotes a Newtonian/Mechanistic/fragmented view of the world, to an integrated curriculum that explores and develops a systems view of life way of thinking and then living that life.

Many schools are teaching the skills of systems thinking about the relationship between earth systems and human impact on those systems. But we’re a small pocket movement.

I have hope that the shift will take a firm hold. Once we convince the masses that their needs are natures needs then maybe we can begin the steady and long upward climb towards the significant changes we need to make collectively, to save ourselves.

This Author

Rita Bouchard is an educator at Antioch University of Los Angeles and an advocate for alternative education in public schools.