AI ATTRIBUTION & DISCLOSURE: Text written by author (Aaron Force) except where noted and except for pulled quotations, curated by author. Images generated by Midjourney by author’s prompts.
As humanity is confronted with the ecological dilemmas it has served to create, we are beginning to understand how dysfunctional our presence has been. The species that cohabitate the planet with us continue to be threatened or go extinct, ecosystems are compromised, and even our climate wavers on the precipice of catastrophe. To date, there has been little done to rectify these circumstances, primarily because our egoic state of consciousness and existing, rigid socio-civil structures prevent it.
"I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that." —Dr. Gus Speth, Environmental Scientist
In the meantime, there is a growing cadre of scientists and activists doing what they can to revitalize habitats and improve the chances for improved vitality of struggling species. Rewilding is a concept that is gaining steam in this effort to help restore natural habitats and undo some of our effects. Given nature’s precarious position at this time, this represents highly urgent work that must be encouraged and supported.
Still, the improvements that are possible with rewilding relative to the existing and ongoing destruction is minimal and feels in some measure like trying to save the Titanic with boxes of bandages. Unfortunately, the impacts of such efforts—though valuable—may be ultimately ineffective in the long term. Will things be any better 100 or 500 years from now?
Perhaps it is too little, too late. Perhaps we’ve encroached too far, tread too heavily, taken too much. Perhaps we are cresting the critical mass of destruction and can never recover.
Why Much More Is Required
If recovery is possible and if a true ecological balance can be restored, it will take far greater efforts, in my opinion, than rewilding (although I obviously support its work at this time). Our population will only increase and with it the swelling pressures upon our remaining lands. Massive effort is required to ensure a return to balance, that Earth herself may thrive and our own continuity be ensured.
"If enough people everywhere believe something must be done to help the environment, you will save the Earth. But you must work fast. So much damage has already been done, for so long. This will take a major attitudinal shift." —Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God
In very real terms, we are killing the planet which of course means, we along with it. It all seems like the onset of acute madness, that we blindly believe we can continue to subdue our Earth until it has no more life left to give and yet ourselves survive. At the same time, it is not just about the ability to remain alive as a species but to enjoy life. If nature has all but perished or if we are subject to the effects of an unbearable degree of climate change, then does there yet remain any joy in our existence?
But our development practices now don’t just represent a practical or even moral dilemma.
For neither is our present situation indicative of the expression and realization of our highest potential as a species. It should be obvious that we fail the Hypothetical Alien Observer test with flying colors. We cannot live so oppositionally to nature and attain to our highest potential as a species. All we have to show for ourselves is a behavior reminiscent of the ravaging spread of cancer; what other analysis could be reported to the home planet of a race of perfected beings?
What is this talk, anyway, of humanity as an ascended species? All evolution points somewhere, to a state of higher order and continuing transcendence over limitation. This implies, as well, greater functionality and ecology (a truly connected nature, where holistic tendencies abound) which our cancerous condition fundamentally disregards. For beings with such high potential, we should be attaining to higher realizations of it; so much so that in time (and perhaps quite soon), we overcome all dysfunction.
Becoming an ascended species will require an alignment with all the characteristics we would imagine one to represent. Balance. Regard. Restraint. Care. It will require an active implementation of the principle of yin and yang—the embrace and interdependence of balanced forces in this world. It will require wisdom and understanding to repeal our incessant claim to wilderness and the natural environment.
But the way things are prohibits what can be.
Massive Ecological Renewal (MER)
One vision I have relative to our ascension is the concept of what I call Massive Ecological Renewal. MER is a proposed means of environmental restoration that occurs at a far more immense scale than rewilding. Whereas rewilding generally focuses on restorations of habitats by strategic, surgical methods including removal of invasive species and support of more diverse ecosystems (generally working with land that is already available), MER is DRASTIC in scope.
It does not just seek to manage and improve existing lands—it proposes the complete razing of urban sprawl and rural communities and restoring them to their natural condition. This would occur globally. Concurrent with this process would be the requirement to focus human occupation into centralized urban areas—Utopias—the topic of another article.
Of course, such an audacious vision is impossible.
But, like so many “impossible” things, it is only because our present state of consciousness precludes it. It is time to think post-egoicly. It is only in the Post-Egoic Society that we will find the necessary Shift in consciousness and transformed structures that will facilitate the level of change needed. In humanity’s global awakening, everything functional and harmonious necessary for us to be sustainable, thriving, and evolving enters the realm of possibility.
While the way things currently are stifles the change necessary, the way things will be shall fully support it. The proper circumstances must arise in order for the types of change that must occur, to be able to occur. What is must be let go of for that which will be; that “which will be” possessing the ability to override our present dilemmas. The problems created by one level of consciousness cannot be resolved at the same level and it is never a transformation within the same sphere that must occur but one that allows transcendence beyond it.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” —Albert Einstein
Yes, as a proposal, MER is absolutely impossible in today’s egoic paradigm. Private land ownership obviously represents one of the biggest obstacles. It is the “American Dream” to have one’s own home and a piece of land and, yes, there is a great deal of satisfaction in this—as well as a lot many of us have invested. In today’s environment, talk of repealing ownership rights of citizens literally gets them up in arms. The guns come out and the voices raise and beer cans get forcibly set down on tv dinner trays.
But perhaps the concept becomes easier to accept if we push it 50 or 100 years or more into the future (if we have the time). Possibly, we can envision our evolution in that span, that we emerge from this chrysalis-time of shifting consciousness to view ourselves and our world with a far more expanded view.
As humanity awakens and rubs the slumber from its eyes, the sight will surely be appalling. Did we do all this . . . in our sleep? What horror, what hell, to come to our senses and see the tragic results of all our thrashing and throttling about in the midst of our dark night as a species.
Consciousness Is The Key
There is no doubt that our behavior is based on self rather than species. That it is egoic is readily apparent in that no natural creature (or even our earlier ancestors or recent indigenous peoples) could ever imagine the concept of “owning” land. Sure, some animals claim dominance in securing various territories but the differences from human land ownership should be clear.
Ego’s primary purpose is to seek for its own identity by accumulating possessions and attaching to their implied value. It is identity by proxy, the only identity ego can have. Defying natural order and spiritual state of consciousness, ego has no substance, depth, or intrinsic meaning or value. All it has it must bootstrap, and does so only by association with material or conceptual things. “Thingness” is the only perceptual content ego can have and thus supports its paradigm of separation.
"The ego's strong boundaries enclose us within our own mental space; it separates us from the world." —Steve Taylor, The Leap
Separation is all ego can perceive. Such a condition is why humanity finds itself in its quandary to begin with, having lost all understanding of the interconnected nature of the universe. By exaggerating the space between things, ego finds the meaning it seeks and in the separation finds unique position and therefore identity.
Out of all of this, then, it should become clearer why humans seek to landgrab and stake claim wherever they can afford to do so. It is not natural; rather it is self-focused for egoic purposes of which the average person isn’t even aware. Ego defies nature and the natural order primarily because such is the domain of a more essential, or primary, state of consciousness, that expanded state existing outside of ego. In this, then, our ego-based tendencies can never result in sustaining a healthy, natural condition. We are doomed by our primary condition of consciousness.
In spite of this, consciousness does appear to be shifting.
Many are awakening to new modes of perceiving themselves and the universe and in this wake, are finding a distaste for the present modes of society. Like nails on a chalkboard, our collective ways gnarl at the harmonious understanding developing within. The former ways are being proven wanting and an itch deep within the psyche seeks scratching and to be eased from the growing discomfort of how things unfortunately are.
"Our fourth [major cultural awakening] appears headed toward a rejection of unregulated exploitation of humankind and of nature and toward conservation and optimal use of the world's resources." —Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy
The answer, it appears, lies within this shifting consciousness itself. For our outer reality is always a reflection of the inner and as we internally change so can we expect society to do so as well. That we have our urban sprawl and rural development at all is by this tendency for mirroring. Our predominantly egoic state of consciousness materializes a societal manifestation made in its own image. We create what we know. But, our egoic form of society also supports ego, ensuring a recursive and circular process by which its defiant reign may continue indefinitely. Give me my space, “I” demands it.
As we collectively move into a more expanded (and natural) state of consciousness, however, so too will our outer reality begin to adapt. The endless expansion into native realms and the idea that we can claim stake in perpetuity to those lands—individually and with legal enforcement—will one day seem as primal as the conquistadors conquering new lands or colonizers laying claim to humans as slaves.
"The emerging Ecologist worldview is 'biocentric' or 'ecocentric,' with similarities to the worldview of indigenous peoples, like those in the rain forest. Rather than seeing the planet as a pyramid with humans on top, it sees the Earth as a web of life, and humans as just one strand in the web: what we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves; we belong to Nature, not nature to us; we have obligations to Mother Nature, not just for us. For Her." —Paul H. Ray, Ph.D. and Sherry Ruth Anderson, Ph.D., The Cultural Creatives
Still, it’s yet another difficult pill for many to swallow and appears threatening from our current base of understanding. More troublesome still may be determining how such an awesome undertaking would even be possible.
Thoughts On Implementation
If society indeed begins to change and if we can also agree that MER is a worthy undertaking, how can it possibly be implemented? Innumerable, seemingly unsurmountable obstacles line the way to its achievement. How are landowners compensated? What about holdouts or resistors? How will our centralized urban centers be revamped or built anew? And what to do with all of the developed outlying areas representing millions and millions of acres to be dismantled and restored?
These questions and more would take an entire book to begin to answer and quite honestly, many of the answers do not exist yet. It would take teams of people spanning multiple disciplines in order to fashion a reasonable program. Still, I believe it’s possible as well as necessary. Here are some considerations to keep in mind, however.
1- Society will begin to support and even demand it.
This may be difficult to imagine from within our present framework of consciousness. But, as consciousness shifts, so will our awareness of exactly why MER needs to be implemented. It will become clearer just how unsustainable we are as a species and how grossly barbaric our presence has been. Humanity will begin to see that we can never achieve our potential with such a legacy currently marking our way.
"If we do not recognize that every business, corporation, or enterprise is part of the whole system, and must take feedback from the whole system, and be accountable for its effect on the environment, we cannot continue to evolve, or even survive." — Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential
While my proposal may seem far too radical for many (especially within our present framework), there will come a time I believe that it will be welcomed. This does not, then, represent support for a forced takeover or reset by global elites or hidden cabal. Rather, our own deepest longings for wholeness and harmony will one day support these efforts, our transformed and expanded understanding seeking neo-natural manners of expression as a species.
2- We can only do what we can with the time available to us.
Undoubtedly, this is a process that may take centuries. It is important to understand that in order to give it an air of believability. But we can also recognize that even 300 to 500 years to achieve a significant process such as this is minimal relative to our full span of existence on Earth. Neither do we need to try to tackle all of it, all at once.
Logically, it seems the appropriate place to start would be at the furthest edges of existing development. Building by building, road by road, we begin where the work is easiest and begin our slow retreat from the remaining wildernesses and frontiers to areas of increasing density. We work in toward our main travel corridors, perhaps leaving a kilometer or so of development on either side for the time being. Some reasonable strategy can be implemented by which planned stages would continue to be implemented leaving more and more restored lands.
"In the past, there was time for new thinking to evolve. The rhythm of change was relatively slow; a mindset adapted to the changed conditions had several generations to come about. This is no longer the case. The critical period for new thinking is now compressed into a single lifetime." —Ervin Laszlo, Chaos Point 2012 And Beyond
What must be understood, however, is that we don’t have limitless time before beginning the process in some manner. The Shift will reach its crest when it will; we have little say in that. Perhaps more suffering is first required in order to initiate it on such a global scale. But we need to be ready to act when it does. Such is our work now, for the sands of the hourglass are spilling.
3- Economics and equity will also change.
Land ownership presently drives a great deal of private wealth. But like all socio-civil structures, the economy and concepts of wealth will also change as humanity’s consciousness shifts. One way these may change is through the implementation of Resource-Based Economies (RBEs) which drive the economic domain not through the production and consumption of goods (which itself supports our unsustainability) but are based on resources themselves.
"The authors [Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, and Paul Hawken in The Ecology of Commerce] start with 'the idea that the world economy is shifting from an emphasis on human productivity to resource productivity,' which amounts to using natural resources four, ten, or even a hundred times more efficiently. They show an amazing array of inventions that already do this, which are 'real, practical, measured and documented.' Those inventions include hydrogen fuel cells for cars, instead of the gasoline engines we use today; the same kind of fuel cells can also be plug-in generators for electricity in every home and neighborhood." —Paul H. Ray, Ph.D. and Sherry Ruth Anderson, Ph.D., The Cultural Creatives
Without the push for endless, often needless, production and eventual disposal, we will indeed become far more prudent and balanced in our relationship to nature. Scientific application will allow us to be immensely more efficient in extraction and restoration as well. Harvesting or extracting natural resources may still be problematic with the goal of absolute renewal but it is presumed that humanity will be far more efficient and wise in its utilization as we progress through the Shift.
4- Advancing technology will assist us.
Already we are awed by the recent advancements in artificial intelligence. This will only continue to improve and by its developing power we may be fueled to discover new methods of demolition and waste management in recovered areas and construction or renovation of urban centers. In addition to AI, one of our next major waves of technological revolution will be in the form of nanotechnology. It is now entirely possible to envision armies of nanobots, numbering in the trillions, able to deconstruct any development at its microscopic scale.
". . . nanotechnology will enable the manipulation of physical reality at the molecular level." —Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near
Self-replicating and AI-powered, these mini-machines can work night or day, holidays or weekends, good weather or unbearable, for as many decades or centuries as is required. And where more rapid transformation may be required, large-scale, automated machinery will surely exist in our future which can disassemble and transport structures and materials to central processing stations where they can be recycled, repurposed, or otherwise stored until their end use can be determined.
5- Volunteers and paid staff will be plentiful.
As economic models become transformed it is entirely possible to imagine funding for massive teams of paid staff. Universal Basic Income, or derivatives of it, funded by the resources of many of the lands themselves, will provide for the needs of workforces, allowing them to concentrate their full livelihoods on renewal.
"The monetary system is a form of slavery that limits our ability to create a better world. We need to create a new system that emphasizes sustainability and abundance for all." Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project
Such individuals may be trained in heavy equipment operation, truck driving, deconstruction, and so on. In addition, there may be volunteer corps, those who are perhaps retired, if our normal work experience even remains the same in such a manner. Though I hope their numbers will be largely declining by then, prisoners may find a little bit of “freedom” in exchange for labor.
Another interesting prospect arises from technology, as well, and that is in life extension. Via a number of different technologies, the length of normal human life span is expected to become radically improved—by 100 or 200 years or more. This being the case, one might consider that persons be able to work in labor “shifts” of perhaps decades, working for a time at renewal and then having lengthy spans off for other pursuits. The thinking is that significant amounts of time can be applied without forfeiting a large proportion of one’s life—relatively speaking.
6- International Delineations May Change
As is a reflection of nature herself, ecosystems span the artificially-imposed borders of ego. Not only are our national boundaries artificial, but they are also often arbitrary. Sure, they many times will follow natural features such as rivers or coastlines. But many times more, these definitions are applied by whatever forces may have been influential at the time, through war or colonization.
"The bioregion is a natural unity bound together by environmental factors, such as watershed, climatic integrity (desert) or terrain (coastal or mountain). Through intentional consideration of the eco-dynamics of a specific region, the environment is preserved and enhanced. Such clustering of community focus may one day in the future replace national boundaries that have been unconsciously set (as a result of war for example) without regard for natural bioregional integrity." —Barry McWaters, Conscious Evolution—Personal and Planetary Transformation
Of course, individual countries, like individual people, have their own motivations and agendas and one nation’s efforts to restore lands may be completely offset by a neighboring nation’s desire to proceed (or not) in a contrary manner. Such should be mitigated by our shifting consciousness which, like air currents above, knows no bounds or barriers. And more likely than not, as global awakening becomes more apparent, like the dissolution of one’s individual borders once imposed by the tyrant-ego, so too will many nations likely soften and eventually dissolve their own boundaries.
This too will come to be seen as primitive folly, the claiming of unique lands at the collective level and defending them against the attacks of others, themselves surrounded by claimed territories. This tendency for partitioning the natural realm will one day be seen under the light of expanded awareness and revealed for the absurdity it is. Such is its own topic but also directly related to the healing of our ecosystems and the application of a Massive Ecological Renewal.
Is such a concept as MER truly unrealistic? I would suggest it is possible and at least as worthy an endeavor as the hypothetical megastructures—proposed now for decades—such as space elevators, Dyson spheres, or ringworlds. In reality, MER’s possibility is thousands-fold greater, literally in reach via physical accessibility and the technological means of today.
All that is truly required is a Shift in consciousness, a phenomenon that is already in process.