written 12 Dec 2021
published 19 Dec 2021
A caterpillar is an eating machine, focused exclusively on consumption, much like a capitalist corporation. But unlike a corporation, a caterpillar is a living organism, part of a larger process. At some point it stops consuming, forms a protective chrysalis, and totally dissolves, making way for the emergence of a butterfly. The butterfly begins forming around multiple "imaginal buds" within the dissolved goop. The caterpillar immune system attacks these growing buds as enemies, which accelerates the assembly of the butterfly. A similar process may be at work within humanity.
Modern humans first emerged about 300,000 years ago, slowly increasing population to 20 million 10,000 years ago when agriculture began. Increased food productivity allowed more rapid population growth, and we hit one billion in 1800, the beginning of the fossil fuel age. Then population grew exponentially faster. Humans reached 2 billion by 1930, increasing to almost 8 billion today, with another billion within the next 12 years. Not only are there more of us, the technological revolution has amplified our impact, so we each consume more in the way of food, resources, and energy. Exponential growth on a finite planet is unsustainable. We are consuming the Earth to death.
This situation has been written about, with increasing alarm, for decades, but like a mindless caterpillar, relentless consumption and economic growth prevailed. We are now experiencing the leading edge of the collapse of our fundamental biosphere.
As I write this, the mid-west is beginning to assess the damage from a wide spread extreme weather event, including an F5 tornado that stayed on the ground for over 200 miles, ripping the heart out of every community it touched. Climate change is getting harder to deny, as the impact and costs increase every year. Species are going extinct at unprecedented rates. But perhaps there is a butterfly waiting in the dissolving goop of what we used to call normal. What might that butterfly look like?
The root dysfunction of our old civilization is belief in separation between individuals and nature: acting as if exclusive gain at the expense of others and nature was progress. The consequences of this flawed model are now increasingly obvious all over the world. This suggests an alternative: a new civilization that embraces the profound, sacred connectivity of reality, an ancient perspective still honored by indigenous cultures. If we apply the technical knowledge that we have gained in the last few thousand years toward the nourishment of all life on the planet, imagine what we might accomplish!
There is no model within human history for this kind of massively aware, cooperative society, but we can look to living systems for inspiration, since life has been dealing with these same issues for billions of years. Looking to life for inspiration is called biomimicry. Our own body, a large multicellular organism, is a wonderful example of the kind of collective that might arise on Earth: becoming a self-aware planet. In such a connected system, killing the other is the same as suicide, so we could eliminate all the resources, anxiety, and energy currently spent on "defense", and those organized systems could instead work to clean up the messes we have created, improving the quality of life for all beings. In a connected world, extreme wealth inequity would be recognized as a form of dangerous illness, like gangrene in the body, not something to envy or praise. Humanity has expanded to the point of driving all other species to extinction, disrupting the larger order in the same way that obesity causes other bodily systems to fail.
This vision requires a change within our dominant human awareness, which may seem impossible. But this message has been taught for thousands of years. Next Saturday is Christmas, honoring the birth of Christ, who stated that the most important commandments were: "Love God" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:30 & 31). This is an affirmation of the unity of life, which is found in every spiritual tradition on Earth.
We each have the power to choose to live in this unity perspective. This is the butterfly emerging. All the people who hate, and are working to stop this from happening, trying to preserve the old exclusive order, are just like the dying caterpillar immune system. But that system is gone. The future is the butterfly.
