Which is it? Is the Earth a place of finite and diminishing resources? Or is she a cornucopia, a horn of plenty.
The way you regard her is key to how to treat her, other people, and yourself.
This discrepancy lies deep. The Garden of Eden is a symbol of profusion, but one we were, supposedly, exiled from. The Church taught that Man had dominion over all the fruits of the Earth, a teaching that encouraged over-exploitation.
Yet the Norman feudal system, with which they colluded ( taking their 10%), inflicted a state of perpetual sufficiency upon the rural poor.
Perhaps the experience over many generations, of hardship and enforced frugality, instilled in us a collective sense of impending famine.
It is certainly in the interests of rulers that their governance is seen to be protecting us from such a fate.
Any tally of present-day Global resources shows a dangerous depletion and degradation, to the point where market panics and actual conflicts occur with increasing frequency.
Yet my observation is that when you tend a piece of Earth with care and love, it can produce a superabundance.
Last century, after forty years with two states of total world war, governments were so traumatised by the scarcities that had resulted, that they sought to secure supply-chains.
This was the time when the deep oceans were scoured by trawlers, farmlands worked on an industrial scale, and forests converted to exotic monocultures.
-When the centralized command ethos of wartime was focused ruthlessly upon natural resources.
Thus the worst depletion of the Earth's bounty ever was initiated by a sense of scarcity.
Is the trauma that we are engaged in actually the Result of the centralisation of our food-chain?
I have noticed that if I am niggardly with things, if I hoard them, some flow is curtailed; I get little back. That's true right across the spectrum, right through into the world of ideas and emotions.
So abundance starts with you!
With that goes faith in the Earth's willingness to support you in return for your love and respect.
Honestly, it's worth checking the bedrock of your beliefs before you potentially put yourself outside the Pale of mainstream expectations.
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