Three days later we moved in.

First of all, there is a playground. There’s not that many of them in Ireland. Unlike Australia, where we spend half our lives outdoors, the ground here is always so soggy you literally sink into it and then spread splodgey black mud around your pants, car, floor, hallway etc. I am assuming this goes on for most of the year, although i am assured there is a (brief) summer here at some stage.

Then, there’s this new housing, which got built in the recent Celtic Tiger phase; some of it is apparently very slap-dash, but this estate is quality – well insulated, nice furnishings, neat. So anyway, i’ve gotten used to living in the house stuck next to the house it resembles exactly, next to another and another and another… i figure it’s not that different to a housing estate in Australia, where the difference between each 10 room shake’n bake mcmansion is cosmetic anyway.

The problem is, as i walk to work, i pass the piece of bushland they left in between all these homes. It’s really thin. It looks ok from the road, but at walking pace you can see through the bushes and at places it is less than 1o metres wide. I go this way before the traffic most days, which means i hear the songbirds. I’ve always wondered about folk from the northern hemisphere going on about the songbirds. It’s not like in Australia, where the proud magpie stands tall with its call, an elongated and full throated modulation of trills and troughs in cadence, or the parrots squawking about atop the eucalypts, their high pitched squeals no doubt communicating the pleasures (and trials) of sucking the juice out of honeysuckle flowers.

These little birds really do sing. It’s beyond what words i could muster. It’s entrancing.

And the thing is, the thin little strip of actual land they inhabit – the part with the trees and bushes, where the land still has lumps and the grass is long – is beautiful. When you look at the houses across the road, all you see is uniformity. Like i said, it can make for comfortable living, no doubt about it. But the cost is both ecological and aesthetic. That much order is ugly. It slots everything into this consumable little package, makes it all seem ordinary, offers no respite from the humanness of it. By contrast, the little strip of bush contains the song of the earth, the whoops and trills, the whistles and piping tunes of the humble Irish songbirds. It smells of life, it undulates with the natural flow of the land, the branches of the trees twist in the wind, the bark peels off and curls to the ground.

I get the ecocritical stuff about human culture being nature as well, as well as the artistic reconsideration of the suburbs as a place of creativity. But neither of these philosophical positions makes up for the fact that the houses are ugly and ecologically devastating, while the remaining strips of land between them are beautiful and filled with more of the other kinds of life i wish we were supporting, the other animals (like songbirds) that should be allowed to have homes as well. The houses that look onto the bush are the lucky ones around here. They still get their daily reminders of what we’ve covered over with our flat, mathematically ordered suburbs of little boxes made of ticky tacky.

The cars drown out the songbirds if i leave the house too late. So i usually don’t. In the predawn darkness, the singing reminds me of how full life is, without so much deadening order and profitable regularity and all this important traffic. There should be more of that bushland left. That’s all.

This way of interpreting scientific thinking demeans the miraculous mysterious impossible to imagine if it wasn’t already happening existence of life, beauty, and consciousness. The warm bodied, breathing mammals, making homes in the forest and grasslands of a haven of life wrapped in a delicate embrace of atmosphere, flying through space and holding together, jungles and butterflies and grass and those annoying little bugs that bite and scratch and dirt under the fingernails and … all that stuff.

In a lot of ways it is what we have done with science that forms the kernel of the problem. It’s no coincidence that the Industrial Revolution follows on directly from the Enlightenment; as soon as a whole lot of scientists and philosophers (sometimes the same people) proclaimed that we could figure out how the world worked on our terms, without recourse to religious traditions and superstitions, captains of industry stepped in and said “Cool! That’ll be for profit then.” When demystification is accompanied by a motive to carve up and exchange the earth for coin, any chance for a widespread conception of a sacred earth is instantly diminished, to everyone’s detriment (including the profiteers, in the long run).

It is the instrumentalisation of science that kills nature and our chance of thinking about it as a living thing with its own rights. The scientific story of the universe is filled with just as much miracle, beauty, and awe-inspiring wonder as any religious story ever was. It’s just about interpretation. My first tactic is to replace the word ‘just’ in any scientific story about life, the universe or anything in it with ‘mysteriously and miraculously,’ and to shift descriptive words from the ‘average’ to the unique. Hence, something like this:

It’s ‘mysteriously and miraculously’ carbon-based life-forms, that mysteriously and incredibly evolved out of the amoebic oceans, that intelligently responded to their environments, that transformed and evolved to fill ecological niches, that – with incredible fortune – inhabit a planet filled with water, air, land and life in a small solar system on the edges of a unique galaxy that is a haven of life in an everexpanding, impossibly ginormous universe that is mostly void. Life is a beautiful and rare opportunity. And it’s not just that.

But that’s all pretty rosy. Another thing i think of when the idea of a greater awareness comes to mind is the all seeing eye, which has had some pretty negative portrayals over recent decades. First of all you get that ugly big fiery one in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, looking across the lands to see how it can extend its dominion. It’s like the lookout for imperialism, the colonising eye with a military wing behind it and lots of cash and other weapons to make sure it is obeyed. Then there’s the whole surveillance thing, CCTV on every corner, social networking sites selling your information to multinational corporations, governments and gawd knows who else (banks/credit agencies for sure!) tracing your ability to remain a viable part of the market. [666! The number of the one world party beast!]

Joseph Campbell had a pretty positive reading of it too, if i recall his commentary on the US $1 dollar bill correctly. He claimed it was the eye of providence promising justice and a fair go for all, the checks to big government written into the US constitution. No doubt there is something in this, although that would be cold comfort to those who have had to pay for the US imperialism that has also benefited from having a home at the elite tip of the pyramid of power, looking down over the peoples with another kind of aim in mind altogether. Ye olde profit motive, treat ‘em like cattle, they feed at the trough and bellow when there’s not enough, fatten ‘em up there pardner!

But my tinnitus, most audible in the middle of the night, got me thinking of another angle. Instead of zoning out and trying to ignore it, thinking about another sound or thought that would be preferable until (sho ’nuff!) the ringing is no longer at the forefront of my consciousness, i decided to concentrate my hearing on that high pitched squeal in the backs of my ears. And this made me think of the Buddha again. If real, complete enlightenment/awakening is possible, it must be capable of being manifest. It must be accessible from the physical plane; if Buddha’s final awakening is real, then it is physical. My tinnitus is part of it. Part of this real, which is also perfect and enlightened, beyond my ignorance of this fact. Really listening to the body tells me this is true. At a cellular level, it knows exactly what it is doing and does not question this.

Of course i do question it and i won’t be stopping that real soon. If my rationality can’t come along for the ride then enlightenment is still incomplete. But where this led me – at some hour in the depth of the night, when all good people are asleep in bed (and i was wishing i was) – was to that recognition that any technology sufficiently advanced seems like magic. You turn up in a place where metalwork has not been discovered and your guns make you gods. You land your space ship where jet fuel is still being used and you are aliens. You see your tinnitus as part of enlightenment and you just plain wacky. No – i meant, and you see each thought as part of that primal, indivisible consciousness. It doesn’t need to be a deity thing, or even (as i i said) one single consciousness in and of itself. It is just the thing that exists before everything is individuated into separate things, compartmentalised by conceptualisation, divvied up for consumption. We have to do that stuff, of course; and again, i’m not going to stop doing it. This is all part of the one thing. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be that thing. That was there, before you or me or other stuff was made out of it. The shimmering mass before order; the cosmic soup. The consciousness we wake up to…

It’s done and here we are. Many Christians the world over are realigning their faith with environmental principles of earthcare, many already held such issues dear to their hearts, even more care little either way. Pagans are a motley lot, rarely aligned with each other, mostly living the way they feel is right with the earth. And the similarities between the two different ways of being are probably just as strong as the differences: both celebrate the return of the light in the middle of winter (in the northern hemisphere at least) and both see this as a metaphor at cosmic, cultural and personal levels. When the year seems to have ended, the darkness deepened and won, the spirit of death overcoming the hope and regeneration of new life finally, momentously, permanently, the days finally begin to become longer again, the light proves its perennial love of life, and everything is promised another round of the seasons in another year on earth. Cool.

So what would be the difference if people started going back to the old ways, and followed the winter solstice in an astronomical and mythic sense instead of Christmas and its religious and material promises? For a start, i’m not saying this has happened here in Ireland just because the land boasts so many astounding stone sites with incredible art and obvious meaning. The folk here mostly think of the megalithic sites as a mysterious anomaly, a hint of some ancient magic, but not really anything to do with their modern lives. The fact that the builders of the stone sites here were literally ancestors to the current population led me to wonder if there was any direct link still operating. At this stage i would say no, Christianity made a complete break between pagan ways and the modern Irish world (more on this in another, later post, as well as comparisons with Australia).

So: the winter solstice and a pagan new year, promising regeneration and a return of plenty in material and spiritual terms, would suggest that the renewed sense of abundance should only occur to the extent that we lead lives in accord with the ways of the earth.The promise of regeneration is therefore a contract, which asks that we treat the earth in ways that ensure that each population of animals and plants can replenish, and not just us and our domesticated stock and crops (and pets). This contract suggests that the air can be clean, the water unpoisoned, the soil fresh and rich; but only if we really care (ie enough to actually change the way we live) about pollutants and deforestation and soil runoff and ugly beasts like peccaries as well as cute icons like pandas and dolphins. (Regular readers will begin to think i have a thing with peccaries, but this is not the case. I just think of them now whenever i mention ugly animals. I should extend myself with warthogs. And pugs.)

In short, i’m not sure Christmas asks us to change much about the way we live, in an ecological sense. It promises a better world with more care shown to the moral order – social justice and loving thy neighbour and all that, which is great. But it doesn’t teach ecological justice and relationships and that is what a pagan celebration of the winter solstice can do. I’ll have to start selling calendars

Coal. That’s what we all burn here, the driver explains, displaying distaste as he unloads ten bags of (slightly soggy) wood. Everything is wet here in Limerick all the time – at least in December – so i guess something that loves to burn, that won’t quit burning, that sits and emanates a warm red glow without much fuss while i sweat and curse over my stupid logs makes sense. Then there’s the old skool ‘turf’ burners, who cut slices of peat out of the land, dry it out and stock up free fuel for the whole winter with the use of a spade and some local know-how. My new colleague Mike told us all about it the other night at dinner. It’s like a sacred right, to burn the turf, and many folk have gone back to it in tough economic times. It won’t be long until i buy a chainsaw and a shovel myself.

Yeah, it’s cold, an Irish winter, so i guess there has to be a way to keep a house warm, and they sure do insulate them well. This place is snuggly within half an hour of getting home to turn the heating on. (Natural gas, btw; you were probably thinking i was heating it up with the use of slave-driven squirrels forced to turn the turbines all day while i feed them mere scraps from the table, a crumb per kilowatt.) I don’t mean to turn mean, it’s the way they light fires here, they use coal, i didn’t ask to become the enemy, it just turned out that way. I like squirrels. And most furry animals. Even some ugly ones (the peccary comes to mind; they deserved to be protected too, right?).

But i digress. Carbon. More of it. In the atmosphere. Me being part of the bad scene. That’s my point. What has to change with this picture? We’ve already met someone local working on a carbon-neutral fuel alternative, but it is so far economically viable only for small industry. The boiler costs 30K, then the fuel is some long Asian grass that grows really well here. It emits only the carbon it takes in as it grows. Smart huh? It’s bloody windy here too. Gotta be potential in that. Something to take revenge on the easterly coming off the coast that always sticks your scarf down your throat when you open your mouth to speak. I’m big on revenge. Channeling it into non-consumption of big polluting industries like oil is my way of not repressing it.

Back to the coal. I read about the Australian companies in The Monthly, i think, from memory. We’ll sell the uranium, too, as soon as everyone gets over the ethical problem with selling it to India, who refuse to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Aussies have gotten used to being rich and they’ll collectively sell out on any remaining ethics of land and fuel use in order to maintain that ‘right’, i predict. I wouldn’t say it is a good thing to become poor; i certainly feel for those over here that are feeling the pinch, times are obviously tough in a way we don’t currently understand Downunder. But getting rich can be a bad influence, too.

Gotta go. Fire needs more coal.

From the coast of the English Channel to the capital, a web of light radiates across the land. Pulsing veins of flourescent promise carry vehicles and dreams from one place to another, shifting goods along the roads, just as the information we also love to consume travels almost instantaneously along laser tubes and between satellites and computer terminals everywhere in the developed world. Headlights approach and taillights recede, while the engine room of modern wealth drives the cult of individuality and the right to consume as much fuel as we can afford.

But this countryside traffic is nothing compared to London. The centre of civilisation in the 19th century, this megalopolis still stuns the sense of vision from above. Whether it signifies running away from the darkness of ‘prehistory’ or a dash towards a new paradise of eternal light and endless feasting, the incandescent glow of this city at night is amplified beyond any possible material necessity. It signifies a symbolic victory of the highest order. No wonder urban life inspires such fervent loyalty in those that inhabit its luminescence. This is the unconscious altar of modern life, the pyre upon which we throw our sacrifices.

The saturation of light is almost complete, so that the middle of London’s CBD shimmers in an unearthly manner. Surely angels inhabit this place. The grey matter of the buildings seems necessary only as a capsule for this display, a set of hi-tech caves thrust up in sharply defined perpendicular angles, honed to mathematic and engineering perfection, hallowed to our nature. The Thames snakes black ink around the grid, the only marker left that reveals another, older nature, one that flows in curves until it is measured and managed (or ‘chart’red,’ as William Blake wrote in his poem ‘London’).

The centre of London is shot through with enough light to represent a portal to another realm, a place where another, more brilliant plane spills into this one. The city’s heart is illuminated like a heavenly locus, an urban paradise with all the rhetorical force of divine purpose, flooding the material world with the incandescence of the cosmos itself, the materialisation of god’s mind. No wonder we hardly pause to question the authority of the city to rule the way we live on earth.

Here the ancient duality of mind and matter, heaven and earth, god and body is overcome. This glow rivals the visions of the mystics and the promises of the seers. The pilot banks to the right as we approach Heathrow airport and my sightline into this angelic glow is extended for another minute. It seems timeless. The unearthly abundance that is promised in this physical light is promise enough to purchase vast reservoirs of consumer loyalty. The citizens of the city – most of the human population in the 21st century – are blinded to the hypocracies, the lies, the violence and ecological destruction alongside which this emanation of our most powerful modern myth is purchased. We primate moths are drawn to the altar and stamped with its imagery, its narrative of perpetual consumption, ensuring the corporate race for more fuel, more markets, more land and more power continues unabated. The badlands in the shadows are concealed by the mass media, which feeds on the light and is fed by it, spreading the story of dazzling brilliance at any cost.

Such is the quest of hypermodernity realised in the radiation that consumes the earth. The dragon of darkness is slain in a festival of victory and we feast on its body as the oil seeps up from its wounds and is ignited by our inventiveness.

Five hours later we descend at Shannon airport, in the land of the Celts, for whom the Cornucopia was a common symbol of the dream of neverending abundance. But what have we done to build this paradise regained? And what darkness remains the cost?

I think such questions are important, but not as much as i think the way modern societies use fossil fuels and consume everything in sight are important. I gave a presentation on the dominant mode of production and consumption and the way that it seems to be changing in response to the ecological crisis. From my research, the best philosophical development going on in mainstream, secular society is what i would generally term “enlightened self-interest.” This means that, because we recognise that the survival of ourselves and our loved ones (and maybe a few cute animals like bears and stuff) requires a planet, we will begin to look after it better. I see a major problem with this limited idea, because it seems to perpetuate the same old problem that humanity has suffered from since the agricultural revolution … we humans sit outside of the rest of nature and treat it in the way that suits us best. We remain alienated from any concept of kinship with the other creatures or with the land itself; stuck inside our cities and buildings and cars playing the “humans are the only thing that really matter” game.

Even when we ostensibly aim to improve our relations with nature, we do it as if from the outside, and i think this represents a cycle of alienating distance from the animating force of life, of nature within and without. The keynote speaker, Norm Habel, gave a presentation that included not only evolution but the science of ecology in his religious vision of better relations with the earth. While i thought his revisions of the way Biblical scripture could be reinterpreted were pointless outside of the Church (there’s those doubts that i left the day with), i loved the open-minded way he thought about the beauty of creation and the mysteries of life. For Norm, as no doubt for many participants, we humans are a special part of a much bigger story. Secular society needs some of this action: a new story, where we are powerful yet limited beings in an incredible universe, which we should be treating with reverence because we can, because we are conscious of it, not just because it is good for us and our children, and certainly not just for whatever we can get out of it.

I have admitted before to being an animist. My personal experiences of life lead me to believe that the universe lives in a way we don’t understand and we are surrounded by other types of intelligence that we find it difficult to converse with. As a lover of science and as a mystic, i am wondering how the new myth i think we need is going to shape up. Is there some Gaia hypothesis or Deep Ecology on the horizon for the Cities of Light? I’m not sure. But there is something more than “enlightened self-interest,” that is for sure. And – for me at least – there’s no going back to conventional religious thinking. Which leaves us with … evolution and ecology. Because whether we define ourselves as religious or not, we do operate in a framework of belief, a moral code, an aesthetic attitude. Let’s make it beautiful, cooperative, creative and mysterious.

The utilisation of traditional mythic material as a way of adding gravitas to a modern tale is of course a perennial artistic technique. When an otherwise contemporary tale alludes to imagery, characterisation, or patterns of behaviour from deep within the residues of cultural history, it can strike powerful chords within the reader. The genre of mythopoeia, especially when it explicitly refers to a mythic tradition, offers the reader qualities such as a preference for ambiguities rather than assurances even when concentrating its storytelling focus on a concurrent preparation for the certainty of death and the end of things. And while there is certainly abundant evidence of these qualities in Byatt’s new novel, there is also a fundamental problem with it, and this problem can be summed up in the wise adage passed on to generations of composers and performers: show, don’t tell. For while Byatt’s example of mythopoeia displays some of the strengths of the genre, it also overbakes the product by pointing so directly towards its source materials and its driving point.

Byatt’s thin child reveals, through her intimate reveries and quite mature reflections on the times through which she must live, a nebulous feeling about the realities of life during wartime: she “knew, and did not know that she knew, that her elders lived in provisional fear of imminent destruction (p. 4).” This is a marvellous evocation of the preternatural wisdom so often displayed by small children when faced with the ultimate questions of life and death. The thin child also displays an ambivalent attitude towards her received tradition, Christianity, which many readers will no doubt share, as lovers of myth often resent the anti-heretic sentiment of a medieval church intent on killing off all other stories of gods and nature spirits as heresies. While the vicar “talked gently of gentle Jesus and she felt rude not to believe him”, the stories of Asgard “were coiled like smoke in her skull, humming like dark bees in a hive (pp. 31-32).” The survival of myth as a compelling force of cultural wisdom, which survives exactly because it transforms paradigms even as it maintains patterns, relies on exactly the kind of immediate, compelling, terrifying world of Wagner’s Asgard as reframed by Byatt.

Myth, for Byatt, is supposed to bind the world together with words and thereby prevent “the breakout of chaos and disorder” (p. 52), yet it cannot ever be entirely successful in slaying the monster (p. 53). She displays her mastery of the creative aspect of this theoretical truism when describing Jörmungandr, the giant serpent, and its travels around the depths of the world’s oceans, where it creates devastation its wake and is once caught by Thor, at which point: “The sky darkened, clouds piled into black banks, the snake twisted and hissed, the god held fast, as lightning split the cloud cover (p. 74).” An even angrier snake now massacres for fun anything it sees, until it meets its own tail, an underwater Ouroborous “still bad-tempered” who snapped at the wavering form and then rested, “wound round the earth like a girdle” (p. 76).

It is with darkness that this story makes its compact – to resist the false ease with which the Christian hero guarantees regeneration and to confirm the uneasy but seemingly more “real” end towards which Asgard is destined:

The World-Ash and the rainbow bridge, seemingly everlasting, destroyed in the twinkling of an eye. … [T]he black undifferentiated surface, under a black undifferentiated sky, at the end of things (p. 154).

This bleak conclusion is compared to the promise of nature’s regeneration (a promise keenly felt by the thin child) and the comparison makes a direct analogy to the way environmental disasters now threaten our entire ecological system. The book thus suggests an uneasy breakdown in nature’s capacity for self-healing that is obliquely associated with the monotheistic and industrial crushing of diversity (whether by war or industry). For the little girl, the fundamentals of myth, the regenerative force of life through death, of nature and the human culture that is part of it, all came together in the world around her:

It was all one thing, the field, the hedge, the ash tree, the tangled bank, the trodden path, the innumerable forms of life, of which the thin child, having put down her bundle and gas-mask, was only one among many (p. 36).

These are beautiful moments, wherein the child weaves words about her as she walks, observing and naming the vivid life in the meadows, the startling and earthly chorus of dandelions and daisies, skylarks and plovers, the passing of the seasons. The aliveness of her mind and the strength of her inner conviction make the thin girl a likable hero, albeit one that clearly stands in for the author. (This is forecast in the book’s opening lines, which place the child at the age of three as the war begins – Byatt was born in 1936 – and reiterated in the epilogue, where she admits to “writing for her childhood self” p. 166.) The combination of the autobiographical mode, with its evidence of an early passion for powerful stories and the storytelling tradition, and a well-developed relationship with the mysterious psychic and environmental realms out of which myth arises, make this a compelling portrait of Nordic darkness and forlorn hope. When Byatt writes true to this tragic element she is at her best, even when admitting that large portions of the tale are effectively rewrites of the classic original text. In the attempt to make the timeless epic contemporary with current ecological crises – an association that is disturbing, poignant and timely – she does tend, however, to make her intentions so clear as to become blunted. This is especially the case in the epilogue, where Byatt writes of trying to avoid giving a sermon while pointing out that we may not have recourse to our perennial faith in nature’s regenerative powers any longer (pp. 166-67). Her theme of renewal is thereby complicated in a way that makes good sense, and accords well with the broad aims of mythopoeia. But the book remains a little unsatisfying as an example of the ambiguous artform towards which she clearly aims because of Byatt’s added directives as to how and against what it should be read.

Yet, against this, novelists like Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace attempt to reinsert a new kind of sincerity, which accepts postdmodern irony and cynicism even while it posits an empathy between author and reader based on shared experiences. Hence, the irony and cynicism of contemporary life are accepted but also resisted; a new possibility is opened out beyond the permanent marketing machines of popular culture and mass media. What I want to add to this in my writing is an associated move towards replacing culture into what I would recall right relations with nature. This entails treating the earth with respect, as if we humans cared about the future of not only our own race and flourishing, but the other creatures and even landforms around us. At the most esoteric and I think valuable level, this could even occur irrespective of our own human desires and values. Clearly this is a part of the ‘sincerity’ school of thinking and certainly requires a disciplined front against naivety as well as against cynicism. Hopefully its value is counted in the degree to which it successfully resists the assumption that we humans enjoy mastery over ‘nature.’ (Nature for this purpose is hazily defined as something bothersome out there, set aside from our cities; or something deep within, a place we become alienated from as socialisation teaches us to turn our attention constantly outwards, towards more of the stuff we should have or towards the person we think we are or should be…)

This separation makes it easier to consume external ‘nature’ without regard for the ongoing health of the biosphere, because we are all that matters. I think a really radical, new rebellion against a tradition that is clearly out of control and dangerous to the possibility that we and our future generations could keep enjoying life on a beautiful planet needs to have this relationship included in it. Human culture is a part of nature – we know this to be true, it’s not just a nice idea – and our destinies are mutually dependent. So for me, twenty-first century literature must evolve to be not only sincere about humanity and its deepest hopes and fears, but also about the future of the planet, the other creatures, the whole biosphere. Sounds ambitious doesn’t it? But what is the other option – that we should keep on telling stories about how interesting we are? It’s just not enough anymore. I want the whole range of life in my stories. That’s what I think is worth writing.

I won’t give the company extra advertising by naming them, but the ad is called “Bringing Land to Life.” By the time the manufactured lakes are filled, streets have been added to the scene, which is now an entire suburban sprawl community complete with light traffic, schools and buildings for business. It’s all about, the pleasantly voiced spokesman tells us, “a neighborhood you’ll want to call home.” The first time i saw this as i was horrified. I love the Australian land and it looked as if it had been stripped bare and redesigned by a conservative hairdresser with access to advanced playing blocks, lots of plastic and no imagination except for what had been sold to them by a lifetime of television and corporate brainwashing. Then i tried an experiment, and watched it another time as if it were actually a pleasant makeover and i was a potential homeowner. It looked great. I could totally imagine myself, wife and 2.4 children settling in, wandering the parklands, feeding the ducks (not processed bread though, tut tut), and clipping the hedges.

This vision didn’t last long for me, before my original revulsion, now tempered by my newfound maturity (read: apathy in the face of the overwhelmingly popular mood that supports such developments), returned, this time turned down a notch to something like simple distaste. And, as always, i’m driven to write by my care for the land. Is this how we are going to keep thinking about the ecosystem? As a blank slate for our desires? So that we can all accept being molded to the same middle class, conventional lifestyles – with choices, of course – with the only other animals left to bother us our domesticated pets and the semi-tame ducks attracted to the otherwise anaesthetised “wetlands,” with the only plants left the ones that charmingly adorn the borders of our living arrangements… It is nature stripped bare and remodelled for the only creatures that matter, attracted to the sales pitch on the living room propaganda machine, concerned for our children and their education, convinced that the wastelands outside our cities are improved by house and land package developers.

The dominant way of thinking still buys this imagery, presumably. I think that is sad, old-fashioned, wasteful and stupid in the face of what we know about environmental degradation and the need for species biodiversity. I’m not saying we should only build rudimentary humpies out of fallen bark and get right back to nature; but surely there is a place for starting to think about the way we develop land that doesn’t strip it bare in order to plonk this shake ‘n bake manufactured plasticine doll manufactured lifestyle all over it? Human societies have got to get out of this habit of creating monocultural hives everywhere they go. It’s time to let nature have more of a say in the way we develop land – time to practice more loyalty to biodiversity and the needs of life, land, plants and animals beyond ourselves and our own selfish desires.