Wednesday 10 July 2013

Thinking Like A Mountain.


Thinking like a mountain is a term coined by Aldo Leopald, but how are we to understand it?

There are many interpretations of thinking like a mountain which are too static for me. Too bounded by thinghood and human mortality. Something limited by birth and death, whose influence extends no farther than three score years and ten (ish). Life is so often portrayed as a thing amongst things. What if we viewed it as a process interacting with other processes, stretching into the past and future far beyond our ephemeral span.
So if we are to think like a mountain, not only must we see ourselves as an integral part of the ecological structure, as it is today, as it is this decade, generation or century, but we also need to understand our self, our being, as one of the many formative influences in this age of the earth. Yours and my influence extends to the far future. Long after we, as a physical beings are dust, our decisions and actions will still be influencing the world we have long since departed. Will that influence be for good or ill?

The question is: Would it make any difference to the way we behave if we did not escape the long term consequences of our actions? If by some means or another we had to live with them indefinitely.

This is the question that lead me to write 'Atlantis Eternal'.
Why treat something as serious as this as fiction?
Because it's more fun to write and its more fun to read. QED.