Tag: vivir bien

Vivir Bien: The Wild Law of Mother Earth

BELLO+TRONCO+DE+LA+PACHAMAMA“She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation.”

Her human version, as the English translation of the Spanish translation of the original Inca goddess have it, is Pachamama. Earth Mother, Mother Earth, depending on the structure of your language. She rules over crops and all growing things.

Protecting Pachamama

On April 1, 2014, Bolivia passed a new and highly controversial environmental law that in the words of President Evo Morales is about “…how to live in harmony, balance, and complementarity with nature, without which there is no life or humanity.”

The law’s intention is Vivir Bien or ‘Good Living,’ and derives its principles from the world view of indigenous Andean cultures. Vivir Bien aims to reinforce the integral nature of  spiritual, environmental, and cultural realms within the 21st century human economic and societal structures. Which means that our economic and societal structures should be governed by spiritual, environmental and cultural considerations, rather than the other way around as is our current mode.

And if we do not, our own extinction is guaranteed. Pachamama will get over us in less time than the entire panorama of human history. But there is hope, thanks to these South American, forward-thinking politicians. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to enact a Rights of Nature clause into its Constitution, which views the natural world as an integrated assemblage of living organisms rather than property.

Among its many aspects, Bolivia’s law recognizes the right of all organisms to not have their genes tampered with.

Two thumbs up.

Perhaps the most novel and welcome concept of this new law is the recognition that humans and all other entities on Earth are equal.

Imagine…

 

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Ecofantasy?

What’s that?

It’s a state of mind…a vision of an alternative future, where all of Earth’s inhabitants have the right to be alive, each to its own individual perception of the world, and each with a unique voice that sings its own song of creation. All the animals, plants, rocks, air, and water–everyone.

Edward_Hicks_-_Peaceable_KingdomWhere the Wild Law rules…

“…wild law is a law made by people to regulate human behaviour that privileges maintaining the integrity and functioning of the whole Earth community in the long-term, over the interests of any species (including humans) at a particular time.”
—Cormac Cullinan, author, Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice

Even Rivers have the “…right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.” (http://therightsofnature.org/ecuador-rights/)

Even unto personhood—
In 2012, New Zealand gave the Whanganui River ‘personhood rights’ (http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/river-new-zealand-granted-legal-rights-person.html)

Ecofantasy

The idea of rights of nature is still an ecological fantasy in the overall human consciousness. I offer my vision of a not-too distant Earth, a planet, alive with organisms, including the entities of rock, air, water that we deem ‘non-living’ but are alive in ways we cannot fathom.

Toward this vision, I wrote my first novel, Corvus Rising, an ecofantasy of crows, humans, sentience, and the idea that we have the ability to communicate verbally across species boundaries.

 

2Crows