Thus spoke Chief Seattle

In 1854, the native American Chief Seattle gave a speech when the United States government wanted to buy the land of his tribe. You can read it by clicking on the above link.

That was a great speech. Only, these were not Seattle’s exact words. Based on Seattle’s speech, a screenwriter wrote a text that became a religious creed within the environmentalist movement. I shortened it as it is quite lengthy. The message strikes at the heart of the matter. Nothing is sacred anymore. The pursuit of money destroys our planet and values. This version of Seattle’s speech aims to make Creation sacred. The white man may think he owns the land, but he does not. He may think he controls his destiny, but he does not. Whatever befalls Earth befalls the children of the Earth. We have no destiny, no dream we pursue. Things just happen, not because we intend them to happen, but because they are the outcome of a process over which we have no control.

Perhaps, you care for our planet, but what do you mean? If the last white rhino disappears, the Earth is still there. Most of us will survive the demise of the rainforests. Humans have finished off other species for thousands of years, so why stop now? Soon we might create new species using genetic engineering. And nature does not care. Predators kill prey all the time. So, why should we care? Mr Lind, a professor at the University of Texas, wrote an article, Why I Am Against Saving the Planet. He says, ‘Saving the planet has become the de facto religion of politicians, business elites, and intellectuals in the West, replacing Christianity’s earlier mission of saving individual souls.’¹ He claims environmentalism is rooted in German 19^th-century Romanticism, typified by a bias against society and civilisation and a pantheistic awe before an idealised Nature. In other words, environmentalists suffer from a religious desire for Eden.

In doing so, Mr Lind inadvertently tapped into another 19^th-century German tradition, that of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche hoped to leave traditional morality behind, so he said, ‘God is dead.’ He meant to say that religions like Christianity were ruses to enslave us with a false sense of right and wrong under rules imposed by a priestly caste. Nietzsche favoured the values of the aristocracy of ancient civilisations, the values of the strong, to those of the enslaved masses, the values of the weak embodied in, for instance, Christianity and socialism. Slaves think in terms of good and evil rather than good and bad because they resent the ruling class. Nietzsche divided humanity into superhumans and slaves. He aimed to liberate us from our self-induced slavery and realise our potential. But what happens when eight billion people try to realise their potential and strive for wealth and power? We might all end up as free people in hell.

Mr Lind argues for doing away with false sentiments. He goes on, ‘There are costs to mitigating climate change as well as benefits, and rational people can prefer a richer but warmer world to a poorer but slightly less warm one. These individual policies benefit humanity, so there is no need to justify them on the basis of a romantic creed that defines the planet or the environment.’ That may appear nice and dandy from behind the desk of Mr Lind’s air-conditioned Texas room. If you live below sea level or in an area threatened by climate-change-related natural disasters, you might view things differently. Ten million Dutch live at or below sea level, and hundreds of millions more risk suffering climate-related disasters like floods, hurricanes and failed harvests. And Mr Lind is not planning to compensate them for that or invite them to stay in his mansion. And the rainforests and the animals and plants living in them might be better off if the likes of Mr Lind go extinct.

As our production and consumption increase, new problems emerge faster than we can solve existing ones with laws, technology, targets and other solutions. More technology, rules and controls do not solve these problems. In the 1990s, the environmentalist group Strohalm wrote a booklet named Towards a Philosophy of Connectedness.² It lays out Strohalm’s vision for a sustainable and humane society. The principal founder of Strohalm is Henk van Arkel, a dedicated individual who remained its driving force for decades. Van Arkel is a moderate man who does not blame anyone in particular.

Everything is interconnected, so actions have consequences. We often do not know them and may not be affected ourselves. Wall Street traders who sold bad mortgages contributed to the financial crisis. Do you think there are no consequences if you dump plastic in a river or post hateful comments on a message board? Western thinking, reflected in the scientific method, deconstructs reality to analyse the parts. In doing so, it focuses on detail, and the whole can get lost. It makes us act irresponsibly. A few hateful comments don’t make someone take a semi-automatic rifle and shoot innocent people. But if we think like that, we remain locked in a cynical and uncaring world.

And God is not dead after all. This world is virtual reality. You may think you make your own decisions, but you do not. You play a role in a script. You say the lines and do the things the computer has written out for you. And so, we may soon find ourselves slaves in God’s Paradise. It is not slavery as we understand it, the exploitation and repression of one group of people by another. It is slavery in Nietzsche’s sense, which is living under a self-imposed moral system. God owns this world, so it is not ours to destroy. So yes, the sacredness of Creation is a religion.

If religious zeal could feed us, Mao’s Great Leap Forward would have been a success. Instead, thirty million people died of starvation. So, we should not get carried away. Jesus might have fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, but it is not prudent to bet on a miracle. For instance, if we switch to organic agriculture and do not deal with the lower output, for example, by curbing our meat consumption accordingly, the Great Leap Forward might look like a minor mistake in comparison. We can have goals, but let experts figure out how to get there. Dramatic lifestyle changes are necessary for people who have more than enough. Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘There is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.’ The change will be painful. But once it is behind us, we will feel better.

You may think it is impossible, but acknowledging the problem is the first step towards a solution. Our belief that nothing will help can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need a new starting point, a new foundation for our culture, beliefs, thinking, and our place in the universe. Small steps cannot save us anymore. We need to change the way we live.² That is what the people of Strohalm said. For a long time, I believed they were naive dreamers. I felt sure their vision of a humane world society that respects nature would never become a reality. As we head to an apocalypse, we cannot allow realism to stand in the way of what we should do. But then my life took an unexpected turn, and I figured Strohalm’s view could be God’s vision of Paradise.

Latest revision: 18 May 2023

Featured image: Earth from space. Public Domain.

1. Why I Am Against Saving the Planet. Michael Lind (2023). Tabletmag.com.
2. Naar een filosofie van verbondenheid. Guus Peterse, Henk van Arkel, Hans Radder, Seattle, Pieter Schroever and Margrit Kennedy (1990). Aktie Strohalm.