As centuries pass by, the mass of works grows endlessly, and one can foresee a time when it will be almost as difficult to educate oneself in a library, as in the universe, and almost as fast to seek truth subsisting in nature, as lost among an immense number of books. 

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper - Bertrand Russell

It’s a fact: human beings are self-obsessed – to the point where we actively deny the existence of most other species on Earth. We spend our time in homes, schools, offices, factories and cities where most other life forms are excluded. For recreation, we sit in front of screens watching humans mirroring what we do in our own lives. We are fascinated by any minor fluctuation in type: Who’s the prettiest? Who’s fattest? Who can make the sweetest hoot? Who cares?!

The minutiae of human behaviour is rarely as interesting, as the exuberant, cascading variation of the other creatures inhabiting our planet. To see through solely human eyes is to miss the majesty of creation.

‘W’ – Waterbear – can hibernate for 100 years and survive 10 days, unprotected in space. There are 750 species on Earth living in every conceivable habitat from ice shelves to hot springs.

There are critters that can go into a self-induced coma for one hundred years. Others see the planet’s magnetic field and use it on endless journeys; dolphins see with sound and whales use ocean trenches to increase the range of their love songs.

Within his book, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson turns us on to the natural world. This extraordinary and exotic book is a hugely important work. Superficially, it can be enjoyed as an expose of the many weird and wonderful creatures we share our planet with. But it is also a profound journey during which we have opportunities to speculate on the much bigger questions: the origins of life, the purpose of consciousness, the destiny of technology and the prospects for human existence beyond our biosphere.

‘A’ – Axolotl – able to regenerate entire severed limbs. Argentine writer Julio Cortazar imagines a character staring at one for so long that he becomes one

Henderson skilfully amazes us as we work through his treasure-trove of beasts from A-Z (Axolotl to Zebrafish) with unique oddities of extraordinary creatures. However, his genius lies in unravelling how our ‘being-ness’, or our humanity, emerges from other species. In each chapter he draws us back to the meta-narrative that binds all life, woven over billions of years. There is something to learn from every minutiae of wildness around us, and digging into the deep ecological, natural history of our species helps us understand who we are, and why we are.

Interacting with the natural world draws us profoundly into existence. Henderson segues into rumination on humanity’s perennial fear of dying -“a tragedy of cognition” which we may not share with simpler species, describing it as “a looming presence, a lurking, silent interlocutor behind a bewildering variety of masks, with whom we have an intermittent but unending dialogue with in our heads.” He draws on Russell and Hume to boost morale, and quotes Blake as he describes death: “the dark secret love of the invisible worm sickens and destroys the rose”, and as he accesses the ‘eternal now’ as its sublime defiance: “He who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.”

Agonisingly, as the pages of the bestiary turn, the dull horror returns; many of the most exciting and unusual species we share the planet with are threatened with imminent extinction and most of us haven’t even heard of them, let alone been in their presence.

In chapter “L” Henderson recounts a deeply moving encounter with a Leatherback Turtle. “The animal is vividly alive in a realm that is largely beyond our reach and our imaginations. Later I recall a phrase from Zhuangzi: “all the creatures in this world have dimensions that cannot be calculated”” Being with a giant mother laying eggs affected him profoundly as does the realisation that their populations are decimated in myriad thoughtless ways.

‘N’ – Nautilus – secrete tiny laminations inside their shells in relation to the lunar-tide cycle. Ancient shells have fewer laminations per chamber revealing the shorter days of antiquity (21 hours)

Henderson’s discourse demonstrates the biosphere still shimmers with ancient mystery. Nautilus still rise up to the moonlit ocean surface now as they did 500 million years ago. But it also laments that time is running out and each species lost is the passing of ancient and irreplaceable knowledge.

He draws on the analogy of archaeologists grimacing as they think of the library at Alexandra burning down 2000 years ago. It may have contained 500,000 scrolls which at the time may have represented a large proportion of externalised human knowledge. In comparison, biologists tell us we may lose 95% of other species on Earth – millions of species, each with unique dimensions of existence. This rarely makes the news, let alone influences how we live.

‘T’ – Thorny Devil – has a hydroscopic body drawing moisture from dew and rain to its mouth by capillary action allowing it to survive in arid deserts

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings itself is analogous to a living process – wild, diverse, mysterious and self-organising. The conclusion is one in which “nothing is concluded.” How could it? Life is a process and we are living it. Our response to the book is the ultimate epilogue. Of course, Henderson’s urgent call is for us to wake up from our shared, mass-hallucination and see that value on our planet lies not in gold, gadgets nor gimmicks but in the broiling exuberance of the biosphere.

Our hope must be that poignant works such as this connect with enough people to change our relationship with the natural world – before it is too late. We are at a point where trying to extract more from nature will be deathly. In contrast, deepening our relationship to nature and cultivating our earthly paradise can be our salvation.

The Blog of Barely Imagined Beings

‘S’ – Southern Right Whale – “males compete not by fighting but by trying to out-compete each other… in the sheer quantity of sperm that they pass to females in frequent and promiscuous couplings from their prodigious testicles (each about half a tonne)”

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Can shopping save the world? The Story of Change urges viewers to put down their credit cards and start exercising their citizen muscles to build a more sustainable, just and fulfilling world.

storyofchange.org

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The Battle for Gloucester Road is symbolic of the global fightback against the corporate takeover of all aspects of our lives. We don’t have to surrender to big business and see the world turned to shit. There is another way.

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bestbeforedocumentary.com

This film was created by Ben Mann, Giuseppe Cioffo, and Chris Atkins with music written by George Bird and narration by Izo FitzRoy.

Best Before, aims at showing how ensuring a fairer, sustainable food system, where people throughout the world have access to healthy food, requires reforming the way we produce, distribute and consume food in the UK- a country at the heart of this unjust and unsustainable food system.

London is the perfect showcase for such a system: a handful of supermarkets dominate the food system, an incredible amount of food is wasted everyday, and fresh, healthy food has become the privilege of the wealthy, while those worse off have only access to low quality, fatty and sugar-rich food.

If you think your projects, the garden or allotment that you grow on, or your ideas, are working in this sense, get in touch!”

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In the garbage, I see a rose.

In the rose, I see the garbage.

Everything is in transformation.

Even permanence is impermanent.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Two years ago EcoHustler explored the curse you put on your relationship by giving a Valentines gift with a dire ethical footprint in How Deep Is Your Love. The following year we looked at ethical alternatives in Turbo-Charge Your Love. This year we are keeping it short ‘n sweet with 3 reasons not to buy roses this V Day:

1. Ten thousand tons of roses are shipped from Kenya to England for Valentines Day. Kenya is a poor African country, highly susceptible to fluctuations in weather, prone to drought and last year suffered a serious famine affecting 10 million people. That gift to your lover is the biological capacity of Africa diverted from either feeding Kenyans or maintaining the local ecosystem distilled into a disposable product. As the roses rot in an English landfill vital goodness has passed from the Kenyan soil to a plastic lined cesspit via giant planes spewing greenhouse gas; nice gift!
2. The roses are grown in massive greenhouses on Lake Naivasha. The lake is withering away, the hippos are gone, the shore is crowded and polluted. In ten years the lake will have disappeared like the Aral Sea. The land will be dead and the multinational companies profiteering from the business will move to other similar lakes, for example in Ethiopia.
3. Your hard earned wages go into the pockets of unscrupulous English supermarkets and international agribusinesses that will do anything to turn a quick buck, including sticking a label on Kenyan roses saying ‘ethical’ despite the fact that the whole process is fundamentally unsustainable and absolutely immoral. Nobody benefits from the business apart from some corporate drones who manage to keep the suicide economy chewing up what is left of nature for a little while longer.

Don’t buy roses out of season. Give your lover something special. Like a meal, massage or ménage a tois!

“See roses really smell like POO-OO-OO
Yeah, roses really smell like POO-OO-OO”

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This fun animation provides a vision of what a post-consumer society could look like, with people working fewer hours and pursuing re-skilling, homesteading, and small-scale enterprises that can help reduce the overall size and impact of the consumer economy. Narrated by economist and best-selling author Juliet Schor (http://www.julietschor.org).

Animation by Squid and Beard: http://www.squidandbeard.com

Produced by the Center for a New American Dream. Learn more at http://www.newdream.org

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