Why We Call Her Mother

And Why We Should Call Her Mom

There is a bit of a reality that many of us in the so-called “first world” have lost our grip on. Literally, many stay most of their lives on what man has laid atop her. Yep, you got it, here it comes—“The Hippie Talk.” You had to have assumed it would crop up eventually, we are getting naked outdoors after all. So, let’s all find a patch of grass, rock, soil, sand, or water and take a seat and talk about that big ol’ planet underneath us that keeps us alive from generation to generation and day to day.

I hear the immediate outcry (especially with all the recent “acts of nature” that have occurred recently), “That planet kills a lot of us too!” That is a fair observation, but let’s think a bit bigger. I’m sure that any person would believe the assertion that, if it were not for the Earth being here, none of us would be here. Not only that, but scientists seem to think that the Earth also must exist within certain parameters for it to support the kind of evolution that led to the ability for man to eventually come into being. A select number of variables that may only occur as often as 2-3 times out of every 100 billion planets. The naturally occurring minerals within the crust of the Earth have provided the means for the creation of technology that has simplified our lives, while the air in the atmosphere above the crust has kept us breathing from day to day. All of this existed before we did, no matter the science or the myth one ascribes to, the Earth came before mortal man.

So far we have just looked at the Earth through an egocentric (or more aptly anthro-centric) lens, but the Earth gives life to much more than humans. It has allowed for mind blowing speciation, from the single-celled to the monstrous cold-blooded to the extreme complications of mammalian life and form. The Earth is miraculous, and much more a giver of life than one that destroys life. The question then becomes, why don’t we focus more on showing appreciation to the Earth first, rather than appreciation for our own selves?

There are some false beliefs running around in the world that say that humans have not had any major negative effect on the Earth. Even if one is so lacking in sound judgement to deny the existence of climate change, there are still much more obvious negative impacts that the human species has had on the Earth which gives it life. This includes open face mines that have literally torn open the face of the Earth and left behind vats of poisoned water that kills any life that touches it, to simply paving over and building homes over large expanses of the face of the Earth that are much larger and more extravagant than any need would demand for. It also includes the transformation of chemicals found imbedded in the crust of the Earth into materials that decompose at rates much longer than the life of a human persists for. We are paving over, littering the face of, and tearing apart the skin of the Mother which gave each and every one of us life, as well as all of the members of our families that preceded us. How can we make these clearly disrespectful and stupid decisions?

Many of the problems that we encounter as a species both societally and personally derives from drawing conclusions based on false base assumptions. We think that since a society invests power in some form of government that the government then has a right to the land on which it is formed, but the land preceded the government, the people, and even the species, so there is no way for people to have a right to it—at least not by any logical reasoning. We then create money as a means to trade time, and think that since we created the money, that the money can give the individual rights to the land. Once again, this assumption falls apart. The money came even later than the government did, so just because the laws of money say that a person can have the right to destroy elements of the natural world in order to have the type of home one wants and the cars one wants and any other material objects one might want because one can afford it, by no means gives any logical right to harm the Earth that gave one the basic needs in order to accrue more wants.

Our inability to view our planet as our life source, and therefore as the ultimate adjudicator of what should be allowed and what should be forgone has led us into a toxic way of life. Mother Earth demands balance in existence, says that each species deserves to have space and occupy space, but then at the same time must ultimately sacrifice that space and the energy used and return it once again through death. Mother tells us that every species on her surface has fought for its right to be there, and so no other species can determine whether or not another species should live or die. Mother tells us to Love, and that if we do so the life we live (be it short or long) will still be a life worth having lived, and will be full. Mother tells us that those things which we can reach on her surface that are not living may be used and investigated, but that which lies outside of our natural reach is energy that has been given back to her, and is not ours to take away from her again.

Those truths listed above are inherent truths to life on the face of a planet that supports a vast ecosystem of different lives, but they are not the truths that humans use as base assumptions, especially not in the Western world in which I was raised. Humans say that man is master of his surroundings (I keep this gendered male, because it is more accurate to the assumptions we practice). Humans claim that, despite it being obvious from any stand point that the Earth is the first creation, they are somehow allowed to Lord over it. Which, if one were to take a moralist understanding of Lording (one that cares for and protects that which has less power), might be okay, but that is not the understanding we come from. Instead the Western lord is one that takes what is his in order to make more his. Humans say that the purpose for life is to gain and create more and more and more, to live for, by and through profit, which then maintains that profit must always grow, and therefore profit cannot be limited. Since profit is based on consumption and consumption is based on having goods to consume, and goods are made from raw resources, this means that the assumption of infinite profit requires there to be infinite raw resources. This is a strict opposite to the rules of balance given by our Mother, having something be without limits is not a variable that can exist within a balanced equation (as any mathematician can tell you). Plus it is easy to tell from the picture at the beginning of the post to see that the Earth is in no ways infinite, and so cannot supply infinite raw resources.

Most important is Mother’s law of Love, but humans in no way practice this. The most noticeable lack of Love is seen in how we treat our own species. We fight wars, imprison each other, lie to one another, fight one another, and then treat all other life as if it has no rights whatsoever.

Our world is in a dangerous place. It is time for us to return to the only true base assumptions, to return to the feet of our Mother Earth, and perhaps we can grow familiar enough with that ultimate supporter of life to begin to call her by the more familiar term, Mom.