Painted 19th century Tibetan mandala of the Naropa tradition, Vajrayogini. Rubin Museum of Art.

By Jon Moore:

This is a problem of human perception. We tend to look for short cuts and simplifications as much as possible. With the idea that things repeat and the simplest form of a repetition is a circle, we short cut to repetition equalling a circle. The wheel of the year reinforces this perception, yet anyone who has lived on the land will attest that no two springs are the same. From this flows the fallacy of return to the past. If only we could fix such and such all would be like the good old days. “Remember the good old days” is code for The Golden Age.

Sulla attempted to return the political settings to the time of a working Roman Republic. The difference was he had to institute rules and laws to return to a period when ethical standards were followed because that was the right thing to do rather than it being a breach of law. This is a difficult thing to comprehend on first contact. Yet a little thought reveals we are now in a similar situation. Nepotism and political donations are now controlling western democracies to a similar degree while patronage was the driving force towards the end of the Roman Republic. Attempts to legislate for ethical standards simply create loopholes for lawyers and politicians to exploit. There comes a point in human culture where decay is such it requires radical change or the culture is doomed.

It is impossible to return to starting points. The arrow of time and the law of entropy ensures the now is never the same as the then. So if post-Copenhagen meetings reach a binding agreement, economies are not crippled and we manage against the entire forces of Nature to return to the atmosphere of 1600, there is nothing to ensure the climate would be the same as then. Equally there is no guarantee the famines of the 1500s would not return. Truly we need to adapt to what is before us not what we would like the world to be.

Why is this so? It speaks to the underlying nature of this universe. No matter what you do to a boiled egg you cannot unboil it. Having poured milk into black coffee and stirred it to white the probability of it separating into a black coffee and milk layers is one in about 400 million universes. So it could happen but it so improbable as to be impossible.

If the socialist Greens had their way and humans disappeared along with all the dams and weirs across the Murray River it would not return to its pre-human condition. The reconstructionists forget Nature achieves a dynamic balance. Clearly it is easier to stay upright on a moving bicycle than on a stationary one. Try it and you might win a funny video prize. It is not possible to go back. We have altered the structure of the soil, the way water flows across the landscape and the constituent nutrients. The available niches have changed and so the species to exploit these will also change. We cannot go back. The sooner we realise this the better. We need to adapt to where we are not where we want to be.

Fire and the landscape

On a small tributary of the Snowy River, I found an exposed section of creek bank. At ground level down to between 2 and 5 centimetres was a grey thin soil. Underneath that layer was a 2 centimetre thick layer full of charcoal pieces sitting upon a 15 centimetre deep, dark, rich layer. This dark layer had once been the top soil. Following European colonisation in around 1860 for this area, the land had been strip cleared and burnt. This layer had slipped and the thin grey level above it eroded in the 150 years following. The upper hills of this landscape were nothing more than wattles growing in decomposed granite. It would be nigh on impossible to reconstruct even by natural means, the preceding vegetation patterns. The dynamic nature of Nature ensures whatever is at hand is used to fill niches.

In an experiment in Norway two areas of forest were cleared. Plot A was left to regrow as is and Plot B was burned before being left to regrow. Plot A returned to the original forest type. Plot B like the boiled egg, grew back with what are considered both agricultural weeds and immediately post glacial vegetation. This tells us two things. Human use of fire changes environments chemically and physically. Secondly firing a landscape re-creates the conditions immediately following a loss of glacial cover. From this it follows, more exploitable “new” niches are created by fire. So if we see paddocks full of blackberries or lantana they are simply in the process of revegetation following the same effects as fire or glaciation. These species bind the soil, stop it slipping and conserve the nutrients available in the area by holding them as plant material. So rather than destroying the “weeds” we can use the powers of Nature to progress through a series of vegetation types to achieve a stable landscape. This landscape will not be the “pristine” original but it will be a stable evolved landscape.

The Golden Age is like the Garden of Eden. It never was and never will be. Constant, usually subtle and occasionally violent change is the way of this planet. Those that adapt flourish, those that do not perish. Some animals are able to withstand enormous and radical change while others do not. The horseshoe crab and the crocodile are examples of the former. To a lesser degree, in that we haven’t been here that long, so too do humans. Pandas and koalas are examples of species not suited to change. Specialised diet is a specialisation in the exploitation of a niche. Once the niche goes, whether by climate change or habitat destruction, the species goes too. This is life on this planet, get used to it, we can’t change it.

A cycle is not a circle. A cycle is more like and elliptical spiral. This is the nature of Nature on this planet and no amount of human hubris nor guilt will ever change this. The hand wringing of the “Greens”, the restorationism of Greenpeace and WWF and the strip burn and plough mentality of the thoughtless will always bump up against Nature and her dynamic balance. We are simply not that important in the cycles of Nature. Either we adapt to what is before us or we die!

See Part One of Jon’s series here.

Earth philosopher, organic farmer, family man, archaeologist and author, Jon is well-known in his hometown as a dispenser of independent, wide-ranging wisdom to anyone who will listen, an excellent raconteur and a regular imbiber of fine coffee. Already working on a number of related publication projects, Jon’s first book, Zen Druid will be available in August next year. Follow Jon’s latest venture at Living the Dream.