For me, there is only the ‘natural’ and there is nothing more supernatural, figuratively speaking, than the glorious natural.

Just look at the immense varieties of insects, plants, flowers, marine life, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. Consider the millions and billions of years it took to evolve from a single cell with DNA to microorganisms to insects and plants and flowers and all of the other life forms with their amazing internal organs, their strange varieties of senses, and the vastly interconnected, symbiotic, ecosystems that sustain them. This is awe-inspiring. Consider the incredible complexity of the varieties of intelligences of the millions of species inhabiting the earth. Now consider the astonishing intelligence of the human species. Yet, this human species has gotten out of control and is overpopulating the earth and creating an artificial, techno-environment that is destroying the interconnected, symbiotic, ecosystems that sustain all other forms of life on earth that will, ultimately, destroy the human species itself. The human species evolved with an astounding capacity for inventing tools, language for unbelievably complex communication, and cultures that allows it to record, organize, fight, dominate, consume, and destroy each other and all other living things and to pass all this on in ever more sophisticated ways.

Nonetheless, the human species seems to have evolved without a capacity to gain a non-egoistic perspective on these cultures and the incipient catastrophe implicit its fantastic success. Although many experts know this incipient catastrophe exists and some even understand the flaws in our cultures, yet they, likewise, seem unable to find a way to deal with this enormous problem. Our science is giving us startling insights into and explanations of every aspect of our earth, its organic world, and human individual and social nature. Technology is taking the discoveries of science and using them to create mind-boggling inventions. Yet, the one thing we have not mastered, and seem to have no gift for, is to take this kind of mature perspective and implement it for universal, collective, self-correction.

Let me reiterate, the entirety of the human species seems to have evolved without a capacity to take such a perspective and use it for collective self-correction to initiate changes that would reroute the configuration of the enormous number of competing cultures with their inhumane conventions. This state of affairs regarding cultures worldwide is propelling them, obliviously, toward self-annihilation of the entirety of our human existence and the earth that sustains us.

In fact, we may not have a chance to see if we have evolved neurologically sufficiently to be able to do this because, I think, there exists, within dominate circles of our cultures across the globe and transcending nations, a distinct bias against this course of action. Even though not familiarly related, there seems to be a kind of tribal bond among elites of all cultures that impels them to act with dominance and defensiveness toward anything that would threaten to diminish the prominence and security of this neo-tribalism.

The rest of humanity must learn to forge ahead with a project for understanding the perniciousness of the world’s structures and systems, how they are interlocked, and for implementing ways on local levels, but nevertheless across the globe, to redesign nearly all of the structures and systems, on every level, of all of the world’s institutions.

This may be the only way to salvage our glorious, almost supernatural, natural world.