Trauma and The Land

We are suffering a massive health crisis, both mental and physical. The facts are undeniable - the majority of people in this country are unhealthy and unhappy. To me, this seems obviously connected to the fact that we suffer from chronic nature disconnectedness. 

Yet our paradigm of healing often focuses on the damage wrought, whether that is PTSD, cancer or missing limbs. But all of these things that manifest themselves in our bodies and minds have a cause beyond the immediately obvious, whether that be abuse, polluted air or a car crash.

The existence we have shaped in the west and spread across the world, for ourselves and for the more-than-human is toxic, deadly, killer. It’s like a relationship that has drifted into deep abuse due to lack of intention, care or integrity, lashing out in perpetuated trauma that we inflict on ourselves and others. The systems we have created traumatise us, the land, the waters, the air, the animals, the plants, the fungi, the bacteria, everything we share this planet with.

But these systems are also made up of individuals, often damaged, traumatised individuals that then act out their trauma on others. It is normalised. You are strange if you decide not to engage in these systems, othered, rejected, diminished. For many of us, we don’t have a choice whether or not to participate in these systems - extractivism, exploitation, capitalism, globalisation, colonialism, consumption.

All of this paints a very bleak picture, and one I believe we need to face in honesty. So how do we break free of that? 

By returning to the land.

If we can grow our own food where we live, have our own water, produce our own energy, care for and tend the wider web of life that we are a part of, where we are, then what control do those systems have?

There is an argument that the land cannot sustain the current population, and that if we all tried to live from the land, then it would decimate it. I don’t believe this is true. It is certainly true if we tried to maintain our current lifestyles, but there is plenty of evidence to show that with a reduction of consumption in everything (energy, food, water, timber, clothes, products), and using what we already have, then it is possible. 

We can even produce our own medicine for many minor ailments (which should reduce as we live a more natural life), we can provide care for our own community.

Community = people + land.

And that is why the commons are such a threat. And that is why they must exist.