Throughout our existence as a species, we have used imagination and storytelling to explain the world around us,
from natural events, to seasons, to animal migrations. These marginalised traditions come in the form of folklore, belief systems and magic, and date back millennia. I would argue that this engagement with the natural world places us within it, as part of a living, evolving system where our involvement is less centred and more aligned.
By comparison in the modern world, we use science as the lens to view and understand ourselves and our surroundings. We owe much to the current scientific method, but it is an unrelenting force that grasps something, works out its composition, explains it to society and then finds a way of using it. This objectification of the world around us, I would argue, has created the current global environmental crisis.
Through looking at the role narrative creation and storytelling has in our lives, I believe there is space for an immersion in the natural world to exist side by side with a rational scientific understanding of existence.
Borrowing from old traditions and practices can we exist on a planet where our connection to it informs our decisions, instead of making decisions that ignore our connection?
