Perspective

In my other life, my paid work writing for a home magazine, the most common concern environmentally conscious people have when renovating their home is opening it to light.

In cooler climates particularly, using the sun to passively warm a house is important. Light brings joy and life and feelings of comfort and connection. In Melbourne many old houses are dark and gloomy, energy sinks with little connection to the outdoor environment.

When they were built, and until recent years, nature was something you struggled against and retreated from when necessary. Now there is a shift towards openness and communion with the environment; householders want their homes to be oriented properly to make maximum use of the sun, for communal and energised rooms to face north and quieter study areas to be graced by the gentler light from the south. Renovations open constipated houses to embrace their gardens and backyards, replacing walls with windows and glazed doors.  

I find this heartening and inspiring. The metaphors of light, openness and connection with nature are at work in the world. I contrast this with the work of my old profession, journalism. The news we receive through the media is slanted towards conflict and disorder, disasters and impending doom. This has a profound, wide-ranging effect, engendering a level of fear and crisis in the psyche of the community. This persistent, heightened state means it is harder for people to see reality as it truly is – multifaceted and nuanced – and therefore meaningful decisions are harder to make. The media’s black-and-white vision contributes to black-and-white vision in society as a whole, acting as a brake on psychic and social development even as society itself on many levels has evolved well past its narrow and restrictive world view. 

Perspective, I believe, is increasingly important. We should never be naive about the world or live in a saccharine state of denial, but we do need perspective. It is the ability to see and experience the joy and light as well as the darkness and chaos of reality. In daily life there are myriad ways to experience profound joy: from seeing the sun rise in the morning to hearing birdsong or watching children at play; from playing tennis with friends or swimming in the ocean to simply smiling in the wonder of the present moment. Individually and collectively we have to balance the light and dark, and counter the alienating tendencies of our society with appropriate love and care.

Perspective is also about having the big picture in mind. Many activists working for positive change in the world, especially in the environment movement, seem enmeshed in the crisis mentality, attempting to shout above the rest about the impending Armageddon. There’s no doubt that our planet is in crisis, and we do need to hear about the immense ecological changes taking place, but more than anything we need vision of a way forward. We need an emphasis on vision and an understanding that the situation is not static and insoluble. Perspective allows us to see that humanity and the planet are in an immense transition, and we would do well to know more about this transition and act in whatever ways we can to further the cause of life.  

The dominant Western world is moving away from a masculine, heroic culture in which humanity sees itself as separate from nature and towards a more feminine reality in which relationship, connection and oneness with nature are paramount. Author Richard Tarnas, in his book The Passion of the Western Mind, sees the evidence of this shift not only in the rise of feminism and growing empowerment of women, the opening up to feminine values by men and women, but also in increasing ecological awareness, sense of unity with nature and opposition to governments and corporations acting against the environment. Tarnas sees it in the growing embrace of the human community, in the accelerating collapse of long-standing political and ideological barriers separating the world’s people, in the deepening recognition of the value and necessity of partnerships, pluralism, and the interplay of many perspectives. It is visible, he says, in the widespread urge to reconnect with the body, the emotions, the unconscious, the imagination and intuition – among many other things.

No transition is easy or straightforward and elements of the old co-habit for some time with the new, blazing with intensity even as the ground underneath them is disappearing. We cannot fully picture what humanity or the planet will be like in 100 or 200 years, but we can recognise that a meaningful and important shift is under way and act in concert with life to enable its right shape. In this wonderful endeavour we require a healthy amount of perspective.