The Song of Unborn Birds

As without, so within.?

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As I hooked it on its usual branch, the lid fell off.

The cheaply-made bird-feeder dropped to the ground.

The seed scattered.

It doesn’t matter very much. Birds eat seed from the ground as happily as from a feeder. If the family of rats got a little more than normal, so be it.

Not a big deal.

I stood back and enjoyed my daily dose of awe. A dozen species, flitting through the branches, watching cautiously, dashing in, eating, escaping to chew, digest and sing.

Reading George Monbiot’s ‘Feral’ reminded me that what we consider a beautiful, rich, natural landscape is, in truth, already much degraded. There ’should’ be many more birds in my garden than there are. Yet, entranced by those I watch, I imagine the world around me is thriving.

It’s not, of course.

It’s called ’shifting baseline syndrome’ — what’s familiar seems normal and right.

I’d notice if the few dozen birds in my garden dwindled to a handful. I don’t consider that once, right here, there would have been hundreds or even thousands more.

I hear birdsong, but not the song of birds that will never now be born.

We habituate to the familiar.

Like many of us, I’m bewildered by people who deny the unfolding, interlocking crises that are engulfing humans and the planet — climate change and species extinction among them.

Mostly (though not exclusively) denial comes from middle-aged Westerners. Their baseline is disconnection from nature, relative affluence, learned disembodiment, a life that’s comfortable. They consume awe-inspiring documentaries about the wonders of Planet Earth.

Unfolding catastrophe seems elsewhere. They ignore it, or dismiss it as exaggeration, lies, or ‘a natural phenomenon that’s always happened’.

They’re comfortable because their world seems as healthy as it was last year. That’s their baseline.

Someone commented on Linkedin, in response to something I wrote, ‘Climate Change is a scam for Liberals to make money’. He probably believed it. He worked in middle/senior management in the Energy Sector.

Now, though the enclaves of the affluent West remain relatively immune, the catastrophe creeps closer. The deniers insistently disconnect more from unfolding reality, and remain desperately adamant.

It’s as if, deep down, they hope they’ll be dead before anything really bad happens and forces them to pay the price for so determinedly averting their eyes.

The thing about a slow-unfolding catastrophe is, the longer you delay doing something about it, the greater the cost when eventually you’re forced to act.

Imagine, for a moment, if collective humanity had taken action when the detrimental effects of human actions on the planet were first suggested. We could argue when that was — with the philosopher Rousseau, through enlightened voices at the start of the last century, through warnings from indigenous peoples, with the publication of Rachel Carson ‘The Silent Spring’ — but for now, let’s accept our environmental catastrophe was fully understood, and laid out scientifically, 50 years ago (around the time of the first ‘Limits To Growth’ report).

Imagine how relatively minor the adjustments required would have been. We would have needed a phased restructuring of Western economies and industries. Richer nations would have needed to empower (and fund) developing economies to grow sustainably, not through a ‘globalised’ race to the bottom of cheap labour and ecological vandalism.

Imagine how much better things would be now for humans and all other species, and how relatively cheap ‘better’ would have been.

Now, the challenge is exponentially larger.

Yet still we don’t truly act.

Still the deniers deny, and corporations commit ecocide for profit, promoting an attitude of ‘Keep Complacent and Carry On’.

Imagine how much more expensive — in every way — it’s going to be, if we remain inactive and leave it to future generations to mitigate the disaster we’ve ignored, fifty years from now.

Imagine how future generations will curse us as they read about the world we and our ancestors destroyed, as they watch reruns of Planet Earth and ask how we could have been so selfish and stupid. Perhaps they’ll wistfully imagine an abundant world where dozens of birds feed from a tree in a green garden somewhere.

Perhaps they’ll only hear birdsong on the soundtrack of old films.

Perhaps their baseline will so have shifted, they’ll be denied even that solace. Perhaps they’ll not be able to imagine the song of unborn birds.

That’s the thing about a catastrophe: the longer you delay intervention, the greater intervention must be.

I watch birds flitting in and out of the feeders. The rats, all sleek fur and pink paws, creep from the undergrowth to enjoy the unexpected seed bonanza.

I’m stopped from self-righteousness by the simple realisation: ‘as without, so within’.

We ignore looming catastrophe in both inner and external life.

Perhaps it’s intrinsically human to ignore, for as long as we can, evolving catastrophe in our inner life. Perhaps that encourages us to ignore it in the outer world too.

I spent decades ignoring the gradually intensifying toxic waste left by experiences I’d had as a child. Those unexamined residues inexorably took over my inner life.

I ignored and adapted.

The impact on my mental and physical health, on my choices, on my relationships, were apparent if I dared to look, yet I found reasons for inaction.

Always there were justifications. I convinced myself I was not in pain, or that the pain would pass, or remain bearable until such time as I could face it and heal. Perhaps I hoped I’d get to the end of life without paying the price.

A month or two before my heart attack, I was standing in a rehearsal studio, emotionally broken, extreme pain in my chest, scarcely able to bring words out, as the performers I was directing looked on with undisguised concern. I was a previously healthy 55 year old who worked constantly with his body. I could no longer walk more than 5 minutes without excoriating chest pain. I told myself I was tired, and perhaps had indigestion.

I imagine, healthy again in many ways, how I would have been different, if I’d had the courage to acknowledge the unfolding catastrophe of me decades before.

How much cheaper it would have been had I intervened in my inner catastrophe as it became apparent, rather than waiting until it became overwhelming.

Denial is easier than acceptance. My physical and mental catastrophe took decades to explode. Each subsequent year was not much worse than the one before. The gradual evolution of catastrophe shifted my baseline of judgement until it seemed nothing much was wrong.

Catastrophe will not be ignored.

Catastrophe will be heard.

The catastrophe of disconnection from our natural homes — the body and the world — and our abuse of both, will be heard.

By everyone.

It’s being heard today by millions around the globe, and by other species who share this time with us.

The longer we delay intervention, the greater the cost will be.

Greater effort.

Greater disruption.

Greater pain.

As outside, so within.

If we refuse to hear our urgent needs, and find compassionate response, how can we hope, collectively, to hear other creatures, ice floes, dying waterways, the populations of migrating birds, and the myriad other urgent calls for help that echo round the globe?

We cannot hear the songs of birds that will never again be born. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Still, the canaries in the coal mine, sing their warning and then die. We hear but do not act. We take them into coal mines to suffocate and keep the wheels of profit spinning.

We avert our eyes when 18,000 Texan cattle burn in unimaginable distress, so we can buy cheap food in the supermarket.

We shrug at extinction around us, and shrug at extinction within.

We shrug at our disconnection from our life force and our awe, as if catastrophe is just the way the world is, over which we have neither say nor agency.

We ignore catastrophe.

Yet we’re also the species of Rousseau and Carson.

We’re the species of profound indigenous alignment with the biosphere.

We’re a species of altruism and extraordinary kindness.

We’re both cause and solution of the catastrophes we face.

Solutions will stay out of reach until we, each of us, find courage to face catastrophes as they unfold within us. To learn, when we realise we’re lost, to ask for help. To recognise when we’re living unaligned with our better self, and take the action our soul requires of us. To face fear with resilience, generosity and hope.

To relearn humility.

The birds feed, sing, and, now spring is here, gather materials for their nests, fly wild and wondrous. They fill me with everyday awe.

The rats, timid and beautiful, clear away the seeds I dropped, feed their young, follow the rhythm of birth, life and death that‘s the music of life on earth.

I’m at greater peace these days, and do what I can to intervene in the unfolding catastrophe of human eco-vandalism and self-neglect, using whatever skills I have.

I watch my inner universe and when I see a new storm gather, I act before dysfunction and pain, once more, become a baseline I work from.

Our human baseline is not pain. Nor is it degradation. It’s thriving within a thriving world. Anything less betrays of our individual and collective birthright.

We should never accept that.

#personalgrowth #coaching #selfwithothers #climatechange #selfwithothers #ecology

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After years as aperformer, director and trainer, I now coach and mentor people. I specialise in helping people who feel lost find themselves again, rediscovering their power, passion and wonder.

I also write, paint, consult, give talks and run group programmes.

If you'd like to know more please go to: https://johnbritton.co

Or email me at: [email protected]