Addressing Earth
»We are recognizing just how animal-like mind is, and just how human-like Nature is.«
Why? The EARTHFEST is the idea of a space in which humans do not come first. The earth comes first, the other beings, the non-human persons with whom you and I share our breath come first. The breakdown of life we are currently suffering goes back to this simple and grave oversight commited by the occidental civilization: to claim that humans come first. All subsequent distortions in our perspective – that everything non-human is just a thing, that we must incessantly out-compete others in order to win our place, that death is the end and must be avoided by all means – are only consequences of this fundamental confusion of our place in reality.
The EARTFEST creates a space in which the earth comes first. It proposes the days around the summer solstice – ancient mystical peak of the year in the animistic cultures of the northern hemisphere – as a celebratory moment for life. In these days we can act with gratitude towards what fills us, includes us, transcends us and precedes us, which has agency before our actions and wisdom beyond our words. In these days we come second and listen – instead of setting the rules of the game and talk.
The meaning of the EARTHFEST is nothing but that: holding open a space in which reciprocity can begin to trickle back, because humans do not claim anything before the others. It is a space in which we can listen to the questions the earth has to us, to the voices of the non-human subjects with whom we exchange our bodies, our breath and our identities. It is an occasion to understand that I do not own myself, and I do not possess any thing in this world, but rather am given to myself by the exchange of life which comes from innumerable other bodies.
The way to celebrate the EARTHFEST is open. The EARTHFEST is a commons, as all important cultural celebration days are: They belong to all, and they need to be respected by all. Everyone is free to fill them with their subjective energy of belonging. EARTHFESTS are picnics on a flowering meadow, rituals in the recesses of a cave, songs sung around a fire, pictures drawn in the bank of a river, the heart beating under the shower of bird voices in the earliest morning. For wayst to participate, see here.
