The Law of the Jungle: Nature’s Way in the Amazon
‘If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.’
Aristotle
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Pinuya Village, Brazil
From Da Vinci to Einstein, throughout history, humanity has often turned to nature for inspiration. Looking for answers for how to reimagine democracy for the 21st century, we find ourselves doing the same. In a time of ecological crisis, we will after all struggle to heal the divides in our societies without first healing the divide that has haunted us since ‘the fall’ – that between man and nature.
We are in Acre State, known locally as ‘The End of Brazil’, to learn more about the complex, self-organising systems found in rainforests in the hope that we can find inspiration for how to remodel our own systems of governance. A sort of biomimicry for democracy, if you will. Chico Mendes, Brazil’s eminent environmentalist assassinated for his tireless campaigning once spoke of the levels of connection present here. ‘At first, I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity’. The forest feels like it is more alive than we are. A place that taunts our transience with its timelessness. Maybe this is why we find ourselves always drawn back to nature. When life gets too big for us, we retreat back to our enduring mother.
The rubber industry has brought many ‘pícaros’, or rogues, to this state over the centuries of exploitation, but now the most poisonous snakes live far away. Since winning power, Jair Bolsonaro has turned a blind eye to those carving out increasing chunks of the rainforest, the lungs of the planet, in the interests of national economic growth. Someone who knows the dangers such policies pose to the climate is Dr. Ane Alencar, Director of Science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brasilia. Speaking with her, she illuminates the complex, interconnected symbiosis which governs the forest seemingly without an overarching executive. A metaphor for the perfect democracy, or a Hobbesian inferno? Her research suggests the former – there is an order to the apparent chaos.
This may be a recent revelation to science, but the people who have listened to and learned from the rainforest the longest know this all too well. Ibã Edes of the Huni Kuin tribe is one of the few remaining guardians of this deeper wisdom among indigenous peoples. Shamans like Ibã are instrumental to the community in mediating between the human world and the deeper wisdom of the forest. Together with his father Kupy, he guides the tribe in understanding their inner connection with the symbiosis of nature described by Dr. Alencar, to manifest this interdependent sense of being into their outer collective lives. Might we also draw on this great teacher in healing our broken democracies? Walking with Ibã through the forest we come to a clearing, a sacred place for the villagers where they come to connect with the spirit of Yuxibu. “Sente a força?”. We can certainly feel the mosquitos, but we have to admit the forest has a certain ineffable power to it.
The anthropologist and systems theorist Gregory Bateson once declared that ‘the major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think’. Sometimes the dissonance between reality and false beliefs reaches a point where the world stops making sense. It’s only then that we can consider radically different possibilities. The idea that democracy should be limited to a system of election cycles and representative politics certainly doesn’t make sense anymore. We need to start thinking like a rainforest, in systems, networks and patterns rather than in silos, separation and linear trajectories. Democracy then would seem to be the compass bearing for our collective journey to reconnect with self, other, world and nature – and the complex and interdependent relations that bind them together. As the fog begins to lift, the game is now on to move forwards and seek out the tangible and practical ways this new perspective can be manifested into reality – to find the parts that form the whole.