“In Potowatami and most other indigenous languages, we use the same words to address the living world as we use for our family. Because they are our family.”
– Robin Wall Kimmerer
If you belong to one of the up-and-coming tribes ready for a piece of the pie, you may not be glad to hear that the pie may soon be extinct, along with life on earth. If you are already aware of the importance of preparing the next pie—the one that’s compatible with a living future—you may already be using your resources strategically for now and later. You may already be free of the compulsion to buy the cheapest food regardless of the consequences to your body or to life on earth. You may already avoid products that are plastic, eternal, and toxic.
Even so, chances are good that regardless of how far you may have gone to adapt to an increasing awareness of deep time and deep ecology, you’ll forget all about that when you are sick and in need of care. That was the rationale behind transferring capital from obsolete industries to medical systems. If you exclude the future of life from your thinking—as most moderns do—it makes perfect sense to change medicine last.
If you’re a doctor, you may not agree. You may be starting to wonder about the pressure to get and use an MRI regardless of benefit to the patient, of treating the virtual patient, and of the skyrocketing cost to life on earth of our failure—as a species—to make hard choices. You may realize that you—along with all sapiens—are as susceptible to extinction as amphibians. You may begin to realize that the prize for winning the race to the bottom is death of all humans and of all our relations. You may resist spending the future eof life on futile struggles with life for the purpose of reducing legal risk. You may balk at “treating the database.”
And so, next time you think about inclusion, think about what you want to be included in—from the point of view of your body, the body of humanity, the body of your habitat, and the body of life. Doing what’s right for your body and your life will help you evolve as you come to treasure the vision of abundant life for all.