"All things good are wild and free," wrote Henry David Thoreau 150 years ago. Yet in the ensuing years we have witnessed a bizarre and deadly acceleration of the war against nature, the war against the wild and free.
Bizarre because the war is almost always waged in the name of "the good of humankind"; deadly because this war threatens the elements that we humans, all members of nature, depend on.
It is so simple and so basic: clean air, clean land and clean water are being destroyed and this will continue unless we begin to question what have become sacred assumptions as to progress, economic development, the rights and responsibility of business, consumption habits and the role of the wild in our lives. And our questions must be reflected in our policies and laws, but more importantly in our actions as individuals, businesses and communities.
At the political and legal level we must let government and businesses know that borrowing against the future will not be tolerated and that subsidies must stop. The issues must be confronted and debated, not covered up through promises of, or accession to, more spending, constitutional reform, so-called economic growth and development, or other sensational issues and distractions. At the individual, business and community level we have to simplify, downshift and give ourselves the time and energy to renew our relationships – relationships with our fellow humans and fellow beings on the planet. We must renew our wildness and thereby regain our goodness.
It is so simple and so basic: Does anyone want "economic growth" or are we really seeking the security and fulfillment that is identified with the economic growth? Does anyone want "development" or do we really want the security and fulfillment that is identified with the development?
Take care of the air, land, water and "others" and the rest will follow. It has done so for all but the tiniest fraction of earth's 4.6 billion years of existence--even we humans have only strayed from the path of security, happiness, and fulfillment for a mere two or three steps in a journey of thousands.
We can do this, but we must wake up to our condition. We must confront and not confuse or cover up our insecurity and emptiness.
Wild at Heart hopes to be one vehicle for this awakening. We hope to participate in the transformation of assumptions and the changing of paradigms through the simple mission of defending the earth's air, land, water and "others".