It is ironic that Chapter I of the Book of Genesis, the foundational text of Abrahamic religions, created the meme that is destroying the very world that the book proclaims God created for man. Dominion is the cornerstone for all of humanity’s destruction.
Organized Religions Are One Dimensional
Organized religions are not well thought-out because they were designed primarily to support civilized culture as either part of the control system or as a panacea for the masses.[1] Religions are not holistically designed for the benefit of all life on Earth because they were never intended to be. Religions are designed simply to hold the allegiance of a group of people to society.
Religions are centrally organized. At some point, they are commonly adopted as the state religion. No religion would exist today without substantial historical support from the state.
Spirituality has no organization, has no text, is a personal philosophy. The only time a spirituality has been developed by a group with a deep wholistic understanding of ecosystems has been by indigenous peoples. Because their livelihood depends on being in long-term balance with the wild, indigenous peoples have to fully understand their local environment. This includes knowing the names and the many uses of every plant and animal.
Civilized groups destroy the wild by replacing it with the domesticated plants and animals upon which we have grown to depend for our existence. I know, for I have been an in-the-field plant breeder and created the second largest collection of savable open pollinated seeds in the world for sale at Restoration Seeds. Hybrid and genetically modified seeds cannot be saved and re-grown true to type.
No one wants to hear that their beloved religion is destroying the world. But, sadly, it’s true. All organized religions directly or indirectly reinforce civilization and the value system that is killing every wild ecosystem and causing irreversible catastrophic climate change on Earth.
Why Dominion is the Destroyer
Dominion is the Simian Flu[2] for planet Earth. Dominion does something to humans that causes them to destroy the world in order to live. Dominion is the foundation of the social organizational system called civilization.
To save the world, we have to understand what is causing its destruction. Dominion is the idea that power over all other species and the the natural world is given solely to people. Dominion justified the Agricultural Revolution and overpopulation. It has been destroying the world ever since. The Agricultural Revolution should be renamed the Dominion Revolution.
Dominion allows us to consume without thinking about the costs: which species were killed to make the product, how an item was manufactured, how much pollution was created, how the workers were treated.
To create a civilized home, we are taught to buy a piece of land, scrape the life off of it, build a home from materials taken from other ecosystems, then wage-slave for most of our lives. Ingenuous housing is free and when we are done with it, we can push it over and plant a garden.
Dominion removes almost all limits to what we can do. Dominion justifies laws that allow forests, prairies, rivers and seas to be clear-cut, plowed, dammed and fished and poisoned. Dominion makes destruction legal.
Dominion makes destruction legal.
Evil in Sheep’s Clothes
The meme the world belongs to man and I can do anything I want with it is so deeply programmed into society that it is difficult to see it as, to use a biblical term, evil. Consuming nature, forcing others to work, and doing harm to a domesticated species is as much an injustice as someone doing the same to us.
Turn the tables. Imagine if someone had dominion over us.
- What if someone came to our neighborhood, leveled all the homes with the people still in them to build their home in that place?
- What if someone bred obese humans in death camps to eat them?
- What if someone tore down our homes to mine them for materials for their use?
- What if someone plowed under our farm field to grow food for themselves instead?
- What if someone hunted us in our homes for sport and mounted our heads on their living room walls?
We do this everyday to other species without empathy. We take it for granted that we have the god-given right to consume the entire world and to grow as many people as possible. We even extend dominion to controlling each other with money. Dominion is the ultimate sin and civilization is the great satan.
Religions turn humans into soulless, blind demigods. We kill the wild with our bulldozers, chainsaws, plows, dams, roads and poisons.
It is important to remember that the problem is not humanity. Indigenous humanity has lived in harmony with the earth for 80,000 to 250,000 years, depending on how we define human. Humanity lost its way during the agricultural revolution 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Male Dominion Over Women
What is happening to Earth is happening to women…the two are not separate. The patriarchy has wanted dominion over Gaia as they have wanted domination over the feminine. They have treated her as a resource…rather than the Source of life. She is the Source…she gives us her life force so freely. ~ Beth Brown
The Lie That Civilization Must Continue
The excuse that we require civilization to live is the lie that perpetuates it. We teach our children that civilization must continue at all costs or we will die. The fact that humanity has thrived for 2 to 4 million years without civilization proves that is a lie.
We have one choice: move beyond civilization or we turn Earth into a desert and 90–99 percent of all life including humans will die. If you don’t believe me, visit south eastern Europe and the Middle East. These were once thriving ecosystems now destroyed by civilization.
We have one choice: move beyond civilization or we turn Earth into a desert and 99 percent of all life including humans will die.
If you have an eye for horticulture, you can see American ecosystems beginning to desertify in just our generation. Since the removal of the rain-creating old-growth forests in the pacific northwest U.S., forests are not regenerating. The top of Southern Oregon’s Siskiyou Crest and the stretch of Interstate 5 from Roseburg to Eugene are beginning to not grow trees any more.
Industrial farming and poisons have killed almost all of soil life in the midwestern U.S. Perennial prairies once as tall as a man on a horse are gone. Dams and hatcheries have killed almost all rivers in the U.S.
Dominion twists our minds to believe that the destruction of our children’s future is our protected right.
Civilization Lifted the Sustainability Circuit Breaker
Indigenous societies have something in place that enables them to live in eternal harmony with all other species creating a fecundity of life and biodiversity. This keeps them from destroying Earth the way civilization does through overpopulation and consumption. Indigenous peoples depend on healthy wild ecosystems to provide their food and shelter.
Perhaps it is an absence of permitted uses and cultural ethics. In Native American culture, the concepts of I can do anything I want to the world does not exist.
Freedom and liberty are logical extensions of dominion. America is founded on the greatest exploitation, slavery, genocide and ecocide in the history of the world.
Beyond Civilization
Civilization can never be fixed. We have to move beyond civilization to the next thing. Maybe the next thing is the oldest thing, tribes. Tribes did get us through millions of years.
There will be no justice until there is no injustice. The purpose of civilization is to enforce inequity between humans and species. By inventing an all-powerful superhero god, religions teach obedience to authority. This is called the Control System.[3]
Society beyond civilization will be founded on the opposite ethics of civilization.
- Man belongs to the Earth. The reverse of Earth Belongs to Man.
- Equal wealth for all.
- Equal rights for all species.
- Personhood for all species and ecosystems.
Permaculture’s ethics are similar.
- Care for the Earth.
- Care for people.
- Fair share.
The Re-Wilding Revolution
The idea that, The world belongs to man, is responsible for humanity destroying the world. End this meme and replace it with a better idea and humanity returns to balance with our relations.
No matter what the cause, it is a lost cause until the dominion of man ends and we return to making a living with the wild. This will more than likely require a 10x reduction in human population. This can be achieved without calamity, over 100 years, by one-child families.[4]
We have a long way to go, but at least now we know that dominion is the cause of Earth’s destruction and all of our misery.
Letting go of civilization and religion will be a monumental evolution in human thought. We will call this the Re-Wilding Revolution.
Share these ideas person-to-person. Don’t just read these essays, post links on your social media to essays that resonate with you. Our speech is not free if dissenting messages are hidden by search engines, and mainstream media. You found these ideas, now share them with others!
Chuck Burr is author of Culturequake: The Restoration Revolution. Revised Fourth Edition. 10th Anniversary.
[1] Wikipedia, Constantine the Great and Christianity.
[2] Simian Flu is a fictitious flu that kills 90 percent of the human population and gives rise to Planet of the Apes.
[3] Chuck Burr. Culturequake, The Control System: Everywhere.
[4] Chuck Burr, Culturequake, The One-Child Revolution.
Culturequake 