| 1 | 1 | | After years of pushing fruitlessly against a locked door, the door has suddenly burst |
| 2 | | open and we're all falling over ourselves into the bright new age of ecology. And how |
| 3 | | bright it is. We have stumbled upon a new set of ideas which connect the most |
| 4 | | commonplace aspects of our daily lives with the rest of the creation and the very future |
| 5 | | of the planet. Green has all the makings of the new religion. But already myths are |
| 6 | | creeping into the Green faith. Dangerous and powerful myths, fundamentalist myths |
| 7 | | which could undermine the rational foundations of environmental thinking. |
| 2 | 8 | | Heathcote Williams's latest poetic TV production, 'Sacred Elephant' - featured on |
| 9 | | BBC2's Animal Night - represents the militant wing of the new Green theology. Williams |
| 10 | | specialises in the poetry of Angry Veneration: anger at the human destruction of God's |
| 11 | | Sacred Creatures. I was moved by his requiem for the whale, and then the dolphin, and |
| 12 | | now the elephant, but I can’t help feeling that these poems show worrying signs of |
| 13 | | irrational fanaticism. Well-meaning as they are, they produce a deeply mistaken and |
| 14 | | romanticised view of nature and our place in the scheme of things. |
| 3 | 15 | | For Williams, it is not good enough simply to respect animals. Elephants are more |
| 16 | | than just our equals in creation: they are our superiors. 'With its ears it can discern a |
| 17 | | mouse/ Which is reassuring for mice': the suggestion is that elephants are nice to mice. |
| 18 | | And always the assumption is that only we sadistic humans indulge in the rape and cruel |
| 19 | | destruction of our environment. But this is simply not true. A few nights spent in a South |
| 20 | | American rainforest or on the plains of Africa should dispel any lingering notions that |
| 21 | | wild animals are nice to each other. We humans may have the sheer power and numbers |
| 22 | | to inflict great damage, but we are not by nature more destructive than the other animals. |
| 4 | 23 | | 'The Nandi and the Masai1) know the elephant/ As a survivor from an older order/ |
| 24 | | And respect its seniority': yet another myth - that only 'noble savages' still possess |
| 25 | | knowledge of the paradise world of harmonious nature, knowledge which we have long |
| 26 | | lost. Not so; the 'noble savage' is a myth now, and probably always was. Evidence from |
| 27 | | Easter Island, for instance, has revealed that the famous stone-carving culture vanished |
| 28 | | very soon after the last forests were cleared. It seems the Easter Islanders deforested |
| 29 | | themselves out of existence ... 500 years ago. Contact with aboriginal people today in, |
| 30 | | say, Amazonia reveals much the same thing: they have an unsentimental and utilitarian - |
| 31 | | not to say short-sighted - approach to the forest. |
| 5 | 32 | | Now I'm not saying that animals are any nastier than we humans. I’m certainly not |
| 33 | | saying that aboriginal peoples are - or were - any less ecologically 'sound' than we are. |
| 34 | | What I am saying is that there's not really a lot to pick and choose between us, and that |
| 35 | | Heathcote Williams's obsession with self-denigration is mistaken and unhelpful. If we |
| 36 | | lowly humans are to rise to the mammoth - sorry, immense - task of assuming |
| 37 | | responsible stewards hip of the planet then we must have great self-confidence and an |
| 38 | | intimate understanding of biology. |
| 6 | 39 | | My perception of our role in the environment is almost the opposite of Williams’s: |
| 40 | | we humans are on the threshold of becoming the first creatures to control our biological |
| 41 | | imperatives in a rational, constructive way. In biological terms we are immensely |
| 42 | | successful, and yet we are about to become the first species in the earth's history to |
| 43 | | voluntarily limit our success in the name of harmony. OK, so we may have left it pretty |
| 44 | | late, but at least we are beginning to act. I'd like to see a herd of elephants negotiate a |
| 45 | | Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. |
| 7 | 46 | | Five years ago, the environment needed all the friends it could muster: every inch |
| 47 | | of newspaper, every film story was another nut or bolt in the huge tower of awareness |
| 48 | | which was to be built. Perhaps as a result we let our sense of discrimination run wild. It |
| 49 | | is a common enough fault among fanatics, especially when they are in a minority. But |
| 50 | | we've got to exercise those old muscles again if we are to keep the core of environmental |
| 51 | | thinking sound. Fundamentalists - whatever their faith - are both dangerous and a |
| 52 | | laughing stock. |
| | | |
| | | Brian Leith in 'The Listener', January 18, 1990 |
