OMBAOWOW: One Must Becometh at One With One’s World.
I am increasingly persuaded that this singular phrase contains more wisdom than an alarming proportion of our institutions, and certainly more than several committees with which I have had the misfortune of becoming acquainted- for it appears to me, after long observation of streams, trees, birds, weather systems, and the curious behaviour of our own species, that the great tragedy of mankind is not that we are ignorant but that we are perpetually enraged in the labour of forgetting that which was once known instinctively, intimately, and without effort.
What is civilisation, but a vast and elaborate attempt to convince a creature born from the world that it somehow stands apart from it? We emerge from the soil, breathe the atmosphere, drink the water, consume the fruits of innumerable living systems, borrow every atom from processes older than memory itself, and then, having done all this, proceed to declare ourselves independent entities - as though a wave might proclaim its sovereignty from the ocean.
I have often suspected that were an intelligent visitor from some distant star to arrive amongst us, they would depart more bewildered than enlightened, for they would discover a species that speaks constantly of connection whilst arranging its affairs as though separation were the fundamental law of existence; a species that understands ecology yet behaves economically as though ecosystems were optional; a species that understands dependence upon nature yet speaks of conquering nature; that comprehends interdependence in theory whilst constructing institutions founded almost entirely upon the assumption that interdependence may somehow be ignored indefinitely without consequence. One can hardly blame the visitor for returning home with the impression that humanity has suffered some peculiar metaphysical injury.
Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether future historians (assuming the remain future historians and that they have not wisely abandoned the profession in favour of gardening) shall look back upon our age with the same mix of fascination and disbelief that we reserve for those eras in which learned men debated how many angels might stand upon the head of a pin; for they shall discover that we possessed all the necessary evidence before us, that every branch of inquiry pointed stubbornly toward the same conclusion, and that nevertheless we contrived to avoid it.
Let us therefore circle around to OMBAOWOW. The mycelial network beneath the forest floor appears to understand it exceedingly well, despite having accumulated neither wealth nor prestige. All living things participate in a reality whose primary characteristic is not competition, nor hierarchy, nor acquisition, but relationship. Everything becomes through everything else. Everything, in anything. The stream carries the mountain; the mountain directs the stream; the forest summons the rain, the rain nourishes the forest. Life itself advances through an endless choreography of mutual becoming, each thing transforming and being transformed by all that surrounds it. OMBAOWOW.
Only humanity pauses amidst this astonishing dance and declares itself a spectator. And what extraordinary arrogance this is - breeding loneliness - breeding confusion. For it is not merely that we belong to the world: the world is not a stage upon which we act, nor a resource awaiting extraction. It is not a collection of objects arranged conveniently around the observer. We are expressions of it, movements within it, processes occurring inside a process so vast that language itself struggles to encompass it. The distinction between self and world, whilst useful for practical affairs and avoiding collisions with furniture, begins to dissolve under closer inspection until one is left wondering whether the boundary was ever quite as substantial as one had imagined.
OMBAOWOW is essentially not about world government, world bureaucracy, nor any other scheme involving additional paperwork. Rather, I speak of a transformation of perception, a remembering, so profound that future generations may scarcely comprehend how we ever managed to think otherwise. They shall observe that every breath entered them from beyond themself and they shall wonder how their ancestors became persuaded that independence represented the highest expression of existence when the entire universe had spent billions of years demonstrating precisely the opposite.
So thus we must ring it aloud once more: OMBAOWOW. One Must Becometh at One With One’s World. The phrase appears ridiculous, which is encouraging, for the deepest truths often arrive wearing absurd disguises. Yet I confess that the longer I contemplate it, the more difficult it becomes to dismiss, until I find myself entertaining the possibility that all genuine wisdom, all genuine civilisation, and indeed all genuine sanity may consist in little more than the gradual recognition that nothing was ever truly separate from anything else, and that the long journey of consciousness is not toward domination, nor accumulation, nor conquest, but toward the rediscovery of the wholeness from which it first emerged.
OMBAO -WOW! 