CRIMINALIZING ECOCIDE & BIOCIDE: THE LAWS OF LIFE SUPERSEDE HUMAN LAW

ECOCIDE & BIOCIDE

Poly Higgins lived a meaningful life. She has proven Margaret Mead’s famous dictum once again: “Never doubt that a powerful group of people can change the world. Indeed, nothing else ever has.”

Nature itself is slapping ever broader human populations in the face with a clear message: Playing with the forces of nature, unleashing extreme weather, wantonly proceeding with the mass destruction of ecosystems, and driving untold numbers of species towards and into extinction, has consequences. Grave consequences.

We cannot place human law, let alone human behavior — especially unnatural, anti-natural, and organically immoral laws and behavior — over the laws of nature.

For the simple reason that the laws of nature supersede our own laws — whether we like this fact, see this fact, and respect this fact or not.

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If human beings are no longer routinely skinning, boiling, and eating one another nor conquering, plundering, castrating, raping, and even enslaving one another on a massive scale — or committing other horrendous barbarities such as those committed by those who came before us (possibly many of our own ancestors included) it is in part thanks to laws and judicial progress.

We cannot and must not underestimate the power of the law.

We cannot and must not hesitate a minute longer to root and seed law not only in human tradition, Roman, Common, Indian, Mahometan… but in fact, in science, in nature — in reality itself.

From the Codes of Hammurabi, the Eightfold Noble Path of the Buddha, the Ten Commandments of Moses and the Christian Bible, the Vedas and Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, passing through Roman and Common Law, the Koran and Sharia Law, up through the Constitutions of contemporary nations and of our still infant United Nations, the evolution of jurisprudence has been and is central to our ability to not only thrive and live but quite literally, to even survive.

And to survive not as abstract entities, and not only as a species, nor only as collectives living within and under the umbrellas of shared ethnic, cultural, national, religious, and more recently, professional and preferential identities — but to survive, to live, and to thrive as individuals with hearts, minds, and spirits that need wilderness, beauty, truth, dignity, justice, freedom, solidarity, compassion, decency, and virtue as much as with bodies that need healthy air, water, soils, flora, and fauna.

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From Alberto Gentili and Hugo Grotius to Emmerich de Vattel to Samuel von Pufendorf, from Thomas Jefferson and other drafters of the U.S. Constitution to all those who contributed to the increasingly broad-based global legislation that is increasingly clear and specific about what we must and must not do, judicial progress has laid quite robust foundations that, properly respected and observed, would enable billions of humans and sentients and the ecosystems and biomes we all inhabit to flourish.

But the egos, greed, and fabricated needs of far too many are so vast while the consiousness, hearts, and lovingkindness of far too few so small that we once again need brutal, raw force — weather imposed by nature in the form of ravaging fires, floods, storms, pandemics,plagues and so on or by our “fellow” humans in the form of oppression, persecution, mass incarceration, starvation, murder and war to react in a more timely manner to the value and need to not just write laws and speak rhetorically about them — but to actually embody the virtues, principles, and wisdom in them.

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Without law, without order, without a minimum of understanding of and respect for the patterns, principles, standards, norms, rules, and laws of reality we can only expect one outcome: Exposure to distrust, disorder, and sooner than later, viciousness, violence, destruction, chaos, pain, suffering, untimely death — or worse.

We cannot pretend we respect the law if we and our organizations — our malls and supermarkets, our corporations, unions, governments, universities, and even our religions — are all too often actively, aggressively, and blatantly violating (or allowing & encouraging others to violate) the fundamental laws of reality — of the universe, solar system, and planet; of physics, chemistry, hydrology, and biology; of the air we breathe, the rivers and oceans that give us drink, the soils, flora, and fauna that feed us, the communities and societies that provide us with so very much.

Some of us have so little, but many of us — including all those that can read this — live in societies that provide us with so very much, with everything we need to not only survive but to live and even thrive.

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We must consider how our ancestors lived. Deeply, truly.

We must consider how those who come after us will live — if they will be able to survive or even live at all.

We must even consider how we ourselves will live in the decades ahead if we expect to live much longer.

Or if our imagination fails us, every single one of us should go camping, ideally for at least 3 nights with as little equipment and food as possible and as deep into nature as we can — to appreciate how damned spoilt, selfish, and arrogant we have become not “as a species” — but as the individual members of said species. We have become woefully detached from reality, from nature, and from the laws of nature.

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It is high time to accelerate the adoption of laws at every level of legislative and political organization, global to local and back, sanctioning all humans who want to continue ignoring, hurting, harming, and all-too-often viciously raping, violating, desecrating, and destroying our fellow sentient beings and the living systems that so generously gift us not with “ecosystem services” but with the vital treasures that give us nothing short of life itself.

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Written from the bottom of my heart and soul, with fury and love to honor Polly Higgins whom i was preparing to reach out to not so long ago — an impulse that i failed to act upon in a timely manner. May her legacy and the seeds she and others have helped plant live on in the hearts of those who understand the raw power and urgency of aligning human and natural law.

May those seeds blossom into vast flourishing ethical, moral, legal, and judicial ecosystems and bear powerful fruits in legislatures, courtrooms, clerk offices, constituent assemblies, and all other spaces in which virtue, value, truth, goodness, and justice are expected too, and need to flourish if humanity, other sentient beings, and the living systems that sustain all life on earth are to have a fighting chance to bounce back from the wanton violence we have unleashed and are still too aggressively unleashing against all of nature, our very own nature.

Thank you Jojo Mehta.

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with metta
Rio de Janeiro,
July 6, 2021