The Plant Yourself Podcast Can You Hear the Earth Crying?: John Seed on PYP 617
John Seed was a 3-piece suit tech worker, then a meditating hippie farmer, before stumbling into his lifelong calling as an environmental activist.
He participated in the world's first direct action to preserve a rain forest in the 1970s. He co-founded the Rainforest Information Center and raised money and awareness to save the "lungs of the planet."
John soon realized that raising awareness wasn't going to accomplish the mission. After all, most people were aware of the damage humans were doing to the planet, but still weren't taking action to stop it.
His discovery of the Deep Ecology movement brought new clarity and led to the creation of new forms of activism. With Buddhist scholar and activist Joanna Macy, John developed what's now known as The Work that Reconnects (and Experiential Deep Ecology in Australia).
This work invites us to honor our feelings, even the most painful and hopeless ones. It asks us to see the possibilities that can arise when we see ourselves as part of, rather than apart from and above, nature.
In our conversation, we talk about capitalism, economics, advertising, right livelihood, psychedelics, 4 billion years of evolution that lives in each of our bodies, and the distinction between personal biographical trauma and that trauma that every living being experiences on a planet at war with itself.
I feel so lucky to be able to imbibe John's wisdom and spirit and humility.
I don't know if I have more hope than before, but I have more clarity, direction, and resolve.
I wish the same for you, and all my human relations.