Body dysmorphia and the rape of the Earth

While working towards my doctorate, and during subsequent research with an inter-faith seminary in the States, lots of questions have been posed. Here is my response to (another) one of them.

Question: Why does being taught to hate our bodies, our sexual natures, transfer over to hating our planet? How have we mistreated or ignored both our bodies and Mother Earth?

In making my response to this question, I am aware that I am using broad generalisations, which I usually try to avoid since there are always exceptions to what may appear to be a predominant theme. But I decided just to go with it this time!

When we are born we don't hate our bodies; such hatred, or fear, is, or may be, learned as we 'grow up'. In contemporary western cultures being thin, to the point of being unhealthy and unwomanly, has been promoted as an ideal for women, while being muscular, macho, and 'tough' has been promoted for men. I do believe that this is changing, albeit slowly. However a lot of damage has been done. Corollaries to the cult of thinness include the scorn and bullying of those whose bodies are naturally generously built, guilt and self-loathing among those of us who are curvy or a bit overweight, and the rise of anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders, especially among young people, already coping with the changes of puberty. Lots of money, of course, is made from our obsession with body-image: cosmetics and elective cosmetic/body surgery, dietary supplements/alternatives, gym memberships, rapidly changing fashions, and so on. 

Of course it is right to look after our bodies, to keep ourselves healthy, but if we aren't comfortable with our bodies and don't meet some imagined acceptable 'norm' then our self-esteem will be low, affecting everything else in our lives, especially our intimate relationships: we may develop a self-sabotaging pattern of need/exploitation/rejection because we don't feel worthy of affection, respect and love. Sexual intercourse has come to be seen, at least in part, as one of many appetites to be selfishly satisfied, preferably with instant gratification, rather than a magical union of male and female, containing within it the possibility of pro-creation.

Such selfishness ('I want it, I shall have it, and I shall have it now, no matter what the effect on anybody or anything else') has also become the dominant pattern of our relationship with the earth. Human beings changed (I hesitate to use the word 'evolved' which has perhaps more positive connotations!) from being firstly hunters and then hunter-gatherers, sharing the resources of the earth with other creatures and life forms without taking more than necessary for survival, to being agriculturalists, thus introducing the mistaken concept that tracts of land (and plants and trees, and flocks and herds of animals, fish, and birds) can 'belong' to people and freely be exploited by them. With the industrial revolution, the natural world was seen even more as simply a resource to fulfil human beings' perceived needs and selfish desires, with no thought for either the destruction this caused or the unsustainability of such rape of the earth. We have exchanged stewardship for oppression.

I wish that I felt confident enough to say that the balance is now changing, and that we are slowly not only realising what we and our ancestors have done, but beginning to restore what we have lost: a proper sense of the relationship between the natural earth and the creatures it births, nurtures, and sustains – but sadly I do not. We have a long way to go before humanity's rebellion against our Mother is ended, the wounds healed, and the true and necessary partnership restored.