What we have forgotten to our nature.

"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished. A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated."

1. Man is not Special, not the Crown of Creation, or a Species Apart, but rather a fairly minor evolutionary adaptation to one ordinary branch of the tree of life on Earth. The impact and 'success' of this species is no more an indication of greater importance, predestination or divine will than is the impact and success of the mosquito, HIV, bacteria, cancer cells or the Plague.
2. Our planet is a single self-managing organism. All life on Earth exists to sustain, nourish and support all other life on Earth. As with a human body or any other organism, that is only possible when each component of the organism does its part, in balance and harmony with the rest. In that sense the Earth is sacred, it demands and earns respect and obedience to its 'laws' because that is essential to the survival of all life.
3. The Earth is full of sentient, intelligent, communicative, emotional creatures. Most human moralities and religions seem to hold that creatures with these attributes deserve freedom from harrassment, suffering and enslavement, and the right to exist. Therefore much human activity, which deprives all non-humans of these rights and freedoms, is an atrocity no less despicable than human genocide, holocaust, torture and slavery, and must be stopped.
4. Small is beautiful, and place gives us identity: The community as the basic political unit and Natural Enterprise as the basic economic unit work best because they can be self-selecting and self-managing, and are extremely adaptive. In nature, the community teaches you what you need to live, it defines you and gives you purpose, it anchors and connects you. And though we are all part of a web, a mosaic, and we all travel, ultimately we have our own place, our 'home'. If you're not totally connected with everything and every creature that is part of your place, then it isn't your place. If you don't have a place, then you don't yet really exist. It is your community, your ecosystem, all of it, that is your place -- not the isolated, nuclear-family, locked house on 'private' property. Larger political units (states) and economic units (corporations) are inherently unwieldy, inflexible and less democratic. Because of their sheer size they are detached, remote, and cannot possibly understand or respond to our needs. Forged from both idealism and cynical greed for power, these abominations serve no useful purpose except to protect us from other large political and economic units (and they do that poorly).
   
5. We learn what we're shown, not what we're told. Our senses provide us what we need to learn, to really understand, to be happy. When we live in our minds, we close ourselves off from so much. Formal education is futile. To bring about change we need to show people something that works better, and reconnect them with their senses, their imagination, the Earth.