This article is a lightly edited excerpt from the new monograph Living Perenniality: Plants, Agriculture, and the Transformation of Consciousness, by Craig Holdrege (New Perennials Publishing; 2021). The book grew out of a collaboration between Craig and Bill Vitek, editor of New Perennials Publishing and director of the New Perennials Project. (Another fruit of the project, a corn and alfalfa study, was highlighted in the Fall 2020 issue of In Context #44, page 6-7.) At our online bookstore you can order a copy of the monograph ($12), or find a link to freely download a pdf of the book.
The grove of over 500-year-old oak trees in Switzerland that I visited once has been a lasting presence in a landscape that has experienced the ebb and flow of much change. The trees too have transformed. Each year, living in an annual rhythm, they bring forth new roots, branches, leaves, flowers, and acorns; they form new buds and lose their leaves in the fall. Underground they weave with fungi and other plants; bacteria and fungi break down their discarded leaves and, together with myriad small animals, create a humus-rich soil that also supports the life of trees and other plants. While oak leaves feed the decomposers, acorns provide food for various animals. In a mast year, when they produce an overabundance of acorns, teeming animal life thrives, and this, in turn, brings new dynamics into the relations among other species. The trees respond to the changing conditions of light, air, and moisture in the moment and over longer periods of changing climate. The trees are lasting and they are embedded; they are responsive and they are active. They are exemplars of living perenniality.
An ancient oak (Quercus petraea) near Wildenstein Castle, Switzerland. (Photo credit: Markus Bolliger)
The long-lived oaks are enduring but not static. The annual ring of wood that each tree grew in its trunk in 1546 is still there. But it would not be there if the tree as a whole were not, day in and day out, living in receptive and active weaving with the changing world. The width of the ring and the quality of the wood reflect its relation to the larger ecosphere.
What is long lasting and alive is also responsive in the moment. What is long lasting in the sense of solidity, but not aliveness, will be broken down over time and disappear. What endures and is in touch with its context will transform. You don’t have living perenniality in nature without continuity and without ongoing transformation.
Dynamic and healthy ecosystems are usually inhabited by a great variety of plant growth forms, from the short-lived to the long-lived. They are all active contributors to the long-term, vital coherence and transformation within a forest, prairie, or lake. Short-lived parts of creatures, such as root tips and root hairs or the hyphae of fungi, and creatures with short life cycles — spanning months in annual plants, weeks or days in nematode worms, to less than an hour in actively dividing bacteria — are all essential in nature’s life processes.
Human life is dependent on this living perenniality in the rest of nature. Nature is not a separate “other,” outside of me. I am woven into it as an organism and could not exist without it. And yet, in consciousness, I can be essentially oblivious to it. Nothing external can compel me to strive to learn from, honor, and act in relation to the wisdom at work in the world. It is a choice I can make — a choice that does not arise for trees, fungi, and squirrels.
Humanity has — whether we like it or not — a unique place on Earth. Over two hundred years ago J. G. Herder wrote that the human being is the first creature to be “set free” in creation. Clearly, I am not free to live without ground under my feet or the oxygen that plants create. “Set free” points to a state of consciousness — my ability to ponder, choose, strive for a better future, or ignore what’s going on around me. Humans can, in Herder’s words, “look to far horizons” and also “see much darkly and false. We forget our steps, only to be reminded when stumbling on what a narrow basis the whole head- and heart-edifice of our concepts and judgments rests.”(1)
To take a perennial view as a human being is to attend to the long term. We consider — in the present — the past, and we look to the future. Grounding for living perenniality in a human context lies in the growing insight into the currents of life that are at work in the present. We can learn from the life of nature — nature as measure — and we can consider how human thought and action have influenced and will influence the course of evolution. Humanity has strongly disrupted processes on the Earth. Much of this has to do with egocentric minds that think short term. And also with the drive to do the doable, which manifests in profit-seeking economics and immense developments in technology.
In his novel, The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk describes a main character as “too clever to be wise.”(2) This is one conundrum of our situation today. In cleverness left to its own devices, a person can be caught up in a web of ideas — a “cool idea” comes and he wants to try it out. He follows that idea, helped by a cadre of smart people, and develops a product. While the product, considered in isolation, may be ingenious, the larger context that it will in fact influence and change is usually given little consideration — except to the extent that it serves the limited goals of the creators. It is left to others to pay attention to and deal with all the unintended consequences. You can see this in technology, in laws that serve egotism, or in political and economic structures that reinforce the life-inhibiting status quo.
As human beings we are enmeshed in forms that stem from the past; we are active in the present, and we consider the future. Future is a “not yet” that is at work in our concerns, hopes, and ideas in the now. How can we further a healthy evolution of the planet so that diverse life on Earth — including human life — can thrive? This question embodies a striving beyond what is given today.
How the future should look is not written in the stars. While there is no script, there is much that we can learn from living perenniality in the natural world. When we work to gain a deeper understanding of its qualities, we are not only learning new facts. The participation in how life is at work on Earth can enliven our perceptions, help our thinking become more dynamic, and let our doing become sensitive to the contexts in which we are working. We become more rooted in the life of the planet. The wisdom in the world provides guidance.
The study of living perenniality in nature will not tell us what to do. It does provide fertile soil for intuitions and inspirations that have the potential to be in touch with what the Earth and humanity need. While we can decry so much that is out of sync in what we do, there are also, all around the globe, people who generate seed ideas, such as the idea of perennial polycultures or the farm as an individualized ecosystem. Such ideas can lead to new creations on the planet, born of human intentions that strive for integration into the large context of life.
When we plant seed ideas, their growth and transformation in the web of life need tending. This includes ongoing attention to process. Are we able and willing to continue to guide their development with a sensitivity to the context they are in and that they are transforming? Do we stay flexible and open to further change? Do we realize that organizational forms also need to be imbued with life and not become rigid structures? Do we continue to learn — and remain aware of our ignorance? These are the kinds of questions that can foster living perenniality in human striving.
References
Herder, J. G. (1982). Herder’s Werke, Vierter Band: Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit [Ideas Concerning a Philosophy of the History of Humanity]. Berlin: Au au Verlag. (This book was first published in 1791.)
Wouk, H. (1951). The Caine Mutiny. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.