We have to recognize civilization for what it is…and it is not beautiful. The human landscape lies on the other end of the aesthetic spectrum from beauty: it is sublime. It is full of decay and death while we imagine it is full of growth and life.
Ecosystems are beautiful and they are filled with both life and growth and decay and death. Other species have no illusions about death – they see it all every moment of their lives. They are so familiar with the process of decay and death that it does not scare them. They know, with as much surety as we know that wood burns, that when wood decays, or leaves decay, or plants and animals die, they become new life.
Right now the qualia we need is not to help us feed our desire for money, fame, possessions, and other material trappings. Rather, we need to re-tune ourselves to the homeostatic cycles of life and death, growth and decay, yin and yang, masculine and feminine. What we are looking for are the gifts from ecosystems that will make us whole.