Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Viktor Schauberger: NATURE WAS MY TEACHER (reprise)

 

Viktor Schauberger (1885-1958) was a natural scientist whose ideas were way ahead of the time. As a young man he worked as a 'forest-master' in the Austrian Alps when they were still a true wilderness. His remarkable observations of Nature-in-the-raw were to influence his entire life's work.

Schauberger's insights into Nature's ways pivoted around the essential characteristics of water as a living substance that energizes all life, both organic and inorganic. He frequently asserted "water is a living organism" - an idea to which poets and philosophers have subscribed, but which has escaped conventional science.

He was passionate about trees, and natural forests as the cradle of water. He warned how deforestation would deplete the world of water and destroy fertility, causing deserts and climatic chaos. He argued that when the natural eco-systems are in balance and diversity rules, there is great creativity and the evolution of higher and more complex life forms, but there is also order and stability.

When humanity walked lightly on the Earth, we cooperated with Nature. Although we are still part of Nature, we behave as though we are not, but above it, dominating and exploiting it. Viktor warned that the more we continued to go against Nature, the whole eco-system would become sick, the climate destructive, and human society would break down, with extreme violence, greed and pandemic illnesses.

"How else should it be done", he was asked. His answer was straightforward and uncompromising - "Exactly in the opposite way that it is done today!"


[Thanks to Gabriel Herbst for introducing me to Viktor Schauberger. First postede 1 July 2008]