Humans Have Rights and So Should Nature

Humans once lived in harmony with the natural world. Consider timekeeping. Until relatively recently, the human notion of time was based on the natural rhythms of nature. Time was measured by a new moon, the first snow, a migrating bird, or the ebb and flow of a river. Time meant situating ourselves as part of a larger web of life.

Western society has since lost its connection to nature. Human-created days, hours, minutes, seconds meticulously dictate our lives. Our sense of time is now detached from the world around us. Modern clocks provide many important services by establishing predictability in a complex and fast-paced world. But the loss of our interconnectivity with nature’s timekeepers has diminished our relationship with nature.

Timekeeping is not the only way in which we have lost touch with nature. Many elements of Western society treat humans as separate from