In Praise of Walt Disney’s Nature Advocacy and What May Be Missing with 4 Questions

 

In Praise of Walt Disney’s Nature Advocacy ... What May Be Missing with 4 Questions

“How could this Earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures.” Walt Disney

There is no doubt that Walt Disney was an advocate of nature and conservation. Even at the beginning, he brought live deer into the studio so Bambi could be characterized correctly. He brought to life animals, birds and fish photographed in living color to capture every move and emotion. He helped us to walk with elephants, hunt with jungle cats, swarm with dolphins and wait patiently as penguins survived another blizzard. There is no doubt through his nature documentaries and feature films, we were educated, affiliated, bonded and even protective of our wildlife neighbors.

Perhaps more than anyone he highlighted the meaning of Anthropomorphism which attributes human characteristics, emotions, and behaviors to animals or other non-human things including objects, plants, and supernatural beings.  Who hasn’t watched the Lion King and shared the emotions of youthful exuberance and curiosity,  angry and jealous family tensions, unknown overwhelming dangers, and the redemption of the circle of life? My 5-year-old niece cried inconsolably, but so did I share a few tears of joy. The spark of sublimity was lit for lions for all time.

No doubt his cartoons of Mickey Mouse brought to life a walking talking mouse with his family, friends, adversaries, a nice home with everyday problems. He was cute with big round eyes, button nose, normal  tail, an outlined plump body dressed in red shorts and wearing large yellow gumboots. As onlookers we could relate to everyday people problems but may not look as kindly at a real mouse occupying our own house.

But a mouse is not a human character who worries about shopping, driving or partying. The cartoon did not help to explain how a mouse lives and struggles in the real field … his burrows, food supply and food web, his numerous offspring, his lifespan and purpose in the environment. Only a basic understanding of ecology could validate his existence and worth to his true community.

Perhaps, too many Disney fairy tale characters are flawlessly pictured that may imply to children that a perfect face and body can live happily ever after.  Perhaps, too many of the fire-bolting, muscular exaggerations of mighty superheroes may imply that supernatural powers are needed for success...the bigger the better.

The timeless power of nature in its collective multidimensional forms is the strongest of all forces that dominate our Earth’s life support without which we couldn’t survive.

The more you learn, the more you understand the good news that Nature follows ecological principles which means that its real power is not about might, disorganization or destruction,  but about managing connections and restoring balance and unity.

Only interactions with humans disrupt these cycles. Could it be because they just don’t know enough synchronicity from the soil up to the clouds? Or how the missing link of a small honeybee could seriously limit the world’s food supply?

We need to hear this message loudly and clearly because ecological emergencies must be reduced all around the planet before natural cycles can’t redeem the imbalances or mediate the suffering of all living beings. Only a diversified communication mass media conglomerate like Disney can share the information creatively with facts and fantasy … combining science with creative art.   

What may be missing is a character from an eco-fiction source. Imagine if water could talk about its survival or a tree celebrate its partnerships and succession?  

Eco-fiction is a story that talks about the relationship between natural settings and human communities. The characters inhabit an ecosystem based on ecological principles that call attention to act responsibly to be good ethical stewards of the Earth. They share the reality of microorganisms, photosynthesis, food webs, carbon dominance, pollution, and changing weather patterns as first-person experiences. They share their joys, fears and hopes. They give warnings of dangers to ignore their messages.

A good eco-fiction asks 4 key questions:

1. Can storytelling help to change societal norms and feelings about conservation and sustainability?
2. Why is biological diversity so important to environmental sustainability?
3. Why are cycles the language of nature from nitrogen to carbon to nutrients to pollutants to greenhouse gases and more?
4. Why look at the environment as a work in process … not a given constant or photograph?

So, here is an eco-fiction idea for consideration called The Incredible Journey of a Water Sprite with Roots.

In a culture where fantastical superheroes and Mickey Mouse abound, maybe it’s time to meet a real superhero whose live is essential to sustain all life on Earth.  His mission is to discover Earth’s Cyclical Truths with natural affinity as both a water element and plant that makes him a primary consumer in the ecosystem.  He narrates his personal journey as he walks and talks through his  many experiences with lifeforms essential to ecology and shares his amazement at several natural cycles. He falls in love twice ... the impossible and the probable. It is only when he encounters humankind that he feels a loss of self; and learns consciously, and sometimes painfully, the truth for the need for preservation of balance in nature. 

What is more important to Earth’s survival than fresh clean water?

What is more important than a fresh, clean water cycle?

Disney is a natural fit to produce a movie like this but there may be other production companies who may be interested in an eco-fiction movie to help educate the masses and preserve our fresh water supply?

"No one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced."  Sir David Attenborough

Please comment about your favorite Disney movie or documentary. 

Questions and comments are always welcome.

Annemarie

amarie10@gmail.com

833 4471 4661 (please leave your best time to talk)

Excerpt... the water sprite returns to the pond now polluted...

Then I stop, unblinking and unthinking in shock. What I see is more frightening than the strangest invasion of any alien beings, I'm sure.

A new colony has appeared on the bottom sludge. A series of finger-like tubes are projecting out of the mud with long bluish grey worms twisting and turning their way to the top. Moving through and around the tube worms are other blood red worms, wriggling and waving back and forth with lapping tongues clearly seen in their open mouths picking up any food particles on the currents. Is that saliva dribbles I see floating by?

.

 

...these are actual biological changes in polluted water with less oxygen

Podcast Interview Answer #10 How Ecological Succession Compares to People’s “Social Succession” with Special Warning?

Podcast Interview Answer #10 How Ecological Succession Compares to People’s “Social Succession” 

with Special Warning?

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” 

Chief Seattle

Ecological succession is the process of gradual change in a community over time. It is based on organization that can predict the sense of a new development in any habitat. In some ways, nothing can remain the same except adapting to change itself. 

With nature, if we had a 100 years to spare,  we could concretely watch ecological plant succession in action to adapt to an altered environment in predictable ways starting from grasses, bushes, small trees and larger trees over time to restore balance and order. 

Nature’s ecosystems are complex, dynamic and adaptive with inbuilt resilience and capacity to cope  with environmental disturbances or stress and return to former stability.

What about a community’s systems or social succession to survive a severe uprooting of normal life?  Is there anything that nature’s ecological principles can help people to pass through any such a disaster to a level of sustainability again?

Social succession has yet to be defined in  a dictionary, but the comparison can be made to nature’s ecological succession. The case is made in 3 parts with a few supporting details:

1. Common principles relative to both nature’s and people’s communities
2. What if a global disaster undermines social systems and  foundations?
3. Warning about never losing the collective will

Part 1: Common principles relative to both nature’s and people’s communities

One consequence of living is to change and adapt as one's environment is altered.  The main issues become how to help manage connections, maintain diversity, broaden participation, and foster adaptive systems thinking. 

• we live in an interconnected world and need to think and act globally
• as environments change, adaptations are small and doable by everyone … wear a mask
• transitions are long term and require tolerance and patience
• a diversity of participants are needed as facilitators to help the common goals of survival
• front-line workers become the essential links to survival from janitors, drivers, cashiers to doctors
• a democratic system assures every member steps beyond private rights to common good

Part 2: What if a global disaster undermines people’s foundations and systems?

How can a society survive when people are impacted economically, physically and mentally?  On a planet of 7.5 billion people,  nobody is immune to this novel respiratory virus, CoVid 19, that can destroy lungs and other organs without natural immunity. 

In many ways, this viral pandemic will challenge the important principles of  ecological or social succession because of one reason … stay isolated for safety.  

Individual isolation is recommended as the main way to stop infections but lock-downs inside homes and social distancing are NOT the norms for Nature’s principles of change and adaptions. After a forest fire, the inhabitants draw together even more to support each other’s life-cycles. Unnatural situations can arise:

• individual communities are easily fragmented into fears, scapegoats and self-defensive behavior
• several socio-economic dysfunctions are displayed between racial and ethnic  inequalities
• economic recession can follow loss of jobs, displacements, future employment
• virtual reality grips a stronger hold on online retail monopolies that suppress individual small businesses
• specialized e-learning for in-house groups removes group problem solving and decision making
• virtual relationships are objectified without working and building together
• emotions rely on sensory experiences to feel empathy, sense of fairness and equality which may atrophy
• leaders seek ways to integrate technology into every aspect of civic life like surveillance and vaccinations without democratic approval
• autocratic dispositions that promise instant solutions or panaceas to placate the  helpless, hopeful believers
• wearing a simple face mask to protect everyone from breathing in a viral disease, symptomatically or asymptomatically, as advised by scientists, becomes a political football.

Over time these less than normal routines can evolve into divisive anti-social problems with serious loss of natural affinities by developing more tribes, partisanship and nationalization instead of common cause and effect within globalization.  

Think about Nature who doesn’t set leadership roles ... just common affinity for each organism's right to exist. Nature does not offer miracles...just logical progressions from single cells to complex beings and systems. 

Nature offers the only solution that it is only the collective will, that can make lasting changes.

  Part 3  Warning: Never lose the collective will 

In times of such overpowering disruption of normal standards or routines, the opportunity is availed to make changes and adaptations for a more inclusive and successful community within a better environment for all citizens, including nature’s rights.

• plan a different economy that is kinder to the climate and the planet
• form cooperative societies worldwide to pursue interests in science, artisans, entrepreneurship, culture  
• be resourceful in new developing new technologies  and skills while protecting ecological balance and nature’s rights to exist, regenerate and restore.

Most importantly, no crisis should ever reduce the people’s sense of belonging to and functioning as a community. We must never regress to living each for himself or revert to living within an isolationist policy.  As intelligent human beings, let’s choose to follow Nature’s presence as prerogatives to man-made regulations. 

Imagine if the bees decided that they would stop pollinating … nature wouldn’t survive, and neither would people.   

 

To that end, this solitary birch tree personifies how ecological succession could work in human terms through his experiences. 

Care for your own small space, no need to aggrandize.

Look after basic needs of others in your community, weak to strong. 

Be true to yourself based on your actions, not appearance or other opinions. 

No need to compete, stay content, maintain calmness within imitations.

Understand there is a beginning for every ending, as well as social succession for recovery. 

Whatever else, enjoy nature's communion. Take time to smell a flower and watch a tree dance in the breeze and wonder how nature connects and protects us all.  

Questions and comments are always important and appreciated. How do you feel about nature's principles to help us through this health and environmental crisis?

Annemarie

amarie10@gmail.com

1 833 471 4661 (leave a message for the best time to talk)

https://helpfulmindstreamforchanges.com

 "Nature is full of rules to help sustain each other but there is one great law whether it is written or not. This greatest law of nature is we are all connected ... when we change our seeds we change our biology … when we pollute our food, we pollute ourselves. It is impossible to alter one strand without changing the others.”

Excerpt: Ecological Succession of Birchum Birch

Is this how a pandemic can be visualized? We need People Power to turn it around.