People who share an active concern about the quality of air, water, soil, and other aspects of our planetary life-sustaining system tend to be called “environmentalists.” In the media they are usually pitted against people who talk of “the economy,” which includes the state of the stock market, the gross national product, employment (as opposed to working and making a living), or prices of goods that are produced, exchanged for money, and consumed. People who focus on these matters are not usually identified by a single label. They are “business leaders,” “business and industry,” and “consumers” (rather than citizens). By and large, they are perceived as more realistic, their interests as more important than those of “environmentalists.” Whereas people who contend that ancient redwood trees and animals of other than our own species have a right to live are often seen as “extremists,” I don’t recall ever hearing that pejorative applied to a corporate CEO, no matter how destructive of the common good his behavior might be.

The economy is the nitty-gritty, and the environment, much as we love it, can come later, if we can afford it: all too often, that’s what it comes down to, because of this dualistic way of thinking. Yet there is no way to separate the air, water, land and ocean from our personal health and well-being. How can we explain the huge increase in asthma in California’s children? In that context, clean air is not a frivolous issue. What about those toxic fish in the ocean? How did they get that way, and what do we do now? It may not be obvious why we need redwood forests or spotted owls or red-legged frogs, but the evidence is becoming ever clearer that everything is interdependent—including us.

There can be no one-word substitute for the word “environment,” I have concluded, because we are inseparable from it. The boundaries between us and all else are permeable and often illusory. If the natural systems we live in are degraded, so are we, in body, mind, and spirit. Recognizing that is a first step toward doing what must be done, which is to look at things clearly and specifically and seek out the interconnections, which lead not only to everything around us but also everything inside us. If we let go of abstractions that obfuscate reality, we may discover that we can see and sense and understand much that has been wrenchingly difficult to grasp. Help in making this perceptual shift is available from science, philosophy, poetry, music, and the visual arts.

The essential lesson is beautifully clear in Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, a film written and directed by Ki-duk Kim and recently shown in some California theaters. A monk and a child he is raising live in a temple floating on a lake surrounded by mountains in Korea. One day the boy captures a fish, a frog, and a snake, ties a stone to each with a string, and releases them. He laughs as he watches them struggle. The monk sees all this but says nothing. That night the monk places a stone on the back of the sleeping child and binds it to him by wrapping a rope around his body at the level of his heart. When the boy wakes and complains, the monk tells him to go find the three animals, warning that if any of them is dead, the boy will carry a stone in his heart all his life. This extraordinary film is a parable for our time.

In the 1970s we discovered we had an environment and were warned by a cartoon character, Pogo, that “we have met the enemy and he is us.” In the year 2005, all of us on this beautiful planet carry stones in our hearts. It is not too late to rejoin the planetary community.

—Rasa Gustaitis