JINEN — Philosophy of Ecological LIFE in JAPAN
On this occasion we want to give you a green ecological touch if you have felt that call to be a little more environmentalist, ecologist, we can probably help you to have more ideas, or even to go a little further than what is normally known. And it is that what we want to talk about is the Jinen.
Jinen is a Japanese concept that refers to living like nature, that is, living as part of nature. They have probably realized that they are currently emphasizing that we live with nature, in short, that we are superior to nature, we can make and unmake it as we want, we have to dominate nature to continue growing.
Undoubtedly in recent years, society’s concept of our position in nature and how we use it has improved a little, going from “it must be mastered, it must be changed, it must be transformed”, to now saying “we must live with nature, you have to learn to live with nature”. And it’s not bad, it’s an improvement between destroying it, dominating it, living with nature, but I think it should go further.
This is the idea that the jinen has, to live as nature that we already are, to forget about a type of dominion over nature or a type of coexistence with nature, as if it were something possible. For example, when you go to the forest and you find a hive of bees, those perfect shapes of the same size and that they all work, all producing honey, a perfect organization. When you see this, it goes through your mind, “how beautiful nature is”, but you don’t think that it is a work of art or engineering. But when we see a building, a bridge, a dam, built by human beings, we no longer consider it a work of nature, but an artificer, a totally independent concept. But why don’t we consider what we humans do as a product of nature, when we are part of nature?
Perhaps now we ask ourselves, how can we reach the Jinen, or what is the ideal, because it is not just about deciding that today I am already part of nature. In Japan there is talk of a whole process that is simple in concept, but complicated in implementation. It all starts with something similar to traditional environmentalism or ecology, how can we take care of nature, how can we restore nature, what if global warming, and all these issues that we have become accustomed to in modern society, but unfortunately present to us distanced from nature. We talk about these issues as if they do not involve us, as if we are in a great position of power, outside, superior, from which we can repair or break the system.
