This was the Great Forgetting. If the world has no soul, it cannot feel pain. It cannot suffer injustice. It is, in the cold language of property, “standing reserve.”
For countless Indigenous cultures, the idea was never lost. From the Kogi of Colombia to the Maori of New Zealand, the land is an ancestor, a conscious partner. As legal systems begin granting “rights of nature” to rivers (the Whanganui River in New Zealand) and ecosystems (Lake Erie in the U.S.), they are unknowingly legislating the Anima Mundi back into existence. anima mundi
The Anima Mundi is more than just a dusty philosophical term. It is a way of seeing. It asks us to look at the world with "soft eyes," to recognize the spark of life in the inanimate, and to understand that the boundary between "me" and "the world" is an illusion. This was the Great Forgetting