What Americans Can Learn From the Guaraní People

     The divide between civilization and nature seems very clear and real to many modern people. Clearly, humans are on top. We were built to bend nature to our will. That is our right as a thinking species, after all. But it is precisely this attitude that has destroyed forests, killed other species, and left many fields barren.

     The Guaraní, on the other hand, live with nature rather than above it. They live a life of hard work with minimal consumerism to keep their families and their communities going without harming the land that provides them with food and goods.
 
 
     With 9 to 5 jobs and packed urban settings, people in developed nations are in no position to drop everything and become farmers and hunters, but there is one lesson we can learn from the Guaraní people, and we need to take this lesson to heart: Humans are part of the environment. The environment has a delicate balance, and humans can upset that balance very easily. Cutting down too many trees can cause devastating soil erosion. Using fields too intensely for too long can deplete soil of its nutrients and ruin the area for future farming efforts. The Guaraní know these facts, but many people from developed nations ignore them. Why? Because we have pushed nature to the edges of our society, both literally and figuratively. When you have never seen nature for what it can be, you never consider the changes we have made.

The Guaraní people have methods of living that are much more gentle on the environment. They allow their crops to grow alongside trees rather than simply clearing huge areas to grow crops, and when the Guaraní do clear areas, they do so in a safe, contained manner that does not take more space than a family needs. When an area has been farmed to the point of soil quality decline, the Guaraní then plant crops that thrive in poor soil before moving on and allowing the forest to reclaim the land while the people find a new area to farm. With these methods, the Guaraní are not making the environment adapt to them, but rather they are adapting to the environment. For many modern people, adapting to the environment sounds a lot like losing, but if we do not wake up and see our connections, we are the ones who will lose.