You know what terrifies me? Knowing that one day, there will be a generation that won’t possibly be able to understand the world we live in today. Now initially you may say—hey, that’s a good thing right? Maybe if you’re assuming I’m talking about technology—that it will take us so far that today’s way of living might seem archaic. And I am talking about technology here—but in this case it is taking us in a very different direction. There is a war happening out there right now—where the casualties are countless and the effects invisible to most. It is the war between technology and nature. In this role we’ve created as humans where our job is to consume, we rarely see the wreckage we leave behind. This war can be difficult to see—but it is films like Hayao Miyazaki’ Princess Mononoke—that make it a little easier for us to grasp. In this film, you find the animals and spirits of nature attacking humans, in order to protect themselves as the humans lay waste to their habitats and suck their resources dry. But even that’s not enough (it’s never enough). They need to kill the Forest Spirit—the very heart of nature itself. By doing so they anger it and it festers into something disgusting, withering everything in its way. 

Forest Spirit after being killed by the humans—begins to wreak havoc and destroy nature.

Now, you can go ahead and give the Forest Spirit whatever name you’d like. You can put a different face on it. But you can’t change what it represents. Our earth. We abuse our earth. Treat it poorly. Pollute it. Even spill blood on it. And just as the Forest Spirit and Nago are possessed by anger—so too is our Earth. It is trying to tell us that we are killing it, but we aren’t listening. With global warming’s devastating effects increasingly getting worse and water becoming scarcer throughout the world, we are headed for an entirely different landscape for existence. We might not be around to see it happen, but the future generations will suffer. They won’t know the world we do: with it’s green trees and diverse wildlife, and water accessible at every corner. These will be things of folklore. Until we can learn to live in harmony with the earth the way the villagers do with the Forest Spirit when they quell the rage of Nago, we are doomed.

Nago when he is possessed by rage and turned into a demon.

– D.Y.