The Language of Separation
A sign in Montreal recently caught my attention. It read: "Humans and the natural world are on a collision course."
It reflects a common way of thinking about the relationship between people and the environment, but it also reinforces an idea that needs unravelling.
Humans and nature are not on a collision course – because humans are not separate from nature. We never have been and never can be.
Language like this reinforces the illusion of separation - a narrative that has fuelled domination, extraction, and colonialism for centuries. The idea of "man versus wild," the belief that humans were "given dominion" over the earth, the assumption that nature is something external to us - these all perpetuate the very mindset that has driven the crises we face. After all, the separation of humans from the more-than-human world is what has fed extraction, separation and colonialism for centuries.
The framing of a "collision" also suggests that there is a singular moment of crisis ahead of us. It implies that we can brace for impact, as if climate change were a future event rather than something already unfolding in real time, but there is no “one moment” of climate change.
It also subtly maintains the notion that human flourishing could somehow be detached from the well-being of the land, water, and air that nourish us - but there is no world in which we thrive while the land around us suffers.
It might seem pernickety to care about language here – there’s more important things to focus on right?
But language shapes our understanding of the world - for each sentence we read we unconsciously absorb layers of meaning behind it.
Language that separates us is a symptom of the disease, and fails to understand the level of healing we actually require: an end to the paradigm of separation.
And if we don’t recognise that disconnection, we risk treating symptoms while leaving the root of the problem untouched. Healing requires more than technological fixes or policy shifts - it requires a fundamental shift in how we see ourselves in relation to the world.
Other narratives carry this same harmful logic: “humans don’t deserve…”, “the Earth will be better without humans…”
The problems we face don’t stem from our humanity, they stem from our systems: from capitalism, colonialism and a mindset that sees us as separate and in opposition to everything around us. The result is relationships built on violence - both to the land and to each other.
Until we heal that mindset in ourselves and our communities, we will continue to recreate it in our wider systems. And if we blame our humanity instead of these systems, we risk despair and inaction.
So today, I invite you to take a few moments outside.
Put your feet on the grass.
Feel the air on your skin.
Remember: You are nature. You always have been.
From this place of connection, ask yourself: What is being asked of me? Where am I being called to act? And what is my next best step toward deepening my relationship with the world around me?
