I think people would be better off if they learned to use the whole earth. All five senses. the world is a very sensual place you know. People joke by saying "touch grass" but its much more than that. There's so much more. It's really there.
Most important of all, perhaps, during rituals we have the experience, unique in our culture, of neither opposing nature or trying to be in communion with nature; but of finding ourselves within nature, and that is the key to sustainable culture.
To have fur, to detect fast movements, to be afraid, to breathe underwater, to see in the dark, to carry precious stones, to be aerial, to make silver trails, to drink from the lake, to care for your offspring, to live in song, to play, to create micro crevices on the ground, to know death, to move with the moon, to cure with herbs, to be... See more
We have tried to relate to the world around us through only the left side of our brain, and we are clearly failing. If we are to re-establish a viable relationship, we will need to rediscover the wisdom of these other cultures who knew that their relationship to the land and to the natural world required the whole of their being.