Perhaps it was with good intention that some people have called the Earth “Mother.” For me, this is wrong and unhelpful. To anthropomorphize the Earth in this way ignores reliable observation and encourages bad behavior.
If indeed the Earth has consciousness, it is not the consciousness of a caring, benevolent Mother. The Earth does not tolerate inattention, disrespect or careless behavior. It is not accurate or good to see the Earth as an entity acting in a mothering way.
In fact, the Earth has traits that are characteristically unfriendly and hostile to humans, even while humans have been given a select niche in which to prosper and survive. I fail to see that humans are regarded as anything special, entitled to mothering. It is not a caring, benevolent Mother that erupts and sends ash, lava and deadly gas in all directions, regardless what number of humans are affected.
It is not a mothering gesture to send destroying hurricanes ashore or ravaging tornadoes across a countryside populated by humans. It is no mothering entity that causes my fingers to go numb and white in winter. It is no mothering care that causes others to die in summer from drought and heat. The same Earth that provides nourishment also yields poisons that kill and harm humans.
I can breathe oxygen that plants have rather recently learned to spread in the vastness of the earth’s atmosphere. However, that is a balance that humans have now learned to alter. The apparently friendly benevolence of the Earth’s atmosphere can be changed by humans to an inhospitable, polluted atmosphere of suffocation and harm.
The Earth may have the appearance to some of a nurturing mother. But the Earth also is an unmoved arbiter of vengeance to creatures that ignore or alter the power and delicate balance of the Earth’s ecological systems.
Humans are nourished by plants that grow from the earth. But humans also can make the same nourishing food into agents of harm by the way humans apply chemicals to the Earth and alter the natural productivity of the land. The Earth is no motherly protector who catches a toddler who stumbles because of a lack of skill or insight. The toddler falls.
At best, humans are gardeners who have this brief time in the history of the Earth to draw breath and nourishment from the Earth. Humans have a very recent relationship with an Earth whose history has nothing to do with mothering humans. For a relatively brief moment in time, the Earth has given us a home and become a hospitable place for humans to live and prosper.
It now appears that humans have perhaps overlooked that hospitality and have become unruly and unwelcome guests. The Earth has, in very unmotherly fashion, already begun to eliminate these ungrateful and destructive guests. Changes in the climate brought on by humans have already caused the suffering and starvation of millions of people. There is no intervening Mother protecting the gardeners who have ignored or misused the welcome from a gracious Earth.
I wonder if humans who have become like unruly children of a dispassionate planet will change. Will humans change enough of their greedy and uncaring behavior before they are cast aside by the Earth as countless creatures have been cast aside and gone extinct in the past. No Mother protected them, and there is no Mother who will protect humans from such a fate.
The Earth does not tolerate inattention. If humans cannot be skillful observers of what the Earth demands, humans will surely perish. They will at least perish in great numbers, but perhaps not totally perish. If humans continue to show themselves to be disrespectful, unruly guests in the Earth’s garden, they will certainly be evicted.
If the Earth is indeed a Mother, the Earth is more demanding than any mother I have ever met.