My life's mission is connected with my understanding that there is more to life on Earth than just people. Our species is just one of many and until we fully recognise that fact and start acknowledging the constraints that nature has imposed on us, and our utter dependence on other living things for our survival, we will render our own species extinct. We may have achieved all sorts of wonderful things - science, philosophy, art etc., etc., etc. - but without a proper appreciation of our place in nature, and how we relate to it, we are nothing more than locusts voraciously devouring the planet and the resources we, and everything else, utterly depends on.

There will, no doubt, be humanists among you who will scoff at this or condemn me for being anti-human (or something). But I would ask you, do you need to breath, drink and eat in order to stay alive? If you answer "yes" (I'm not sure I want to hear from anyone who answers "no"!) then where do you think those essentials that keep you alive (and reading, writing, painting, politicking and praying) come from?

This lifelong mission of mine started years ago, in my early 20s, in a brief period out of work, when I decided, for something to fill the time, to learn the names of common wild flowers. That's when I first came face-to-face with the rest of the world around me - the rest of the world that lots of other people either don't seem to see or regard as trivial and beneath their notice.