Once it was commonly recognized that the heart is a persons mind. That a person thinks with their heart. However at a certain point in time people decided to switch this view and start to see the head as the center of consciousness. This has had a major impact on the way humans interact with the earth.
If the heart is the center of consciousness a person sees the world with their heart. Their heart is connected with the energy of the earth and they resonate with other being in a heart to heart way. This is why heart based cultures have developed the idea that everything is a person.
Lets look at the Native Americans. The rocks are the stone people, the trees are the standing ones, the four legged animals are the four legged people, the birds are known as the winged people, and the humans and other two leggeds are known as two legged people. In Native American thought all of the creatures of the earth, plants, and even dirt and rocks are all beings we are related to. They are all persons.
This is why after a native American would hunt an animal she or he would thank the animal for providing meat to help people survive. They wouldn't cut down a tree very lightly, it would involve a ritual. They would walk gently on the earth because they had a sense that what they were taking from the earth involved taking from a living being. The earth itself was seen as a living being.
This was a similar worldview that people in Europe used to have however eventually a new way of thinking came about where the world itself was seen as a machine and all the animals were seen as machines. This view of the earth as being essentially dead matter for humans to use and this view of animals as being like machines is the product of viewing the head as the center of intelligence. This has had a very serious impact on the earth.
This worldview has led to the widespread practice of animal experimentation and factory farming. If a person views animals as living beings they are not going to use cruel farming methods and they are not going to do experiments on them. Some of the first people to experiment on animals in Europe rationalized what they were doing by saying that the cries of pain from the animals were the same as springs springing out of clocks that were being tinkered with or gears creaking of machines that were being tinkered with.
Much of society is very low EQ, that is they have very low levels of emotional intelligence.
It is not only the Native Americans that saw the earth as being alive. It is also the way Europeans used to see the world and it is the way many people in India see the world today. Even in Japan they have Shinto shrines to honor the spirits of rocks and streams and even cats. Spirit is just another word for consciousness, life-breathe is personality. Breathing in and out is like the ripple of energy waves. And energy waves are consciousness. Everything has a heartbeat because everything is vibrating energy. A heartbeat is a type of breathing.
Some people have complained that because of industrialization the modern world has turned the earth into a dead nothing. But that is not true, there is life all around us. The earth is not dead. The concept the world is a dead hostile place void of personality is the root of Darwins view of evolution. He saw animals as competing in a struggle to exterminate one another. This exterminationist view of the world led to the two world wars where nations saw themselves as in Darwinian struggles against each other.
A Russian scientist named Kropotkin came up with an alternative view of evolution where he saw animals as cooperating with each other to help each other survive and that cooperation was the basis of evolution. And he cited many instances he noticed in Russia of animals of even different species helping each other survive. The Western mind saw the world full of monsters and in doing so it became the monster, it was projecting who it was onto the universe.
It is possible to change our ways and embrace a heart centered view of the world and interact with other creatures and interact with humans on a basis of love and to not take more from the earth than what we need. It is also possible to forgive ourselves for any mistakes we have made. Love is the answer and love conquers all.