Introducing the Institute of Natural Law with Zach Bush MD.

An origin story: the removal of Natural Law from the Declaration of Independence and the Institute's mission to bring it back.

INL: Tell us how the concept of Natural Law was first awakened in you?

As a young teenager my grandmother, at that time the director of PR for the Library of Congress, flew me to Washington DC for my first solo flight and weekend alone together. She took me to stand and read the original signed copy of the Declaration of Independence. She wanted me to see how many crossed out sections, words, and added content were penned into the document in the last few hours of the effort to get the document signed. She wanted me to see the original pen strokes spelling out what in her estimate, was the most distilled value and purpose of government; “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. As powerful as these words are, it is the lesser known words of the first paragraph preceding this famous line that are perhaps the most important. 

These are the words that justify the conclusion in which it is stated that when a peoples find themselves oppressed by a government, it is their right to resist and replace with a more just authority, “which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them”.

Unfortunately, this line was later interpreted that the laws of nature were superseded by Divine Rights and Laws — which had long been known as the divine right of kings.

In European cultures, a political doctrine in defense of monarchical absolutism, which asserted that kings derived their authority from God and could not therefore be held accountable for their actions by any earthly authority. Divine Law validated that God could speak through the unique voice of the royalty of a nation (British in this case, but subsequently the controlling colonial factions within the United States), thus superseding Natural Law and these inalienable rights of mankind.  

This unchecked capacity to declare and interpret Divine Law as something outside of Natural Law empowers individuals or leadership factions to self-proclaim truth and rights of conquest and ownership via divine appointment, thus providing the justification of extreme abuses of women, children, indigenous peoples, nations, and earth itself. 

In the decades since that first thorough reading of Natural Law with my grandmother, my professional life has taken me on a scientific exploration of the collapse of human health and fertility. The realization that we are on a trajectory to our own extinction — driven by our separation from nature at all levels of biology — has driven me to look for root cause and root solutions for a reconnection of our humanity and our human systems to nature.  

There is no other path forward for us. 

My conclusion after these decades of research in cell biology labs, clinical care in hospitals and clinics around the world, and deep observation of natural systems: nothing short of total rebirth of our biology, our economy, and our society through radical connection to nature can save us from the trauma that we have unleashed on ourselves at the genetic and societal levels. With this reality, it is an extraordinary relief to discover that there are immutable laws of nature that occur for a single bacterium, an ecosystem, a human being, a human economy and a human society.  

As we expand our understanding and memory of Natural Law, we quickly find the clear path forward for humanity to become a co-creator within our nature for prosperous health and abundance for the whole web of life on our planet and beyond.

INL: What does it mean to call humanity back into alignment with nature?

ZB: The oxford dictionary defines nature as: the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations. This is astounding. How did we manage to write humans and all that we create out of nature? This is a deep wound; the belief of our separateness drives us to a fear of scarcity of all things, in scarcity we fall into the need for ownership and exploitation.  

As we come to terms with the reality that human biology is the most complex ecosystem of life on earth — containing more species than any other place or animal on earth. Nature literally speaks through us. Our conception in our mother’s womb, our birth, our growth, vitality, and health, are all fully dependent on our direct connection and expression of nature within us. For an individual to regain health they must adopt a lifestyle that reintroduces the nourishment and connection to biodiverse nature in every organ system of the body. In the same way, a human society must also reintegrate nature at all levels of societal values, behaviors, and outcomes.

INL: Why is it so important for the Institute to exist now?

ZB: We have a few short decades to reverse the current trajectory of human health and our deteriorating, extractive systems that drive our economies, lifestyles, and governments. The impact of eight billion people living disconnected from our nature is too great a burden on planetary biology. We have accelerated extinction rates by an estimated 10,000 times in the last 50 years. The collapse of ecosystems is on par with the collapse of human health and fertility.  

We have the opportunity to realign to Natural Law. Returning to values, behaviors and productivity that support a thriving state of biodiversity in all natural systems can very rapidly reverse the cataclysmic patterns of disease and collapse of living systems that we currently perpetuate. 

The big question is: are we willing to change?

INL: What can we learn from biology and human cells as it pertains to Natural Law?

ZB: Life begins by the creation of healthy boundaries at the cellular level.  Each cell has a sovereign identity that comes with biological rights or functions that allow it access to all the resources and information that it needs to thrive and participate in complex relationships within the natural system that it dwells in.  

That sovereign state of the cell creates the power of attraction. It brings to it the nourishment and opportunity for co-creation from other forms of life. With the attraction of other organisms comes unique identity (polarity), in which each unique constituent in a complex system contributes unique resources, capacities, and needs allowing for collaborative exchange for universal abundance, adaptation, growth, creativity, and transformation toward higher complexity, intelligence, and beauty through the regenerative cycles of birth/death/rebirth.  

In this way we find that the axioms of Natural Law are: sovereignty, attraction, polarity, rhythm/flow, relativity (sensing/perception), cause and effect, creation/gestation, and perpetual transmutation of energy.

INL: Can you describe the micro to macro relationship of these cells to that of our species here on earth?

ZB: The difference between physics and life seems to be a roughly 1000-fold (in single cell organisms) to 10,000-fold increase (in multicellular organisms) in the amount of light energy produced per unit of volume. A human cell is crammed full of small, specialized bacteria that are called mitochondria. These organisms are necessarily present in every human cell including the ovum that is the single cell that you developed from.  

These mitochondria are designed uniquely to release light energy from double carbon bonds in sugars and fats that you might eat in your food. A single human cell is unique in its structure and function from all other species. Unique DNA patterns and expression lead to the capacity to self-organize into a fetus which attracts and absorbs nutrients within the womb of the mother.  

Nonetheless, that cell cannot become or thrive without the multiple mitochondrial variants living inside of it. Those mitochondria cannot live and reproduce inside your cells unless constantly fed sugars, fats and amino acids derived from the soil metabolism of your food inside your complex gut ecosystem. Your gut ecosystem cannot live and thrive without the constant connection and refreshment of the macro ecosystem of biologic diversity that is around you and delivered to your biology via your breath, your food, your water and your skin.

The glucose and fats that are delivered to your gut and repackaged by your unique liver cells would not exist without the creation of those long chain carbon fuel sources of sugars and fats if they were not assembled from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by other mitochondrial cousins that live inside each green plant cell — called chlorophyll.    

Not a single human would have been born without this complex energetic system composed of tens of thousands of different species working together for the creation and sustenance of you. 

While no single species within that web — even your own parental cells — could have imagined you, they have co-created you through Natural Law.  Each unique element in its sovereign identity increases the creative potential and intelligence of the whole system. 

We have come to believe that human biology, and all that we create is separate and therefore able to survive outside of nature.  We were wrong.  It is time to write humanity and all we do back into nature.  

INL: What does a future governed by Natural Law look like?

The last 70,000 years of human history has been dominated by successful long-standing systems of Natural Law that have organized hundreds of nations living in balance across many continents. 

The 600+ nations living alongside one another in North America at the time of European colonialists arrival is an example of a 40,000 year system of Natural Law. The Iroquois nation mastered the philosophy that afforded the coexistence of more than 600 plus nations representing a total population estimated at 100 million persons who enjoyed unique cultures, languages, and values to coexist.  

Conflict resolution was largely done with international diplomacy governed by an elected council of women. While battles and wars occurred throughout these many millennia, there was no single empire building nation that would attempt to destroy and dominate the others. Similar patterns were witnessed in the 100,000 years of oral history of the Khoisan peoples of Africa, and the 40,000 years of the aboriginal nations and cultures of Australia.  

Over the last 5000 years a series of empires have come to recognize the need to return to Natural Law.  Confucius, coming out of a modernizing and centralizing power structure in China, inspired the minds and spirits of humanity in the 1700’s. Among them was Benjamin Franklin who would spend 30 years writing and teaching the laws of nature to those that would come together in the colonial settlements of North America to form the United States. The failure of Natural Law would occur in the US within years of its formation as the tenants of Natural Law were undermined and superseded by the doctrine of Divine Law that allowed culture superiority and dominance to be justified.

In a future human society that rediscovers Natural Law, and comes to understand that this system rules the entirety of life as well as the physics of the cosmos, we will reach the opportunity to create new systems of growth. This would be a co-creative culture that recognizes the vital role in each community to express the human experience and ingenuity for how it has been informed by the local ecosystem and resources.

Communities founded on earth-based value systems, like food sovereignty and energy independence, have the capacity to eliminate poverty globally. Models of economic prosperity not dependent on extractive centralized resources and colonial exploitation will allow a safe space for human development for the first time in modern history.  

Such a system would foster new philosophy, biology, and creativity in our generations to come. The alternative is to continue to suck the last few decades of life out of global soil, oil, and human rights, palliated by technocratic rule as a distraction from our collective pain.

The future that our global governmental agencies have aligned on are accelerating this current path. The human spirit and creativity arising as an equal and opposite effect of these realities creates a foundation for new human civilizations that will be built on the value and celebration of biodiversity — from the micro to the macro. 

It is our choice to call humanity back into alignment with Nature.

Thank you for stepping into the co-creative journey of the Institute of Natural Law.  Share your perspectives, passions, and dreams with us!