After reading Glenn Parton's
wonderful essay The
Machine in Our Heads, which I would urge everyone to read, I was inspired to try again to articulate, in
simple terms, the environmental philosophy that underlies much of what
I have come to believe in the last five years, and which has driven
much of my recent lifestyle and behaviour change, and the writing of
this blog. Here's the latest attempt, talking to myself out loud:
- I believe that
Earth, our planet, is a single organism, a self-organizing and
self-managing system, which evolves deliberately and 'consciously' to
maximize the diversity, the resilience, and the well-being of all its
utterly connected component life forms. Like the cells and organs of a
human body, the purpose of each creature is to look after and care for
its community, and in so doing contribute to the continuance, balance and health
of the Whole. In this sense Earth is sacred -- worthy of our absolute
respect, reverence and devotion. [Basis: Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, Suzuki's Sacred Balance etc.]
- I believe that our
current culture, which we call 'civilization', was a well-intentioned
human invention designed to adapt to, and cope with, a sudden global
scarcity of food, which probably arose as a result of the last ice-age.
Although this invention was initially successful, producing
agriculture, work specialization, and urbanization, its consequences
have included war, crime, poverty, overcrowding, epidemic disease,
environmental devastation, species extinction, ecological fragility,
global warming, massive psychological illness, and violence on a
magnitude previously inconceivable in Earth's history. [Basis: Economists Peter Jay & Marshall Sahlins' Original Affluence theories, Diamond's works, Pilger's New Rulers of the World, etc.]
- I believe that our
current culture, which we call 'civilization', has, as a result, made
all of humanity mentally ill, and physically degraded the planet to the
breaking point. [Basis: Quinn's Story of B etc.]
- I believe that we
need to deal with the pandemic psychological damage caused by this culture
first, because we cannot galvanize the will, effort, and resources to
create a wholly new and radically different culture until and unless we
have
- a clear picture of what our civilization has done to us,
and to our planet,
- a clear understanding that there are no simple, moderate
solutions within the vast scope of human ingenuity, no easy way out,
- a comfort with our ability to live without civilization,
and
- an appreciation of what that means: not a savage,
primitive, subsistence, nomadic, hand-to-mouth existence, not a turning
back of the clock, but instead, after a period of massive social change
and modest sacrifice, moving forward
to a paradise on Earth
- I believe that man
is not naturally violent, acquisitive, greedy, negligent, aggressive or
destructive. These are all symptoms of stress-related mental illness
caused by our culture. No one is to blame. [Basis: Hall's The Hidden Dimension etc.]
- I believe that the
psychological and spiritual healing necessary to cure our pandemic
mental illness will require a combination of education, to learn about
the true cost of civilization and re-learn the alternative ways to
live, and support to help each other heal. That education and support
will have to be personal and one-on-one. It will be difficult, because
we've been so well indoctrinated to believe that our brutal, violent,
destructive civilization is the only way to live -- our religions, our
institutions, our stories, our moral systems, our reasoning systems,
everything we're taught from early childhood, even our language is
imbued with cultural bias. But as civilization hurtles us ever more
alarmingly to crisis upon crisis, and the absurdity and
unsustainability of civilization becomes more obvious, the willingness
to create a new culture and abandon the old one will accelerate. And
humans lived successfully and peacefully for three million years before
civilization culture, so our instinctive knowledge of how to live
without civilization, the knowledge of a Sacred Earth culture, is in
our DNA. We've just forgotten, and we can learn to remember and
rediscover that knowledge. [Basis: Jensen's A Language Older than Words etc.]
- I believe that
spending time away from civilization is critical to this healing. We
can't listen to our instincts if we're surrounded by civilization's
louder noises, and we can't reconnect with the Sacred Earth if it's
only an abstract concept.
- I believe
that if
we fail to heal ourselves, and fail to create a new healthy culture in
time, our world will suffer a series of eco-tastrophes by the end of
this century, which will bring an end to civilization anyway, but much
more
horrifically than if we can replace it voluntarily first. But I'm sorry
to say I don't believe we will
act in time to create a new Sacred Earth
culture. The old culture simply has too much momentum, and belief
systems and behaviours change slowly. The old culture is moving too
fast and no one is in control, so even though we are already timidly
applying
the brakes (with efforts like the Kyoto Accord, population growth
reduction in some countries etc.) I don't think we can stop before we
crash. And many of the victims of the old culture -- corporatists,
neoconservatives, and religious fundamentalists especially -- will
fight us fiercely and incessantly to prevent anyone from taking their
foot off the growth 'accelerator'. They are the worst addicts to our
civilization culture, and will be the hardest to liberate. [Basis:
Gould's Full House, data from the UCS, Census Bureau, Worldwatch Institute, etc.]
- I believe we need
to try for a 'soft landing' anyway, no matter how hopeless it may seem.
I have no use for neo-survivalists and salvationists, the fatalists at
both extremes of the political spectrum who are actually looking forward to
the crash that ends our civilization, in the belief that it's
inevitable so we might as well get it over with. I've already described
in my How to Save the World Roadmap the things I believe must be done
in order to avoid eco-tastrophe and bring us, with minimal suffering,
into the Sacred Earth culture. My novel (in progress) will describe
what life in this future culture could be, will be, like.
- I believe
we need a Plan B, in case the voluntary measures in my Roadmap aren't
enough. If civilization is analogous to a car (with 6.3 billion
passengers all fighting for control of the wheel) driving too fast on
black ice toward a pile-up ahead, then the Roadmap, Plan A, is most of
us applying the brake together with all the force we can muster. Plan B
is to ditch the car, to derail it by more drastic means, in the belief
that anything is better than a high-speed crash. Plan B is the radical
environmentalist's reluctant manifesto, which involves removing those
with their foot stubbornly on the accelerator, by force. More on Plan B
later this week.
Please let me know what you think of Glenn Parton's essay.
If you're a regular reader, you'll know I have little use for
psychologists, but I found Parton's paper very compelling. If you enjoy
The Machine in Our Heads, you might also like his Humans in the Wilderness paper, published in the remarkable Canadian eco-philosophy magazine, Trumpeter.
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