Five years ago, at the age of
48, I decided it was time to stop complaining and being depressed about
the state of the world, and start doing something about it. I began to
read voraciously, an average of two books a week, and gradually put
together a picture in my own mind of the current state of the world,
how we got here, and what we needed to do about it. In February of last
year I started a weblog, in part because I wanted to share what I had
learned, and in part to discuss it with others and find out if they
felt the same way that I did. At that time I wrote an essay
that described my learning journey to that point. Since then, I have
read a great deal more, and engaged a lot of very bright and perceptive
people in discussion of these issues. I intended to update the essay,
but I have come to realize that the sequential story of discovering the
unprecedented crisis this world is in today is essentially what the 'environmental philosophy'
category of my weblog tells already. What is needed now instead is a
recapitulation, much shorter and not necessarily in the order in which
I learned it, of what I have learned and what I believe we need to do
to stave off ecological catastrophe. That is what this essay is about.
It is my way of 'signing on' to the 1992 World Scientists' Warning to
Humanity signed by 1600 senior scientists from 71 countries, which
stated:
"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. No more
than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we
now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.
A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and life on it is required
if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is
not to be irretrievably mutilated."
At the root of my environmental philosophy is a growing belief that
just having everyone 'do their best' to make the world a better place
will not be enough. In other words, we need to bring about a dramatic
change in our world in this century, a much greater and faster change
than any culture can achieve organically. A change this drastic and
this sudden has occurred four times before in human history:
- about 30,000 years ago, with the invention of the axe, the flint arrowhead and the spear
- about 10,000 years ago, with the invention of catastrophic agriculture and animal domestication
- during the Renaissance, with the invention of modern science
- during the industrial revolution, with the invention of automation
Each of these revolutionary inventions utterly changed the way humans lived. None of them, I think importantly, came about because of political or social actions or revolutions -- they were all (in the broad sense of the term) technology-based.
What we need urgently today is another such revolution, every bit as
radical as these four. We need to find, and rapidly implement, a
better, sustainable way to live.
This essay is organized around ten 'arguments'. I am not smart enough
to be able to distill the entire logic supporting these arguments into
this essay, but I will refer the reader to sources that do. The Bibliography
at the end of this essay contains the full list of these sources. Some
of the books and articles in this Bibliography contradict each other in
places. I freely admit to being selective in what I've taken from each.
I trust my instincts in that selection. My purpose is not to persuade
you, dear reader, but merely to show you what persuaded me.
The essay also contains a systems chart of 'How Nature Works' and another of 'Why Civilization Doesn't'.
These charts are my attempt to capture the interrelationship of the
forces that allowed the world to function as a self-managed system so
effectively for millions of years, including the first three million
years after the appearance of man, and the forces that have largely
replaced these natural forces since the dawn of civilization, driven
largely by the changes wrought by the four human revolutions noted
above.
Here are the ten Arguments:
The Truth About Nature: What We Have Forgotten
- Man is not Special, not the Crown of Creation, or a Species
Apart, but rather a fairly minor evolutionary adaptation to one
ordinary branch of the tree of life on Earth. The impact and 'success'
of this species is no more an indication of greater importance,
predestination or divine will than is the impact and success of the
mosquito, HIV, bacteria, cancer cells or the Plague.
- Our planet is a single self-managing organism. All life on
Earth exists to sustain, nourish and support all other life on Earth.
As with a human body or any other organism, that is only possible when
each component of the organism does its part, in balance and harmony
with the rest. In that sense the Earth is sacred, it demands and earns
respect and obedience to its 'laws' because that is essential to the
survival of all life.
- The Earth is full of sentient, intelligent, communicative,
emotional creatures. Most human moralities and religions seem to hold
that creatures with these attributes deserve freedom from harrassment,
suffering and enslavement, and the right to exist. Therefore much human
activity, which deprives all non-humans of these rights and freedoms,
is an atrocity no less despicable than human genocide, holocaust,
torture and slavery, and must be stopped.
- Small is beautiful, and place gives us identity: The
community as the basic political unit and
Natural Enterprise as the basic economic unit work best because they
can be self-selecting and self-managing, and are extremely adaptive. In
nature, the community teaches you what you need to live, it defines you
and gives you purpose, it anchors and connects you.
And though we are all part of a web, a mosaic, and we
all travel, ultimately we have our own place, our 'home'. If
you're not totally connected with everything and every creature that is
part of your place, then it isn't your place. If you don't have a
place, then you don't yet really exist. It is your community, your
ecosystem, all of it, that is your place -- not the isolated,
nuclear-family,
locked house on 'private' property. Larger political units (states) and
economic units (corporations)
are inherently unwieldy, inflexible and less democratic. Because of
their sheer size they are detached, remote, and cannot possibly
understand or respond to our needs. Forged from both idealism and
cynical greed for power, these abominations serve no useful purpose
except to protect us from other large political and economic units (and
they do that poorly).
- We learn what we're shown, not what we're told. Our senses
provide us what we need to learn, to really understand, to be happy.
When we live in our minds, we close ourselves off from so much. Formal
education is
futile. To bring about change we need to show people something that
works better, and reconnect them with their senses, their imagination, the Earth.
The Truth About Civilization: The Problem and Its Root Cause
- Civilization was a well-intentioned response to a sudden
drastic shortage of human food (possibly arising from overhunting of
large game and/or the last ice age). But it was not an instinctive way
to live, and needed a lot of artificial constructs and controls to
work. Our civilization systematically brainwashes us into staggering
cultural homogeneity and imaginative poverty, and to believe ours is
the only way to live -- that there is no other human way. To do so it
must get us to forget or deny the 5 truths above, and teach us these
great myths:
- That our instincts are unreliable (what nature 'tells' us
to do), and logic and morality are infallible (what human codes tell us
to do);
- That life is a struggle of 'good vs. evil', and that we are inherently weak, selfish and lazy;
- That it's good to be 'normal' and to be like other
people, and that we're all part of society and not ultimately, terribly
alone;
- That we must be unconditionally obedient to our
'superiors', their hierarchy and their laws, or society and order will
collapse;
- That our well-being is appropriately measured by our material possessions and our ability to acquire more;
- That disparity of wealth, health and dignity is necessary
and inevitable and that with hard work 'have-nots' can become 'haves';
- That we must all work long, hard hours at unsatisfying jobs or we will all suffer and starve;
- That humans have an inherent right to all the land and all the resources of Earth (and even beyond);
- That history began with civilization, before which life
was short, fearful, nasty and brutish (and in nature and tribal
cultures, it still is).
- We
are instinctively responsive to, and responsible for,
everything we have control over. In nature that is the immediate
community -- what goes on outside is not one's business. But now that
we, as a 'global community' control the whole world we cannot respond,
cannot bear the commensurate responsibility. This conflict between our
instincts and reality, along with the stress of overpopulation and
separation from nature, has made us all mentally ill. This illness
manifests itself in violence and war, hatred, abuse, greed, jealousy,
and fear. We are helpless to do what we 'know' we must. It is like
facing 'Sophie's choice' (being asked by the Gestapo to decide which of
your children to spare from the gas chamber) over and over and over. We
cannot bear to know, so we turn off, we hide inside, we distract
ourselves. It is only when we don't know, and cannot even imagine, that
we can go on, and tolerate the world we have created. This makes it
easier for us to accept the brainwashing that ours is the only way to
live, to tolerate the abuses and outrages that weknow are going on
behind closed doors, and to accept the arguments of skeptics and
apologists and holocaust denyers that it's not really
that bad, or perhaps it's even good, or at least it's divine will so
it's beyond our control, there's nothing we can do about it, we're not really responsible
- As a consequence, we are poised, by the end of this
century, to create a world that contains one billion Americans and
fourteen billion people, and uses eight Earths worth of resources (at
current regeneration rates) just to meet human needs. A world that
will, as a direct consequence of this overcrowding and unsustainable
consumption, be preoccupied with catastrophic famines, epidemic (new)
human diseases, crop failures, cannibalism, crop failures, nuclear and
biological wars, water rationing and desertification, economic
depression, catastrophic terrorism, cascading weather disasters, and
the decline of democracy, constitutional liberalism, and the rule of
law. A world, arguably, not worth living in.
Forward Not Back: The Solution Process
- Solutions are needed that either directly address
overpopulation and unsustainable consumption, or address the causes of
these problems (see the Why Civilization Doesn't Work
chart). Or, alternatively, we could resign ourselves to the inevitable
crash of this horrible world (probably as a result of a new
catastrophic disease or nuclear or biological holocaust), and start
designing a post-apocalypse world that will allow the survivors to
carry on and perhaps learn from our mistakes. Solutions, throughout
history, have come in four 'flavours': innovative (new technologies),
social (changing people's minds), commercial (changing the economy) and
political (changing laws and regulations). Innovations have been,
throughout human history, by far the most effective and enduring.
Revolutionary change requires radical solutions -- solutions that
undermine, replace and ultimately destroy existing systems,
technologies, ideas and beliefs. But they must represent bold steps
forward, not nostalgic steps back to a pre-civilization world that is
no longer possible or desirable.
- If we hope to impose change on a world unready and unable
to save itself, enough of us must be informed, aware of the
consequences of our actions, skeptical, willing and able to learn from
nature, fully committed, confident we can do it, passionate in our
search for radical solutions and courageous in following through on
them.
Next Week: Part Two of this
essay will support and elaborate on the first 5 arguments, and show
that the answers to today's problems are right in front of us -- we
need only relearn what we have forgotten and open ourselves to the
truths we can no longer see.
Week of August 16th: Part Three will conclude the essay by establishing
the sense of urgency for change, explaining why continuing to do what
we are doing now, no matter how valiantly, will only get us where we
are currently headed, and prescribe not solutions but a process for
those who are ready, caring and courageous to find and then implement
creative solutions.
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4:02:28 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
