Progress must... progress?

Issues of sustainable global relevance are more often than not shoved aside in the media and even more importantly in our educational systems by the artificial, the contrived, the staged, and worst of all, the trivial. There are many reasons our modern cultures have created such an artificial value system through our couple hundred year romance with science, industry, and technology, but the reality remains that we as a culture are continuing to insist upon wearing the emperor's new clothes even though our best sciences are virtually screaming that there are icebergs ahead, we must change course. Yet, to quote my favorite quotable person (guess who?):

"The context of survival is radically altered. Our problems can no more be resolved within our former pattern of the human than the problems that led to quantum physics could be dealt with by any adjustment within the context of the Newtonian universe." (Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, p.43)

Thank you Thomas Berry, once again we are in your visionary debt. For those of you reading that are still envisioning from within the box, I shall translate in as simple terms as it gets. Our technology can not solve the global issues that our technology has created. Please oh please don't sound byte me with that quote out of context, because I am not denying in any way shape or form that our technologies are an essential ingredient in the healing of the earth community process that we must undertake to avert... an even greater mass extinction event than the one that we have already set into motion. But our technologies are just that, an ingredient. Not the ingredient, but one of many. What is particularly alarming to me at present is that there are an alarming amount of supposedly tuned in green activists, such as Frances Beinecke, president of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who are still convinced that through technology lies the answer. She recently stated in the spring 2008 issue of the NRDC's OnEarth magazine that if we only invested our budgets that are slated for domestic energy infrastructures for the next 20 years into global warming solutions that "We can stave off the biggest environmental and humanitarian crisis without disrupting economic growth."

Pardon me madam president, but with all due respect, get your head out of the greenhouse it's baking it in there and get a clue. This isn't about saving our economy. This isn't about how many new donors and corporate sponsors we can wrangle into our corral by playing the game. This isn't about pretending that everything is going to be fine in the morning if I just take the green colored pill. This is about waking up from the devastating dream spell that our entire extractive industrial culture is entranced with that economies must grow in order to be healthy and that progress is based upon ever greater use (exploitation) of available resources. What is needed is to reawaken our genetic sensitivities and awarenesses that technology has lulled to sleep in order "to create a new language, even a new sense of what it is to be human. It is to transcend not only national limitations, but even our species isolation, to (re) enter into the larger community of living species. This brings about a completely new sense of reality and of value." (Berry, The Dream of the Earth, p.42) We absolutely do need to judiciously apply our technologies towards mitigating the imbalances we have created. But underlying how we choose to apply our available funds and technologies are issues of fundamental awareness and context.

We live in a unique time in that the evolution of our species is now a matter of conscious choice. It will only be though a shift to an earth-centric context of reality (as opposed to a human-centric context of reality), and an earth-centric system of values (where what is beneficial for the sustainability of all life forms and life support systems also happens to be good for us), will we find a way though our planetary crises in any recognizable form. The real issue becomes one of value; how do we as a society choose to instill qualities of wonder, and of awe, of enchantment with the land and respect for it's infinite possibilities for life through our popular media and other various forms of cultural communication? The very experiences that make us truly human are the fundamental experiences that reconnect us with the experience of the divine in creation itself.

How do we shift from glorifying gangstas and perpetuating petty personas to glorifying grace and perpetuating praise? What we value, what we cherish, what gives us meaning, and depth, and fortitude, are the qualities reflected back to us by what we choose to believe in. It can only be my sincere heartfelt hope that an ever increasingly number of human beings around the globe choose to orient their lives around the planetary community of life in it's integral form over various forms of diminishment and separation or the illusionary fallacy of the almighty dollar as the ultimate bearer of worth while we still have maneuvering room within which to choose such things at all.

Telling stories that put our species into mythological context, within the universe, within the greater community of life, within the bioregions where we physically dwell and sustain ourselves is one way to enter into the great work of our times. Entering into purposeful relationships based on cooperation and giving is another. Encouraging and expecting radical honesty is another, especially from those who put themselves into positions of influence and leadership. When all is said and done, how we choose to define progress within the next decade or two will end up defining who we are as a species, and whether our community, the only real community, is worth living in or not in any acceptable manner for anyone.

My vote? Summed up in the name of my other blog, The Gaia Community College. I think we should all go back to college, and learn how to progress with dignity, intelligence, grace, and most importantly of all, together.

"Most often we think of the natural world as an economic resource, or as a place of recreation after a wearisome period of work, or as something of passing interest for its beauty on an autumn day when the radiant colors of the oak and maple leaves give us a moment of joy. All these attitudes are quite legitimate, yet in them all there is what might be called a certain trivializing attitude. If we were truly moved by the beauty of the world about us, we would honor the earth in a profound way. We would understand immediately and turn away with a certain horror from all those activities that violate the integrity of the planet." (Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, p. 10)