You know the -- 'what the world needs now, is love sweet love' -- kind of thing.
Does common sense prevail? Sometimes. (Maybe always, given enough time.)
Seems everyday, 'scientists' are proving what common sense has always known. For instance I just read a study that proves that organic fruits and vegetables are better for you than non-organic 'sprayed with chemicals' produce. Our grandmothers could have told us that, and many of us have been living with that common sense for decades. In recent years, we have 'learned' brown rice is better for you than white. Really? Who knew? :-) My favorite 'new' insight -- You might want to be wary of chemicals you put on your skin; if you wouldn't eat it, maybe you don't want to slather it all over yourself. Duh.
I could go on and on, but you are probably mentally adding several to this list just off the top of your head. (I'd love to see them posted here as comments!)
What worries me the most is that the direction we've taken (calling it 'development') has caused untold problems, for ourselves and the other life forms we cohabit the earth with. And though most of us finally recognize it, we don't seem to know what to do about it -- or when we do, we don't seem to have the will, personal or political, do to it.
Black Elk, the Lakota teacher, reminded us that "all things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One."
The depth and breadth of the unity of life is being discovered by human beings daily, yet little is being done to stop the destruction by one species (read "people") of the majority of the rest -- 'all our relations,' as they are spoken of by the First Nations people in the region where I live. And then, ironically, since what we do to them we are also doing to ourselves, we don't seem able to stop what looks like the inevitable destruction of whole populations of humans, just as we haven't been able to protect thousands upon thousands of other living species.
Brian Swimme points out in The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos that human beings, as a result of insight and technological skills, have become what he calls a 'macrophase' power: our impact on the earth has the potential to be as powerful as the Ice Age glaciations, or the forces that catalyzed the great extinctions of the past. Unfortunately, he adds, we only have a 'microphase' sense of responsibility or ethical judgment. So far, at least, we humans have not developed the requisite vision or judgment to act on our own (and the planet's) best behalf.
"Now, our concerns for the human community can only be fulfilled by a concern for the integrity of the natural world. The planet cannot support its human presence unless there is a reciprocal human support for the life systems of the planet." -- Thomas Berry
The BP Horizon oil disaster and its disputed rate of flow is one example. Exxon Valdez might have taught us of the dangers of oil to our coastal regions; yet for some reason, our insatiable appetite helped us to 'conveniently' overlook the lesson. Consequently, in the Gulf of Mexico as you read this, 'relations' from sea to air to shore are being affected, many of them fatally, and there appears to be no end in sight.
I remember as a child learning of the extinction of species caused by mankind; yet 40-plus years later, some 30,000 species are still going extinct every year. The planet's most eminent biodiversity specialists have said that 'Earth faces a catastrophic loss of species.' (Steve Connor, The Independent, July 20, 2006) The majority of the extinctions have been caused by habitat destruction, under the guise of what some humans call 'development'. Fully 95 percent of the primordial forests of North America have been destroyed -- and developers are battling with ecologists to for the right to take down as much of the remaining 5 percent as regulation will allow.
I don't know where you live, but I'd be surprised if you haven't noticed the 'changeable' weather patterns of the last number of years. The decade from January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NASA.
Not only is fresh water becoming harder to provide for much of the world -- with 3 billion more human beings expected by mid-century -- but severe food shortages are inevitable.
Life, as modern wo/man has known it must change -- radically. Choices we have made in the past have created a very serious crisis. If we are to survive as a species, and to reverse the trend of destruction that our rush to industrialize has ramped up to frenetic levels, we have to make some very different choices from here on in.
"We know that we are the ones who are divided, and we are the ones who must come back together to walk in the Sacred Way." -- Ojibway Prayer (Oneworld Book of Prayer, p. 152)
What is the sacred way? Centuries before Christ, the Greek healer Hippocrates, writing the creed for physicians, said, 'First do no harm." Imagine what the world would be like if humanity was to truly embrace that sacred way.
Is it even possible?
What would need to happen?
Unity of purpose at the outset.
"Unity," Linda Kavelin Popov writes, "is a powerful virtue and it brings great strength. Unity is inclusiveness. It brings people together. We see our commonality without devaluing our differences. We experience our connectedness with all people and all life." (italics added)
People need to feel like they have a voice in order to feel united with others. They need to feel like they matter. Often, it's fear that keeps us from listening to those who think differently than we do. Fear and prejudice. But "unity frees us from the divisiveness of prejudice and heals our fears" (LKP again).
I was disheartened at the events outside the G20 meeting in Toronto this past week. But I was also disheartened at the main focus of the meeting. I realize that those leaders felt the need and the pressure to avert further economic crises and set their agenda accordingly. But there were members of my family, 'the human family,' who were there because they had even greater concerns on their mind, and they want a place at the table and a voice in the debate.
As Thomas Berry (cultural historian and ecotheologian (although cosmologist and geologian — or “Earth scholar” — were his preferred descriptors) points out, "Fixation on the primacy of industry in the well-being of the human is producing a recession of the basic resources of Earth which is now a permanent condition. This recession is not a temporary economic recession of any one nation, nor the recession of some financial or commercial arrangement; it is an irreversible recession of the planet itself, in many of the basic aspects of its functioning. The Earth simply cannot sustain the burden imposed on it."
I understand the desire to ensure that whole economies don't collapse, but common sense would seem to urge an approach that considers the 'real' costs of any such measures. Trying to keep the stock markets afloat if the Earth is going down is like polishing the china and putting the jewelry in the safe on the Titanic. If we haven't hit the iceberg, we're certainly heading for it, full steam ahead.
Thomas Berry, in The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future (N.Y., Bell Tower, 1999), sees the last night on the Titanic as an apt parable for our response to the current global situation.
"Long before the collision, those in command had abundant evidence that icebergs lay ahead. The course had been set, however, and no one wished to alter its direction. Confidence in the survival capacities of the ship was unbounded. ... What happened to that 'unsinkable' ship is a kind of parable for us, since only in the most dire situations do we have the psychic energy needed to examine our way of acting on the scale that is now required. The daily concerns over the care of the ship and its passengers needed to be set aside for a more urgent concern, the well-being of the ship itself. Here is where macrophase concerns in one context become microphase concerns in another context. Passenger concerns in the situation of the Titanic needed to give way to a macrophase decision about the ship itself."
We need to collectively awaken our macrophase vision, at once. We need to experience and understand our unity -- not just with other humans, but with 'all our relations,' -- every life form who rides this planet with us -- and we need to begin feeling and thinking and acting from that deep, full sense of unity. In these times, and the times to come, blessed indeed is the individual human who can say, "I refuse to engage in conflict, seeking peace in all circumstances. "
Linda Popov reminds us that "unity comes when we value every person, in our family or in the world. The joy of one is the joy of all. The hurt of one is the hurt of all. The honor of one is the honor of all."
When I think of the enormity of the issues we are facing, I feel overwhelmed. You probably do too. What can you or I, only one of more than 6 billion people, possibly do?
Some of what we can do, and are doing, may have begun to sound like cliches or motherhood and apple pie.
Think globally, act locally. Check. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Check. Grow a garden (and/or support a community garden or farmer's market). Check. Buy organic, as much as possible. Check. Move to cleaner energy. Working on it. Conserve water. Working on it.
As we stand at a precipice once again -- on the cusp of 'business as usual' or 'let's try it a new way', -- may we chose anew.
If each of us could fully embrace the unity of all living things, we'd be one giant step closer tolearning to live in unity with the ecosystems of the world.
Those of us living in the West have come to expect 'the good life'. And in recent history the good life meant having more than enough, having luxury with little or no regard for the impact on the ecosystem. We have perhaps one generation to make 'the good life' mean one that gives back as much as it takes, or more, a life that lives in harmony with all living things around it.
At the risk of sounding like a cliche -- let it be this generation.
That way, even if (Gaia forbid) we can't stop the human ship from sinking, we'll go down more fully humane.
Namaste~
~ Kate
The Practice of Unity
I am a lover of humanity.
I seek common ground.
I appreciate differences.
I resolve conflicts peacefully.
I honor the value of each individual [and every living thing].
I am a unifier.
I am thankful for the gift of Unity. It makes me an instrument of peace.
Reflection Questions
How can I be a unifier in my immediate world?
What can I do to help the earth and "all her relations?
Who in my neighborhood is being excluded from the table? (and how can I invite them?)
What action am I called to in the wider world?
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