Imagine a Time When the Eco-Crisis is Over: Then Tell Us How We Got There?
by: Dave Belden on December 7th, 2009 | 8 Comments »
The Copenhagen Climate Conference is under way. Our focus is on what can be achieved this week. But I want to ask you, the reader, this:
Do you have any vision in mind for how we might really get past this huge crisis about our human behavior on this planet?
Imagine a time when there is only mopping up to do, but everyone agrees that the big crisis is past. We have learned our place on the planet. We are living within sustainable limits. It may be 100 years from now or 250 or some other time, whatever seems viable to you. Then tell us: how did we get there?
One sentence answers like “we had a revolution” or “we all achieved spiritual consciousness” are not too interesting to me. I’m interested in history, in the way things have actually developed, the revolutions that actually happened, the changes in spiritual and psychological consciousness that actually have happened. I’d like to know your vision about how things could get from here to the place we need to go.
I’m not well read in the eco-literature. Perhaps you are and are convinced by the ideas that are laid out in a book or website you can direct us to. Please do, or tell us the thinkers from whom you take this piece and that piece and put together a vision of our future path.
Some questions:
- Can reforms mount up that are fast enough and deep enough that our system evolves into sustainability? If so, how?
- Or is some radical break necessary, comparable to the political revolutions of the past?
- Do we have to imagine some radical movement towards a new kind of human being who is caring and unselfish, or can we get there with our pretty much unreconstructed human nature and the psychological tools for it that we already have?
- Do we have to develop new psychological / spiritual tools?
- Can an ecologically sensitive culture emerge and has such a cultural change ever happened in history that gives you hope that this one can?
Dear Dave,
You ask “Do you have any vision in mind for how we might really get past this huge crisis about our human behavior on this planet?” Actually I do, I have just written a long article on the need for a “human movement” to save civilization.
If you share with me your email address I will send it to you. (I am a long-time contributor to Tikkun)
Fred
Fred, email me at dave@tikkun.org. Or if you have it online already, give us the link here in the comments. Can you summarize the thesis for us in 100 words or so?
in approaching these questions, i think it’s best to not think of ‘living within sustainable limits’ because that way of putting it suggests that it’s a matter of controlling ourselves. like the ‘regulatory state,’ that suggests there is a contradiction between our voracious appetites and a kind of ‘limiting’ self-consciousness that has to control those appetites. but really it’s the voracious appetites that are the distortion to be recovered from. it’s the fear that leads us to not stop the train even though we want to get off.
This is a great comment. Can you say more about how we can hope to recover from our voracious appetites? As an aside, I don’t actually think of myself as having particularly voracious appetites and am close to miserly in spending money on material things, but I am still very aware that I am totally part of the problem in that I have a huge carbon footprint compared to any low income person in a poor country. Surely the majority of Americans don’t actually think of themselves as having voracious appetites either. Is it voracious to use a tumble dryer, commute by car, take the occasional plane trip to visit family? Maybe ordinary desires are a bigger problem than the voracious ones, when all are added up, and will be harder therefore to recover from?
Fred,
Please send me a copy of your human movement article. I’m writing a book on world peace and how to get there, focused on how to get there. Your article may have relevance.
Thanks, Russ
Unfortunately it seems that poverty and necessity are the two biggest drivers behind conservation and sustainability throughout most of our world. Obviously in some ways poverty can exacerbate sustainability, but for the Western world I think it may take a larger economic crisis than the one we are in now to really motivate significant numbers of people to live more sustainably (and by motivate I guess I mean force). I foresee us gradually changing our behaviors and relying on technology to help rectify the destruction we wreak on our environment. With that said, I don’t know if we will get past the crisis, but rather mediate smaller crises which we will in turn adjust to and learn to live with while continuing to cause the worse grief to the poorest of our populations.
Geez, that sounds pretty pessimistic. On a more hopeful note, I believe that growing communities of people attempting to live out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. chapters 5-7) in practical ways is really our only hope to coming through this crisis better than we were before it. Historically, only small pockets of people have ever been able to make concerted efforts to live by these teachings.
It is interesting to see that there are these assumptions that we can solve all the problems that we have caused in the first place.
I am convinced that human life on earth will go on at best for another 200 years. After that, self caused oblivion.
If not by war, then by over exploitation of this planet’s resources.
One thing that I think will be crucial is a deeper public awareness of the personality disorders, especially the Cluster B disorders including antisocial, borderline and narcissistic. The nature of these disorders is such that they lead to a disinterest and often inability to experience healthy empathy or even to accurately perceive the needs of others and the importance of limits for sustainability.
There are a number of books relevant to these subjects. I’ve listed some of them at:
http://tinyurl.com/ydll59v
http://tinyurl.com/ycj5cos
http://tinyurl.com/ya353lq
I’ve also written about them in the Interests section and Blog of my website.
The crucial thing to note here is that there is growing research that shows actual brain differences that affect emotional processing, empathy, etc. in those with these disorders. That means that attempts to simply appeal to compassion and kindness may fall short because there is literally just not the brain equipment present to respond as an emotionally healthy individual would do.
This topic takes on even greater stakes when we understand that people with these disorders not only can, but often do (because of the nature of our system) end up in positions of political or economic power.
I’ve discussed that more at
http://tinyurl.com/cxwmly
My vision for a sustainable future is one where these empathy-spectrum disorders are as well known as cancer and AIDS. People are no longer so easily fooled by charismatic, but devious, politicians and leaders because they have been made aware (perhaps by similar public health education campaigns) of the signs of these disorders and are more wary. And well-meaning but somewhat naive activists have stopped believing that every person will respond to basic kindness and appeals to reason and caring. They will understand that some people simply are not equipped to do so and that we must protect ourselves from the dangers of having such people in positions of power.