One of the questions I always got from new students in my Sustainability Studies program was, “Why can’t everyone see the obvious need to work towards sustainability?” That’s a question I have spent many years and much of this blog talking about. I was, by training and many years of working in a lab, a classical scientist who understands the science and engineering aspects of what is needed solve our technological and economic problems in this planet. When I first started this blog, I had many people complain that I wasn’t covering ‘green technology’ and better economic models of capitalism enough. Of course, I do, and have done that, because that is part of the solution. Yet, from the start I have always emphasized that the sustainability solution is social not technological. It was the reason that the sustainability Studies degree Program I created was a B.A. and not a B.S. degree. There are enough degree programs out there with the green fix focus, but my research into Worldviews showed me very clearly that we need to change the human mind before we can change the technological world we live within for the better.
“The environmental crisis is an outward manifestation of a crisis of mind and spirit. There could be no greater misconception of its meaning that to believe it is only concerned with endangered wildlife, human-made ugliness, and pollution. These are a part of it, but more importantly, the crisis is concerned with the kind of creatures we are and what we must become in order to survive.” Lynton K Caldwell. Simply put, ‘All our environmental problems are behavioral problems that encompass our ecologically incompatible belief systems, worldviews and everyday actions.’ As I quoted in my last post, most of the time we treat the planet much like we each other – as a global population, with much disdain and little consideration for anything outside of our own needs and wants. It not that we are all self-centered egotistical psychopaths, but the consumer system we blindly follow as ‘normal’ is psychopathic and induces us to be as psychopathic as well. The competitive root of consumer capitalism is the biggest lie we accept. The ‘system’ we live within requires us to accept separation from the natural world and each other readily despite our natural nature to want to live more in connection and harmony. We are inherently a social and empathic species.
If you can break away from the mass media that serves to keep us entrenched in the money focused consumer worldview and look at alternate media from around the world (Try YES magazine for example), you will find lots of stories that are positive and uplifting in how millions worldwide are already striving to create a new world that revolves around people and communities and not money. Yet, the consumerism worldview persists. What is it about this worldview that holds us in its vice-like grip despite our inner knowledge that everything about it is wrong and harmful at so many levels? I have discussed worldviews many times in the blog (e.g. Old Euro-Worldviews gone amok – Trying to Change Beliefs) so I’ll just overview and reveal some new thoughts here. For most of human history we lived in egalitarian communal tribal systems that were on the whole peaceful but could have strict tribal boundaries with fixed rules for living together. It wasn’t perfect or we wouldn’t have let ourselves be tricked and seduced into accepting a hierarchical system. It was here that we lost trust in ourselves and became afraid, and fear is all it takes for egocentric psychopaths to control you. Fear works so well they have controlled us for millennia! Occasionally you would get a benevolent leader, like the fairy story endings, “and good King Stephen ruled as a just and wise King and was beloved by his people.” Except, most of the time the King was paranoid of others claiming his throne, so he ruled with pathological dictates.
Unless you are prompted to do so, you cannot see your worldview anymore. A worldview is the unquestioned assumptions and beliefs that make up your reality. You can no more see them than a fish probably sees the water in which it swims – that’s how effective the conditioning is that forges our personalities up to the age of 7. After that age your worldview is fixed until something comes along and challenges it. Since you are reading this blog you are probably already challenging your conditioning, but consider asking someone you know to challenge the consumer worldview – the basic assumptions that drive their lives are 1) Humans are separate from each other and the natural world, 2) humans are superior to the natural world, 3) fixed hierarchies exist with humans at the top within their own hierarchical system followed by various aspects of the natural world, but all subject to human domination, 4) it is every individuals right to seek maximum personal economic gain, but they have to compete in a dog-eat-dog world to succeed, and 5) progress is always positive and always an improvement on what came before. In many environmental philosophy books, these assumptions fall under the heading of ‘The Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP).’ It is an appealing worldview because it purports to give the individual a life of unparalleled material abundance. Everything else in life that we want has to fit within the DSP, such as relationships, connectedness, love and happiness, but that is incidental and not a part of the paradigm. It is assumed that material abundance will somehow create such benefits, yet, rarely does, no matter how much abundance one gains.
Many of our cherished philosophers all the way back to the enlightened Greeks have championed various versions of the DSP throughout the centuries. Just like fish trying to fathom the water in which they swim, it is hard to break out of the thinking that dominates the worldview. Throughout history, most people might have complained about the lack of abundance, but never had the time to contemplate their navels, let alone the assumptions of the DSP in their struggles to survive. That role was left to the few who did benefit from the hierarchical structure, and that alone was enough for them to keep championing the DSP even if they did see its grim limitations and inherent problems (e.g. Malthus). The wealthy Transcendentalists (e.g. Thoreau, Emerson) of the 1830s began a new line of thinking that arose out of English and German Romanticism thinking that nature was perhaps more than just resources to be endlessly plundered, but perhaps of more spiritual connection in how humanity ought to live. The first step to getting back to the animist philosophies of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who still used nature yet lived self-sufficiently and sustainably.
To be Continued ………………………….
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