We live on an amazing planet full of teeming and diverse life forms with replenishable resources we can use to give us wonderful lives. Being spiritual means to care for the planet, because if we do, it will nurture us as well. But we cannot go on as we have been doing destroying natural systems and treating the planet as a disposal system that is of no consequence to human life, let alone the natural world.
Our technology of Heat, Beat and Treat, is a Corollary of our current consciousness of separatism and reductionism that promotes a mindset of greed, violence, and ecological destruction (see earlier post The role of Limiting Beliefs and Empowering Beliefs 2 – Breaking away from Consumerism {June 2019}).
If you wish to succeed in the modern world, you have to buy-in to existing models of knowledge that the people in power support and in which they have invested their lives and reputations (in whatever system). If you want to be a maverick and think outside the box, or even to break the box apart, then you have to have courage, conviction, and determination, because those invested in the models, whether they are political or academic will go to extraordinary lengths to keep you quiet.
Nowadays there is a whole social system set up to shame and ridicule, with terms like conspiracist as put-downs to discredit you. Now to simply ask logical queries that call the models into question is enough to ruin you. While sociopaths may inhabit the top of most hierarchical structures, those invested within the structure tend to be good and decent people, but they suffer from the very condition they accuse ‘model’ non-believers – myopia. They believe passionately that they are right and therefore struggle to accept anything that contradicts their way of thinking. The same is true for most people within their worldviews – they believe what they believe and resist change, or alternate truths, since it is too uncomfortable. Beliefs define people existentially and to attack a belief is tantamount to attacking a person themselves. It’s why people can polarize so readily – beliefs can be dogma’s. People know this when religious beliefs are challenged, but it is the same for everyday models of living, working, raising a family, and even views on sports teams.
Graham Hancock has a nice term that describes modern science- Materialist Reductionism. This describes the view that only the material world (solid matter) is truly real, and that all processes and realities observed in the universe can be explained by reducing them down to their most basic scientific components. Theories are formulated and beliefs of set facts are set in place. But there is something ephemeral about facts – they keep changing. Today, I’d like to discuss a couple of ideas that are logical and valid but they challenge the status quo, and by direct connection the profit-making capacity of those in charge. Before I begin, let me reiterate that how we currently look at the world from a historical perspective is quite recent – the Industrial revolution set how our modern world functions (see previous post, Spirituality 3 {March 2018}). We look at history through our worldview lenses and so make the error of assuming the past was like it is today.
For this post, too many technocrats have reduced food production to a ‘science’ where plants only need minerals to grow, and energy is produced via burned fossil fuels and until very recently now increasingly through the renewable technologies. Yet, look at what has happened. We now have food crops with little real nutrition and our energy generation systems have created myriad atmospheric problems.
It’s all about technology, and while I applaud how clever we have become I still come back to the spiritual component – just because a specific technology works doesn’t mean we should be employing its use without careful and mindful consideration of whether we should actually be using a technology that is shown to be harmful to not only humans but the natural world. I am not saying we should negate technology (I am not a neo-Luddite) but that we should weigh the pros and cons of any technology on its benefits to harm ratio very carefully. There are many technologies that are better than ones being used but they cost more and so are not utilized because heaven forbid, we create a better world with health in mind rather than profit.
Agri-Business and energy generation (electricity) are two of the biggest culprits of pollution and malnutrition on the planet. When we have innovative systems that promote health, we should be grabbing on to them with a sense of urgency that shows how much we care, and letting go of the ones that destroy life. That is a spiritual path. The planets soil is being degraded and eroded so fast that conservative estimates are that we will have almost no arable land by 2050. Pollution from burning of fossil fuels will reach such extreme levels by 2050 that a most of life will be affected. We know this now. This not some radical scare tactic but data put out by the industries themselves that even while telling us still rolls out even more technology to accelerate the damage, not mitigate it. Biodiversity is being lost so fast that while we do not know specific species, we do have a good inkling that many are being lost even as we try to find them.
The base of the food chain especially is particularly vulnerable. One cubic centimeter of heathy soil contains up to 1 billion microbes that foster a microscopic ecosystem that supports a host of larger organisms that further nurture the soil ecosystem. But what do we do with technology? We add so many poisons (biocidal chemicals) to remove unwanted crop competitors we have literally denuded tens of millions (if not more) of the beneficial organisms from each cubic centimeter. Our soil is almost devoid of life and literally just a collection of minerals to which we just add more minerals to foster chemical growth that looks like a plant but is missing many key ingredients for health. But biological growth needs so much more than simple elements for growth. While most will not moan over the loss of soil microbes, nematodes, or even worms, we should at least be cognizant that it is these smallest of life’s creatures that directly and indirectly allow us to live healthy lives and not just live. It strikes me that we are fast approaching a situation where being unhealthy is becoming the norm. It doesn’t have to be this way. A spiritual approach is being aware of connectedness and acting to foster life at all levels for the benefit of everything, not just humanity.
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach” Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
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