I often talk about potential ideas for creating a sustainable human culture on this planet. Technological sustainability is an exciting field with amazing innovation and potential. Yet, even 50 years after international recognition of our ecological problems (UNCHE, 1972 and 30 years since UNCED (Rio, 1992), all we have had is endless promises to start becoming sustainable. The world may have improved with more efficient technology but it is always hampered by the intractable socio-cultural and economic realities that control our lives. Our human path is doggedly focused on cheapest cost with maximized profit, an insane fixation on continued growth in a finite world, and an even more insane fixation on consumer living.
In the last two posts I overviewed how ‘stupidity’ pushed by the ‘Bandits’ has been driving our global thinking, and how despite our being very ‘smart’ we still insanely march to the edge of the ecological abyss, like Disney’s Lemmings, pretending to ourselves that somehow, everything will work out before we take the final plunge. There are several things we must do to change our course, the first becoming aware of what we measure as success (see early post, The world Economy – are we really doing better? Measurement is everything! {August 2018}). And to do that we really need to exhibit more critical discernment – a term I use frequently, but perhaps one I need to delve into a bit more deeply to clarify it.
Discernment means to ask questions and to then judge the results, or lack of, using wisdom born of doubt. A discerning person is a naturally skeptical one, but a skeptic in the sense that they accept certain knowledge is impossible and are willing to view all potential knowledge before coming to a temporary and open-minded conclusion that further knowledge can change their perceptions. (I cover this at length in one of my first posts about, Skepticism {January 2018}).) A discerning person tries to avoid confirmation bias, however attractive it is to stay within one’s beliefs, and look at good, the bad, and the downright ugly amounts of information out there.
There are many great quotes about discernment to be found. One I like is, “Discernment is the ability to see things for how they really are and not as you want them to be” Anon. Dissonance of any kind is rarely pleasant, but being open to it does serve to alert oneself when things are not as they seem. Modern social media has spawned a world of conspiracy theories and it is easy to dismiss them. But a discerning person will look at them critically before recognizing the illogicality or gaping holes in the logic of the true believers. Oftentimes, being discerning shows nuggets of truth that lead you down rabbit holes, where you are transported into a wonderful, or troubling, surreal understanding of something you never knew before. And if you can become a big picture person you will start to connect dots that reveal a whole different picture. That’s how I went from being a typical environmentalist to becoming a ‘sustainabilitist’ (my term). I saw reasons that explained in a whole new light why we were never doing to change within the existing paradigms. “Discernment is understanding the deeper reasons for why things happen” Charles Spurgeon.
Discernment is also the ability to use keen perception and to judge wisely about the validity of any information, an action, or policy being proposed or enacted. Discernment can be psychological, moral or even aesthetic in nature, whether it frames a scientific discourse of proposed truth, a political one, or a philosophical one. A discerning individual can be considered to use wisdom and good judgment, especially when regarding subject matter often overlooked by others. Discernment is also choosing betweenmultiple options in which the difference between best, optimum, or preferable hinges on many considered factors and not just the most expedient ones. “Discernment is not a matter of telling the difference between right and wrong; rather it is a matter of telling the difference between right and almost right” Charles Spurgeon.
It is interesting to me the number of friends and relatives, many I have known for decades, that are unable to talk to me because they are upset about my being too open-minded enough and that I distrust the narrative from Mainstream Media (MSM) to seek alternate perspectives. And even those people that I remain in contact with do not discuss anything that is seen as controversial to the MSM. Whether that be Covid, the global economy, or even the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, the willingness to even have open discussion about ideas is just not tolerated by them. It seems more and more that having any ‘wrong’ views is no longer tolerated. This truly bothers me for this is how totalitarian regimes are born. They accept the MSM narrative so completely that they have zero discernment. They question only within the narrow boundaries of the narrative they believe, but seem incapable of questioning their own beliefs. Of course, what I am noticing as C19 starts to diminish in the rear-view mirror, is how many people that were so accepting of the MSM narrative are now distancing themselves from it as disturbing information starts to percolate slowly out into the mainstream system. What was once regarded as almost treasonous thinking only 18 months ago about the pandemic is now being seen as acceptable discernment.
Some people think they have discernment when they really are just suspicious. If you are suspicious, make the effort and follow the threads of information that lead you to a full understanding (or as full as it can be at any given time) of a situation, etc., that can be disturbingly dissonant as it is illuminating. When we are working with ‘absolutists’ (people who hold absolute principles in political, philosophical, or theological matters), we are dealing with people who see everything as black and white and cannot, or will not, see the world as shades of grey. It’s not bad to have confidence in your convictions, but if those convictions are not grounded through good discernment, then you are looking at rigid beliefs that spawn true believers and all manner of intolerance (a person who professes absolute belief in something and becomes a zealous supporter of a particular perspective, even to the point of justifiable persecution).
My being focused on Sustainability for several decades means I have been critical of the Consumerist worldview. I looked at globalism in the 1980s and saw a growing path of hyper-consumerism that had would exacerbate environmental problems to unprecedented levels. It’s what prompted me to change my career from biochemist to eventually becoming a sustainabilitist. While I disdain the competitive model of our consumer paradigm and promote cooperation and collaboration for sustainable socio-cultural solutions, I do believe that we also thrive when we have competition of ideas and think critically about what we are doing and why. Shutting down inconvenient discourse is never a way to proceed. We have had that with many religions for centuries and it has happened politically forever, with political regimes like Nazism and Stalinism, taking it to extremes. But how often are we seeing creeping soft totalitarianism in our current global political systems – even the so-called democratic ones as corporate systems gain more and more control of our lives. When we discern this control we can then think more clearly about what it is we really want. That is a part of the discussion I have focused on in this blog and it is worth revisiting.
0 Comments