What is the true meaning of abundance? Too often we mean it as affluence and monetary wealth, but that only something that traps us in a singular frame of mind about abundance being money. As I have said several times in this blog, money is merely a tool, and not an end-point in itself. Within a worldview addicted to money, it is hard to set Quality-of-Life goals that are not money related. To have an abundance of something is to have more than you need. Abundance is sometimes used to describe positive qualities, such as ‘an abundance of love.’ Abundance is the opposite of scarcity. An abundance of wealth is seen as a ton of cash, and that alone traps everyone, including the so-called affluent, in a mindset of needing more of it, and worse, being prepared to defend it at all costs. Peoples’ self-identity becomes wrapped up with the ‘thing’ called money.
As a simple statement, my view on abundance is ‘the ability to be able to do, what you need to do, when you need to do it!’ Fits as a definition of freedom as well. Without getting into any labels, personal sovereignty is being able to do whatever you want to do as long as you do not impose it, or infringe it, on any other person. Of course, that would include a lot of collaboration, discussion, and compromise, but isn’t that what a thriving society should really be about. Not endless restrictions, but ways to let everyone be authentic, while still getting along.
I love this quote from the actor Anthony Hopkins: “My philosophy is: What people say about me is none of my business. I am who I am and do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And that makes life easier. We live in a world where funerals are more important than the deceased, marriage is more important than love, and looks are more important than the soul. We live in a packaging culture that despises content.”
The good news is that I believe our worldviews are really in transition, but we are only glimpsing the area beyond the deep forest, we still need to get beyond the trees so to speak (see link, Richards Research). As an example of changing insights, assumptions, and behaviors, consider the evolution of the attitudes embodied in the terms conservation and environmentalism. Human beings are, by nature, conservers – that is, they tend to place a high value on anything they view as important that is in short supply and try to maintain, if not increase, its quantity and quality. For instance, gold, being a relatively rare metal and capable of being fabricated into beautiful ornaments, has become a standard of commodity quantity and quality, to be defended or acquired at the expense of butter and blood. If gold were as common as wood, we would probably use it to construct our houses.
Since the beginning of time, people’s most precious commodity has been their ‘survival average.’ As a result, people have tended to conserve those commodities that they believe contribute to their survival, and to be cavalier in their attitude toward those commodities that they perceive as having little or no survival value. While we now have a broader perspective about our resources we have a been a little too cavalier about how we used them in the last couple of hundred years. We understand the ecological message, even if we do not always act on it. Deep down we recognize our utter dependence on our environment and on life everywhere, and we know we must somehow develop a culture that will secure the future of an environment fit for life and fit for living.
In the last century, each generation has become acutely aware of the complexity of ecological problems that are rooted in the past behaviors, driven by outmoded worldviews. Unlike much earlier problems of hunting too many of a species we relied upon for survival, today’s problems are also rooted in technological patterns of thinking out of the industrial revolution. The wisdom needed to solve the patterns cannot arise out of our current worldviews. That wisdom must come from an awareness rooted in a deeper appreciation and understanding of the ecological systems in which we live.
Environmentalist, Samuel Aldrich, extolled the problem about knowledge and expertise, “ Anyone who wishes can learn more about environmental matters than the most able scientist of a few decades ago. [But] interest, concern, and good intentions are [by themselves] inadequate preparation for participating in environmental decision-making. There is no role for the instant ecologist.” We now find ourselves with technologists running the show and well-informed lay-people butting heads in trying to make policies to resolve the problems, but few truly understanding how their worldviews are driving their assumptions and beliefs. This has created dilemmas that are rooted in worldviews from the past, and confounded by those of the present. We must understand the perspectives of others, while at the same time we must understand ourselves, before we will be able to make rational decisions in devising and carrying out programs that truly reflect the ‘oneness’ of our environment, its problems, and its needs.
A case study of how wisdom arises from knowledge and a deeper appreciation of nature is that of philosopher conservationist Aldo Leopold (first half of the twentieth century). In an effort to stem the rampant destruction of North American Forests at the end of the nineteenth century, the United States Forest Service (USFS) was created with a scientifically focused set of policies based on utilitarian use of resources. A young Leopold, believing the zeitgeist of the day (1909) entered the USFS to make his mark, but found instead confusion in his thinking and assumptions causing him to redefine his worldview over the following years. His first posting for the USFS was in Arizona and New Mexico territories. Early on, he became involved in wildlife conservation programming, which he approached in energetic utilitarian fashion by promoting game management as an economically attractive recreational endeavor.
At that time, he believed that total elimination of predators of game animals was essential, considering them pests. The sportsmen and the stockmen of the region – one third of the population and one-half the wealth of New Mexico – demanded the eradication of mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, and bobcats to allow for large huntable populations of ungulate game animals. Through his lifelong observations we can see how he was able to make connections that allowed him to grow in his thinking and how his worldview changed as a result. In essence he became increasingly more cognizant of the importance of ecological balance, and especially how predators actually played an essential role in the scheme of things.
In his 1944 essay “Thinking Like a Mountain”, published in 1949 in A Sand County Almanac, he dramatized that realization as a single event, combining solid science with a tinge of mysticism: “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes, I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing that fierce green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.” This passage has become so defining of Leopold’s philosophy that it became the title and lead for a film – Green Fire – about his life and career writing on conservation.
Near the end of his career, Leopold clearly verbalized an ecologically informed philosophy of human-environment interactions in ‘Conservation,’ an essay published after his death. Leopold stated: “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism. Its parts, like our own parts, compete with each other and co-operate with each other. The competitions are as much a part of the inner workings as the co-operations. You can regulate them – cautiously – but not abolish them. “It is of course his finale to A Sand County Almanac – The land Ethic – in which Leopold introduces his epic ethical and ecological conclusion. The land was more than simply an economic consideration, but that it must be given the same consideration as any person.
The life-long evolution of Aldo Leopold’s environmental worldview from utilitarian anthropocentric to scientifically ecological was based on, and enabled by, his continuous acquisition and assimilation of scientific knowledge. This occurred through rigorous study and purposeful, on-the-ground experience, intimately accompanied by reflective thinking and intense analysis of data gathered by himself, his colleagues, and other scientists. As importantly, his worldview also underwent a spiritual connection that transcended the science. It is the connection of understanding and spiritual wisdom that today is much needed.
To Be Continued ………………
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