“I am sure that if mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars” E. M. Forster.
For literally decades now (and especially since I published my Sustainable Living Text in 2012) I have promoted a positive vision for a new and better future for humanity and the natural world. I like modern living, but even there I find that I can live mor simply and with mindfulness of everything that I do. It isn’t hard, but I realize that it has great limitations to do so effectively while still living enveloped within a consumer-materialist, male-patriarchal worldview that currently dominates global thinking.
I wrote the next two paragraphs for another blog I contribute to, but they are worth repeating in my own blog here. “I want a world where war is obsolete, people live in peace and relative harmony with each other, and where we live harmoniously with the natural world for the benefit of all life with a comfortable and technologically safe lifestyle. And the craziest thing about all this is that most people I talk with want this as well. It is this last statement that long ago set me on my quest to understand why, despite the desire to be this way, we continue to wage war, commit atrocities on each other and the natural world, and promote hate and separation as if it was completely normal to do so.”
“My Espe stories of a sustainable future are not just cute stories, they are a vision of what can be if we simply choose it to be. We can’t expect the ‘small number of powers that be (the hierarchy the Cabal, the 0.001%, the global corpocracy; pick your favorite term) ’ to do this for us. No group of politicians, corporations or billionaires can, or will, make the changes we need. Change has to come from us, the people of this planet. “Change never comes from the powerful and proud [the hierarchy]– they have too much to lose and too little to gain. Change always comes from the common and humble – we have little to lose and much to gain” John Ikerd, Economist.”
And in keeping with my consistent view that even with technological advances, even if we find the most incredible technologies now, will not save us, or get us to that better world. Our worldviews that drive our current attitudes are just too destructive to do that. It’s why I spend so much time writing about our worldviews and changing ourselves. If we became more ‘ecocentric’ tomorrow, our world would already be moving to a better place with current technologies because we would be more mindful of everything we do. Add a better mindset and better technologies and you get a better world. No magic formula there, but we must solve the former before we can get the latter. Ignoring the former just keeps us on the ‘Road to Perdition.’
I talked about ‘Invisible Women in the last four posts and our need to give half the ignored human population a voice in how the world runs. Men have been running it for the last 5-6 millennia and if we are honest will admit that they have made a pig’s ear of it all. Now simply letting women run the world is not the solution either. It’s getting to an androgynous society in which men and women both express their strengths equitably. Women need to find empowerment to speak their needs and have a voice in all decision making (Animus) and men need to find ways to express themselves so that they exhibit their feminine aspects (Anima) without either gender losing sight of themselves as androgynous beings. More about this in a future post coming soon.
The male mindset for at least the last five millennia has set conditions about everything for women, and also the natural world, by largely ignoring both. I don’t think it was done maliciously, but testosterone driven thinking probably spurred on empire building and the mechanistic-scientific worldview of the Medieval Renaissance that ignored spiritual aspects of life. Just as women have been invisible for most of civilized history, so too has the natural world and its complex systems. A future sustainable society will have equitable representation from women, and also, the natural world. Only relatively recently has science come to realize just how truly interconnected is everything on the planet. In general, women have an innate wisdom about cycles and systems rarely appreciated by men, except in indigenous societies in which men and women thrive and adapt more equitably.
Now the idea of giving women an equal voice is already a huge step for a humanity that has been so dominated by a male perspective for so long, but the idea of giving the natural world a voice is an interesting concept, because in our global minds nature is inanimate. I’ve talked about becoming ecocentric and worldcentric (see links 1, 2, and 3). Yet whether your worldviews allows you to view the planet (Gaia) as a conscious entity or not doesn’t really matter. The thing is to give Gaia rights to thrive and exist peacefully because it benefits us – humanity – to do so.
Indigenous peoples actually have a worldview that recognizes ‘the rights of nature’ as inherently natural in themselves. It is based on a spiritual perspective. Whether it was always that way, or only the peoples who practiced it that way survived is debatable. But that in itself is reason to look closely at this mindset for our own survival and ability to thrive in the future. If we don’t give the natural world a moral stanch to exist and thrive simply because, it is the basis for our own survival, then we will continue to abuse the natural world and in turn, continue to abuse ourselves. Not a rational way to move forward even if nature is viewed as inanimate.
“As our own species is in the process of proving. One cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying”Arthur C Clarke.
Since at least 1972, although the transcendentalist writers espoused this idea as early as the 1830s, nature has had ‘legal rights.’ The international group ‘Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN), is a diverse consortium that seeks to build legal frameworks that protect nature. They state that, “Rather than treating nature as property under the law, rights of nature acknowledges that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles. And we – the people – have the legal authority and responsibility to enforce these rights on behalf of ecosystems.”
The push to give nature legal-rights really began in 1972, when law professor Christopher Stone, published a seminal article, ‘Should trees have standing – toward legal rights for natural objects.’ Stone’s premise was that that nature was considered right-less, having no legally recognized rights to defend and enforce. Quite astounding really during this heyday of the birth of environmentalism. His main argument that other non-animate/non-sentient systems (e.g., corporations, unborn children, and even ships) have legal rights, so why not nature?
Globally we had been practicing conservationism and preservationism of natural systems since the 1890s but environmentalism brought a whole new ethic to how we view and use nature. I’ve defined these terms early in the blog, but to recap briefly for each:
Conservationism: The environment is something we use, so we have to conserve it and take care of it, so that others can use it in the future. For instance, this would entail sustainable harvesting of a forest to minimize deforestation.
Preservationism: Protects the environment from harmful human activities. Preservation would involve setting aside part or even all of a forest from human development.
Environmentalism: The whole natural world and environment is to be saved, preserved, set aside, and protected from human abuse.
To close this post, conservationism was acceptable because it allowed economic use of the natural world, but with just a mindful set of policies to maintain the resources for future use (i.e., continued economic growth). Preservationism was more of a legal set of battles to set aside resources to be enjoyed recreationally but not for resource extraction and use. Environmentalism was an attempt since the 1960s to combine both and also add (usually through legal means) an ethical component. It is that ethical part that has been the most problematic, and the one that we must address now if we are to thrive as a species.
To Be Continued …………………
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