by Ibon » Sat 07 Feb 2015, 13:18:57
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '
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Further, their community I belonged to was mostly well educated professionals. Each saw the world through a relatively narrow lens. There was a lot of focus on humanities shortcomings and good deeds. Not bad in itself. But no real deep thought about what drives humanity, what our real motivations are.
That is what I was assuming and this actually leads to a point I would like to explore in reference to these last couple of pages about a sense of the sacred toward our mother earth as a key component to modern civilization eventually reaching sustainability and how I see a fair chance of this happening. This will be my last long post on this for the moment as I try to wrap this up and not belabor the point.
The tremendous surplus of energy available to modern civilization during the past decades has allowed a specialization to develop among individuals in the consumption of material goods but also in their ability to specialize and entertain their pet interests. This has lead to a degree of relativity. Whether you are driving a Hummer down to the mall or fighting for your pet charity cause we have had the abundance in our society to specialize in an almost boundless way.
When a biosphere is healthy it is invisible. When there is material abundance the physical resource base is similarly unnoticed. Think of how people turn on or off the lights or water without even thinking about the source of this.
VTSnowedin made a good point that our knowledge of ecological limits is relatively recent, since the 70's, and in a way this makes sense since it was only when limits started to creep that the healthy biosphere, long invisible, started to take form in our minds.
So we have had this invisible external environment and such abundance that each individual has been allowed to pursue without constraints material abundance and of course also moral and ethical and in the field of humanities any cause that one would fancy. This is part of the cult of the individual whether it be driving a Hummer down the street, fixated on your Iphone or leading a pledge drive for breast cancer. It might seem weird at first that I can make the case that a philanthropic cause like fighting cancer is just another expression of individualism but it does represent the passion and interests of the individuals leading this and it also reflects the abundance of a society that has the luxury to go into ever more specialized endeavors, including humanitarian ones.
One of the reason climate change or biodiversity loss does not take center stage and gain priority is because in the eyes of society these are just another "cause" and competing in a specialized world of hundreds of other noble or not noble causes from fighting malaria to nascar racing.
And now to Pops point about any religion requiring a "hook" like the fear of hell or getting reincarnated as a tick on a dogs ass, there is a hook that I see emerging as constraints and the consequences of overshoot undermine our societies ability to continue unhindered in indulging in such a degree of specialization of interests.
In times of abundance climate change and species extinction has the same moral relevance in the eyes of society as any other of the hundreds of "causes" out there that we strive to resolve.
How do you all think this will change with the tightening of constraints, the diminishing of species, the consequences of climate change leading to crop failures etc etc?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')piritually I have evolved to see us as a part of nature, so that we should work within it, not seek to command it.
Newfie, you are on the leading edge. Maybe because I own a nature reserve in Panama some of you might think well obviously Ibon would say this, isn't he somewhat biased?
Actually, the long invisible biosphere and the long unnoticed abundance of resources are going to become dominant in our focus and in our specializations in the decades to come, and the moral equivalence that puts philanthropic causes competing with each other will experience a separation of the wheat from the chaff. The feedbacks from the consequences of overshoot are going to demand priority and focus toward resolving the constraints and this will draw together society in no uncertain terms.
That is also the "hook" that will develop with a sense of sacredness. We wont need to create an afterlife that threatens hell or coming back as a tick, the very feedback consequences in real time in our own sentient lives will serve this very well.
The emerging religiosity or spirituality may very well be less dogmatic in a religious sense and more like Ethical Humanism but the existential nature of the consequences of overshoot will draw folks toward a central focus. And the healing and preserving of our mother earth has the potential to create a common core belief system of worshiping our mother earth
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')TW...working on The Ape Within. Very good
