What is to be Done?

What’s to Be Done?

Today, we are faced with an uncertain future without interest in or knowledge of our common past beyond perhaps 150 years. Trying to solve the environmental crisis that is upon us by looking back, at the most, to the beginning of modernity will not provide us with the insight, ideas, or inspiration we need. To imagine alternative futures, new economic, social, and political arrangements and personal livelihoods which are sustainable, we must look deeper into history, retrieve our foundational myths, marry our emotional and rational ways of knowing, strengthen and expand our democratic institutions and recognize our common humanity. We must use the best science of which we are capable to find ways of creating satisfying and fulfilling lives without consuming the living earth which all we know, including ourselves, depend on for life.

This is a tall order and, to make matters worse, we must do these things as we experience the advancing environmental crisis which threatens to become a worldwide catastrophe. We are a people divided about such fundamentals as whether we are, in fact, facing such a catastrophe. We must begin with finding a way to discuss these things that respects the diversity of opinion, value judgments, and strongly held beliefs. We need a civility which has been sorely lacking in our political economy.

How do we move forward? We will not move forward in addressing these issues if one of the many sides of the divide insists on imposing its view on the others. We will not if we look at those with whom we disagree as having evil intent, as so far from us that we have nothing of importance in common. The fact is that we have most things in common. We all love our children and want to create for them the best possible future. We want a life that is purposeful and meaningful. We want to live in freedom and we care about our neighbors. These are some of the foundation stones which we can use to begin building our common future.

As always, the devil is in the details, but so is the divine. How do we define and describe “freedom?” Who are our neighbor and what is our responsibility to them? (Jesus answered that question with the parable which we have come to call “The Good Samaritan.”)

We all carry around assumptions which we may not even be aware of, let alone question. While we may not use this language, one such assumption concerns the nature of human being (formerly the nature of “man.”) Are human beings discreet, autonomous individuals whose interactions are those of “economic man” meeting in the market place, competing for advantage? Are human beings relational; do we become human in the presence of other humans and need one another to complete our humanity? The way we answer these grossly simplified questions will inform how we respond to the many questions and issues which presently confront us.

One general assumption of modernity, unfortunately often abetted by religious traditions, is that humans are apart from nature, that the natural world is the backdrop for the human drama and a resource to be exploited for human needs only. We have witnessed this assumption played out across the globe. Most powerfully held by western civilization, this assumption has spread around the world until today just about every nation promotes greater and greater consumption as the price of achieving the “good life.” This fact is one of the main reasons why the natural world is being dismembered and rendered less capable of sustaining life. For those of us who accept one of the very powerful ways of knowing which we call science, the evidence is not refutable.

If one just looks at recent history for solutions, the basic assumption goes unchallenged and we only talk about ways to manipulate nature (technological fixes which ultimately seem to deepen the problem) so we can go on with the business of ever greater consumption.

Fortunately, many of those religious traditions have changed their assumptions about the place of the human in nature; they describe one creation where all life is interdependent and loved by the Creator. Some name the wanton destruction of the natural world as “sin.”

Can the secular world do the same? Can people wedded to the notion that to be successful is to endlessly accumulate things and power begin to define success in non-material ways? Can they include a thriving, healthy earth in their definition of wealth? Can they find meaning and purpose without having a lot of money to spend? Can they build a world where everyone has the necessities of life, freedom to grow as persons in nurturing communities, and no one has more money than they can spend in a normal life?

In addressing these questions we need to expand our understanding of what it means to be human and what has been the human project. We need to learn from a much deeper understanding of human history, to bring into the conversation the thousands of generations from all over the world which struggled to make sense of being aware of being alive. Most of this conversation is unwritten. All other-than-human life has a stake in it. We need to know that the history of the human race includes flute makers, painters, bead makers who adorned their bodies more than 35,000 years ago. We do not find weapons of war in ancient caves; humans played music, and made paintings which match and surpass the best that modern artists can accomplish. That is our heritage at least as much as organized violence and war.

We need to study belief systems which took millennia to develop, to seek out the wisdom which our ancestors achieved. We need to build on these with the tools and understandings which our science has given us. We have seen the planet from the surface of the moon; we have decoded our genetic material, we recognize we are part of the continuum of life from the simplest cell to the human brain. We know as never before, we are one. Can we build from that?

Shouldn’t we be bringing the best of our accomplishments to the question of whether all creation has a future? Is this what it will take to ensure that life has a future on this planet? Maybe, maybe not; but in a democracy shouldn’t we be having the discussion?

PLEASE NOTE: this is the first entry of this new blog. As you might tell from reading it, the blog will discuss history, the imperative to restore the natural world, economics, politics, and the imperative of peace with justice, with a little philosophy and theology thrown in. I think of this blog as a campfire where we gather to sit in the light and warmth, ask deep questions, share our wonder, stories and dreams, and take comfort in the company of our fellows. You are welcome to join the conversation. Joseph Gainza