What's God Got to Do With
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IDEAS • POLITICS • RELATIONSHIPS • ART • WRITING • SPIRITUALITY • YOUTH CenterThe Post A Journal of UU Rowe Center Volume 26 No.2 • Spring/Summer 2015 SPECIAL SECTION What’s God Got to Do With It? Joanna Macy, Mary Catherine Bateson, Starhawk and others reflect on their spiritual journeys ALSO INSIDE THIS ISSUE Charles Eisenstein Fear of a Living Planet Chris Martenson The Great Unraveling Ralph Nader Letter to Environmentalists Joyce and Barry Vissell How to Love Catherine Ann Jones The Bliss of Not Knowing AND MORE! www.rowecenter.org page 2 The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015 www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954 page 3 Charles Eisenstein will present “Approaching That- IDEAS More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Pos sible,” September 17-20. CHARLES EISENSTEIN child hugs a tree and thinks that leaves a livable planet what healthy forests, healthy our ways, or else!” Appealing we’ll receive? I am willing to he feels the hug and imagines to future generations. What streams, and healthy skies look to fear and selfish interest, in bet that even the survival of the tree is his friend, only to is it, exactly, that makes us like. And we insulate ourselves general, is a natural tactic for the species or the wellbeing learn that no, I’m sorry, the into environmentalists? If we ideologically by our trust in anyone coming from a belief of your grandchildren isn’t tree is just a bunch of woody answer that, we might know technological fixes and justi- that the planet has no intrinsic the real motive for your FEAR of a LIVING PLANET cells with no central nervous how to turn others into environ- fications like, “Well, we need value, no value beyond its environmentalism. You are not system and therefore cannot mentalists as well, and to deep- fracking for energy indepen- utility. What other reason to an environmentalist because oes the concept of a all, science can easily affirm of knowing and choosing. But possibly have the qualities of en the commitment of those dence, and besides it’s not that preserve it is there, when it has you are afraid of what will CHARLES EISENSTEIN has written several books, most recently living planet uplift The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible and Sacred Economics. or deny Earth’s aliveness that’s still pretty theoretical, so beingness that humans have. who already identify as such. bad,” or “After all, this forest no intrinsic value? happen if you don’t act. You are and inspire you, or A speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity, he depending on what definition let me share a little of my own The child imagines that just as I don’t know about isn’t in an ecologically critical It should be no surprise an environmentalist because is it a disturbing has a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Yale, lived a decade in of life is being used. No, we introspection. she looks out on the world, the you, but I didn’t become an area.” that this tactic has failed. you love our planet. To call Taiwan as a translator, and has been a college instructor, yoga teacher, and Dexample of woo-woo nonsense construction worker. He currently writes and speaks full-time. He lives in are dealing with an emotional When I apprehend concepts world looks back at her, only environmentalist because The most potent form of When environmentalists cite others into environmentalism, that distracts us from practical, Pennsylvania with his wife and four children. perception here, one that goes such as “Earth is alive,” or to learn that no, I’m sorry, the someone made a rational ideological insulation, though, the potential economic losses we should therefore appeal science-based policies? beyond “alive” to affirm that “All things are sacred,” or world consists of a jumble of argument that convinced me is the belief that the world isn’t from climate change, they to the same love in them. It is The scientifically-oriented strategic error that opens envi- mistaken. By shying away Earth is sentient, conscious, “The universe and everything insensate stuff, a random melee that the planet was in danger. really in pain, that nothing implicitly endorse economic not only ineffectual but also nuts-and-bolts environmental ronmentalism to accusations of from the idea of a living planet, even sacred. That is what up- in it bears sentience, purpose, of subatomic particles, and that I became an environmentalist worse is happening than the gain and loss as a basis for en- insulting to offer someone a activist will roll his or her eyes flakiness. By invoking unscien- we rob environmentalism of sets the critics. Furthermore, and life,” there is always an intelligence and purpose reside out of love and pain: Love for manipulation of matter by vironmental decision-making. venal reason to act ecologically upon hearing phrases like “The tific concepts, by prattling on its authentic motive force, the derisiveness of the criti- emotion involved; in no case in human beings alone. Science the world and its beauty and machines, and that therefore Doubtless they are imagining when we ourselves are doing it planet is a living being.” From about the “heart” or spirit or the engender paralysis rather than cism, encoded in words like is my rejection or acceptance (as we have known it) renders the grief of seeing it destroyed. as long as we can engineer that they must “speak the lan- for love. there it is a short step to senti- sacred, we will be dismissed as action, and implicitly endorse “hippie” or “flake,” also shows the result of pure ratiocination. us alone in an alien universe. It was only because I was some substitute for “ecosystem guage” of the power elite, who Nonetheless, environmental ments like, “Love will heal the naive, fuzzy-headed, irrational, the worldview that enables our that more than an intellec- Either I embrace them with a At the same time, it crowns us in touch with these feelings services,” there need be no supposedly don’t understand campaigning relies heavily world,” “What we need most is hysterical, over-emotional hip- destruction of the planet. tual difference of opinion is at feeling of eager, tender hope, or as its lords and masters, for if that I had the ears to listen to limit to what we do to nature. anything but money, but this on scare tactics. Fear might a shift in consciousness,” and pies. What we need, they say, stake. Usually, derision comes I reject them with a feeling of sentience and purpose inhere evidence and reason and the Absent any inherent purpose or strategy backfires when, as is stimulate a few gestures of “Let’s get in touch with our in- is more data, more logic, more The Psychology from insecurity or fear. “Judg- wariness, along the lines of “It in us alone, there is nothing eyes to see what is happening intelligence, the Earth is here the norm, financial self-interest activism, but it does not sustain digenous soul.” What’s wrong numbers, better arguments, and of Contempt ment,” says Marshall Rosen- is too good to be true,” or “I’m stopping us from engineering to our world. I believe that this for us to use. Look around this and ecological sustainability long-term commitment. It with such ideas? The skeptics more practical solutions framed To see that, let’s start by berg, “is the tragic expression nobody’s fool.” Sometimes, the world as we see fit. There is love and this grief are latent in planet. See the results of that are opposed. Similarly, calls to strengthens the habits of self- make a potent argument. Not in language acceptable to poli- observing that the objection to of an unmet need.” beyond wariness, I feel a hot no desire to listen for, no larger every human being. When they ideology writ large. preserve the rainforests because protection, but what we need only are these ideas delusional, cy-makers and the public. “Earth is alive” isn’t primarily What are they afraid of? flash of anger, as if I had been process to participate in, no awaken, that person becomes of the value of the medicines is to strengthen the habits of they say, but to voice them is a I think that argument is a scientific objection. After (And I—the voice of the deri- violated or betrayed. Why? consciousness to respect. an environmentalist. The Love of Life that may one day be derived service. sive critic lives in me as well.) That wariness is deeply “The Earth isn’t really Now, I am not saying that The idea that our planet is from its species imply that, if Why then do so many of us Could it be that the contempt connected to the contempt I’ve alive” is part of that ideological a rational, evidence-based alive, and further, that every only we can invent synthetic name “fear that we won’t have comes in part from a fear that described. The derision of the cutoff. Isn’t that the same analysis of the situation mountain, river, lake and alternatives to whatever the a livable planet” as the motive one is, oneself, “naive, irra- cynic comes from a wound of cutoff that enables us to despoil and possible solutions is forest is a living being, even forest might bear, we needn’t for our activism? I think it is to tional, and over-emotional?” crushed idealism and betrayed the planet? unimportant. It’s just that it will a sentient, purposive, sacred preserve the rainforest after all.