By now most people have heard of the philosophy of human life that asserts human life, with its massive infestation and “flesh eating” of the earth is a parasite, or a disease, which Gaia, (earth) is getting a fever from. Sadly, this a fair comparison, but a useless one, as it turns people off, makes people the villains, and not the heroes of the story. How many stories or books have been successful so far in which the villain is the victor? Our human nature does NOT accept we should be the bad guys.
The science of climate change says. We are burning dirty fuels. We deforest the woodlands. We acidify the oceans. We extinguish plant and animal life. We are creating oil slicks, pollution, soil, water and air contamination. We are melting the glaciers and murdering the polar bear cubs. …Gosh, this doesn’t sound good, let’s watch “Dancing with the stars!” No wonder people not only hate science, they blame it.
The philosophy says people are causing a mess, we need to stop people. Yet this is why the philosophy and science are winning over exactly about, uh, nobody.
It is exactly backwards toward encouraging, inspiring and even motivating people. People need hope, faith, and belief in the can do spirit of innovation and ingenuity. This is the innate human gift of nature that can deliver us. A new philosophy, based on ecopsychology and our belonging to the earth needs to be seeded, take root, and truly green the planet.
From the perspective of the many millions of organisms who could possibly thrive, and who could even be much better off should humans destroy ourselves, global warming is very fortunate. Sadly, though, we are not the kind of mammals who destroy only just ourselves. We also are involved intensely in deforestation, acidification of the oceans, and loss of habitat for others, air, soil, and water contamination which affects most the organisms we routinely ignore every moment of every day.
We do not ignore these organisms, entirely though. If there is something we want from them, such as a clean food resource, fuel resource, an animal to eat, or a place to grow food, we suddenly can become quite panicked. Indeed to the point of wars, blame and rage against the closest scapegoat, we are activated. Scapegoat grabbing is a form of projection. The human psyche does not automatically want to know our own power, so we look for others as the “cause” of our problems. It is another defense mechanism, like denial, and one of our more insidious weaknesses.
Scapegoats include Nature itself, whom many still see as a wrathful bitch. It is much easier to blame any other entity, than to blame ourselves. If it is not due to Nature, some look at God wanting to punish immorality, (the most insane blame game of all is to invoke a deity that created beauty over billions of years, and then on a whim feels like killing innocent bugs, birds, and beasts because a handful of the beautiful creatures created, was born gay, or worked on a Sunday). Or we simply blame the outsider of the moment. Historically, it was the Jews, or the Native Americans, or the African Americans, or now, the Mexicans or Muslims. The important part we need to learn, but seem incapable of learning, is that WE are the ones with power to destroy, and WE are the ones with the power to improve.
The question must be examined with courage and truth. The truth is we are doing terrible things to living things, and we are seeing the consequences of scape-goating. Resource shortages, short term greed, increased storm severity, famine, contamination, epidemics, depleted seas, soils, and most of all depleted souls. Is Global warming as bad as it is made out to be?
No. We are as bad as we have made everything else out to be. On the bright side, we are also as good as we wish to be.
We will suffer until things get bad enough that we see we have to take steps to do better. The question should not be asked, “Is global warming as bad as it is made out to be?”, but ask instead, “Do we have the power, the courage, the integrity, the determination, the intelligence, and the soul to join earth’s regenerative powers and healing, and become part of keeping balance”? Can we use our industry and hearts to embrace inclusive purpose? Will we replete our soils, the dust from which humus and humans came? And our souls, the spirit divine which God, or Nature, if that is what you call it, created of the earth, by the earth, and for the earth? Or shall we keep pointing in every other direction we can imagine, and watch as all perish from the earth?
The water of the rain flows in your bloodstream. The cells and microorganisms that comprise you comprise other beings too. Even minerals and rocks change, and become living as soil, and eventually as us. The network and diversity of life is inseparable, even more so than our union was in 1865, to use the US civil war as a metaphor. In time, we will see we are not separate from the molecules of other organisms, both inside us, and external to us. I think we will see WE are the earth, and we, of the earth, by the earth, and for the earth, will not perish from the earth.
