The Dream of the Earth

“With our new knowledge we can partidipate more fully in the emergent processes of the present and the shaping of the future. Yet the primary determinant in our activities is our sense of millenial fulfillment in whatever form it presents itself. In the last few centuries the millenniem has appeared as the Enlightenment, the democratic age, the nation-state, the classless society, the capitalist age of peace and plenty, and the industrial wonderworld.

It is a supreme irony of history that the consequences of these millenniel expectations have been the devastation of the planet - wasteworld rather than wonderworld. Of special significance is the fact that these entrancments and the consequent devastation exist on a worldwide scale. The earth entire and the human community are bound in a single destiny, and that destiny just now has a disintegrating aspect. The disintegration is threatening because both the psychic and the physical energy levels were so high, the consequences generally irreversible. The modern question has always been the control of energy that exists on an order of magnitude many times greater than what was available in prior periods in history. Whatever the direction taken by the human community in modern times, its consequences will be vast beyond the iagining of any former generation.....

The industrial context in which we presently function cannot be changed significantly in the immediate future. Our immediate survival is bound up in this context, with all its beneficial as well as its destructive aspects. What is needed, however, is a comprehensive change in the control and direction of the energies available to us. Most of all we need to alter our commitment from an industrial wonderworld achieved plundering processes to an integral earth community based on a mutually enhancing human-earth relationship. This move from an anthropecentric sense of reality and value to a biocentric norm is essential.

The ideal of a human habitat within a natural setting of trees and fields and flowering plants, of flowing streams and seacoasts and those living forms that swim through the waters and move over the land and fly through the air - a world of nontoxic rain and noncontaminated wells, of unpolluted seacoasts with their fertile wetlands - the ideal of a human community integral with sucha a setting, if properly understood with all the severity of its demands on its human occupants, would seem to be our only effective way into a sustainable and humanly satisfying future.

This is, of course, a mythic vision, highly romanticized if it is taken too literally. Yet it is considerable less idealized than the wonderworld vision that supports our current industrial system. In both cases we recognize that the mythic vision is what evokes the energies needed to sustain the human effort involved. The important thing is that the mythic vision lead to a sustainable context for the survival and continued evolution of the earth and its living forms. The ecological vision that we are proposing is the only context that is consistent with the evolutionary processes that brought the earth and all its living beings int that state of florescence that existed prior to the industrial age.

.....Even when its consequences in a desolate planet are totally clear, the industrial order keeps its control over human activities because of the energy generated by the mythic quality of its vision...What is needed is more adequate elaboration of the mythic phase of the ecological process...........


Sorry for the long post. This is an excerpt from a book I started reading by Thomas Berry. Thought I would share a little this morning since no one is awake yet!”

“Thanks for the post!

I fear that the human race will not come together on a common level of thinking until major changes happen. Everyone must relize that with everything action, there is an equal and direct opposite reaction to it and I don't think some people get that. I think it won't be until we are facing something like a killer asteroid or something, will we all put away our differences and get on the same page. It is amazing to me the progress that we have been able to attain at present. Could you imagine what we could do if we were all onthe same page?”

“laqtis is an optimist....”

“Latqis is also firm believer of Newton's 3rd Law of Motion which in many ways relates to other things in life.

I dreamed I saw the knights
In armor coming,
Saying something about a queen.
There were peasants singing and
Drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree.
There was a fanfare blowing
To the sun
That was floating on the breeze.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.

I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes.
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst thru the sky.
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high.
I was thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.

I dreamed I saw the silver
Space ships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun,
There were children crying
And colors flying
All around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun.
They were flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home in the sun.
Flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home.”

“Consider this one simple thread of reality:

Oceanic fish stocks are nearly depleted. This affects not just the human population that depends on ocean fish for food, but marine species as well, threatening biodiversity beyond our comprehension.

What are the causes? Human over-fishing, human pollution, anthropogenically-caused climate change, and who knows what else.

We took a quantum leap in scientific knowledge in the closing decades of the 20th Century, which has revealed to us the degree to which we have affected the biosphere. In effect, every generation has mortgaged the cost of its industrialization to succeeding generations without even being aware it was doing so. We saw the resources of the Earth as vast, unlimited, and capable of sustaining up well into the new millennium. But population explosion has depleted those resources more quickly than earlier generations expected, and it seems beyond understanding to believe that reining in population growth at this late stage would reverse the damage. It goes beyond pollution to a more serious bioligical crisis, that is, exceeding the carrying capacity of the habitat.

When animal species exceed the carrying capacity of their habitat, extinction is the logical result. That is one of the major causes of background extinction (mass extinction results from global habitat changes, regardless of their cause).

Indeed, local human populations have disappeared from the face of the earth despite having developed complex agricultural methogs, built elaborate irrigation canals, devised food storage methods. Why? A simple combination of convergences: their population reached a point where it could not be supported during times of drought.

So, given the current level of human population, and given the worldwide food supply (marine and land-based), what might need to happen to cause wide-spread famine and death?

Depletion of marine stocks and climate change that would shrink the acreage of agricultural productive lands come readily to mind, and both of those forces are already in motion, perhaps beyond any capability we may devise to control them.

Fishing controls? Too little too late, and what will people who depend on fishing do to survive in the meantime?

Climate control? We cannot even put into place minimal greenhouse gas controls.

And guess what? We are all part of the problem regardless of our political leanings, professions of concern, awareness of the problem, or desire for change. We exist in the most highly industrialized society, we create demand for gadgets (Those Pocket Rockets, capiline shirts, and tanks of white gas come from somewhere, are produced at a given biological cost, and have already had an effect on the biosphere when we purchase them. Our vehicles emit gases when we drive to trailheads.)

So none of us can point fingers elsewhere. We can only work as best we can toward some common sense goals, realizing as we do that education is the only force that will effect change, if it is not too late already for change.

Beyond extinction, biologic history tells us of great dyings when populations run out of control. Disease is the greatest tool that biology uses to thin out populations, and we have certainly seen that at work. Unfortunately for the future of the human race, we have developed treatments to combat disease. The population continues to expand. Disease agents develop resistance to anti-biotics, we develop new and better anti-biotics. Intellectually and emotionally, we think we are winning, but in the long run we are developing an over-population of beings that depend on greater and greater supplies of natural resources for sustenance at the very point where those resources are being depleted without any thought to the result.

In short, we are literally eating and propagating ourselves out of house and home.”

“Geo - Very well put. I, however, do not think that it's too late. I personally see us at the cross roads. There is no doubt in my mind that if we continue down this raod, we will be in the situation you speak of, but I really feel that in my life time, we will/might (I hope!) see a change. I think that when we all start relizing that money is not as important they those in charge say it is, it will be the first step. Dangerous frst step indeed and one that a lot of people will resist. This line of thinking would take America off of the top shelf. Along this line of thinking, I think that it might be best for us as a whole in the long run if we decide to resign our post at the top on our terms, rather than get knocked off on someone elses. I like to answer you question:

"Fishing controls? Too little too late, and what will people who depend on fishing do to survive in the meantime..." Solent Green, anyone?? :)

Just some attempt at some humor, but really, we just might be at the point in history that we CAN do the right thing. I don't knock anyone for drive big fat vechiles, but I do have a problem with the people that do, but don't do something positive in return. If 10% of people who "take" without giving back, did....That alone would make a big difference in the impact of the world and in thinking. The reason why it will/might not happen is 'cause there is no BIG money to be made in on it. Change that way of thinking and I think you're half way there.

BTW - Thanks to IndianaJohn for starting this thread, the other, sleepy parts of my brain are now awake.

Buddur - It used to be that when I was young (no pun intended), every Sunday morning my parents would put on "Rust Never Sleeps" and make/have breakfast. That tune was and still is one of my favs. You ever see the concert video? "NO RAIN!, NO RAIN!...." Maybe I should start that tradition up again.....”