26 March, 2009
Switch on your heart when you turn off your lights
Posted by pbrandis under nature and culture | Tags: earth community, environmentalism, worldviews
1 Comment
I am sure you’ve wondered how (or whether) the world will ever become sustainable? And I’m sure you’ve wondered what would change the trajectory of today’s civilisation?
There has been so much written and spoken about sustainability, but we seem no closer, and perhaps we are further away than ever. Why are we failing to keep our earth habitable for future generations? What is the real legacy we are leaving?
The path to sustainability is often talked about in global terms – global deals, carbon trading, UN conferences and declarations, policy shifts etc. What is not talked about much is the need for a new consciousness.
Why do we fail to talk about treating each other with love and respect as the foundation of a new society? Why are we scared to talk about our deepest needs? Victor Havel believes that to achieve the fundamental shift in our current direction, we must develop “a new understanding of the true purpose of our existence on this Earth.”
Gus Speth, Dean of Yale School of Environmental Studies, has said this about the changes needed:“many of our deepest thinkers and many of those most familiar with the scale of the challenges we face have concluded that the changes needed to sustain human and natural communities can only be achieved in the context of the rise of a new consciousness.”
There is a real need for a significant cultural change, a change in our worldviews, and a reorientation of what we value. Call this a spiritual awakening, or a new consciousness. If you prefer call it a rethinking of what is really important. (A recent report covers this in great detail – see Towards a New Conscioiusness: Values to Sustain Human and Natural Communities).
If we treated others with respect, generosity, kindness and fairness, would the world become a better place? You bet!
We certainly won’t get there if our fundamental values don’t change, or if we keep believing in endless growth, corporations, unbridled competition, aggression, excessive individualism and materialism. To build a sustainable world, we need a more mature human society based on nature’s templates, as Bill Plotkin reminds us.
If being green was more than just turning off our lights, but also involved switching on our hearts, we would be on the way to transforming our world and ourselves.
April 9th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Hi Peter,
I heartily agree with your latest post. But how to achieve this new consciousness is the age old question…
It seems there’s always been these two camps – the aggressive, self-focussed, push-through-regardless-of-costs mentality vs the more cooperative, collaborative, sharing, altruistic tendencies.
There is still a residue of deeply seated fear of being absorbed, losing individuality in the collective sludge – a fear so potently described in the anti-totalitarian works of Ayn Rand which have inspired/justifed the worst excesses of laissez-faire capitalism that have led to the current economic collapse – a fear which I believe goes way back to “the great disillusionment”, as I call it, the last great turning point, when our ancestors shook off the ancient pre-history tribal, so-called matriarchal or goddess era where there may have been harmony with nature but where those in control promoted an increasingly complex and stultifying culture of superstitious placation of the gods, thus preventing any significant momentum toward technologies that might mitigate against the harsh vissicitudes of nature. Once tasted, the illusion of individual freedom from the bonds of onerous collective obligation is an intoxicating brew. Are we ready to give it up yet?
It is possible the current economic collapse and the fast approaching energy collapse, combined with the accelerating reality of adverse climate change events could finally form a tipping point in human consciousness. Or will hardship and chaos turn minds to mere self survival?
If we’re honest we find that this same polarity between self and collective interests exists at the heart of all we do, a fundamental existential paradox. Any change in consciousness must bring an understanding of how to reconcile and balance these two competing demands within our own lives and in our relationships with those in our immediate circle. And that’s not easy.
But there is great power in bringing together the hearts and minds of people of good will. We have a new tool in highly intensive networking – the internet – and we have a growing sector of NGO’s and more sophisticated models of community organising activities. So there is definitely hope! You it seems are using all three means, so all power to you! The WakeUp Sydney initiative sounds terrific.
I have often thought it would be a powerful thing to find some way to facilitate both a technical and conceptual hub whereby all the wonderful diversity of good will in our community, manifested in groups all pushing their own particular cause, could somehow be inspired beyond notions of competing for the limited dollar to see areas of commonality and agree to some kind of umbrella concept – there as I said for purely coordinating and networking reasons, a facilitating body with a brief to keep themselves as small and backgrounded as possible… so that power remained at the base. But when issues of shared interest arose, the mechanism would be there for a speedy flow of information and swift collective action, with as little organisational effort as possible required from the grass roots, so they could keep their limited resources focussed on their respective core constituencies. Organisations like GetUp and Avaaz provide such a service for individuals. I suppose there are many groups set up with these meta-functions in mind. If so, someone needs the vision to hub those so they can function as one and not compete with each other and further scatter energies. It would seem to me new internet technologies might permit for creatve new modes of organizing.
Happy Easter renewal!
Mercia