New Search for Ultimate Reality

NCRcafe New Search for Ultimate Reality

Marie Schickel Rottschaefer is the facilitator.

Its goal is to give a brief overview of developments that have relevance for us in the early 21st century, particularly in seeking solutions for pressing people and planet problems.

Discussion Number Thirteen September 2007

WHAT IS OUR FUTURE?

In August I said that we would focus on some of the incredibly exciting global developments that should give us further hope and a springboard for action in a time of profound uncertainty.

EVOLUTION (PROMOTING OUR RAISON D'ETRE)
OR DEVOLUTION (DOING AWAY WITH IT)?

One way to understand how we need to help to restore the planet (July café # 11) is to understand what the global crisis is. Rue talks about the global problematique in Everybody’s Story - Wising Up to the Epic of Evolution (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2000) as Gerald Barney’s characterization of the cumulative challenge of the earth’s interrelated problems:

“As we humans have begun to think globally, it has become clear that we do not have a poverty problem, or a hunger problem, or a habitat problem, or an energy problem or a trade problem, or a population problem, or an atmosphere problem, or a waste problem or a resource problem. On a planetary scale, these problems are all interconnected. What we really have is a poverty-hunger-habitat-energy-trade-population-atmosphere-waste-resource problem. [Barney, Gerald (1993). Global 2000 Revisited. The Millennium Institute.]”

In another of his books, Religion is not about God, referred to earlier, Rue speaks of the diversity of crises affecting the planet. He is one voice among many speaking for many years about our future and the future of the planet. We have a choice of promoting evolution or destroying our fellow creatures and ourselves to the point of extinction and a degenerated planet. In 2007 we see, read and hear overwhelming evidence that we are moving towards a state of utter destruction.

Restoring the planet, means promoting the welfare of the planet’s people, animals, plant life of all types and the infrastructure that supports life, i.e. the land, pure and sufficient water, the oceans, the air, sustainable waste management, sustainable technology and all that these inventions imply. But to do this we have to radically rethink and improve our way of life. It is literally a planetary effort. As the problem is an interconnected one so too is the solution.

My progressive acquaintance with the seriousness of the problem was about thirty-two years ago with Robert L. Heibroner’s An Inquiry Into The Human Prospect. He concludes, “We do not know with certainty that humanity will survive, but it is a comfort to know that there exist within us the elements of fortitude and will from which the image of Atlas springs” (Pg 144).

But it was sometime later that I greatly intensified my effort to promote seeking solutions for people and planet problems after reading the Union of Concerned Scientists’ World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity and Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration drafted originally by Dr. Hans Kung in cooperation with the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions staff, Trustees and experts who drew on many of the world's religious and spiritual traditions.

One sign among many voices speaking to our future is Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming (New York: Viking Press, 2007) mentioned in discussion #10. The dust jacket flap of this book makes an astounding statement. “While they [participants in a worldwide movement] are mostly unrecognized by politicians and the media, they are bringing about what may one day be judged the single most profound transformation of human society.” (Emphasis is mine).

This book – “is about people who want to save the entire sacred, cellular basis of existence – the entire planet and all its inconceivable diversity” (Pg 8). Its nine chapters -- The Beginning, Blessed Unrest, The Long Green, The Rights of Business, Emerson’s Savants, Indigene, We Interrupt This Empire, Immunity, Restoration -- total about190 pages and precede its prolific Appendix. In the Introduction to the Appendix (Pg. 191) Hawken quotes Richard Tarnas:

“It is perhaps not too much to say that, in the first decade of the new millennium, humanity has entered into a condition that is in some sense more globally united and interconnected, more sensitized to the experiences and suffering of others, in certain respects more spiritually awakened, more conscious of alternative future possibilities and ideals, more capable of collective healing and compassion, and, aided by technological advances in communication media, more able to think, feel, and respond together in a spiritually evolved manner to the world’s swiftly changing realities than has ever before been possible.” Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche, Intimations of a New World View (New York: Viking, 2006), p. 483.

The Appendix comprises nearly half the book. Hawken’s says that its taxonomy, as far as he knows, is the most complete listing of issues that need to be addressed to achieve a just and sustainable world. And it is a curriculum and course catalog for a university that should but does not exist (Pg 192).

Along with the database of organizations the Natural Capital Institute created a Web site to accelerate public awareness and to increase the ability of the movement’s participants to connect and collaborate. This is called WiserEarth, where ‘WISER’ is an acronym standing for World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (www.wiserearth.org). It is the first online database that can be edited by the community it serves.

In this brief Café discussion, I can’t begin to describe this book. WiserEarth’s main areas of focus are: Agriculture and Farming, Air, Animalia, Arts, Biodiversity, Business and Economics, Children and Youth, Civil Society Organizations --- Nonprofits, Philanthropy, and Social Entrepreneurs, and many more (Pages 217-302). These are only the main areas with a multitude of listings for the various sub-areas and still further sub-listings. if ever there was a response par excellence to the global problematique, this is it!!! As the problem is interconnected so too is the solution. This book is one big interconnected presentation of solutions.

Reading and studying this book I feel a type of joy, hope and renewed vigor that I’ve never experienced. Now’s the time to galvanize more and more into action!