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Why Rethink the World?

Why should we "Rethink the World"?  A valid question, but perhaps a better one might be, "Why didn't we rethink things a long time ago?"

 

How we got here is assuredly too big a topic to examine in this brief column.  Let's just agree that we did in fact get here.  And by here, I mean several things: this point in Earth's history, in population, in environmental degradation, in use of finite natural resources, in redistribution of the world's biological mass (away from biodiversity, toward an ever-increasing proportion of the world occupied by homogeneous human mass), and a score of other indices which define "where we are."

 

I'll enlist the words of Thom Hartmann from his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, to help me describe our position.  "In the 24 hours since this time yesterday, over 200,000 acres of rainforest have been destroyed in our world.  Fully 13 million tons of toxic chemicals have been released into our environment.  And more than 130 plant or animal species have been driven to extinction by the actions of humans.  The last time there was such a rapid loss of species was when the dinosaurs vanished."  And those of Paul Hawken, the author of The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability.  "We live in a time in which every living system is in decline, and the rate of decline is accelerating as our economy grows.  The commercial processes that bring us the kind of lives we supposedly desire are destroying the earth and the life we cherish.  Given current corporate practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global market economy.  We are losing our forests, fisheries, coral reefs, topsoil, water, biodiversity, and climatic stability.  The land, sea, and air have been functionally transformed from life-supporting systems into repositories for waste."

 

I believe that most of us intuitively recognize that there is something perilous in maintaining cultural and individual practices which permit the sort of things described above to occur.  But our myopia allows us to tell ourselves a lie, that "everything will be OK."  Looking too deeply at the situation exposes the lie, so most of us don't.  As Derrick Jensen, in A Language Older Than Words, puts it: "In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.  It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable.  The lies act as barriers to truth.  These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.  Truth must be at all costs avoided.  When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defenses and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre party.  We try to stay out of harm's way, afraid they will go off, shatter our delusions, and leave us exposed as the hollow people we have become.  And so we avoid these truths, and continue the dance of world destruction." 

 

Complete destruction of the world's living systems through human activity is not likely, especially not while I'm still biologically active (alive).  I'm certain that it will continue to support some level of human population for quite some time to come.  And I don't have kids, so I'm not proposing to "rethink our world" to save it so that my genetic inheritors will carry on the bloodline.  But I know many people who do have kids.  I'd like to see them inhabit a hospitable place, but, frankly, I don't think things can go on as they are too much longer even more without serious repercussions.  The purpose of "Rethinking the World" is, for me anyway, to help expose the lie, and to correct the myopia.  If that goal sounds a bit grand, then maybe I can spread a bit of simple, helpful, educational material to a wider audience. 

 

There is one other thing: Mahatma Gandhi said, "You must become the change you seek in the world."  That is what "Rethinking the World" represents, at least in part, to me.  My own lifestyle could in no way be represented as ecologically sustainable.  So this column is an opportunity to change myself and, hopefully, help in a much broader sense the rest of "the world."

William Gresham, March 2001

Bill Gresham lives and ponders on planet Earth.  His writings also have appeared on Mind Like Water's column EcoLogic.  Click here for links to those articles.

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