As one culture falters, a new one is being born.
Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
I’ve spent the last few weeks wandering in the wilderness of doubt and dissatisfaction. Not one of my favorite places, but from time to time I find myself there. And for an energetic, purposeful, upbeat kind of guy, it’s usually a challenge to be patient and await what life has in store for me.
Then a few days ago during my morning writing, it became clear: I’d lost touch with my vision for our planet. I’d lost the sense that events are unfolding just as they should, that a shift toward compassion and sustainability is proceeding steadily.
My anger and frustration at Dubya’s actions regarding the environment probably had something to do with my state of mind. Backing away from his pledge to regulate carbon dioxide, abandoning the international climate treaty negotiations, rescinding regulations to lower arsenic levels in drinking water, professing his desire to drill for oil in fragile wilderness areas. And though the Bush administration has now begun a pro-environment spin campaign in reaction to the public outcry, I believe that their true intentions were revealed in these earlier actions.
Well, I didn’t get to wallow in my hopelessness for long. While browsing in Malaprop’s Bookstore with my wife, Shonnie, I was drawn to a book by Daniel Quinn. The Story of B proved to be a perfect antidote to my malaise. (I have difficulty using this word without thinking of Jimmy Carter’s 1979 speech.)
In his teachings, Quinn’s protagonist, B, states the essential vision of the dominant cultural paradigm.
The world was made for Man, and Man was made to conquer and rule it. This is what we’d been about from the beginning: conquering and ruling, taking the world as if it had been fashioned for our exclusive use, using what we wanted and discarding the rest—destroying the rest as superfluous. This was not wicked work, this was holy work. This is what God created us to do!
And this is the way we’ve lived for the past ten thousand years, with nearly every other culture on earth succumbing to the good news of “a coming utopia.”
But somewhere along the way it became apparent that the course we’d undertaken would not bring us to utopia. We began to understand that we could not treat our planet with callous disregard without facing the consequences of our actions. According to B, the collapse of our belief in the omnipotence of humankind began in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. This book revealed how DDT, a highly-touted pesticide, was not only killing its intended victims; it was poisoning the food chain; it was poisoning us. From this moment on, our supremacy over the earth and all its inhabitants was called into question. And with the disintegration of this vision, we began to experience a collapse of our culture. According to B:
Things fell apart. . . . Order and purpose are replaced by chaos and bewilderment. People lose the will to live, become listless, become violent, become suicidal, and take to drink, drugs and crime. The matrix that once held all in place is shattered, and laws, customs, and institutions fall into disuse and disrespect, especially among the young, who see that their elders can no longer make sense of them.
Exactly the state into which I’d descended until Quinn’s prose supplied the needed antidote. And when I awoke from my slumber, I looked around and saw other folks who had also awakened. Folks who have recognized the folly of living one’s life hooked up to the heart attack machine. Folks who have stepped off the carousel of consumption and debt. Folks who are taking responsibility for their role in the degradation of our planet. They’re recognizing the arrogance of believing that the Creator favors only humans over the billions of his/her other creations. They’re treading more lightly on the planet and discovering more sustainable ways of living. They’re creating community, volunteering, and getting involved.
And though these folks are growing in number, they remain below the radar of the mass media. They are working individually and in small groups, outside mainstream political, government, religious, and business organizations, institutions that continue to defend a culture already exposed as bankrupt.
They’ve had their day, and this is indeed the final hour of that day. Now our day begins.
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