16 June 2009
Reinventing Ourselves, and Reinventing the World
Posted by Admin under: Forum .
If we are on an unsustainable course – which it is increasingly clear we are – we obviously need to change direction. But we are on our present course because of who we are: we got ourselves here, and we are going to need to change ourselves profoundly in order to find ourselves going in a different direction, as a species.
There are only two responses we can have to our present dilemma: either we stand by and watch as our ecological systems disintegrate, or we can take concerted action. This is pretty much what it boils down to.
At the same time, there is no single, comprehensive plan or program that can allow us to achieve sustainability. What we need is for humanity to fundamentally change direction – to see itself as driving toward a different goal than that of merely material wealth, and to look at the world and our role in it from a more directly responsible perspective. We may not like it, but we are now, collectively, in charge of the air, the water, and the land. We need, for the first time, to manage the climate. And we need, above all, to manage ourselves.
Let’s be clear. Nature will take care of itself. It has suffered many setbacks, and always come back. We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of species. What is at stake is not “saving the planet.” It’s saving us. It’s about the survival of humanity, with all of its foibles, its nobility and its degradation, its capacity for kindness and for cruelty beyond measure, and its limitless and unfinished potential. We’re not even talking about “life.” It’s just the life of those other species on which we happen to depend.
It is unlikely that even a nuclear holocaust could destroy all of life; and life appears, in any case, to be an intrinsic property of the universe. Our existence is in many ways remarkably improbable; but it is not some kind of accident. It is said that if the universe were, at the time of the Big Bang, one degree hotter, it would expand too fast to coalesce into stars and planets; and if it were one degree colder, it would collapse in on itself. But this improbable circumstance notwithstanding, it seems that balanced as we are, life is a natural outgrowth of the universe’s evolution, not something parachuted in from the outside – because in reality there is no outside.