When we look at the “system” of creation and reality as most of us perceive it, a natural reaction is to panic and seek a solution to climate control, peak oil and other threats. This is a good thing. This is how civilization changes to cope with different circumstances.
Tools exist to help us deal with these matters. Technological avenues are explored. We define the problem. We begin to plot the solution, legislate it and eventually implement it despite the cries of those trapped by ignorance.
But the best laid plans can never escape the improbable, the event or events that are unseen and unexpected when they intervene. We cannot see or know that which we do not know.
Today we are told in some quarters that despite best efforts, it is too late. Human kind has soiled its nest, its earth, beyond the limits of redemption. The ice caps will melt, the oceans will flood, and our species will be extinguished.
A brief visit to http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/30/759435/-Global-Warming:-A-Path-Beyond-Denial-and-Despair shows the fallacy of such thinking. Human audacity is found in the egotism of despair. It is not a world that belongs to “us”. It is a world of which we are a part. Notably, even church clerics are coming around to this point of view in theological terms. Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori sent some shock waves through the religious community lately with her espousal of this idea. Go to http://www.religiondispatches.org/blog/sexandgender/1648/bishop_sends_shockwave%2C_slaying_the_sacred_cow_of_individual_salvation_%5Bincludes_an_online_comic%5D and read it for yourself.
In no way is it recommended that humankind, in a spirit of despair, desist from efforts to rectify damage to mother earth. Rather, such efforts should be redoubled with the confidence that although the outcome is almost a certainty, the earth will remain to rotate in time around the sun as long as the universe exists.
We have to come to peace with our place as a part of the earth, as opposed to being its dominator. Rest assured that while we bear responsibility to comport ourselves in a way that helps to continue the existence of this wonderful reality we enjoy, we must never forget our place as a mere part of it all.
Tools exist to help us deal with these matters. Technological avenues are explored. We define the problem. We begin to plot the solution, legislate it and eventually implement it despite the cries of those trapped by ignorance.
But the best laid plans can never escape the improbable, the event or events that are unseen and unexpected when they intervene. We cannot see or know that which we do not know.
Today we are told in some quarters that despite best efforts, it is too late. Human kind has soiled its nest, its earth, beyond the limits of redemption. The ice caps will melt, the oceans will flood, and our species will be extinguished.
A brief visit to http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/30/759435/-Global-Warming:-A-Path-Beyond-Denial-and-Despair shows the fallacy of such thinking. Human audacity is found in the egotism of despair. It is not a world that belongs to “us”. It is a world of which we are a part. Notably, even church clerics are coming around to this point of view in theological terms. Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori sent some shock waves through the religious community lately with her espousal of this idea. Go to http://www.religiondispatches.org/blog/sexandgender/1648/bishop_sends_shockwave%2C_slaying_the_sacred_cow_of_individual_salvation_%5Bincludes_an_online_comic%5D and read it for yourself.
In no way is it recommended that humankind, in a spirit of despair, desist from efforts to rectify damage to mother earth. Rather, such efforts should be redoubled with the confidence that although the outcome is almost a certainty, the earth will remain to rotate in time around the sun as long as the universe exists.
We have to come to peace with our place as a part of the earth, as opposed to being its dominator. Rest assured that while we bear responsibility to comport ourselves in a way that helps to continue the existence of this wonderful reality we enjoy, we must never forget our place as a mere part of it all.
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