Ecological Implications
THE ECOLOGICAL Dimensions of peace
"Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace."
Dr. Albert Schweitzer
We all desire a peaceful world, but if we don't extend that new world of peace to animals as well - do you honestly think we deserve it? Many people want to end war - but want to maintain the option to exploit, subjugate, and kill in large numbers (either directly or by proxy) certain ‘others’, and to continue the ecological destruction of our Earth in the service of 'progress' or market demand. These individuals want a ‘selective’ peace - a peace for some - but not for others (or for our Earth). They've yet to realize the inherent contradiction between desiring peace, while inflicting violence in any form against any 'other'. They can't see that 'selective peace' is just as absurd an oxymoron as 'pre-emptive war'. Whether we call it karmic justice or spiritual blowback, whatever we do to another (human, animal, or our home planet) does come back to us. The more holistic, authentic peace of Planetization is inconsistent with any acts of violence committed against animals - or against our Earth Mother.
"To understand why there is war in the world, you must listen to the cries coming from the slaughterhouse at midnight."
Ancient Chinese proverb
Planetization brings into the world a peace that by its very nature is all-embracing and all-encompassing. But it requires a radical change in thinking and not just a minor alteration of the status quo. It's a multi-faceted peace that involves more than just the eradication of armed conflict. Peace is active and expressive - not just reactionary and 'against' war. And we'll never evolve as a species beyond this Age of War until we learn to collectively generate, express, and channel a wider range of peace energies, what Hindus term 'ahimsa', or "peace to all living beings".
"(S)ocialization is gradually enclosing us in anetwork not of conventions but of organic bonds...."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Living 'In Context' with the natural world
The current paradigm only nominally acknowledges our biospheric presence; giving primacy instead to an abstract conceptual model of 'The World' based on the Nation State; while at the same time it commodifies and places a market value on all aspects of the natural world. In an ever spiralling orgy of greed; the forces of globalization are even privatizing our Earth's fresh water, placing 'intellectual copyrights" on seeds and genetically modifying them with 'terminator' genes so farmers constantly need to buy new seeds instead of putting some crop seeds away for the next planting. According to the Indian physicist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva, already 150,000 small farmers in one province of India alone have committed suicide because of globalization's destruction of their ability to remain self-sufficient.
Planetization, on the other hand, places us 'in context' with the natural world. Under the current paradigm, this is something only required of 'primitive' people who still hunt and forage. We've so bought into the myth of 'conquering' and commodifying nature, that desiring to live 'in context' with the natural world seems more like a step backwards rather than the evolutionary advance it really represents. Under the existing paradigm, our stance vis a vis the natural world is one of control, subjugation and exploitation - not relationship.
But an increasing number of people are waking up to see how another way of life is possible, one not based on unchecked greed and exploitation. Living 'in context' with the natural world doesn't mean we'll have to go back to living in thatched huts, or give up indoor plumbing (more eco-friendly dry flush toilets have been around for years and continue to grow in popularity in Scandinavian countries). It means developing appropriate, EF Schumacher-style 'small is beautiful' technology to sustain us at perhaps the watershed and bio-regional level. This is a more progressive, enlightened vision of our future rather than a step backward. In fact, it's difficult for us at first to see the truly regressive nature of the current paradigm where industrial behemoths suck up our precious natural resources to turn into so many wasteful and unnecessary consumer goods, and with its emphasis on 'ever increasing profits' is in a world of finite resources. We don't readily see how truly backward it is to live in a world where a super rich global elite siphons off most of our world's wealth, while millions of Third World adults and children are forced into lifetimes of backbreaking, mind-numbing menial labor.
It took Earth billions of years to evolve our complex human brain, but so far we've squandered this pinnacle of evolutionary achievement. The ancient Greek definition of sin is 'to miss the mark'. And by this definition, it's a 'sin' to desecrate our advanced human consciousness by channeling it into meaningless work as cogs in corporate machines in an endless striving to 'get ahead.' Many of us today feel no meaning or purpose in our lives, or even a sense of who we are, outside of our work identities. Planetization re-aligns us, once more, with our ultimate purpose as human beings. It restores the greatest possible meaning to our individual lives. There are no membership fees to join this effort. There are no meetings to attend. You participate in the privacy of your own home, in your own inner space.
"Although a human being and his/her brain may be considered a major benchmark in the universe's evolution, some scholars have postulated that the next level beyond the evolution of humans as individuals is a coherent and integrated global society of humankind."
Lawrence Flagg
Electromagnetism and the Sacred