Book Reviews
The Great Turning - From Empire to Earth Community, by David Korten, Barret-Kohler Publishers, Inc. & Kumarian Press, Inc., 2006
It is David Korten’s argument that, like it or not, we are faced with a momentous choice in this generation, and that choice will determine whether or not this era is looked upon as the time of ‘the great turning’ or ‘the great unraveling.’
No argument here. This is what we argue on this blog — the inescapable nature of the decisions we must face now, the outcome of which is nothing less than the fate of humanity, indeed of the entire Earth community of the past millions of years.
Korten describes contrasting models that form the basis of this choice, the Empire model which has dominated the human community for the past 5,000 years, or the Earth community model. It is the latter that beckons us towards a new way of life on the planet that might just salvage the human prospect.
Korten also appreciates that this struggle over which model we choose, and the decisions that will come from that, has deep spiritual roots. The kind of god we worship says much about our values and about how we will proceed.
The spiritual and cultural realms are those of a higher level of human consciousness, which millions upon millions of people are expressing throughout the world. It comes up against the image of an Old Testament god, a male patriarchical model of awesome and destructive power. The god of empire is violent and angy, and worship of this god will certainly not bode well for our future.
“The competing narratives are…reflected in the range of qualities atttributed to God in different cultures. At one extreme is the wrathful God of Empire who demands exclusive loyalty, favors one people over another, lives apart from his creation, rules through anointed earthly representatives, and extracts a terrible vnegeance on his enemies and the unbelievers. At the other extreme is the universal loving God/dess of Earth Community, the intrinsic, omnipresent living Spirit beyond gender that manifests itself in every aspect of Creation.”
One God emerges from a model of empire, of domination, the other from a model of community, sharing a common life and a commitment to the common good, towards the fulfilling of the potential of all.
I don’t know about you, but I am pretty clear about which God’s hands I prefer to place the future of life on this Earth, including the fate of humanity.
Korten goes on to write at length about the contrasting values of these models, and then how we might go about ‘birthing earth community.’ Some of these suggestions are very practical, empowering, things we could all sink our teeth into, so to speak.
Korten has been one of our more significant cultural writers, his previous books including When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World, both favorites of mine. He is also a co-founder of the Positive Futures Network, publisher of the magazine Yes!. There is a link to them on my ‘Related Information’ on this blog.
Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization and World Religions, by Rosemary Radford Ruether, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005
In this book, one of our most insightful feminist theologians weaves together themes essential to the understanding of our world right now: “corporate globalization and its challenges, interfaith ecological theology, and ecofeminism.”
These themes are essential. Corporate globalization represents the dominant economic model seeking control of the world right now. We need to understand it, to understand its priorities, and to appreciate the extent to which this economic model is responsible for the depletion and diminshment of this precious Earth.
She reflects on how this corporate model, that sees Earth (and women, and the labor of the poor) as something to be exploited for the purpose of profits for the few, underpins the ideology of imperialism, itself a motivation for the rise in terrorist violence around the world.
As in Korten’s book (above) we are dealing here with a model of domination and control, a model of patriarchy, that is sending us to our doom if left to run its course.
Ruether then digs deep into the various world religions in search of the core of beliefs and values that can help shape an alternative world view, what she calls The Greening of World Religions. In doing so, she does not ignore the elements within them that are part of the problem. But she argues for pulling from these faith traditions the elements that can help form the basis for a way of life that is ‘ecologically just and sustainable.’
Ruether is a feminist theologian, and her chapter on this theme offers a very helpful and hope-filled summary of the thinking of some of the world’s leading feminist thinkers. She writes of these various lines of thought:
“To see nature itself as a living matrix of interconnection provides the cosmological basis for this alternative vision of relationship. This common ecofeminst theology or worldview shares some of the following characteristics. There is rejection of a splitting of the divine from the earth and its communities of life to project ‘God’ as a personified entity located in some supercelestial realm outside the universe and ruling over it. The concept of God is deconstructed. The divine is understood as a matrix of life-giving energy that is in, through, and under all things…the ‘one in whom we live, and move and have our being.’…
“…we need to think of this life-giving matrix as ‘pan-en-theist,’ or transcendently immanent. It both sustains the constant renewal of the natural cycles of life and also empowers us to struggle against the hierarchies of dominance and to create renewed relations of mutual affirmation.”
In her final chapter, Ruether offers ‘alternatives to corporate globalization,’ and points to various movements in which these alternatives are already manifest, from direct action campaigns against the abuses of corporate power, to indigenous rights movements such as that of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, to the struggle for labor rights that has become global itself, to new movements among peasants and farmers for a new agriculture based on ecologically sustainable models, to the ongoing and growing struggle for women’s rights around the world.
Ruether’s book is yet another clarion call compelling us to look honestly and forthrightly at the conditions of our world and what we need to do — in our actions, our thinking, our values, our frameworks of meaning, our spiritualities — to pull us back from the brink of disaster.
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, by James Howard Kunstler, Grove Press NY, 2005 (with 2006 epilogue)
Whew, now that title is a mouthful. But it describes what this book is all about — a compelling depiction of a series of converging trends that are about to alter life as we know it on this planet, and doom-and-gloom predictions of what this new world will look like here in the US.
Kunstler focuses especially on the end of cheap fossil fuels, especially oil, which looms out there just ahead of us a couple of decades from now (or less). It is upon this base of cheap fuels that we have built the industrial revolution and just about everything in this globalized ecomony (what he calls, aptly, the “Hallucinated Economy”). We thought the party would never end, and we have prepared almost not at all for what it will mean to come to the end of the oil pipeline.
Think about it for a moment. Go through the daily activities of your lives and see how oil makes all of it possible, from the consumer goods now produced across the oceans that must be transported by ships and trucks, to the food in your store, to how you get to the store, to the materials (like plastics) made with oil, and on and on.
Then, if you live in suburbs and exurbs, and have just built or moved into a cheaply constructed but high-priced McMansion far from everything, totally dependent on your car — right, just think through your daily life.
Kunstler also describes how this globalized economy, based on far-distant cheap labor production, mega-corporations, and big-chain, big-box stores, wipes out locally-owned businesses and destroys local communities. In the process, the crucial neighborhood ties that will be necessary to survive the difficult times that are coming are also destroyed. We will need one another, but we often don’t know our next door neighbors.
Kunstler paints a very grim picture of the future, and believes that the overwhelming inertia of this oil-addicted society means that we will not prepare in time to save civilization from collapse (”We are not capable of conceiving another economic way. We are hostages to our own system.”).
This is a doom-and-gloom view to be sure. But I found myself getting increasingly depressed when I thought about how little this society is prepared — especially spiritually — to give up a way of life that is so utterly unsustainable that is it sending us catapulting towards destruction, one we are lacking the imagination to believe possible, and for which we do not seem willing to give up anything of our convenient, unthinking consumer lifestyles.
I don’t know if things are going to get this bad as soon as Kunstler believes, or if when the pain really begins we might not still open our eyes and do some drastic things to reorganize life here. But I do know that if we don’t do something very soon to bring our lives into a downwardly mobile strategy of survival that has compassion at its core, a sense that we are all in this together, then his scenario is the more likely outcome.
I like to think of this book as a warning rather than a description of our inevitable fate. It helps me sleep better at night.
The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change and Our Future, by Richard B. Alley, Princeton University Press, 2000
One of the world’s leading climate scientists describes the science of reading weather changes over the earth’s geological history from ice cores and ocean sediments and what these can tell us about what to expect from climate change. I confess that I did not read the entire book, gliding quickly over some of the technical descriptions, then headed straight for the last chapters to see what Alley had to say about our future.
While Alley says that the science is not yet advanced enough to make accurate predictions about how the earth’s climate reacts to certain changes — in the earth’s orbit, in ocean currents, in warming and cooling periods — and therefore exactly how bad things will get and when, one of the things they did learn is that sometimes climate change comes abruptly — not in millenia or centuries, but in just a few years. One of the shifts that can make this happen is the shutting down of the North Atlantic ocean conveyor belt that has kept climate in Northern Europe temperate for a very long time, spreading moisture across the tropics and north.
One of the things that could cause a shutdown is human-caused elevated levels of greenhouse gases.
Alley says that any abrupt change will be very challenging for humanity, causing severe stresses. He also notes, as we have insisted on this blog, that those who will handle the stresses best will be the affluent, while the majority of the world’s popluation, who are poor, face a pretty scary future (hence my basic question — what kind of people will we be in this rich country as the world goes through this crisis?).
He also points out that “the Earth is finite.” We are right now using up 50 percent of its product and that will only grow, if we go on as now, until the Earth has no more to provide for us. Because climate change will take away more of this ‘product’ (through events such as drought, fires, flooding), it will accelerate the pace at which we reach these absolute limits. Of course, if that begins to happen in the next 50 years, it will also occur as we reach maximum population, i.e., maximum demand for the earth’s product.
Reflecting on the impact of a slowing, or worse, a shutdown, of the conveyor belt, Alley writes that if a shutdown happens soon, “it could produce a large event…dropping northern temperatures and spreading droughts far larger than the changes that have affected humans through recorded history, and perhaps speeding warming farther south. The end of humanity? No. An unconfortable time for humanity? Very.”
Are we ready? No.
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York & London, 2006
To see my review of this important book, read this post.
Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment A Citizen’s Agenda for Action by James Gustave Speth Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004
This is one of the things we have needed – a book that not only lays out an unfiltered view of the dire circumstances of global warming, the urgency of the task to reverse the human contribution to this warming, and the time out of which we are rapidly running to prevent catastrophe, but also an agenda for action, things to do that are clear, straightforward, necessary.
Speth has a long history in environmental work that makes him one of our more credible leaders – founder and past president of the World Resources Institute, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, advisor on environmental issues to Presidents Carter and Clinton, CEO of the United Nations Development Program, and currently dean and professor at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies at Yale University.
Part One, “Environmental Challenges Go Global….” lays out a no-holds-barred assessment of our ecological crisis. “For such crucial issues as deforestation, climate change, and loss of diversity, we have already run out of time: appropriate responses are long overdue.”
Part Two, “…And the World Responds,” unpacks the failure of global initiatives on climate change, the recalcitrance of governments (especially our own), and the forces at work that make the failure inevitable. This part will anger you.
Part Three, “Facing Up to Underlying Causes,” gives a great overview of the many “drivers” behind environmental deterioration. To Speth’s credit, he doesn’t stop with the scientific and technical drivers; he goes right to the heart of the matter, to the consumer, the lifestyles of all of us, to the interests of powerful corporations, to attitudes and values.
Part Four, “The Transition to Sustainability,” lays out the beginnings of a broad “citizens’ agenda,” what he calls “The Eightfold Way,” addressing fundamental issues such as reducing global population, eradicating poverty, developing “environmentally benign technologies,” pricing consumer goods in a way that includes the full cost to the environment, “sustainable consumption,” acquiring the knowledge “needed for the transition to sustainability,” the demand for good governance, and what he calls “the most fundamental transition…the transition in culture and consciousness.”
Speth does not spare some of the orthodoxies, the “gods” of capitalist economics, especially the religion of “growth,” an approach that is no longer sustainable and will lead to the collapse of the ecosystems that make our lives on this earth possible.
This is not a long book, nor overly technical; it is readable, accessible. It ends with many pages of resources for citizen action organized around the eightfold way.
God Is Red: A Native View of Religion 30th Anniversary Edition by Vine Deloria, Jr. with new forewords by Leslie Marmon Silko and George E. Tinker Fulcrum Publishing, Golden CO, 2003
Remember this book? It first came out in 1973, re-released in 1992, and then again in 2003. It remains a scathing indictment of the western Christian approach to relations between the human and the earth. Deloria’s intent is to contrast that with the spiritualities of the native tribes of this land we call North America. He describes how Christian orthodoxy, and a spirituality rooted in the centrality of the human to which the earth is made to submit, is an essential aspect of what has led us down this road to our imminent ecological destruction. As an ideology imposed on this land from outside, centered on a warrior god with a favored chosen people to whom he has given the land for their use, much of Christianity has lost the ability to be in right and balanced relationships with all other life forms, or to see the human as part of a web of life, interrelated with other beings. The human project is the important project, and God has created the earth for “Man” to dominate and subdue for the benefit of the human.
As the West secularized, it removed the religious from this framework, but solidified the economic orthodoxy – no part of the earth is left untouched by our drive to put it at the service of wealth, economic growth, and consumption, basically for the desire of the human.
This approach is killing our planet. Spirituality is rooted in the land and in these relationships. By secularizing the land, encroaching on and destroying more and more sacred places, we are unable to hear the land, to learn from it, to gain wisdom from it. Without this relationship to the sacredness of the earth, “the world becomes secular and [will be] destroyed.”
Deloria writes, “It is becoming increasingly apparent that we shall not have the benefits of this world for much longer. The imminent and expected destruction of the life cycle of world ecology can be prevented by a radical shift in outlook from our present naïve conception of this world as a testing ground of abstract morality to a more mature view of the universe as a comprehensive matrix of life forms. Making this shift is essentially religious, not economic or political.
“The problem of contemporary people, whatever their ethnic or cultural background, lies in finding the means by which they can once again pierce the veil of unreality to grasp the essential meaning of their existence. For people from a Western European background or deeply imbued with Christian beliefs, the task is virtually impossible. The interpretation of religion has always been regarded as the exclusive property of Westerners and the explanatory categories used in studying religious phenomena have been derived from the doctrines of the Christian religion. The minds and eyes of Western people have thus been permanently closed to understanding or observing religious experiences. Religion has become a comfortable ethic and a comforting aesthetic for Westerners, not a force of undetermined intensity and unsuspected origin that may break in on them.”
Westerners suffer from a religion of the head, “creeds, theologies, and speculations…products of the intellect and not necessarily based on experiences.” But what the earth has to tell us will not come through those orthodoxies, or through intellectual theories and analyses, and certainly not through rigid moralities that shut down life-giving forces out of fear or hubris.
Thirty years ago, I remember wincing at Deloria’s categorical rejection of Western Christianity as providing a path out of our human crisis. Surely there was something to salvage that could help us find our way. In the past two decades, many people who come out of this tradition have been trying to find within it the stories that provide a new paradigm, another set of eyes, a way to re-sacralize the earth and bring the sacramental aspects of that tradition closer to an earth spirituality. But this also leads many of them away from the traditional orthodoxies to something wholly new, a new spirituality that brings us closer to our true spiritual roots – in nature, in the earth.
Religion, spirituality, comes fundamentally out of “place,” says Deloria. It is local, not universal. The Christian world took its origins out of its foundational “place,” its original geography, and believed it would work anywhere, a universal truth to be imposed by force or urged through conversion. History has eminently bloody reminders of what was left in the wake of that, and now a critically damaged earth that may soon no longer be able to support the human we thought so central to it.
