Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

The title of my second book was certainly intended to get attention: Living Beyond the ‘End of the World:’ A Spirituality of Hope.

End of the world?  Hope?  How do these things go together?

It is uncomfortable, perhaps sad, certainly frightening, but an end of a world is coming, even has already arrived, though the reality settles in slowly. Not an apocalypse, but an end to a way of life, and to the presumptions that supported it.

We – this affluent giant of an economy, this western world of rising standards of living fueled by exploitation of the earth’s natural ‘resources,’ Manifest Destiny reaching across frontiers to tame them and beat them into submission for human use and enjoyment — are coming to an end…

Levees fail in New Orleans - Photo: Jocelyn Augustino FEMA

…not because we willed it so (that would have helped make the end less traumatic) but because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, if you will — because the useful energy has run out.  We have burned it up and seem bent on continuing until it all becomes useless waste. And because growth always, always had limits and we have not only run into them, but have overshot them.

How the end plays out depends upon us – because its ending is not the same thing as our letting go of it. Unfortunately, those two things are definitely not coinciding.

Evidence is all around us of the decay that has settled in to our culture – what absorbs our attention (Zhu Zhu Pets Hamsters, American Idol, who will replace Oprah Winfrey, Grand Theft Auto, etc.), what is happening to the nation’s infrastructure, the collapse of social support systems, the attack on government as if it is some vile animal separate from us rather than a servant of the people it represents, the rise of intolerant religious orthodoxy, the deterioration of civil discourse…

Abandoned homes in Detroit - Examiner.com

…the decay of our inner cities and imminent demise of our oil-dependent suburbs and exurbs, the collapse of ecosystems, the toxic contamination of our atmosphere and biosphere, our deteriorating health from all sorts of social and environmental factors (obesity, diabetes, cancer, hypertension – the list is long)…

…all of this reveals signs of a deteriorating society, a loss of resilient human spirit, loss of a grounding in reality.

Have I cheered us up yet?  Here’s the thing: I believe we have to cure ourselves of our delusions that we can somehow salvage a way of life that is killing us and killing the future without life changing drastically, without great disruptions, without changing our expectations. For example, we have believed that every generation should be richer than the last, more economic opportunity, a belief that being able to afford higher-end comforts and pleasures represents an earned status from our life’s work.  Beliefs like these are among the chief reasons that we are living beyond the biological capacity of the planet.  And as we have done this with exponential growth since World War II, we have created the conditions that are bringing about the ‘end of the world.’

I-35W Mississippi bridge collapse 2007 - Photo: Mandel Ngan-AFP- Getty Images

What does it mean to be at an official unemployment rate of 10.2%, with structural unemployment closer to 17-18%? It is the down side of building a fake economy, an economy of fake expectations and fake wealth.  We lived beyond our means as individuals and as a nation, and when the bubbles burst, it all came crashing down. The fake economy had us bulldozing the natural world for more development, with commercial and home real estate loans, building energy wasteful houses with vaulted ceilings, buying gas guzzling mega-machines to take the kids to school and go grocery shopping, buying stuff and more stuff — all on credit – backed by, well, not much.

While we were shopping for stuff and traveling the world, this type of growth destroyed natural habitats, contributed to the warming of the atmosphere, and replaced consideration of the future with living for now, now being about immediate gratification, certainly not a rooted spiritual wisdom. As we built our economy around debt-financed consumption, that meant we also used this as means for job generation. Now that this era is pronounced over, what happens to all those people who were employed by that economy?

Obviously, we don’t have a good plan to replace it. Wall Street doesn’t mind because it doesn’t need real people, real production, real goods to continue making fortunes. Finance, investment schemes, Wall Street firms are more disconnected than ever from the economy of human beings, eating, sleeping, sending their kids to school, having a warm place to sleep at night.

A list of some articles that inspired this depressing post:

Hunger in the U.S. At 14 Year High
Disagreement Over Goals At a Meeting On Hunger
An American Catastrophe, by Bob Herbert
Sewers at Capacity, Waste Poisons Waterways

I’ll bet you could come up with your own list. You see how we are crumbling. Our infrastructure is collapsing making people sick.  $2.2 trillion required to fix it, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Bridges and roads in disrepair. An electric grid filled to capacity, vulnerable to the slightest glitch, or that air traffic control system that breaks down now and then sending travelers into chaos, pilots, once an elite group, sometimes making less than $20,000 a year to fly us across the skies. Debt service in the trillions. Hunger rising. Public schools failing our children. Skilled workers replaced by an economy of consumption now turned sour. The gap between the few rich and the vast numbers of poor becoming a chasm. Bio-communities collapsing all around us. Did you see NBC Nightly News last evening? One in 5 species will become endangered over the next 20 years. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#34094838)

And for the most part we are in denial.

A way of life is ending, but we are hardly taking note of it.

Why I do this work - Photo by Mom

As I wrote in my book, how one approaches this will make all the difference. We can say, “Oh woe is me, why did I have to be born in such a time?!” Or we can say, “Wow, a way of life is dying that has wrecked the planet, cooked the atmosphere, undermined family and community life, created an ugly national discourse, fed social and political violence, and left us at the brink. What we have now is an opportunity to live differently, to rediscover the simplicity of lives that really matter – friendship, community, healing of alienation, rediscovery of the real meaning of life (NOT Grand Theft Auto), truth and beauty (poetry, music, walks in the woods, if you still have woods), becoming part of the regeneration process of this precious planet once the human steps back from its ongoing destruction.”

Just think how rich and meaningful such lives could be, shared by families, neighborhoods, faith communities. In this kind of life, we look out for one another so that we have less fear that if we let go our expectations no one will care for us; we let go the anxiety that we must and can only take  care of ourselves and for that purpose must secure our own individual future. In this life, we care for one another, we count on one another. In this life, wealth accumulation at the cost of the planet’s life-giving ecosystems becomes an abomination, knowing that it means stealing from the future of our children and other living beings.

It’s going to be hard; it’s going to be wrenching. But it is the most important thing we can do right now to address just about every major crisis we face. Going on as we have been has become unacceptable. It requires wars and enormous military budgets and more destruction of mountains, valleys, lakes and forests, along with more hunger, poverty, and disintegration of quality of life.  I would sacrifice the inordinately high standard of living for the few for quality of life for all, and for a chance for this earth to heal – and along with it, the human spirit.