We Need a Modern Way to Recreate Religion's Respect for the Earth

[buzzsaw_23]

Old world order

We need a modern way to recreate religion's respect for the earth

Karen Armstrong
Saturday September 10, 2005
The Guardian


In the eighth century BCE, the Chinese became concerned about a disturbing change in their environment. Hitherto the Yellow River valley had teemed with wildlife: elephants, lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, monkeys and all kinds of game had inhabited the woods and swamps. After a hunting expedition, the king and his nobles consumed hecatombs of beasts in huge, drunken banquets. But now they discovered that aggressive deforestation had destroyed the natural habitat of these animals, and that their hunters returned almost empty handed.

The Chinese had assumed that their resources were inexhaustible, so they had plundered the countryside and slaughtered its animals with no care for the morrow. Now they realised that this brutal insouciance could not continue. Aristocrats were forced to curtail their hunting, which had been their chief pleasure - almost their raison d'être - and an extensive ritual reform regulated every detail of their behaviour. Gradually this religious discipline transformed their mentality, so that a spirit of moderation and self-control replaced the former wasteful excess. Even warfare became a courtly game in which it was considered bad taste to kill too many of the enemy.

It did not last, alas. In the fourth century BCE, the Chinese had an industrial revolution, and restraint went out of the window. With greedy abandon, princes cut down forests, mined mountains, drained swamps, and their savage internecine wars reduced the great plain to a desolate wilderness. But religious reformers, such as Confucius and Lao Tzu, called upon their rulers to conform to the basic laws of existence, to the way (dao) things ought to be.

The Chinese knew enough about human selfishness to realise that external directives alone would not save their society; there had to be a fundamental change of heart. We are facing a similar dilemma today. As we gaze aghast at the devastation that Hurricane Katrina has wreaked upon the southern United States, some have asked whether this catastrophe was intensified by global warming. Whatever the answer, the question betrays a deep and widespread anxiety. Environmental catastrophe has replaced the apocalypse predicted by the prophets of the past and many now watch for signs of approaching cataclysm as nervously as our forebears looked for portents of the end of days.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,13369,1566899,00.html

[Kazak]

1. The good news of Unitarian Universalism...

http://www.uua.org/aboutuua/principles.html

*see the 7th principle

That's one of the biggest reasons UUism is so refreshing for me (among others), because it rejects Christianity's doctrine of dominion.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Absolutely!

I've been a UU for about 20 years, and I like the fact that we consider ourselves part of a larger web of life, not the lords and masters thereof.

[mzteris]

2. but we don't need to worry!!

about the Earth.

Don't you know that GOD can just "wave his hand" and fix it for us?

Besides, with the Rapture coming all "truebelievers" will be in Heaven to reap their rewards so what's to worry about the Earth anyways?

Lay up not for yourselves treasures on earth where they doth rot and rust, but lay up for yourself treasure in heaven where they will neither rot nor corrupt. (or something like that......)








oh yeah - lest anyone not "get it"......

:sarcasm:

[BlueEyedSon]

4. The Rapture will come (just) before the Earth is uninhabitable.

[info being]

5. Here's a great way: stop being religious

[KittyWampus]

7. Care to elaborate? Without being narrow minded?

[info being]

12. I meant that respect for earth is best achieved...

without the delusional effects of religion. If caring about what actually exists (as opposed to what one imagines to be true) is narrow-minded, then so be it.

[castiron]

6. In 1967 historian Lynn White explored that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Townsend_White%2C_Jr

[castiron]

8. The new field of environmental ethics tries to answer these

questions. Not your normal philosophy field, either. Because of the nature of crisis, it always demands action with its belief.

[blindpig]

9. the problem with the Chinese approach

is that it is totally homo-centric. Like all agriculture based civilizations(which means all I guess) the Chinese have no respect for the wild, only its utilization. And Chinese Civilization with its deep and unbroken roots to the past has a ton of baggage from the magical thinking of our ancestors. Hence the insane demand for tiger penis, bear gall bladder and rhinoceros horn. While I agree that something like religious devotion to the Earth mst be re instilled in humankind if we are to survive I don't think that any currently extant model will get us there. Fact is I don't know what will.

[buzzsaw_23]

17. VERY TRUE

there are numerous cogent arguments and a large body of evidence to suggest the demise of "it all" was the advent of agricultural societies 10 to 15 thousand years ago.

We consider ourselves "smarter" now than the gatherer-hunters but that too rests on a vey narrow assumption of what defines intelligence.

The history of Western man has been a progressive peeling back of the psyche, as if the earliest agriculture may have addressed itself to extenuation of adolescent concerns while the most modern era seeks to evoke in society at large some of the fixations of early natality rationalized, symbolized, and disguised as need be. The individual growth curve, as described by Bruno Bettelheim, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and others, is a biological heritage of the deep past. It is everyman's tree of life, now pruned by civic gardeners as the outer branches and twigs become incompatible with the landscaped order. The reader may extend that metaphor as he wishes, but I shall move to an animal image to suggest that the only society more frightful than one run by children, as in Golding's Lord of the Flies, might be one run by childish adults. 
Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness

http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11072/Shepard/

[Maraya1969]

10. I don't know how you change en entire society's behavior toward

the earth. I do remember vividly that commercial years ago where an American Indian was rowing his canoe and came up on a bunch of garbage. That last picture is of him with a tear running down his eye.

Maybe the add campaigns should be focusing on pulling at our heartstrings again instead of some celebrity telling you how much forest is being destroyed every hour. That type of message doesn't seem to work because most people cannot fathom such numbers without pictures.

Some clips of wild animals standing in a garbage strewn clearing where a forrest used to be is an example. Or a video of a baby black bear and its mother dead on the highway and then the huge housing development that took away their home.

[Qibing Zero]

11. Studying the earth and the things around you

gives you infinitely more respect for life than a religion that tells you to respect it for some arbitrary reason (even if it starts out as a good reason, it doesn't take long for religion to turn into ritual). So go grab a bug catchers net, a science book, a camera, or just a pair of eyes, and go -observe- your surroundings. Climb trees, plant seeds, and watch the smaller things, the subtle things. Take a look at history, and put it all into perspective.

Knowledge is the replacement you're looking for.

[blindpig]

16. works for me

And one doesn't need to visit the remaining "Great Places" in order to view the wonders of Nature. I grew up in a big city was able to find bits and pieces of wonder by the railroad tracks, on neglected properties, in city parks. To this day my most valued possessions are my field guides, optics and gear.

I think this sort of education is a danger to the religious and secular leadership of society and is thus marginalized as "geeky" in an automatic and dismissive sort of way. Knowledge for profit and piety is good, knowledge for its own sake is weird and a waste of time. :eyes:

[OneBlueSky]

13. listen to these words from historian Frederick Turner . . .

"To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich variety of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory."3

[kweerwolf]

14. As a society, we seem to have lost our ability to be awed by nature

Being a "flatlander," I can recall my first trip to Colorado and seeing the Rocky Mountains ... and the accompanying sense of awe that becomes like a sort of "Good job, God!" prayer.

Now it seems we are moved more by blockbuster movies with more and bigger explosions and car chases.

As much as I dislike the fundamentalist Christian "the earth is ours to subdue" mentality, the rest of us share in the blame for losing our sense of wonder about nature. As humans we need to be reminded that nature is an intricate web of which we are one part.

[buzzsaw_23]

15. That is so True

As I set out to go West coming from the midwest I had no Idea what i was about to see and how changed i would forever be. The Sequoias, the hot springs, the mountains all of it transformed my perceptions of the world around and within me.

From same article:
"The ubiquity and persistence of this attitude of committed concern for the well-being of the earth suggests that it once came naturally to humanity. It used to be essential to the way we related to the world but it has clearly become problematic in the technologically driven economy of modernity. It is no use hoping for the best or waiting until "they" have discovered a cleaner form of energy. In the ancient world, assiduous religious ritual and ethical practice helped people to cultivate their respect for the holiness of the earth. If we want to save our planet, we must find a modern way to do the same."