americandream wrote:Ibon
Problem with religion is that it is anthropocentric with notions of stewardship which infers management
Once we initiated agriculture 10k years ago this became unavoidable.
We are not stewards of this planet but occupants. The distinction is a subtle one but dangerous enough in an incomplete consciousness with the result that we see all sorts of madcap geo engineering ideas floating around.
I understand the subtle distinction and it goes deeper. We are not any longer participants in local ecosystems since the day we abandoned our HG ancestry and started agriculture and civilization. We are occupants of the planet living in our own self made human ecosystem. This necessitates stewardship of the commons. These madcap geo engineering ideas are flawed because they are insane attempts at maintaining humans at current consumption and population levels where we are already in overshoot. It is hubris and lacks humility.
Frankly I think we are not yet ready for any management, not until we get our consciousness sufficiently functioning that we tool our environment on a needs basis. Religion is not capable of doing that as it actively prolongs dysfunctional consciousness with the result that it degrades after a period...into a whole salad bowl of crazy mutatuions. As I have said, evolution contemplates fully functioning consciousness and we will either get there or get the boot.
Every once in a while I have to remind folks here that I am an atheist and am not a member of any religious faith. I am educated as an ecologist and have spent countless hours in the field. I can look at a micro orchid growing on the trunk of a tree and place it in its correct taxonomy at the same time as I can hold it sacred. I don't know why this seems so hard for folks to understand. I have known many academic ecologists who have dedicated their lives to the organisms they study and have seen again and again their despair at the destruction of the ecosystems they study. This despair is existential and I would say almost spiritual in nature. And these are scientists.
I do not discount that religions may evolve a sense of ecological stewardship going forward. In fact, it is most likely once consequences happen that religions will go down this path since the imbalances of human overshoot will appear quite "biblical" and it will be very tempting for religious institutions to frame this as the wrath of god for having trashed mother earth.
The workings of logic and reason merged with a sense of the sacred is not a contradiction. I have personally learned this as a scientist. And I have seen this with other ecologists. We are holding our breath and watching the unfolding of the next great wave of extinctions. You can not look at this dispassionately and without a sense of the existential crisis that this represents.
I am not in disagreement with the fact that reason and logic applied to our consciousness is the pathway out of this mess. I see reason and logic as the temple. The sense of the sacred is the singing and praise of our mother earth that echoes inside.
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
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