Gaia's Grief

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

Moderators: Clemsy, Martin_Weyers, Cindy B.

How will humankind address the global environmental problem in this century?

a.) We will find a satisfactory way to address each environmental problem without too much trauma to the environment or to humankind.
6
16%
b.) We will fail miserably; war, famine, and pestilence will triumph in this century, causing not only the senseless destruction of the environment, but unnecessary suffering and deaths of billions of people.
15
41%
c.) Other
16
43%
 
Total votes: 37

noman
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Gaia's Grief

Post by noman »

Joseph Campbell once said that the ecological problem, applied to the entire globe, as symbolized by the image of the earth from the vantage point of the moon; a blue, white, brown, and green sphere with no national borders, may be the unifying theme of a new mythology. Gaia, mother earth, the harmony of humankind as part of the biosphere rather than exploiter of it; is this really a feasible dream or just another Sixties New Age pipe dream?

I’m reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 2005. It just seems like the most pressing, most important problem of the century. Every country in the world adheres to a doctrine of ‘sustained development’. Everyone wants development. Everyone wants all the things wealthy countries have. But Gaia, generous as she is, is telling us there is a limit to what she can yield. It seems obvious to me that the type of development Homo sapiens want, the things people want, just can’t be sustained. That’s a fool’s dream.

So what do you think is going to happen in this century? Do you think we will end up like so many ‘lost’ civilizations; civilizations that exploit their environments beyond their capacities, battle among themselves or with neighboring tribes for scarcer resources, and then fall like Icarus into a miserable decline? Or will we find the ingenuity to address the most pressing environmental problems, and continue the project of development and scientific progress with all due respect to the limitations of our mother Gaia?

- NoMan

romansh
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Post by romansh »

I hate to this, I voted other in that two other positions were dualistic in nature.

But let's not go there for now, :roll:
:lol:

Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

Voted A. :) We humans are relatively young , hence fully capable of adjusting and learning from mistakes. 8)
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
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Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

I voted "other" because some of us humans will be able to learn and make a better world and most of us will fall by the wayside. :wink:
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

I voted other because the answer will be in some, probably uncomfortable, place between the first two.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

drichards
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Post by drichards »

I agree with Clemsy. It seems to me that some will in brace change, while others will resist change.

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Post by Aquiessa »

As Dr David Suzuki once told me in an interview...

"Human beings can't 'manage' their way out of a wet bag."

-- I tend to agree with him. We think we know everything, especially now with all the technological advances. Mother Nature has many redundant self-destruct mechanisms in place to curb us so that we don't have a chance to damage other universal and interuniversal habitats. If one thing doesn't get us, another will. She's got it covered!
~ Don't follow Gurus who pale in your shadow ~

~ Do not speak to me of caged birds, unless it is to tell me you have set one free ~

~ Wherever there is a master, there is a slave ~

~ Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Give a man a religion and he'll starve to death praying for a fish ~

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

If one thing doesn't get us, another will. She's got it covered!
I totally agree. The human race, as a whole, can't seem to get it through their heads that they can't dominate and control nature. We must live as a part of it and make it grow.

I often wonder how many times we've been forced back to the caves with no knowledge of previous civilizations other than what has been embedded in our myths. :?
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Aquiessa wrote:If one thing doesn't get us, another will. She's got it covered!
There's Mother nature and there is her liberated lawyer, kick-ass, daughter who has Mom's permission to manage.

I keep telling you guys that humanity has gone through certain over-arching archetypes that represent the condition that we find ourselves in at the time that these archetypes become dominant metaphors. You've heard it a million times. I'm a broken record....Mom Goddess who is the source earth, Dad God who is the well-ordered sky, Bro God-Man who overcomes behavioral weakness and mortality by deigning to come down from the Kingdom to commit youthful suicide to prove that the sky father is compassionate and protective of his own.....

......then, [drum roll]......

Sis "God"-Woman who repeats a Campbell statement with special emphasis:

If Jesus was God, then we are all God. If Jesus was not God, then none of us is God.

Further, she claims the title of God for all of us on the grounds that it is a metaphor for something other than the All-Knowing, All-Powerful, All-Everything Supreme Being God, but something more real and connected. El Supremo God is a ginormous Boss Jefe guy who claims to run everything, and really lets things dribble down his chin sometimes, maybe for laughs. I'm not sure what the problem is there.

Anyway, there is something we experience in ourselves that takes us beyond our bodies, beyond our experiences, beyond everything we can possibly know by means recognized by science and philosophy. We don't know what to call it and the best word we can find lately is the word "transcendent". This universal kind of "transcendence" is not just about us. It can be found everywhere we look and places we never thought to look. It's the universal divinity in everything.

There is no need to fear a Mother Goddess who gives us life and wraps us in the life of her womb, there is no need to fear the protective and In-Charge Father God who judges us and forgives us if we believe and repent, there is no need to fear the sacrificial Son God who died to get us into heaven, and there is no need to fear the Daughter God because she's just like you and you are SO divine, so perfect, so able to transcend the reality of mortal life so that you can live on a level with that which is Beyond Words.

We're not the source like Goddess Earth. We're not powerful like God Sky. We're not the sacrificial lamb like Son God. We are universally transcendent like Daughter God, who thinks you are all Gods, both great and small.

Hey, welcome to the club!

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

Alley394
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Post by Alley394 »

I know this isn't backed by science at all but it's always been a personal myth of mine that Mars onceflourished with a civilization much like our own but similar enviromental crises lead to the water drying up and the eradication of life. Mars always kinda served as a warning to myself about the fragility of nature.

However, I think the worst case scenario with the enviroment here on earth is that humans learn too late and are wiped out. Even in the face of the most total destruction, say nuclear warfare, I find it hard to believe a seed wouldn't survive and be able to gradually rejuvenate the planet.

So the danger is, in my mind, for the homosapiens. It's sad but I think what will finally kick us into shape is the realization that what is at stake is not just some insect in the rainforests of India, but us as well.

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Post by Neoplato »

So the danger is, in my mind, for the homosapiens. It's sad but I think what will finally kick us into shape is the realization that what is at stake is not just some insect in the rainforests of India, but us as well.
Exactly what I'm thinking as well.
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

xxxx
Last edited by CarmelaBear on Fri Jan 21, 2011 11:55 am, edited 2 times in total.
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

As long as we, the people, keep electing those who are incapable of making a REAL and LASTING retreat from oil and coal, we are doomed. The planet will survive humanity, but if we don't make a 180 on the issue of environmental protection, humanity cannot survive what Mother Earth has in store for us.
Well...99.9% of us won't survive. 10 million people should be enough to preserve the race.
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Neoplato wrote:
As long as we, the people, keep electing those who are incapable of making a REAL and LASTING retreat from oil and coal, we are doomed. The planet will survive humanity, but if we don't make a 180 on the issue of environmental protection, humanity cannot survive what Mother Earth has in store for us.
Well...99.9% of us won't survive. 10 million people should be enough to preserve the race.
My Torts professor in law school called them "horrible hypotheticals". They are extremes that are possible, but highly improbable.

Even when every single dinosaur was wiped off the planet and most of the life on the earth became totally, absolutely extinct, there remained little critters below the ground who kept Life on Earth alive. We are the descendants of the little furry mammals that survived the Great Extinction.

I don't know about you, but when I look in the mirror, I see a distinct resemblance.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

I don't know about you, but when I look in the mirror, I see a distinct resemblance. -CB
Yep. So do I.

Who knows? This time the monkeys had their chance to evolve. Maybe next time we'll all be Lizard Men or Insectoids. :shock:

One thing's for sure, four arms would be much more useful than two. Then we all could count in base 20 (assuming we still have five fingers). :wink:
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

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