Good morning everyone. What an avalanche of fabulous, thoughtful,
provocative, inspiring letters. Thank you. I am considering these, and
will try to distill some main themes and reply soon. But with this amount
of material, I encourage you to respond to each other, so that the
discussion does not flow through me alone, but in all directions, among
all of us. If anyone would sort out some of these themes and attempt to
map the territory, following the little creeks into their rivers and
watersheds, it would help a lot.
I am impressed with the level of the dialogue. When this article first
came out, it seemed like a wildly radical point of view, and provoked such
a shock wave that it was difficult to discuss the material itself clearly.
Now, three years later, the idea of accepting all forms of negentropic
activity as imbued with some valid form of "life" does not seem so wild or
implausible. As a community, we deep ecologists seem to have matured, and
are now willing to discuss a view that earlier provoked mainly attack and
defense reactions.
That puts us in a position to work with the concept we have here, to
refine it, develop it into something useful. The world is unfolding out
of itself at an explosive evolutionary rate, creating enormous suffering
and confusion. No one is unaffected by these changes. They are happening
to US, all of us. How can we understand? How can we learn to help, to
contribute something useful, to alleviate suffering, clarify confusion,
our own and that of others?
I think a deeply truthful and trustworthy view of Deep Ecology and its
mother, Evolution, would be a most extremely helpful contribution. Such a
view not only carries the Creation Story that explains things to us, how
things came to be this way, it also shows us how to behave in this world
we have to live in.
I hope this discussion is going to take the original vision of relatedness
with all forms of life, including technologies and technobiotic life
systems, and show us how to understand and live with such things. I am
looking for useful concepts, beyond likes and dislikes. They are gathering
already in this discussion. I am hopeful we can do this.
The email traffic is running high. It's difficult to get through all this
material, and keep the feeling of a sustained coherent discussion. But
don't worry, we will be collecting the proceedings of this discussion, and
publishing them on Communications For A Sustainable Future, if not in
print as well. So even if you can't keep up with all there is to read
here, if you have a contribution to make, please do so. Anything goes
here, thoughts, feelings, poems & sutras. Let's lay down a fantastic
record of thinking on these subjects. If the material is there, we your
humble servants will sift through it all later and pull something together
that is readable and useful.
Let's not feel obliged to hang around the trailhead of my original article
either. We will soon tire of supporting or attacking McClellan's
outrageous nonsense, or couragous vision. Let's move off down the trail
into the greater wilderness of Deep Ecology and Evolution, and their
sister, profound spiritual understanding.
A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
Meanwhile, I would like to conduct a thought experiment.
So many fine minds and hearts are gathered here (200+), let's try
something fun.
Lean back in your chair and close your eyes. Forget everything you think
you know or don't about ecology. Try to imagine The Deepest Possible True
Ecology. What would it be like? How deep can you go!? What is really
truely real and unshakable, vajra, or indestructible as the Tibetans put
it. Wwhat lies beneath all our cultural expectations and habits and
worrys, beneath all our hopes and fears?
Describe THE DEEPEST ECOLOGY in 100 words or less.
I want to see what people really think. What's radical and what's really
deep. Let's limber up this discussion, kick the roof off, throw down the
walls and take a look around, see what's really out there.