From mcclelj @ csf.Colorado.EDU Sun Nov 17 22:40:05 1996 Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 22:41:06 -0600 From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: Author's Opening Statement-Nondual Ecology Welcome, to all the disembodied beings who are attending this Virtual Seminar on Nondual Ecology. I am delighted that so many people (some 200+) are interested in considering these matters. I hope that together we can take the foundation laid down in the original article, and develop it into a clear view, one that is useful and sound, free of the distracting controversy that arose around the article. With your help, I would like to follow up on this theory with some sort of sketch for a useful practice, a way of living beautifully, caringly and responsibly in this strange new world that is evolving around and within us. Note: I very much wish to encourage active participation in the seminar. If you have a comment, however brief or long (brief is better), or a quotation, reference, or suggestion of any kind, please don't hesitate to post it. It doesn't matter what we say here-we're among friends, in the privacy of planetary mind, generating empty waves of electronic bits. If you feel you can help the discussion along, please do so... To post a message, send email to nondual-ecology @ csf.colorado.edu The main problem we will face in this discussion is likely to revolve around the apparent difference between an absolute, or "deep" view, and a more practical, relative view. Absolute view: Everything is perfect, or at least complete as it stands. There is nothing to do or add. Relative view: Things in this world are never good enough. Consider suffering. These inadequacies matter a lot, and urgently need our attention. These are caricatures of course, but that's the rough shape of it. Across this line we will push and pull, but I hope not too much, as this is an old story, soon tired of. As you can tell from the letters in response to the article, I was accused of presenting an overly absolute view, of slighting the terrible suffering in this world, and offering an excuse for do-nothing, irresponsible self-indulgence. I was accused of accepting the injustices of the world, and even of liking technology! The relative and absolute views are, as we know, inseparable, interdependent. They originate one from the other, and lead into each other. Nonetheless they have different flavors and functions. Sometimes we need to emphasize one, sometimes the other. The perfectly balanced view and practice of a buddha (or other realized being) holds and practices both absolute and relative views at the same time, without confusion. But the rest of us tend to lurch and stumble from one to the other, in a series of exagerated emphases and then over-corrections. My article was a corrective, and thus unbalanced gesture of this kind. I addressed a tendency Western Civilization has to feel that we humans are the origin and cause of the world as it is today, and that because of this, we own and should manage everything that happens on this planet. I tried to show that perhaps greater forces are at work here-deep currents of biological and cultural evolution that have led us into the technobiotic societies and landscapes we see around us today, energies which we perceive but dimly, and hardly begin to understand. I suggested that since we may not have as much control as we think over these things, it might be fitting to show more respect for the forces that shape us and our world, to feel greater caution and humility in the presence of this increasingly strange and dangerous technobiotic, planetary being which is Earth. The arrogance and presumption of control over nature shown by Western Civilization seems 'off' somehow, inaccurate. And to assume we are in control of technology, and its creatures the technobia, or that we even begin to understand it very well, I don't think so. A major revision in our thinking seems needed here, a great step back from, or rather on beyond the immature "scientific" optimism of the last two centuries or so. We need an attitude of respect and humility toward the world we think we have created, an attitude more akin to that which native peoples have toward the earth in all her wildness and mystery, toward the gods (i.e. evolutionary forces) of land and sky, toward their sometimes dangerous and independent minded relatives, the animals and plants and climate. I will defend this position, at least until I am shown a better way of thinking. I hope some of you will be able to shed more light on these questions of evolution, cluture and technology. Meanwhile, there is much else that needs work in the way I have presented these views. What about the plight of wild creatures, ecosystems and biologies, of suffering humans, of suffering sentient beings altogether? What are we to do about such things, or rather, what kind of relationships should we develop in these areas? How do we take on the passionate and essential work of caring for the world we live in, while learning to respect its greater being and independent evolutionary nature? How do we humans, pitiful creatures, arrogant and blind, playthings of the vast energies of the universe, how do we learn to fit in to a world that is bigger than we are, a world which is not simply the expression and consequence of human whims and designs, but which remains essentially mysterious in nature, dangerously wild, unpredictable and largely out of our control? These are the questions that interest me tonight. I am hoping to be shown things I have not noticed, and expect to end this seminar with a broader, better informed, and also deeper understanding of these mysteries. I wish the same for all of you, and thank you in advance for your part of the work we will be doing together. The wind is blowing fiercely through the pines in the snowy mountain valley above Boulder, Colorado, from which I am posting this opening statement. It is winter this week. A fire burns in the stove in the corner, the cat lies curled up before it. I am curious about who you all are out there, not just what you think about ecology. If so inclined, might we not occasionally give body and color to our thoughts by briefly (briefly) describing our surroundings, or other human particulars? The wind blows on in the dark night. John McClellan Sunday night From mwilding @ lungta.naropa.edu Mon Nov 18 09:43:16 1996 Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 09:43:13 -0700 From: mwilding @ lungta.naropa.edu (Mark Wilding) Subject: Some Deep Ecology thoughts ... MAJOR DOCUMENT Here are two expressions of the Deep Ecology view -- "The essence of deep ecology is to ask deeper questions ... We ask which society, which education, which form of religion, is beneficial for all life on the planet as a whole, and then we ask further what we need to do in order to make the necessary changes." --- from Arne Naess "Simple in Means, Rich in Ends": interview w/ Stephan Bodian 1982,"The Ten= Directions" In April 1984 George Sessions & Arne Naess wrote down the following Deep Ecology Platform =85. The Deep Ecology Platform 1. The well-being and flourishing of the human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. 2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves. 3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. 4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.=20 5. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening. 6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economics, technological and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present. 7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situation of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher (materialistic) standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great. 8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes. Mark Wilding | 2130 Arapahoe Ave. =20 The Naropa Institute | Boulder, CO 80302-6697 Environmental Studies | Tel (303) 546-3550 mwilding @ naropa.edu | Fax (303) 444-0410 From dlachape @ ptialaska.net Mon Nov 18 14:16:30 1996 Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 09:43:17 +0000 From: David Lachapelle Reply-To: dlachape @ ptialaska.net Subject: sutras from alaska MAJOR DOCUMENT Greetings to the seminar, I thought I would contribute in short bursts which have occured to me...in connection with the ongoing discussion: people who use the Internet are likely to score higher on associative intelligence tests. Metaphoric thinking has shown to decrease incidence of Alzheimer's disease. A recent trip to Yosemite, (my first), in the course of four days transformed more of my grief over the Alaskan Oil Spill than many years of activism and discussion. I watched as the bus loads of tourists poured out and ran in an uphill river to the base of Bridal Veil Falls. It was as if the sea of humanity had come lapping at the edge of the citadel of granite. Each wave that broke upon the walls of the valley reverberated with all that humanity has: foolishness, self centeredness, irritation, awe, wonder and much more. The valley had a presence which co-mingled with all this humanness and I came away with greater faith in the power of the natural world to heal the two leggeds who run about upon it. Perceiving the absolute, not just talking about it, requires a systematic refinement of the nervous system. Near the end of Milarepa's life a proud and arrogant Lama, who was to try and poison the saint, challenged him to a intellectual dual over the meaning of certain obscure scholarly items. Milarepa responded by saying that he had little time for such debate as he preferred direct realization instead. Milarepa swallowed the Lama's literal poison as well. He transferred the pain, in a test of magical powers, briefly back to the lama, who upon experiencing the fruit of his actions renounced his arrogance and retired to the caves for contemplation. The speed at which my 13 year step son can navigate multiple screens, execute commands and integrate visual and conceptual knowledge while on the computer is astonishing. He navigates the computer like a fine dancer. The forearms of some northern indigenous people are considerably thicker than ours. Life times in Kayaks are thought to be the cause. And finally some advice from Rumi about all of our storytelling: "Stories are like the water you warm to bathe in They take messages between the fire and your skin. The arrange a meeting between the two. Water, stories, the body and all that we do, are mediums that hide and describe what's hidden." I would add to his last line a 1996 addendum: Water, stories, technology, the body and all that we do, are mediums that hide and describe what's hidden. From michaelz @ mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu Mon Nov 18 15:29:20 1996 Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 16:54:52 -0600 From: michaelz @ mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu (Michael Zimmerman) Subject: some thoughts MAJOR DOCUMENT It's wonderful to take part in this cyber-seminar, since I'm supposed to be giving a talk on "deep ecology and spirituality" at the American Academy of Religion convention here in New Orleans on Sunday morning, and I'm counting on this seminar to help me out! Having written a lot about deep ecology, Buddhism, and other non-dual philosophies (including Heidegger's), I've become more and more concerned about the DIFFICULTIES of squaring Buddhism with deep ecology (in its various senses, including Arne Naess's Ecosophy T). Ian Harris has written several very important essays on this topic. For example, there is the difficulty of squaring a cause-effect (sequential, diachronic) model of reality (obviously favored by the scientific ecology to which deep ecologists so often appeal) with the spontaneous co-production (simultaneous) model of reality (pratityasamutpada) so important to Mahayana Buddism. Indeed, Buddhism itself has difficulties squaring these two with one another. More important, however, is the point raised by John McClellan in his excellent, challenging, and controversial article, the subject of this seminar. His point is that even H-bombs and clear cut forests are "perfect" manifestations of Buddha-nature, if we take seriously the implications of Buddhism, rather than picking and choosing from among Buddhist doctrines that seem to favor a deep ecological approach. This same point was made by Professor Yovel, a noted commentator on Spinoza's work, at a conference a few years ago. According to Yovel, for Spinoza (and, I would add, also for Buddhism in important respects) human views on good and evil are inevitably anthropocentric, slanted by various cravings and desires, and incapable of encountering God/Nature "under a certain aspect of eternity." The dualizing tendencies of deep ecologists (theorists and practitioners), their tendency to cling to a certain formation of life on this planet (a formation that could be radically altered at any time by a sufficiently large meteorite), and their hostile attitude toward modern technology, are certainly understandable. I myself once shared these views with few reservations. Today, however, in view of many other conversations in which I am takin part, I am much more inclined to be critical of these tendencies, i.e., to inquire into the LIMITATIONS of deep ecology's perspective(s). McClellan raises a very important point: what if evolution leads to supplanting much of biological (carbon-based) life with silicon-based life, life that also proves to be (ultimately) conscious, capable of suffering, and capable of enlightenment? This would be a great source of sadness for me personally, since I very much admire and identify with the incredible biological beauty of this amazing planet. Yet evolutionary processes have been notoriously uninterested in the concerns of individuals, as vast numbers of magnificent species have disappeared over the eons. That many more are disappearing rapidly through current human practices is regrettable and sad, again from my point of view. But something more astounding than life as we know it may yet be in the process of emerging. Even as we find ways to limit the destruction of existing life, we ought to pay attention to what is coming forth. In a book called GENTLE BRIDGES (dialogues with the Dalai Lama on computer technology and consciousness), the Dalai Lama concluded that he could imagine being reborn as a computer, if computers had reached the point of becoming self-conscious. I take such a statement very seriously. We may not like the future, and we may find ways of altering its course in a more eco-friendly direction, but some centuries from now, the issues that burn so brightly for so many of us will be forgotten. To work effectively, we must not cling to the consequences of our actions. This is the point of Joanna Macy's despair and empowerment workshops, one of which (in March, 1982) led me to become heavily involved in working for an end ot the nuclear arms race. Macy's point was this: One cannot work effectively to save the planet unless one lets the planet go, i.e., one must go ahead and experience all the despair, sadness, and rage that are associated with one's deepest fears, e.g., full-scale nuclear "war" or longer-term ecological disaster. Deep ecologists hoping to be effective in shaping future events must be willing to let it all go in their hearts--the wilderness, wild nature, vast species diversity. Having let go of the profound attachment that so many of us feel to wild nature, we may then become far more effective in working with others who seem not to share our attachment. Instead of portraying them as the enemy, we may find unexpected common ground arising from mutual respect. This is more than enough for now. I am enjoying and learning from the other postings! Cheers, Michael Zimmerman Michael E. Zimmerman Department of Philosophy Tulane University New Orleans, LA 70118 504-862-3391 504-862-8714 (fax) michaelz @ mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu From mcclelj @ csf.Colorado.EDU Mon Nov 18 15:33:48 1996 Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 15:33:46 -0700 (MST) From: mcclellan john Subject: Author Replies to Naess' Deep View MAJOR DOCUMENT Mark Wilding thoughtfully posted Naess's foundation document, (11/18, Some Deep Ecology Thoghts). This could be a major reference for our discussion. Check it out. Naess says, "We ask which society, which education, which form of religion, is beneficial for all life on the planet as a whole, and then we ask further what we need to do in order to make the necessary changes." "All life on the planet as a whole". What do we include as lifeforms, where do we draw the line? It was in search of an answer to that question that I spent so much time in my article on the details of evolution. What, or rather who are the "valid" lifeforms on this planet? This question is crucial to an inclusive deep view of ecology. In my article, I explored as much as space permitted the idea that symbolic systems are valid evolutionary lifeforms. The book length version goes into greater depth in this area. I tried to show that everything we 'know' and use in this modern world, both the objects of technology and the cultural behavior patterns that create and use them, are all products of the same evolutionary forces that give rise to biological forms of life. And thus entitled to the same kind of consideration, even respect and protection, that traditional deep ecologists would like to accord to natural biologies. In case there should be any uncertainty regarding this bold new evolutioary outlook, I have gone further, and tried to set up a broad and inclusive protection zone that would cover all potential lifeforms, until such time as we understand them better: Include Everything That Moves. When we do this, we know we are not in danger of limited vision, and the blindness of current cultural assumptions, which as history shows, so quickly become quaint and outdated. Let's see how this would apply to Naess' position: Naess continues, >1. The well-being and flourishing of the human and nonhuman life on Earth >>have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These >>values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human >>purposes. >>2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of >>these values and are also values in themselves. >>3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to >>satisfy vital needs. My goodness. If we include the technobia, i.e. all forms of human or nonhuman interface, cooperative behavior or partnership with technology, tools, symboloic systems, etc, we are looking at an extraordinarily rich and complex "ecosystem". Does all of this deserve the kind of respect and protection that we know Naess intends to direct to the natural biological world? I think so. Protection isn't exactly the right word here. Humans need protection as much as anything else from our own exuberant, explosive technologies. Respect and the feeling of relatedness are the essential thing here. Where does that lead? I think it leads directly to a form of modern day pantheism, an extended and essentially mysterious interrelatedness with all manifestations of life. Steve Kurtz (11/18) writes in: "Pantheism is a form of reverence for the value of "everything". If spirituality is the basis of positions, it should be presented front & center. Whether we worship cows, computers,TVs, rock stars, atheletes, or the internet is a personal choice." I would of course add stars, sun & moon, the four directions, the buddhas and saints and sages to my personal pantheon. The idea is the same in either case. I find this suggestion extremely provoking, and would like to look closely at the way native or Stone Age peoples relate to the world around them. They seem to consider everything imbued with some kind of spirit, everything related in some way to them. Some of these life energies are good, some are dangerous, even bad, but all are valid manifestations of life on this plant. This is my idea of real Nondual Ecology. Is this something we could use? Can we develop this feeling for life, try to refine this kind of understanding? If we did, what kind of relationship would we begin to have with our world? Maybe a good one. I am delighted to find the discussion has gone immediately to the heart of the territory. Worshiping cows computers, cars... We do you know. An extraterrestrial biologist, peeking at us from his blind behind the moon, would try to figure out what we worship by our behaviors. What do we spend a lot of time with, a lot of money on, what do we most value, take care of, replace when lost, improve on, use in our daily life and on feast days and holidays? Why my goodness, cars, cows, TV's, computers, and so on. This may sound ridiculous, but deserves very careful thought. Maybe in our behaviors we show the kind of appreciation, respect and understanding that I am seeking in a theory of deep ecology. Sometimes there's no problem until you try to put something into plain English. Then behaviors that are quite naturally based on hidden assumptions become controversial and highly suspect "radical" theories. I look forward to your comments. From amcgowen @ hposl02.cup.hp.com Mon Nov 18 15:57:24 1996 Subject: Technology is human behavior, not "new life" In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 17 Nov 96 19:42:34 MST." Date: Mon, 18 Nov 96 14:56:03 -0800 From: Alan McGowen McClellan's "absolute perspective" appears to be the view that all states of energy are equally good -- presumably including states of no life, or even no universe. I'm tempted to invoke the spirit of Wittgenstein to help us out here: whatever McClellan is doing, it isn't ethics -- his "absolute perspective" essentially enjoins those who are doing ethics to go do something else. Some may follow McClellan into a Jehova's Witness- like isolation from the fray of life, meditating on how impotent we are to contravene God's Will. But somehow I suspect that Charles Hurwitz will not be one of them :-) Along the way to his "absolute perspective", McClellan makes a number of concrete scientific mistakes and wild extrapolations. For example, he states that any extinction we cause will be repaired in "an evolutionary twinking of an eye". In fact biodiversity has take tens of millions of years, and in one case, about 100 million years, to recover after major mass extinctions of the fossil record. See J.H. Lawton & R.M.May, eds. 1995 Extinction Rates, Oxford University Press, London. McClellan seems convinced that humans have opened a new chapter of evolution with technology, and he writes of technology as if it were as autopoietic as organic life. In fact all technology is dependent on humans to maintain it, and through humans, on the life support services of ecosystems. Technology is not a new form of postbiological life, it is part of the extended phenotype of human life, just as the beaver dam is part of the extended phenotype of beavers. It is part of biology -- a fragile part, every bit as dependent on the maintenance of biological integrity and healthy ecosystems as we humans are -- because technology is human behavior, human culture, human traits. Moreover, because technology is not autopoietic, it has no "good of its own" -- no ends of its own. Its replication depends entirely on how well it serves *our* ends, not on how well its traits serve its own ends. Its value is entirely utilitarian. By contrast, an organism has ends of its own. This is a fundamental ethical distinction which McClellan's "absolute perspective" overlooks. Alan McGowen From bbarnum @ Minneapolis.polaristel.net Mon Nov 18 20:29:13 1996 Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 21:30:12 -0600 From: bbarnum @ Minneapolis.polaristel.net (Betsy Barnum) Subject: Ephemeral non-dualism MAJOR DOCUMENT Hello, seminants on non-dual ecology. I will admit to being put off by your article, John McClellan, and especially its tone which seemed a bit careless and more provocative than strictly necessary--though you've explained that as the inevitable over-correction of all attempts to find the center. I was much more able to connect with your commentary in response to the letters written to Tricycle. In those comments, you wrote, //- We care passionately about the world, almost too much at times; this is understandable, as our very lives are at stake. But a deep and constantly refreshed detachment must lie at the core of any really passionate relationship. When this is forgotten, lost in the heat of caring, the relationship becomes greedy, possessive, and materialistic; it becomes deluded, self-centered and blind, and ultimately unhelpful. // This is one of the most important truths I have learned from what exposure I have had to Buddhism. It can be hard for the Western mind to grasp how it is possible to be both detached and passionately committed at the same time; how can two opposite things both be true? It is a great challenge to learn, as a Westerner raised in a Christian tradition, that "either-or" thinking does not lead to the greatest depth and breadth of understanding, nor to passion nor to compassion nor to energy. Paradoxically for the person who thinks dualistically, the deepest compassion--and this is what we need most if we are to effectively address any problem--must arise out of detachment, not out of possessiveness, despair or selfishness. It is the compassion I hear in the above paragraph, and other places in your comments on the letters, that somehow was missing for me in the tone of the original article. Your comments also had great wisdom in the admonition to bow to our enemies, to approach with respect even those people or forces or beings we regard as evil or dangerous or bent on our destruction--once again, possible only if one starts from detachment rather than from fear, anger or hatred. However, I agree with some who have posted today that you have taken quite a leap in giving technology and its artifacts full-fledged status as evolved lifeforms. I suppose I will need to read your book to get the full argument--but I'd like to hear more about how you got from biological evolution to the notion that technology is evolving on its own and colonizing humans to create a new type of lifeform you call "technobiotia." I do not agree with your statement in the article that people have merged with technology, or that we can no longer exist or act without it, and I don't see how you got there. How do you back up this statement? I also have a problem with your use of the term "evolution." I'm no scientist--I'm a writer and have a degree in English Lit. But I do read a lot, and I know that there is and has long been in mass culture a basic misunderstanding of what evolution is and how it works. Evolution does not have a "direction," other than adaptation to various niches. Would you please explain how evolution is operating in your view of what is happening with technology? How is technology (or "technobiotia") adaptating to niches? At the start of your article you quoted a paragraph from Richard Dawkins' book _The Selfish Gene_. Again, I am no expert on memetics, but I have dabbled in it. Is this the basis for your theory of technological evolution? I have to confess that when I first started reading about memetics, I thought it was a joke--a tongue-in-cheek pretense designed by very smart people to look like real science--a game for intellectuals, philosophers and such. I can actually see some truth in it, as a way of understanding how ideas, singly and in sets, can spread so quickly among people and can be so hard to find and root out. But I still think memetics is basically a construct, a metaphor, not a science. (Dualism again!) But really! One last comment: I have been aware for some time of how difficult--maybe impossible--it is to express nondualistic thoughts in a language, like English, that is inherently dualistic, as are the thought patterns of the West that are at least partly engendered by this language. It is both frustrating and intriguing to work with this language. I feel my mind beginning to grasp the Everything That Is, and when I try to look at it and describe it, it slips away. I disagree with your position on technology and its ability to evolve; and I thank you for posing a question that challenges my mind to stretch and gain a new perspective. I'd like to comment further on "technobiotia," but will save that for later. Squash soup was lovely tonight, velvety and sweet. It feels good to eat food grown locally, in the fertile farmlands that surround the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, in the Upper Mississippi River Basin bioregion. Now that winter is pretty much here for the duration, and the bright crunching leaves of October have become a brown undercarpet to icy snow, we will be eating a lot of root vegetables, like potatoes and onions and yams, and other good keepers, like squash and apples. I'll miss the lightness and delicacy of green salads and fresh berries, but they are part of summer, and this season's fare is richer, heartier, earthier. Blessings, and looking forward to more conversation, Betsy +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ One speaks of living on the earth but in truth life is held within the earth. An atmosphere woven from life encircles the planet. Every movement, every breath, every response, the least thought is shaped to the curve of this mass. Even time and space bend to it. Like a child in a womb, all we know exists inside this outer body. And all is dependent on it. Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From jrogers @ asis.com Tue Nov 19 03:48:10 1996 Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 02:48:17 -0800 From: J Rogers Subject: dueling dualities MAJOR DOCUMENT It's raining on the northcoast of california. Our first real storm of the season, the dry season is over. This storm is a warm one. The next one promises to be colder. As the days grow shorter and the sun follows an ever lower arc through the sky, our solar panels are putting out less and less electricity. The rain curtails their power further. However, the river is beginning to rise and our pelton wheel in a nearby creek bed should begin to generate electricity soon. We have been eating a lot of oyster mushrooms this week, seems to be a good year for oysters. We are just at the end of our fall season with many of the few tree species locally which lose their leaves for the winter still hanging on to the colors of autumn. Time to clear the ditches on the road. I suppose most "deep" thinkers recognize that, from an evolutionary perspective, humans are a passing life form. We are not the crown of creation, the ultimate acheivement of evolution. Are we a link in the "chain" of life forms that will evolve into a more sophisticated species capable of even greater cognitive feats and emotional, spiritual experiences? Are we merely a spur of abandoned railroad as evolving life forces move onto a silicon track? We may cease to exist at any time, we may not. We can't know these things. We cannot know the results of our actions on future generations of humans or other life forms, whether they be plants and animals or rocks and clouds or even silicon. Certainly not in the context of a language based intellectual discussion in an online seminar. We can, possibly, achieve a non-dual (absolutist) outlook on technology and ecology. Though, expressing it through a fundamentally binary communication system is more than ironic. We can attempt to stand back and let civil/social/techno evolution take it's course, in the same way that we aspire to stand back and let an ecosystem evolve in all it's diversity. We can, perhaps, renew ourselves through detachment from our personal needs and openness to the wonder that we exist at all. The wonder that so much rich complexity is, and is so beautifully. But we, at least I, cannot consistently act from this place. The moment we decide to take action in the modern world we enter into the world of dualities. Many of us are looking to indigenous cultures for guidance in correcting perceived shortcomings in modern culture. In prehistoric human cultures we were actively engaged with our environment. Our world was not wild: it was home. Human interaction with the natural world has always been based in large part on human needs, yet guided by the human heart and spirit. We used all the tools at our disposal, including our minds, to implement the knowledge of our spirits and our hearts. We respected other life forms, and our tools. We were not perfect. Perfection is a human abstraction. We were nature. And we still are. With all of our tools. With all of our imperfections. Our abuse of technology is not a result of the technology itself, it comes from our minds, our rational, dualistic minds. Our fascination with technology, and indeed all forms of power, is a test of our heart/spirit knowledge of our connection to ten thousand things. We cannot stand apart from an ecosystem. We are an integral part of an ecosystem no matter what we do. Our use of technology is and will be part of our nature. And, it will be part of the ecology of any bioregion which includes humans. The question is how will it be used? What decisions will we make? And, what will guide us? We choose our role in the universe every day. Not choosing, is choosing. If we continue to use our rational minds for a guide, we will only continue down the techno/destructuve entropic path we are on. It may not matter a billion years from now, but right here, right now, it matters to me, to my children, and to the community/ecosystem I live in. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness, birth and death, are indeed merely different sides of the same coin. Yet, I hope we will use our hearts and spirits as guides to integrate our techno/rational minds, with our nature, in ecological terms. As integral participants in the natural world we are agents of change, we need not accept the degradation of our nature. We can choose compassion, beauty, and life. We can resist the self-hatreds of corruption, greed, and cynicism which turn the bulldozers of profit on the ecological foundations of our well-being. Not everyone will make this choice. We will not be completely successful, we will make mistakes, we will need to be renewed in our efforts. We need to harmonize our minds and our technology with our hearts and our spirits. In this effort may your heart soar like a hawk. j rogers By not exalting the talented you will cause the people to cease from rivalry and contention. By not prizing goods hard to get, you will cause the people to cease from robbing and stealing. By not displaying what is desirable, you will cause the people’s hearts to remain undisturbed. -- Lao Tzu From MoCtrLite @ aol.com Tue Nov 19 05:47:00 1996 From: MoCtrLite @ aol.com Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 07:46:57 -0500 Subject: THE INFORMATION AGE AND GENETIC ENGINEERING Some random thoughts related, directly or indirectly, to the subject line and to each other: ** Copper, zinc, magnesium, iron...sentient? Moot point - what would my sentient body do without them? ** The Information Age is more than the advent of computers and the retrieval, processing, and storage of electronic data - it is the realization that information is the "stuff we biological entities" are made of (DNA coding, quotes from dead philosophers and poets,...). ** Would genetic engineering be possible without the computational power of the computer? Can we take a vow to respect all life without respecting the biological entities created through technology? Again the sentience of "non-living" things becomes a moot issue by virtue of the interrelated dependence of unarguably sentient beings upon them. ** Buddhists are not forbidden to have children but are asked to consider seriously the matter of bringing new life into this world. Should we not be just as responsible in the area of genetic engineering? Some systems of thought treat animals as unfeeling automatons...how much more so will the products of genetic engineering be treated? ** In Buddhism there is no soul but, instead, codependent arising...where would any religion or philosophy be today without the transmission and preservation of information? From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Tue Nov 19 09:48:32 1996 Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 09:48:26 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: On Arne Naess"s Deep Ecology Platform MAJOR DOCUMENT Mark Wilding thoughtfully posted Naess's foundation document, (11/18, Some Deep Ecology Thoghts). This could be a major reference for our discussion. Check it out. Naess says, "We ask which society, which education, which form of religion, is beneficial for all life on the planet as a whole, and then we ask further what we need to do in order to make the necessary changes." "All life on the planet as a whole". What do we include as lifeforms, where do we draw the line? It was in search of an answer to that question that I spent so much time in my article on the details of evolution. What, or rather who are the "valid" lifeforms on this planet? This question is crucial to an inclusive deep view of ecology. In my article, I explored as much as space permitted the idea that symbolic systems are valid evolutionary lifeforms. The book length version goes into greater depth in this area. I tried to show that everything we 'know' and use in this modern world, both the objects of technology and the cultural behavior patterns that create and use them, are all products of the same evolutionary forces that give rise to biological forms of life. And thus entitled to the same kind of consideration, even respect and protection, that traditional deep ecologists would like to accord to natural biologies. In case there should be any uncertainty regarding this bold new evolutioary outlook, I have gone further, and tried to set up a broad and inclusive protection zone that would cover all potential lifeforms, until such time as we understand them better: Include Everything That Moves. When we do this, we know we are not in danger of limited vision, and the blindness of current cultural assumptions, which as history shows, so quickly become quaint and outdated. Let's see how this would apply to Naess' position: Naess continues, >1. The well-being and flourishing of the human and nonhuman life on Earth >>have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These >>values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human >>purposes. >>2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of >>these values and are also values in themselves. >>3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to >>satisfy vital needs. My goodness. If we include the technobia, i.e. all forms of human or nonhuman interface, cooperative behavior or partnership with technology, tools, symboloic systems, etc, we are looking at an extraordinarily rich and complex "ecosystem". Does all of this deserve the kind of respect and protection that we know Naess intends to direct to the natural biological world? I think so. Protection isn't exactly the right word here. Humans need protection as much as anything else from our own exuberant, explosive technologies. Respect and the feeling of relatedness are the essential thing here. Where does that lead? I think it leads directly to a form of modern day pantheism, an extended and essentially mysterious interrelatedness with all manifestations of life. Steve Kurtz (11/18) writes in: "Pantheism is a form of reverence for the value of "everything". If spirituality is the basis of positions, it should be presented front & center. Whether we worship cows, computers,TVs, rock stars, atheletes, or the internet is a personal choice." I would of course add stars, sun & moon, the four directions, the buddhas and saints and sages to my personal pantheon. The idea is the same in either case. I find this suggestion extremely provoking, and would like to look closely at the way native or Stone Age peoples relate to the world around them. They seem to consider everything imbued with some kind of spirit, everything related in some way to them. Some of these life energies are good, some are dangerous, even bad, but all are valid manifestations of life on this plant. This is my idea of real Nondual Ecology. Is this something we could use? Can we develop this feeling for life, try to refine this kind of understanding? If we did, what kind of relationship would we begin to have with our world? Maybe a good one. I am delighted to find the discussion has gone immediately to the heart of the territory. Worshiping cows computers, cars... We do you know. An extraterrestrial biologist, peeking at us from his blind behind the moon, would try to figure out what we worship by our behaviors. What do we spend a lot of time with, a lot of money on, what do we most value, take care of, replace when lost, improve on, use in our daily life and on feast days and holidays? Why my goodness, cars, cows, TV's, computers, and so on. This may sound ridiculous, but deserves very careful thought. Maybe in our behaviors we show the kind of appreciation, respect and understanding that I am seeking in a theory of deep ecology. Sometimes there's no problem until you try to put something into plain English. Then behaviors that are quite naturally based on hidden assumptions become controversial and highly suspect "radical" theories. I look forward to your comments. From rosss @ ci.boulder.co.us Tue Nov 19 16:02:41 1996 Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 16:04:14 -0700 From: Susan Ross Subject: On Arne Naess"s Deep Ecology Platform -Reply MAJOR DOCUMENT John, and online folk, Looking out on Open Space this morning - reading your letters - being with blue sky, golden light in the fields, snow melting off the barn roofs, redtail hawk circling, much new snow shining brilliant on the Rockies. Not sure who knows me out there - suffice to say that I, like most of you, have spent this life's breaths immersed in All of This. The discussion on John's essay engages us in conversation from which we may learn - but to truly learn that which we try to speak here, I'll spend more time in All of This. I'm pretty sure from the point of view of absolute, the "Nonduel" "All That Moves" conversation is neither "more" or "less" than the seed that just floated by on the wind. But, if I think of the almost infinite amount of accumulated interconnectedness /knowledge/ wisdom that seed has within it - beyond our wildest human/techno/computer dreams, I don't see this human-created technostuff coming close within any eon soon... I think it behooves us to challenge John's premise that human-created technologies, etc. may have "sentience" - I think we should be looking at Alan MacGowen's questions - does any techno/culture stuff persist without humans, for better or worse? And what really is the context of this conversation - well beyond layers of the web of electromagnetic impulses, the world of ideas like "nature" or "artifice", human created concepts that are our ways of trying to grasp "caterpillars"(category/ idea), caterpillars(critters), Caterpillar tractors(machine/technolgy), or Caterpillar Tractor, Inc.(corporation), etc.etc. Attributing sentience to human-created stuff (whether human-controlled or not) seems beside the point to me - even the interface, the interplay, the persistance of pattern of all of these are still subject to impermance, and our attempts to try to place them into "this" or "that" are bound to fail. I don't see human artifacts like technology, or even culture as "gods" to be propitiated - they may be powerful, but are still transitory phenomena. Respect to all, but no need to create more "thats". I DO see us as quite capable of wiping out the context of this whole conversation - with an atomic bomb, or more likely by having to leave our computers to attend to the unimmaginable suffering which is already all around us. Waking up and compassionate (empty of "this" or "that", including the relative for other/for self) ACTION seems called for - and I don't see machines - or even ideas - DOing much in that direction. Its more than movement, its more than emptiness. Since the conversation started with John's premise that these "technothingies" have "sentience", I propose that computers and other afformentioned technostuff continue with their own thread and we humans keep on trucking with how to be right here, right now. I look up the hill and see the buildings where tons of plutonium reside at Rocky Flats probably for 20,000 years - or until the wind blows it into our garden. I may try to see it as something other than human ignorance at work, but my innermost being says this is human-created ignorance given form for awhile. I have nothing against the "absolute" pure nature/quality of plutonium, and no, plutonium is not "bad", but yes, humans gathering it in one place and figuring out ways of killing one another with it - on the relative level, I say STUPID humans. And I'll dare speak for the rest of the universe and say "No thanks" to seeing that as some kind of "evolution" - we can do better, even within our own little narrow view of things! Sorry for the rant - time to go outside Opps - just got back in from outside to find that perhaps John is suggesting that we move on - my 100 words on the "deepest" ecology. I'll try again on that one. Apologies for the wordiness. Susan From jrmiln @ globalnet.co.uk Tue Nov 19 17:20:11 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 00:21:32 GMT From: Joseph Milne Subject: Technology is human behavior, not "new life" MAJOR DOCUMENT I would like to reflect a little on Alan McGowen remark yesterday that technology is not an independent life form. John has suggested that it is, along with symbols and other such things. Alan suggests that these are human behaviour. After reflection, I am inclined to agree more with Alan, but maybe for different reasons. I would go further and suggest that technology, in its braodest sense of 'tools' is in fact a defining feature of the human species - as are art, religion, culture, philosophy and civilisation itself. The more I consider this, the more crucial it seems to me to grasp it so that we can understand our own species. I think there is a danger in regarding these things as intities in their own right. We fall into the objectifying mode of thought which is the lmitation of logical empiricism. This tendency to objectify everything so that it can be analysed from outside is one of the things that distances us from the remaining communities that still have a profound contact with nature as a sacred realm. Modern philosophy has struggled to break free of this tendency to look at everything as an object. This was the main motive of Husserl's attempt to lay the foundations of phenomenology, and later the work of Heidegger. The notion that human reason somehow stands outside reality and can 'see it as it is' has been shown to be an illusion - and now even in science it is being called into question. More than this, to objectify what is actually human (art, technology) is to slip precisely into the dualism John is proposing we escape from. The foundation of dualism is the notion of independent objects or entities - the foundation of logical empiricism. It is this view of reality that allows the instrumental view of nature in, which I suggested yesterday was one way of seeing how modern man comes into a false relationship with the universe. The objectifying tendency also lies behind the authority currently given to the natural sciences - shown in the expression 'science shows us . . '. There is no thing 'science', only the sciences. This is important since ecology is itself a science. One would not regard ecology as a 'species' or new 'life form'. On the contrary, it is a human activity employing very human means to understand nature. And 'nature' is us. It is not a separate entity from man. You will notice I use the word 'man'. I have observed that in this discussion this word has been carefully avoided. Instead the word 'humans' and its variants is used. This again is a part of the objectifying process. To speak of humans is not to speak of one's own existence but of something outside, an entity leveled down to that of all entities equally leveled down. It is, again, those communities that still have contact with nature that call themselves 'man' or 'mankind'. They have not objectified themselves because they have not objectified the universe. It may be thought that this is a quobble over a mere word. But the vocablary we use embodies and displays our world-view and the values we hold or that are simply generally about. Some will not use the word 'man' because it is thought to be 'politically incorrect'. But PC (regardless of its initial good intentions) is a good illustration of the objectifying process. It always alights on Latin abstract replacments for the concrete term. If we think simply of 'humans' as one entity, then we can easily think of 'technology' as another entity. But if we think of 'man' or 'Man' then we are brought into contact with our actuality and our modes of being, which are manifest as our culture. Culture is human. It is Man writ large. The attempts of much environmental thinking to regard man simply as a biological entity are in fact reinforcing the divorce of man from nature and the completeness of himself. The dualistic mindset of empirical science has crept deeply into environmentalism and so it attempts to deal with the problems created by the dualistic mindset with the same mindset. I fully appreciate that John is trying to open up the possibilty of a more inclusive view, and I fully support this attempt. Yet I am still worried that this all-inclusive view is liable to become itself an objectying reduction - although I know this is not intended. I present it as a problem, not a criticism. One phrase which tends to this is John's definition of sentient as 'all that moves'. Well, not all existent things move. Symbols and numbers and space do not move. The nondual does not move. Truth does not move. Again, I am with the spirit of John's meaning, so this is offered as a problem not a criticism. I leave these observations at this point for now. Joseph Milne __________________________________________ Joseph Milne Department of Theology & Religious Studies University of Kent at Canterbury Canterbury Kent CT2 7NY U. K. __________________________________________ From jrmiln @ globalnet.co.uk Tue Nov 19 17:20:15 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 00:21:38 GMT From: Joseph Milne Subject: Introductions MAJOR DOCUMENT Greeting to all in this seminar - from England where it is a gentle autumn night. First I welcome John McClellan's paper and the challenge it presents to us all to take a larger view of the world and the problems it currently presents to us. I do not wish to quibble over details of the paper I do not particularly like, but wish to focus on its central theme in the hope that more light will shine there. There is, in this respect, one aspect of the current situation that John's paper does not raise. It is this: the way modern civilization regards the world (essentially as a resource) and the consequent way we dwell in the world seems to me to directly reflect our own inner state of being. Our outward actions, quite regardless of any beliefs we may claim to hold, are directly correlate with our inner condition. From this it follows that our attempts to alter the 'outer' world, the physical environment, need to be initiated from an inner change of state or understanding. Of the 'deep ecology' I have read or discussed there seems virtually no consideration of this matter. In particular there is no 'deep anthroplogy'. Man is taken as given and understood and simply must either reform his actions or take a more romantic view of nature and the universe. This has obvious religious and philosophical implications. The human species can neither be absolutised or relativised. Much current invironmental thought attempts to 'level down' the human species and all its creations (civilization, art, religion etc.) to a mere biological entity along with all other species. It seems to me that this way of thought is itself part of the current world-view that reduces everything to some bilogical or matterial base in an instrumental or functional way. This raises a further matter. The view of evolution presented in John's paper is itself part of the Darwinian view, in which all things merely struggle to survive and flourish for their hour. This view of evolution leaves out of account any direction or teleology in the evolutionary process. There is a choice to be made between an evolutionary paradigm of (a) passing play and (b) a cummulative evolution that has a direct end or destiny in its full unfolding. I am thinking here of Teilhard de Chardin as an example of the second. The 'static' or 'cyclical' view of evolution belongs to the East generally. In either view all is 'ultimately well'and all things come to pass without harm or loss to either 'nothing' or 'God'. Nevertheless, the manner of being of man is that, according to the situation of each and the species as a whole, existence puts certain fundamental demands and responsibilities upon him. I am not thinking of morality, but simply of the primary fact that we must take on the question of our own existence and its meaning, and hence our relationship with the whole of reality and the foundations of reality. Man is a being who is called to be concerned, whether it be for enlightenment or worldy pleasures. He is therefore a participant in his own manner in the unfolding of the universe. So such a species needs to attend at once to 'detachment' from the spell of existence and to full responsibility within it. Speculation about our species possibly being superseded is to be taken into account, but only in the context of the full actualisation of our humanness. In short, a 'deep anthropology' is required as a fundamental cornerstone of a meaningfull 'deep ecology'. These are some of my concerns which I throw into the arena for our common reflection. Joseph Milne From dlachape @ ptialaska.net Tue Nov 19 17:30:14 1996 Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:30:03 +0000 From: David Lachapelle Reply-To: dlachape @ ptialaska.net Subject: Further sutras from Alaska MAJOR DOCUMENT Greetings, I have enjoyed very much the level of discussion and particularly the snapshots of ecosystems that we all represent. I have this image of the winds blowing between our nodes of inquiry: the winds of Boulder, the Great Lakes and the soft beezes of the Midwest, the coastal gales of california, the sultry breath of New Orleans..... Our Winds here in Juneau are ample. A large arctic high is in place over most of Alaska which means the Taku winds are blowing here in Juneau: random blasts of atmopshere which spin and dance across Gastineau Channel in front of my home. Our local ecology is adapting to the half million cruise ship visitors a year which invade from our docks. The haze of cruise ships hangs equally in the air with spruce pollen for many hundreds of miles up the inside passage. We are living here in what is called the Goldbelt.... a zone of mineralization which brought Juneau into being,(and wiping the flounders out in the process)... There are shadowed movements of mining conglomerates gathering in every direction around our fair land. We have managed to stay the course of what would be the largest urban mine in the world from opening its doors adjacent to downtown... but the potential for massive mining has this particular philosopher coming down squarely on the relative side the divide. Some further condensations: feedback is the corpus collosum of duality. Of the five precepts non-lying has been the most difficult for me to work with. Right Speech implies a level of ressonance between all levels of my being which I find most challenging. Aleut kayakers crossing the open ocean to the Pribolof islands for fur seals relied on chants to time the wave the crests arriving at the prow of their vessals. By accurately measuring the distance of the wave crests in time they would infer the interference pattern of the islands and use this knowledge to "ecolocate" their way to their goal. Compassion born of discernment I have found to be more selfless. A local ecology teacher was waxing eloquently to a group of third graders on a field trip. He was pointing at a Bald Eagle and said, "Can't you just see the fish in the Eagle's stomach." To which one of his class replied, "Yah right, and I can see the fruit loops in Louie's stomach." The Yogis, (ala Yogananda) would speak of the causal plane of reality as a level of consiousness in which the seed patterns of all forms reside. Is modern technology prefigured in the causal plane? The Kabbalists speak of soul work as returning the shards of light back to the original container.(Which they say apparently broke apart under the impact of the original impulse for creation). As we all sit before our screens I wonder if there is a glimmer of soul shards trying to collect themselves through our gathered attention. A bit of historical perspective on deep ecology: "I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills, I Know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Give oblations to God Fullfill your vows to the Most High. and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me." -Psalm 50 (deep ecology with an Old Testament vengence!) Contrary to the strict scientific interperation of evolution mentioned in this discussion I find evolution very purposeful. I would venture to say that a seed of profound unrest which is in most human hearts is because there is some disjunction between what each one of us knows ourself to be and what we know we can become. This knowledge of what we can become I do not think lives in the realm of worlds, thoughts or culture, (Though surely we are influenced by said realms)... it lives in the breath of a sunset on the closing blues of a day, it ripples from the dorsal fin of a killer whale, it calls through the passion that unites loves, and it exhales on a perfect clear night when the northern lights wash the stars with magnetic veils of delight. From jrmiln @ globalnet.co.uk Tue Nov 19 18:52:51 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 01:54:16 GMT From: Joseph Milne Subject: On Arne Naess"s Deep Ecology Platform -Reply At 16:04 19/11/96 -0700, Susan wrote: >I think it behooves us to challenge John's premise that human-created >technologies, etc. may have "sentience" - I think we should be looking at >Alan MacGowen's questions - does any techno/culture stuff persist >without humans, for better or worse? And what really is the context of >this conversation - well beyond layers of the web of electromagnetic >impulses, the world of ideas like "nature" or "artifice", human created >concepts that are our ways of trying to grasp "caterpillars"(category/ >idea), caterpillars(critters), Caterpillar tractors(machine/technolgy), or >Caterpillar Tractor, Inc.(corporation), etc.etc. Attributing sentience to >human-created stuff (whether human-controlled or not) seems beside >the point to me - even the interface, the interplay, the persistance of >pattern of all of these are still subject to impermance, and our attempts to >try to place them into "this" or "that" are bound to fail. I don't see human >artifacts like technology, or even culture as "gods" to be propitiated - >they may be powerful, but are still transitory phenomena. Respect to all, >but no need to create more "thats". Dear Susan, I am inclined to agree with you here. The notion of technology having independend sentience ends up hiding its real nature from us. It actualy belittles its significance. A more appropriate appoach is to see it as an expression of our humanity, which is what it actually is. To 'deify' it is to remove ourselves from it and so confuse our natural responsibilty towards it. A computer or other 'high tech' is follows from the first flint or axe that man put to intelligent use. The fact that man is that species who employs tools as the manner of his life reveals man to us. To use a tool shows that man has a sense of time and history and prediction. It also shows us that his evolutionary adaptation has not become limited to soem specialised function which involves growing a biological tool, like a beak or tusks. Man can take up a tool and he can lay it down. And it is because he has this freedom that we can discuss here his responsibility towards the universe - towards all things, even to God or enlightenment. The power of reflection illustrted in the taking up and putting down of tools is the same power of reflection that enables man to have the possibilty of liberation. In the tool is engagement and detachment, the two qualities essential for spiritual work or effort. A trully nondual conception of man would understand that there is no contradiction between his full engagement in life and his transcending it. John has, to be fair, invited us to look with respect upon technology. I think he is absolutely right in that. But to deny it is part of man is, I think, a big mistake. Joseph Milne From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Tue Nov 19 20:22:06 1996 Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 20:22:00 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: The Evening News MAJOR DOCUMENT After reading little squiggles on my screen all day, such a rich flow of thoughts and feelings-and feeling a bit overwhelmed myself, I finally went for a 3 hour walk up the backside of Twin Sisters, the mountain that rises above my house. I felt like a sorcer's apprentice, that I had summoned these spirits somehow, with the help of my friend Don Roper (our host at csf), and that great clouds and hosts of the spirit beings had come swirling around in my computer, all of them intelligent, caring, sensitive creatures who deserved individual, personal attention, more than I may be able to provide. I hope that you will find a way to take care of each other, appreciate and enjoy each others' company. I feel a great depth of caring understanding coming from these discussions. This is a trustworthy reservoir of intelligence which has congregated here: a larger body of thought, one with many eyes, much mind, many hearts, able to grasp and know much. We will distill this intelligence and refine it together. I very much enjoy the feeling that you are real people in real landscapes, with weather (weather, on the net!?), with cats, windows, wind outside. We are all looking at a waxing crescent moon, are we not, gracing the evening sky. We all see Jupiter in Sagittarius, and see the sun sink father and farther south each night. This is good, absolute in its own way. So I climbed the narrow mountain canyon, clad in pine, dusted with fresh snow, 800 feet above my house. Found more fresh elk tracks. They winter here in our valley, and have just come down from their high mountain summer range, 5 days after hunting season closed. Survivors. I can hardly imagine the living hell they've just been through. Last night, on a similar walk, I ran across them in person: two big bull elk in the moonlight, just behind the peak. Still alive. Go in peace, brothers. My wife, who was up there too for a while, told me she'd seen a golden eagle fly off the carcass of a young buck we had found shot and killed about a week ago. I checked it out. Asshole tore all to hell by that big bird. He made more progress on it than the magpies and ravens have done so far. I came home an hour after dark, reactivated my net connection, and sat down to compose this note. So what are we trying to do here? My goal is to learn to understand the world I live in in a sacred way. I KNOW that what I see and meet is Aliveness. whether it's cars, computers,and cities, or wild & empty mountains in the moonlight with elk in their hair, and eagles flying around their ears. I SEE the Aliveness when my mind is open, and believe it in my heart. I REMEMBER that it is there at times when my eyes and mind are less open. (Capitals is all we have for Emphasis out here in email land, as you all know). So how do we establish and learn to understand this aliveness properly? Maybe I have made a mistake in spending so much time trying to demonstrate the phenotypic, biological lineage and evolutionary authenticity of technology. It seems to provoke a lot of controversy and disputatious uncomfort. I think it's true enough, but maybe this isn't a good approach to the subject for everyone. Let me pose this as a question, or rather a series of questions: -- How should we consider this world we live in, as utterly holy and sacred through and through, life and death, nice and not-nice together, or as divided into good zones and bad zones, sacred and what, profane? unsacred (what's that?)? wicked?... -- If we see a world divided, how did that division arise, WHEN and HOW did the primordial purity of the early universe or the fresh young Earth split? Be prepared to defend your statement. -- If we see a sacred landscape around us, radiant in primordial purity, as the saints and sages of all times and schools have reported and confirmed again and again, what does that mean for our day to day activities, attitudes, and relationships? Can we still be good people, useful and caring and helpful, good to have around in tough times, which these undoubtedly are? Let's see if we can step around the prickly issue of whether technology, the extended human phenotype, is alive or not, is entitled to the rights and priviledges of sentient beings or not. The more I think about it, the less "user-friendly" that approach seems to be. Instead, let's look at Sacred World directly, is this entire wall to wall world Sacred or isn't it? If it is, what does that mean to us struggling technobiotic humans? I hope this will advance our discussion a bit. I wish to thank all those who have submitted these wonderful, poetic, caring letters. These thoughts we have arising here on our screens are obviously the product of serious, inquisitive, responsible and caring relationships with the world. I feel honored to share this mysterious mind space with all of you. My apologies for not answering each one individually, which is my ambition for tomorrow (??!), but gee, I have hardly had time to read them all as carefully as they deserve! Good night. John McClellan From ecbm @ cc.newcastle.edu.au Tue Nov 19 20:27:45 1996 nondual-ecology @ csf.colorado.edu; Wed, 20 Nov 1996 14:26:26 +1100 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 14:26:26 +1100 From: "Bruce R. McFarling" Subject: Picking & Choosing, as spring moves to summer MAJOR DOCUMENT After marking some end of year exams at home this morning (with the picking and choosing that entails), my wife and I walked in the heat of the late spring midday sun to our son's school for a talk with his teacher, after which I walked the rest of the way to the University and found this avalanche of messages indicating that the seminar had, indeed, started on the date that had been chosen for its start. So I have chosen to forward my first response to John McClellan's paper, written well before the start of the discussion, and look forward to catching up on the discussion later in the day (which officially begins here before it begins in many of the places this discussion is emerging from, because of the location chosen for the int'l date line). In NonDual Ecology (Reprinted with permission from Tricycle, a Buddhist Review Winter, 1993), John McClellan writes +--------------------------------------------------------------- | ... Today's Deep Ecology seems to regard technology as an evil | force, something alien to the natural world, loosed almost by | divine mistake on this planet. These new energies are not | regarded as legitimate expressions of sentience, universal | lifeforce, or granted the respect we accord to "natural | processes" | | ... Why not take deep ecology all the way to the heart of | what is really wild on this planet: why not include, in the | roster of the wild and sacred, Everything That Moves? Since | everything that exists moves, we'd be done with all this | picking and choosing, and all the worry and strife that go | with that. | | *We'd have a complete, ready made, flawless sacred outlook.* +--------------------------------------------------------------- Just what we always wanted: a complete, ready made, flawless sacred outlook. Actually, I personally did not know I wanted that until I heard about it, but now that I *have* heard of it, *WOW*! All this time I have been thinking of The Way, or The Path, (etc., etc., and so forth) when I should have been looking for The Place or The Position (etc., etc., and so forth). Ronco would be proud. +--------------------------------------------------------------- | ... Meanwhile, they *idealize* the *vanishing dream* of | free, wild biological systems. They *seem to* want to | restore them to their *erstwhile* splendor - as though | evolution ever moved backwards! This is wishful thinking, | like when we imagined the earth was the center of the | universe, or that humans represented the culmination, and | hence the end, of evolution. | This point of view is called biocentrism, and is proudly | opposed to anthropocentrism, which is supposed to be | outmoded and provincial, a naive and self-serving | 'humanist' outlook. ... +-------------------------------------------------------------- Lao Tsu saw a room from looking at one corner. Does John McClellan look at a corner of a room and see a closet? Deep ecologists see an explosive increase in the extinction of species and see the death of ecosystems. John McClellan looks at the explosive increase in the extinction of species and sees: +-------------------------------------------------------------- | We have at last come to accept and even appreciate this | element of danger in nature; perhaps we must learn to accept | it as well in the world we live in today - in the world of | cities, wars, famine zones, collapsing ecosystems, toxic | pollution, and so on, including the extinction of species | and even perhaps the disappearance of 'higher' lifeforms on | this planet, like ourselves. Perhaps this kind of danger is | good, even healthy. I think it is essential to any real | wildness. +-------------------------------------------------------------- while in his filter the Deep Ecologists: He tells us: +-------------------------------------------------------------- | Symbiosis | These new 'entities' we see all around us in the world today, | the machines and social behaviors and bodies of knowledge and | energy systems and so on, are of course no more independent of | us than we are of our own biological support systems. But | then, what lifeform has ever been 'independent' of its | symbiotic partners and background ecosystems? Symbiosis is | the key to understanding this situation. +-------------------------------------------------------------- But then what has happened to the extinction of non-competitive species? If no lifeform is 'independent' of its symbiotic partners and background ecosystems, how does the classification into categories of competitive and non-competitive work? Why casually toss a loaded adjective from an inappropriate classification into the accusation that Deep Ecologists of wishing to exclude 'extinction of non-competitive species'? I wonder. What if we went to the list of things that Deep Ecologists are supposed to wish to exclude, and subjected them to a shallow critique. +-------------------------------------------------------------- | ... exploitive technology, ... +-------------------------------------------------------------- Does exploitative technology mean human activities that are inconsistent with symbiosis between human activity and the rest of the living world? I will assume that they do. Can we survive this aggresive-parasitic phase with these exploitative technologies intact? No, we cannot. They contradict themselves. We can be a party to their abandonment or we can be a party to the collapse of the life-support systems that they require, but we cannot be a party to their continuation, because they are not continuable. I'm not a Deep Ecologist. But I do not apologize for preferring to accomodate the end of this kind of technology by abandonment rather than by collapse. And neither, I suspect, would a Deep Ecologist would apologize for such a preference. +-------------------------------------------------------------- | ... warfare, social injustice, famine, ... +-------------------------------------------------------------- I assume that a poll of Deep Ecologists would tell us which would exclude which of these. It has nothing whatsoever to do with McClellan's notion of something novel happening that demands we advance to a non-dual ecology. But it does make the list longer, and the longer the list is, the greater its rhetorical impact. +-------------------------------------------------------------- | ... urban landscape, ... +-------------------------------------------------------------- My hunch is that McClellan is right regarding urban landscapes: both that Deep Ecologists would be susceptible to excluding urban landscapes from their picture of the target, and that this is a mistake. But it doesn't take a mystic to discern the necessity of incorporating urban landscapes into our picture of how human activities can be non-self-destructive. +-------------------------------------------------------------- | ... television, ... +-------------------------------------------------------------- This does lengthen the list by 12 letters. +-------------------------------------------------------------- | ... the extinction of non competitive species, the collapse of | planetary life support systems for higher species.... +-------------------------------------------------------------- And coming back to the beginning. Three alternatives: we can participate in the collapse of planetary life support systems for higher species; or we can participate in the abandonment of human activities that lead to the collapse of planetary life support systems for higher species, or we can do both. We cannot do neither. A million different species in a hundred thousand different worlds across the multiverse, or just us, we can still do one, the other, or both, not neither. Respect the destruction of the living world that gave rise to us as a sacred act, or not, we can still do one, the other, or both, not neither. Then isn't the distinction between the Deep Ecologist who respects the destruction of the living world that gave rise to us as a sacred act, and the Deep Ecologist who does not, a trivial distinction? A Deep Ecologist cannot be a Deep Ecologist without opposing the destruction of the living world that gave rise to us. Claiming a profundity for the question of whether or not they respect what they oppose is vanity and pretension. Perhaps McClellan should leave this type of vanity and pretension to us less enlightened types. +-------------------------------------------------------------- | Lynn Margulis says that all of life is a "symbiotic | phenomenon", in other words, no creature exists as an | independent entity. All are functioning in intimate personal | interdependence with all others, in indescribably complex and | endless shells of expanding relationships. We humans | obviously have this relationship with our technologies, both | our machines and belief-behavior systems. We are *no longer* | purely biological creatures, but have, according to Margulis, | become "technobionts", and could *no longer* survive on this | planet without our technological support systems. +-------------------------------------------------------------- No longer? Since when could we support our populations at the level of the time without our technological support systems of the time? Is it supposed to be a novelty that we cannot do so today? 100 years ago we couldn't have. 1,000 years ago we couldn't have. 5,000 years ago we couldn't have. 10,000 years ago we couldn't have. Before then, I dunno, but I have my strong suspicions on the question. +-------------------------------------------------------------- | ... Since everything that exists moves, we'd be done with all | this picking and choosing, and all the worry and strife that | go with that. +-------------------------------------------------------------- So really this is a question we've been facing since before Buddha and since before Lao Tsu, and since before Charlton Heston (or maybe I have him confused with someone else), (etc., etc., and so forth). We are pickers and choosers who are complicated enough that we can even pretend that we are not pickers and choosers, and we can even pretend that pretending not to pick and choose is not a choice. How bizarre if a species that can develop a language that can say that preceding sentence cannot choose to survive. And how bizarre if we can choose to survive. Virtually, Bruce R. McFarling, Newcastle, NSW ecbm @ cc.newcastle.edu.au From Gusdz @ aol.com Tue Nov 19 21:37:38 1996 From: Gusdz @ aol.com Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 23:37:00 -0500 Subject: Some problems with McClellan's and Hughes's arguments MAJOR DOCUMENT It is still raining here in Northern California. The first big storms of winter continue to blow and surge through our hills and forests, bringing an end to one of the most beautiful falls in years. The brilliant yellows of the big leaf maples, flaming torches of sweet gum, and yellows and bronzes of our rolling vinyards are falling to the ground to nourish next year's generation of plants. It is a good time to sit in front of the computer and ponder the issues raised in this seminar. I came across it a bit late, hearing about it Tuesday, and missed some of the first postings, including John McClellan's apparent distinction between absolute and relative truth. It may be important to some of the points I want to make here. If so, I apologize in advance. The first posting I received was Michael Zimmerman's, ironically just after I emailed him news about this gathering. So my comments may suffer from my coming to class late. I approach these questionss as a deep ecologist and a practitioner of Pagan nature religion. I am also a nondualist, based upon a powerful mystical experience of that nature. And while I like much of what has been said by many other participants, I am deeply troubled by McClellan's position as I have been able to grasp it so far. The nondualist experience that blessed my life included a sense of active compassion and agape (unconditional love) towards all that is. I had always wondered whether love without an object meant anything at all beyond mere words, but after this experience I no longer wonder. From such a perspective all suffering is transformed into something quite different. When my experience was over I could not re-enter it. Only its memory remained, a pale shadow of the original. Perhaps fully enlightened people exist who are in such a state of awareness all the time. For the rest of us, most of our lives are spent in a world characterized by our needs and suffering as well as love and beauty. Experiences such as the one I had help us hold more lightly to our expectations and judgments about the way things should be. We cannot will ourselves to become enlightened, but we can seek to act compassionately, with an open heart. From this perspective I am truly amazed at McClellan's argument. And very troubled by it. He seems to subordinate compassion, something we can all practice to some extent, to a purely intellectual argument for nonduality, a realization that when experienced is not primarily intellectual. Therefore an intellectual argument for it misses the point. I had always associated Buddhism with compassion, which suggests that on some level, particularly the level of sentient beings, nonsuffering was preferable to suffering. From a nondual perspective that dichotomy does not exist, but neither does the dichotomy separating myself from others. Yet, as I wrote in a recent article about another "nondualist" with nothing but criticisms for deep ecology, even Ken Wilber steps aside when he and a semi contest the road. I imagine Mr. McClellan does so as well. So we have to ask, what difference does their nondualism make in how they lead their lives and how we might best lead ours? Given their own consistent pattern of dualist behavior in daily life, those who criticize a philosophy for being dualist in its practical advice to people in the world should consult their own motivations. If McClellan wishes to score debaters' points about nonduality, he is free to do so. But for those of us with partial knowledge, (all of us) lessons in practicing compassion are usually more fruitful than lectures which devalue compassion, arguing that from an ultimate perspective a green-glass plain left behind by a nuclear explosion is as perfect an expression of buddha nature as a meadow rich in life. THAT lesson cannot be taught. It must be experienced. And once experienced, it leaves a person even MORE devoted to the welfare of others, even if less attached to the particular outcome of his or her actions. That, at least, was my experience, and so far as I have read, very often the experience of others. McClellan's argument suggests we be less concerned about the welfare of existing others because of hypothetical future others we are supposedly bringing into existence. He tells us that our machines are new life forms. Maybe. But we KNOW that currently existing animals and plants and fungi are alive. We know that other human beings are alive. We do not know this about machines. And we also know that the greatest crimes in modern times have been committed by those claiming to see the meaning of history and evolution, and are willing to sacrifice really existing beings for the supposed benefit of future ones. I do not like the implications of this kind of reasoning. It has bloody edges. The concrete dies to benefit the abstract. There is an important difference between technology and nature here. Machine technology is designed to increase human power. It is an expression of our desire for power. Because it is concerned with power, technology's ultimate value is efficiency. We need a measure of power to survive, and I am by no means hostile to technology in its place. I am, after all, emailing this. But when we animate technology so that we can no longer tell the difference between it and animals, we blind ourselves. Animals need a measure of power to live, as do we. But that is by no means all that they are. We cannot understand the wonderful diversity of life on the basis of efficiency values alone. As Steven Jay Gould observed, if life was based only on efficiency, the world would still consist only of bacteria. Our experience of wild nature is not primarily values like power and efficiency. There is also beauty, peace, and a context that transcends the human rather than one defined by, even if sometimes ultimately negating, the human. The power we encounter in nature is not like technological power. I may feel insignificant when beholding a modern oil refinery, but it is a qualitatively different kind of insignificance than that I feel in the Yosemite high country. The difference is crucial. In the one case I am dwarfed by power. But my personal sense of insignificance is offset by my knowledge that human beings made this. We may also be dominated by it, but is still an expression of human ambition. And some wax proud from the knowledge that this is humankind's creation. The high Sierra is not. No one waxes proud by virtue of being in high mountains. Being amid its peaks and meadows is to be open to a manifestation of powers that are neither expressions of nor particularly concerned with human purposes. In a culture where we are surrounded by utilitarian values, where everything has its price, wild nature is our easiest access to the sacred. I suspect that when McClellan goes on vacation, it is not to wander in rapt awe through the halls of nuclear power plants and software companies. Yes, the sacred is everywhere, but it is not everywhere equally easy to access to our awareness. McClellan writes that "all forms of human or nonhuman interface, cooperative behavior or partnership with technology, tools, symbolic systems, etc . . . . deserve the kind of respect and protection that we know Naess intends to direct to the natural biological world" Does this mean that we should preserve working versions of every technology we have invented, as separate "species"? Every model of car, every variety of screwdriver, every computer model and software program? Is this analogous to honoring the intention behind the Endangered Species Act? In McClellan's mind is Word 6 or a Power Mac equivalent to the spotted owl in value? McClellan asks of his suggestion about preserving tools, "Where does that lead?" It leads to the elimination of endangered species not to the preservation of ancient screwdrivers. He equates things with purposes of their own with things that, so far as we know, exist only as instruments of utilitarian power. A mouse has a sense of purpose. A mouse can apparently become bored. Does a screwdriver? Does a computer? To equate killing an animal with throwing away a tool is in practice a radical devaluation of the animal because it blinds us to the important respects in which animals are not tools. Consciousness can be disembodied, and can be located anywhere. But I do not equate life and consciousness. To say that consciousness inheres in a rock is not quite the same thing as to say that a rock has consciousness, let alone that it is alive in this sense. To treat a rock with respect is not the same thing as to treat a human with respect because, so far as we can tell, the consciousness that exists in a rock is essentially passive. And the consciousness of All That Is which exists in that rock, and everywhere else, is not limited by a rock's point of view. As a manifestation of All That Is, a rock has value. But this value is not as multidimensional as that of a living being. So we can acknowledge that consciousness is everywhere, that all things should be treated with respect, and also that inanimate objects are not analogous to life forms and have a being which is quite different from them. McClellan uses the term "worship" to describe what we spend a lot of time, effort, and money on. To clarify his point he brings in the example of an extraterrestrial biologist who would conclude that we worship cars, TVs, computers, etc. One thing I can say for sure is that this being is a pretty poor biologist. Worship cannot be defined in behaviorist terms. And the word simply does not mean "what we spend a lot of time doing" or anything close to that. If it did, we could probably be said to worship sleep above and beyond everything else. McClellan argues for an analogy between the way traditional native peoples relate to other things as imbued with spirit and the way we should relate with machines. We need to be careful here. Native tradtionalists emphasize the importance of relating others with respect - that all things are part of a community. In one sense the ethic of respect is appropriate for relating with machines. Years ago Alan Watts said that a truly materialistic culture, one which loved matter, would love and respect its tools and goods, whereas we are quick to discard and to waste. I agree. The material world is an expression of the sacred, and the more we recognize this, the better. But in another sense McClellan's suggestion is inappropriate if it leads to giving machines more "respect" than the life forms their creation and use destroys. That McClellan appears to be singling out deep ecologists for criticism suggests to me he is quite guilty of this failing. This brings me to James Hughes' piece agreeing with McClellan that "Deep Ecology is in profound contradiction with Buddhism" in supposedly not making ethical distinctions between people and animals". Which deep ecologists is he talking about? Certainly not Arne Naess, who explicitly makes such distinctions (and does not reject technology). Animal rights advocates, who do make such arguments, are usually not deep ecologists, if for no other reason than that their philosophy cannot find a legitimate place for predators. Hughes also assumes that not only are animals not able to become enlightened, they are not in a state of enlightenment. How does he know? Certainly this is about as dualist a position as one can possibly take. Some Buddhist practitioners in Hua-yen and Zen argue that humans were unique in being unenlightened, which is the opposite spin on the subject from the one Hughes argues. I recommend reading "Saigyo and the Buddhist Value of Nature" by William LaFleur in J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames (eds.) Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, along with other essays in that volume. They show that the Deep Ecological perception of a value in nature that is not easily perceived elsewhere is by no means a new idea in Buddhism, let alone not being in harmony with it. In a contribution with which in other respects I almost completely agree, Betsy Barnum approvingly quotes McClellan as saying "a deep and constantly refreshed detachment must lie at the core of any really passionate relationship." I think an important subtlety is masked by McClellan's choice of words. Detachment and nonattachment are not the same words, and do not refer to the same concepts. I would argue that she would be better off referring to the term nonattachment here, and then raising questions about the clarity of McClellan's response to his critics. Detachment is noninvolvement. It easily goes with not caring. Nonattachment goes with deep involvement, even love, but its involvement and love is unconditional. In theistic terms, it is agape. It does not require specific behavior in return. I find McClellan's use of detachment indicative of a weakness in his position as I have understood its presentation in this seminar. His view of life on earth and its ceaseless flux seems rather like someone gazing idly through a kalideoscope. One thing replaces another. Endlessly. All is equally perfect. He is detached, not nonattached. What is lacking in this image is that not only is every state of affairs perfect from a nondualist perspective, every thing is also perfectly what it is, and therefore worthy of respect. We treasure each thing as uniquely valuable. The perfection is in the details as well as the whole. Therefore, even though things are passing, we should treat all things with compassion, with agape. McClellan's argument appears to me to be a confusion, not a clarification. Bright Blessings, Gus diZerega From hollick @ cwr.uwa.edu.au Tue Nov 19 21:54:26 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 12:54:20 +0800 From: hollick @ cwr.uwa.edu.au (Malcolm Hollick) Subject: Greetings from the most remote city on earth! Here in Perth, Western Australia, we're moving into summer - a time of long hot days of sunshine and blue skies; a time for swimming and watching the sun set over the ocean rather than walking in the bush. Last night we had a some thin, high cloud which created a glorious show of colours. Trying to slow down and be more mindful, I limit my visits to the web. So this morning I found an overwhelming flood of mail from the first few days of discussion. I'm really heartened by the number of people thinking and feeling deeply and wisely about this issue; to find there are so many fellow spirits out there. But where to start to respond? To the substance of the debate, with no apologies for repeating points or failing to acknowledge who said what - there simply isn't time. Humans are not the only creators and users of technology. But we're certainly unique on this planet in the sophistication of our creations. Despite this sophistication, our technology is not (yet) an independent life form. It is not (yet) capable of self-maintenance or self-reproduction. It 'lives' only with our consent. And its form, its evolution, is totally within our control. This does not make it 'unnatural' however. How can anything created by a product of evolution from natural materials, processes and energy be unnatural? Indeed, how can anything within the cosmos be unnatural? When I look at it like this, the very idea of 'unnatural' technology seems meaningless. Technology, in all its manifestations, is an integral part of our world, a result of the evolutionary emergence of consciousness and manipulative skills amongst other characteristics. In this sense, I believe we must embrace technology as on aspect of all that is. Can technology be 'good' or 'bad'? 'Good' and 'bad' are cultural constructs, creations of human minds and society. Technology certainly has effects on us and the planet. We can define those effects, eg better nutrition and health, pollution, destruction of ecosystems. But whether they are 'good' or 'bad' depends on the perspective and values of the viewer. The greatest pollution event in the history of the planet occurred when organisms began to release the toxic waste gas we call oxygen. Was this 'good' or 'bad'? It all depends on whether you're an anaerobe or not; and whether or not you believe the evolution of higher forms of life was a good idea. Was the asteroid which (probably) did in the dinosaurs good or bad? It depends on whether you're a mammal or not. And so on. There seems to me to be a key difference between the impacts of technology and other natural disasters. We humans created our technology, are conscious of what we have done and are doing, and are capable of changing our technology so that it has different effects. I believe the availability of this conscious choice and power makes us responsible for our actions in a way that no other species is. For the first time in the history of this planet, a single species can determine its future. An awesome responsibility. and yes, to this extent at least, we are unique and different to other life forms. As an aside, which is not really a red herring, the point has been made that evolution is directionless and purposeless. this is the mainstream scientific view, but I cannot agree. From the Big Bang onwards, the universe is characterised by continual movement towards greater and greater complexity and organisation, a great counter-movement to the inevitable disintegration due to increasing entropy. Surely this drive for transcendence which has resulted in the emergence of self-conscious life - the universe knowing itself for the first time - this drive which is such a deep feature of the cosmos deserves the title of Purpose and Direction? Whether we then choose to personalise it by calling it God or Spirit is another matter, but the existence of this Purpose and Direction is surely undeniable? Mystical traditions through the ages have developed practices which enable their followers to experience this Purpose, or Spirit of the Universe. Unlike established religions, they have not said "Believe because we say it's true", but "Try this experiment and see if you find the same results". Over millenia they have sifted the genuine mystical experiences from the flawed, just as science sifts truth from error by comparing the results of many scientists. The essence of this experience, regardless of culture, is a sense of the Oneness of all that is. And the expression of that Oneness is compassion and love for all existence. I would suggest that in fulfilling our responsibility as a species, we should allow ourselves to be guided by spiritual experience, tested at every step against the experiences of the great spiritual teachers and our fellow seekers. What deeper ecology can there be than that? Malcolm Hollick Senior Lecturer, Centre for Water Research, Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, W Australia 6907 Tel. 61 9 380 3082 Fax. 61 9 380 1015 From jhughes @ changesurfer.com Tue Nov 19 22:45:05 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 00:44:15 -0500 From: jhughes @ changesurfer.com (J. Hughes) Subject: Technology is human behavior, not "new life" MAJOR DOCUMENT BTW its a chilly 35 degrees F here in "aggressively suburban" Eastern Connecticut - all the leaves are off their trees, the cold rain is falling, and only the ducks across the street appear to be at one with nature this evening. Re: technology, I guess I'll let me freak flag fly - I think technology is well on its way to weaving humanity into a super-organism. The most recent treatment of this theme that I like is Stock G. Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism. NY: Simon and Schuster; 1993. though there are also: Laszlo E. Evolution: The Grand Synthesis: Shambhala Press; 1987. Russell P. The Global Brain: J.P. Tarcher; 1983. In other words, the growth of our interconnection via communications technology - good bodhisattvas hould work to make communications technology more generally accessible, by the way - as well as the growth of world trade and forms of global peace-keeping and governance - will create the kinds of meta-identity and meta-intelligence that will create collective autopoeisis. To rephrase that, I think groups, and possibly the whole world, will take on increasing attributes of a primitive multi-celled cooperative organism, and technology is the protein base that holds it all together. Now, again, I don't think this is a good or bad thing - it could have what we consider to be horrific outcomes, such as new forms of collectivism which (more effectively than fascism or communism) destroy individual idenity. Those of you within reach of Hollywood may want to check out "Star Trek: First Contact" to meditate on the message of the cyborg race "the Borg", whose message for humanity is "Resistance is Futile. You willbe assimilated." War is one of the states of heightened meta-individual bonding. But we can muse about what it would mean for the collective, wired, consciousness to achieve the (illusion of) self-awareness, and perhaps even embark on the path to insight. Could the Borg take Refuge and begin to take giant collective meditation breaks? After it/they had collectively taken the precepts and given up murder, mayhem and assimilation? Or is our imagination about the Buddhist path restricted to laptopless individuals on bare wooden floors in pastoral settings ? ------------------------------------------------------- James J. Hughes PhD, U of Connecticut & U of Hartford (CT) 860-429-4932 * jhughes @ changesurfer.com http://www.changesurfer.com From jhughes @ changesurfer.com Tue Nov 19 23:00:30 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 00:59:40 -0500 From: jhughes @ changesurfer.com (J. Hughes) Subject: Some problems with McClellan's and Hughes's arguments Gus writes that the NDE piece asserts that we should stop caring, about each other and nature, and adopt an arhat's detachment rather than a bodhisattva's engagement. I don't read the piece that way at all. I hear John saying that we need to wield the sword of prajna to cut through cloying dualisms, which then liberates to see new and better means to liberate ourselves and all beings. Acknowledging that humanity and its products are a part of the ecosystem, and are forms of ecologically evoled complexity in their own right, allows us to develop an ethical strategy superior to the one that treats humanity as separate from and foreign to "Nature." >Hughes also assumes that not only are animals not able to become enlightened, >they are not in a state of enlightenment. How does he know? Certainly this >is about as dualist a position as one can possibly take. Some Buddhist >practitioners in Hua-yen and Zen argue that humans were unique in being >unenlightened, which is the opposite spin on the subject from the one Hughes >argues. Well, that is a decidedly minority view within Buddhism, and even its proponents were using the assertion of the enlightenment of animals and inanimate objects as a teaching device, not necessarily as a description of reality. Neo-pagan panentheism, seeing spirit infusing all things, is not at all in synch with the Buddhist rejection of spiritual essence - anatman. If the Zen master says "Rocks are enlightened" he didn't mean they had enlightened mind, he meant they didn't have unenlightened mind, since they didn't have a mind. As to animals, Buddhism may have treated them with respect, but all traditions taught that rebirth as a human was the most auspicious for working on enlightnement. ------------------------------------------------------- James J. Hughes PhD, U of Connecticut & U of Hartford (CT) 860-429-4932 * jhughes @ changesurfer.com http://www.changesurfer.com From romcclellan @ vassar.edu Tue Nov 19 23:33:59 1996 NonDual-Ecology @ csf.colorado.edu; Wed, 20 Nov 1996 01:33:57 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 01:33:57 -0500 (EST) From: romcclellan @ vassar.edu (robinson o. mcclellan) Subject: Hello all-- I'll try to be brief-- There seem to be a number of running assumptions throughout most of the letters I have read. The first one I think can be summarized as 'human beings are unique from the rest of creation for one reason or another.' I believe this philosophy is as old as the first fire and the first alcoholic beverage, way back beyond the edges of our beginnings, and I believe it is completely full of holes. To me, humans are fundamentally no different than any other biotic beings. Certainly, we look different, we act different, we communicate differently, and we have very different means of procuring our basic means. But these things simply do not add up to any basic dichotomy between us and anyone else. Secondly, people seem to believe that if only we humans could do things a little differently by being smarter and more cooperative, we could reverse the imminent destruction or severe harm to our life support systems (I hate to use the term 'natural' environment in the context of such a seminar). I think this view is incredibly unrealistic, and it belongs with a whole class of other such outdated and idealistic paradigms. I don't want to sound too bleak, but I think human beings are like any other animal, that is, equipped with a total, passionate, utterly bottomless desire to make it in this world, and to make it as big and as much and as well and for as long as possible. I don't know statistics, but it seems clear enough that the number of people happily telling each other that there's still time to save the planet is a profound minority in this world of six billion eager souls. Bill Gates once remarked on the basic reason why he is so awesomely rich, and why he knows he'll stay that way: he said, "because I have infinite greed". This means that even when he has made more money than one person could ever spend in many many lifetimes, he keeps on going, keeps gaining and gaining.... I believe that human beings are rightly, necessarily endowed with 'infinite greed', and that while it may prove to be our downfall, it is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. Finally I wanted to point out a simple fact, which is of course understood in this seminar, but which needs to be made explicit before too much has been said. That is, the cultural limitaion inherent in these discussions. Who are we? We are the same people who have made many of the major decisions for humankind in recent times, we are the one's who write the most history, intervene in international affairs when we see fit--in short we are the big shots in the world right now, and we all believe strongly that this not only gives us certain rights but responsibilities as well. However these rights and responsibilities, I think, are less extensive than we want to think, and we are the minority. The decisions we think we can make about the future of this planet are not ours to make, and everyone knows that highmindedness has never been, and will never be, a driving force of fundamental change. I'm not sure I've made myself as clear a I hoped, but you certainly see the point. As you must have all guessed, I am John McClellan's son, and I'm a music major at Vassar College. I have been enjoying these discussions as a spectator, but I thought a little generation x perspective might be helpful-- regards, Robinson O. From mwilding @ lungta.naropa.edu Wed Nov 20 08:58:43 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 08:58:40 -0700 From: mwilding @ lungta.naropa.edu (Mark Wilding) Subject: A Nodified Deep Ecology Platform MAJOR DOCUMENT Ideas for Modified Deep Ecology Platform 1. All things in the universe have arisen together (co-evolved) through their interactions and make up a 'sacred whole' or world. The fact that they have co-evolved through interactions, means that all things are connected and interdependent. 2. Diversity and richness of forms is displayed everywhere and contributes to the realization of a sacred world view. 3. Humans are at least one species that have evolved with a capability to reflexively participate in this co-evolution, and therefore have enormous power and potential to affect not only other humans, but all of this sacred whole. 4. Humans have often been bewildered and/or intoxicated by this power and therefore were unable to see their own place and relationships within the sacred whole. This has led to views of the self and the world that are dualistic and anthropocentric. 5. Humans have in the course of their history, operated from these dualistic and anthropocentric views, and exercised the power to manipulate the world without considering or understanding the greater context. Humans have greatly increased their populations and greatly modified the earth in the process. This has often lead to the destruction of both human and non-human life, and caused severe changes in the earth's systems. 6. Those humans who see and understand the whole -- the context in which humans exist have and will by their own nature change their ways, and act in harmony with all things and the whole. In addition, they will, by their thoughts, words, and actions influence fellow humans to re-member the sacred whole as well. 7. Those humans who have a glimpse of this sacred whole, and who desire to awaken all humans to seeing in this way: a. Will benefit themselves by continuing to ask questions -- and further their individual understanding of the sacredness of all things by communicating with them. b. Will benefit others most by engaging in thoughts, words, and actions that are in accordance with this sacred view -- by embodying the view. c. Will increase their skillful means by recognizing and looking at their own blindness, practicing compassion for that blindness, and extending that compassion and the wisdom born out of it to others. 8. Recognizing the extreme situation that our planet is in due to our human actions, it is incumbent upon all humans who see this situation to realize their own nature, act in accord with their own nature - and engage in a dialogue with all of nature. Note: The word "sacred" is by no means the only way to communicate these ideas -- there may be people for which other words would be more appropriate to convey this notion of the whole. Mark Wilding | 2130 Arapahoe Ave. The Naropa Institute | Boulder, CO 80302-6697 Environmental Studies | Tel (303) 546-3550 mwilding @ naropa.edu | Fax (303) 444-0410 From mcclelj @ csf.Colorado.EDU Wed Nov 20 13:48:39 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 13:48:35 -0700 (MST) From: John McClellan Subject: TO FIGHT, CRY & BOW AT SAME TIME MAJOR DOCUMENT Good morning. A strong and frisky wind is waving the grasses and branches around, warm wind, white mountains. The streamers on the tipi down in the meadow are standing straight out. The stone buddha sitting next to a big grey rock seems to be enjoying the morning. This day has what the Tibetans call lungta, windhorse, frisky freshness. I lit a small fire, logged in and have been reading through the fields of thought that greeted me this morning. I'm surprised to find myself happy to stay indoors with the computer on a day like this. The winds of your thoughts are as enlivening as the winds off the divide today! I'm learning a lot. At first I worried the flow of messagages was so high that people would feel overwhelmed, and we'd lose the focus of the discussion. In fact the level of sincerity, and informed intelligence is so good that we do not need to direct this conversation too closely. We can wander through this material, adding to it as we are inpired. The synthesis will probably happen after it's all over, and we compile the proceedings, which you all will have a chance to look at, and add to if you choose. So, let's continue! I had hoped to respond to most of the messages one by one, but that has obviously become impossible. So let me take up a few main points, one by one, and then cruise through the letters, responding to statements here and there as they catch my attention. Here's the main one: *The Hard Lesson of Respect* -- The criticism I hear most clearly and most often is this: If we look at our world as manifesting primoridal purity, as a field of sacred energy, all of whose creatures and activities are expressions of divine nature, why then how can we act to take care of and improve our world at the same time? The view of perfection will sap our resolve, and lull us into accepting the cruelty, greed, and senseless destruction that is tearing the world apart around us, I'm not sure how to answer this. I have answered it already, and don't know what more to say. My wife is a fulltime environmental activist, and I help her out sometimes. As members of Earth First! and Ancient Forest Rescue, we have fought battles together, mainly to save old growth forests from logging. I have friends in the American Indian Movement, AIM, who are fighters too. I have known many good warriors on both sides of the line of legal action. *Learning to Fight* The most effective and dedicated among these, and those with the most longterm stamina, are often those who respect their enemies, who in one way or another acknowledge the power and essential dignity of the forces they are fighting against. Look at the tradition of sacred warriors through the world's cultures. >From mediaeval Japan through the knights of Europe, to the American Indians, fine warriors bow to their enemies before they fight. The Celts bowed even to the Romans! True warriors bow deeply, sadly, and humbly. They bow in fear and respect. One could say some bow with love, and compassion. This is a good way to fight, godammit! It's the best way, the most powerful and authentic way. I don't understand why we need to scorn those things we fight against. Hate perhaps, fear certainly, but not scorn. Only adolescents or shallow, racist cultures need to pump themselves up that way. We've inherited this tradition from our superficial, self-important, smug and superior Western Civilization. This is the style we adopt to sweep things away before the tide of Progress, native poeples, animals, ecosystems, religions, and so on. But such scorn only demeans those who use it. It's time we matured, and learned to respect those we are fighting. This applies directly to technology, and the ways it is used in the world by we humans. To scorn technology as lifeless, ahuman, meaningless tools, the meaning and intent of whose actions comes entirely from the humans who use it, well, much is being missed here. This is a shallow understanding of the forces we are up against. We won't get far unless we learn to understand the enormous power, and perhaps overwhelming inevitability, perhaps even evolutionary necessity of the destructive forces driving the juggernaut of modern western civilization. *Learning to Bow* I've rarely met a logger I didn't like in some way, or at least respect. I like and respect a lot of corporate executives whose lifework I abhore. I like policemen when I happen to get to know them, I even like Forest Service officials! I respect the way they live, and the kind of energy they manifest. One of my good friends here in Boulder, now 83 years old, had a prominent role in the Manhattan project. I bow to his good heart, I bow to his confusion, to all of our confusion, to our society's confusion. I bow to the power of atomic energy, which he helped to unleash. I bow to the Hydrogen Bomb, in fear and respect. I bow to all those of us who in some roundabout way, through the federal taxes we pay or the stocks we may own, pay for or profit from chemical and biological war things, arms sales, and so on. I bow and pause for a long, thoughtful time before those of us who are related to the things we claim to hate and disapprove of, including myself. What does our money do when we spend it in those big stores, or when we give it to the bank? What happens when we buy a big fat car or computer or house, or fly around the continent for fun and work? I bow to all of this, which is more than I can even understand or pretend to fight against. I bow to my own powerlessness, and ignorance, and to my own knowing acceptance of the wrongs I would change but do not and cannot. What's wrong with respect of this kind? All such situations arise from the womb of Emptiness, shining forth true nature in radiant Luminosity, glowing with Compassion. They teach us things, they teach us death, and life, how to love, how to live, how to bow, how to cry, how to sing. We say thank you to these things, to all of them. This kind of respect and love is not a weakness, it is a greater strength. God likes this kind. He smiles, and gives his blessing to those who try to learn this way. You may be crying when you try to bow. That's good. *Learning to Cry & Bow* Some 5 years ago, we fought a logging sale on top of the mountain behind my house. It wasn't the biggest or most tragic sale I've seen, but it was the saddest for me. They cut all the old growth ponderosa up there, for firewood. 300 year old trees that had been standing there for 150 years already before the first white man showed up in this area, Grandfathers that had withstood every fire, and due to their inaccessibility, had escaped the attention of loggers in this county for more than 100 years. Now there are just big stumps among the little 30 to 50 year old trees, slash piles littering the ground, dried out sunbaked dirt where there once was shady grassy forest floor. We stopped that kind of logging in the Boulder County, at least for the time being, but we couldn't stop that particular sale. When I walk up there, at those times when I look around and remember, I still feel like crying almost every time. I am trying to learn to bow to that, to learn something from it, to see the inherent perfection in that murdered remnant of a forest as it stands now today. I know it's there, good life and death to grow with and hold onto. It's hard though, I grant you. I havn't got it yet really. But I'm trying. This is what my article Nondual Ecology is about. Maybe I didn't express these things as sensitively and skillfully as I should have, but I can only throw a ball so far. What we're trying to do here in this seminar is refine this process, learn how to catch a well intentioned but badly thrown ball, maybe catch it and throw it on a little farther. Thank you. John McClellan From ncfs @ islandnet.com Wed Nov 20 13:58:47 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 12:58:28 -0800 (PST) From: "National Centre for Sustainability (Yves Bajard)" Subject: Thought Experiment: THE DEEPEST ECOLOGY MAJOR DOCUMENT At 11:25 20/11/96 -0700, John McClelland wrote: >THOUGHT EXPERIEMNT: THE DEEPEST ECOLOGY In 100 words or less, >spontaneously and freshly describe the deepest, truest, most >irrefutable "Ecology" you can imagine and would be willing to defend. My 100 words about deepest ecology: Forget any sense of superiority. Respect your context, be it animal (including humans), vegetal, mineral or artificial. Belong in that context. Do not pretend you own it. Don't mix mysticism or metaphysics with ecology. Live by a geological timescale, as part of a universe where everything interrelates. Look, listen, feel, dream and live. Do your darnedest, individually and in your communities not to impact the earth, water and air beyond what they can sustain, and to reconstitute what our species is squandering through carelessness and inadequate premises and vision. Manage yourself in your context. Don't try to manage the ecosphere. Yves Bajard National Centre for Sustainability For an insight into what we are doing, consult our Homepage at URL: http://www.islandnet.com/~ncfs/ncfs/homemenu.htm Mail address: 1 - 800 Gorge Road West, Victoria B.C. Canada V9A 1N9 Telephone (250) 480 5016 Fax: (250) 480 5261 e-mail: ncfs @ islandnet.com From Gusdz @ aol.com Wed Nov 20 15:50:21 1996 From: Gusdz @ aol.com Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 17:50:19 -0500 Subject: Buying Premises and Problems with Hughes Here in the Russian River country of Northern California the sun has managed occasionally peep out between our clouds. But the rains are supposed to return. The rains of the past days have knocked down many of summer's plants, but my winter garden is untouched, promising beauty and sustenance in the winter months to come. The weather is still conducive to sitting in front of my computer, reading the avalanche of postings from this fascinating seminar. I jump again into the fray. plop. Hughes argues the specific premises of Buddhism are different from those in other experiential practices which provide experiences of nonduality. Hughes uses this fact to discount my Pagan criticism of his and John McClellan's views. Green Dreams gives a good response to this kind of thinking, and I want to build on it a bit. There is a deeper step we can take. How can we tell which experience of nonduality is the most valid? John Hick's An Interpretation of Religion makes an interesting observation. (Hick is a liberal Christian, and therefore neither Pagan nor Buddhist, and so not necessarily predisposed towards either of us. Indeed, he doesn't mention modern Pagans.) Hick observes that Christian mystics generally have mystical experiences which fit Christian conceptions, Hindu mystics have experiences which fit Hindu preconceptions, and Buddhists have experiences which fit Buddhist preconceptions. Hence, even mystical experiences of nonduality, at least as soon as they are talked about, end up being colored by cultural and theological frameworks of interpretation. Under such circumstances, for Buddhists to say that their experience of nonduality is more accurate than those achieved by other spiritual paths is undemonstrable to the satisfaction of anyone but Buddhists. Such discussions are similar to talking theology with my Christian Fundamentalist brother. But this seminar was not presented to me as a debate among Buddhists. If it was, I would not have participated. As to minority and majority traditions in Buddhism, I guess that is a problem for Buddhists, not for me. My view of spirit is not based on majority vote. But I can say that the article I cited, "Saigyo and the Buddhist View of Nature" by William LaFleur in Callicott and Ames' Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought does not support Hughes' implication that we and only we among life forms are privileged beings. Nor did my own experience of nonduality. Hughes also says he did not read McClellan the way I did. As I missed out on the first part of the seminar, and admitted as much, I cannot say for sure what McClellan said then. But I did address the logic of the ensuing discussion, and of John McClellan's shorter piece as he presented it. Hughes argues that Deep Ecologists separate us from nature as alien interlopers whereas McClellan's views reintegrate us. This is a misreading of deep ecologists by Hughes or by both of them. First, what deep ecologists separate us from nature? Certainly not Arne Naess, who coined the term. Nor many others. But, second, neither are we all in one big glob without distinctions. The fundamental problem at a social level, I think, is that human institutions change with the speed of thought and persuasion, whereas natural processes work much more slowly. Combined with the rather short time horizons of human beings in general and our concern with acquiring power in various forms, this creates a powerful predisposition for taking consistently short term views with bad impacts on long run processes. There are ways of modifying this state of affairs, but the problem is intrinsic to our changing our actions primarily through thought rather than genetic means. We are natural beings who have become considerably decoupled from the natural processes in which we are embedded. This, I think, is one powerful source of the tension between human beings and nature. Modern society simply exaggerates this predisposition even further. I imagine there are deep ecologists who see human beings as nature's only error. There is little in the way of doctrinal conformity among those using the term. But certainly most leading figures among those who write about it are innocent of this charge. So in my view, the faulty perception by deep ecologists that Hughes says McClellan addresses is largely a straw man. Gus diZerega From ncfs @ islandnet.com Wed Nov 20 16:04:36 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 15:04:14 -0800 (PST) From: "National Centre for Sustainability (Yves Bajard)" Subject: Introduction and comments on John McClelland's paper MAJOR DOCUMENT To the members of the seminar: I have filed all the messages of these past two days on the theme of non-dual ecology in a special mailbox. I am awed by the number of Kilobytes they represent. I just don't know where I will get the time to read all these messages, and perhaps I should not, and rather address John McClelland's paper itself, from my perspective. First, a brief introduction (I see on the list a number of persons I "know" from other lists and exchanges, and apologize to them for the repeat. Name: Yves Bajard, age: 63 Occupation: 1. Grandfather of three delicious kids 2. cook at home and caretaker for my wife who works full time as a teacher seconded to the ministry of education in B.C. for another year, perhaps two. 3. Civil engineer (not practising now), geologist, specialist in information management on all aspects of human activities and nature in critical river basins, 4. Currently, secretary and founding member of a small NGO based in Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, gloriously called the National Centre for Sustainability, and focusing with its two-score members and sympathizers, on education toward sustainability (in its strictest sense). 5. "in my free time", "consultant, i.e unemployed professional, which explains my occupation as a cook ( I love good cooking..) 6. Black sheep with many institutions, public and private, because I proposed long before it became conceivable, comprehensive systems for the joint management by all parties involved in or affected by activities in critical river basins. I learned the hard way that information was not a common base to make reasonable decisions, but a weapon in the hands of the ones to control the others.. 7. Not discouraged but fighting on for our common survival, whatever are the remaining chances. 8. Agnostic or atheist, but well read in religious books (Bible, Koran, etc..) 9. still smiling, and reasonably optimistic, in spite of a relatively objective assessment of the crisis created by the growing gap between human activities and the resilience of its substrate (natural or artificial), and of the corresponding imminent risks My views about John McClelland's paper: 1. The sentience of artifacts is to me a strange concept, not so much because it may be at odds with reality, (it may also correspond to reality, but I do not see any way in which I could ask a Caterpillar tractor how it feels when I kick its side to take away the mud from my boots...) but because I fail to see the relevance to the present incompatibility between human endeavour and nature's resilience. This incompatibility seems to me a problem of some importance, because it conditions our future and that of many other species. The sentience of things we built with our technology lacks practical applications to resolve the issue mentioned above.. 2. I must be a complete ignoramus about Deep Ecology, but from the anthologies I have read and consult from time to time (edited by George Sessions and by Alan Drengson and Yuichui Inoue) and in the papers I read in The Trumpeter, I have not seen this qualification of technology as an evil force... What I read by Arne Naess, George Sessions et al, does not qualify technology as evil. My image of Deep-ecology is that of the Apron by Arne Naess, or a similar diagram by David Rothenberg, which can be summed up as follows: people start from a variety of personal philosophies, and by different manners (for Arne Naess, the search of the self in his ecosophy T), converge on a platform in 8 points (reduced to 7 by David Rothenberg), then strive to implement it. There is fairly little mysticism in all that, which does not forbid anybody to reach deep ecology platform through mysticism. For reference, here is the platform (most recent update by Arne Naess): (1). Each individual and all life on Earth has value in itself. This includes cultural life forms. These values are independent of usefulness for human beings. (2). The life forms unfolds in mutuality, with life quality as basis for relationships and civilisation. Diversity and richness of life forms are essential for the unfoldment of these values. (3). Human beings are unique life forms. With their ability both to create and to destroy, they have a corresponding responsibility for life on Earth. (4). It is possible and desirable, with respect for all individuals and cultures, to work for a long term decrease of the number of humans on Earth. (5). At present, human interference in the basis of life on Earth is so extensive that it threatens the existence of life itself. (6). A new politics is possible and desirable. A society with quality of life can be built on dialogue and an extended view of the human being, on cooperation and carefulness with the resources of Earth. (7). It is necessary to choose values in direction of life quality, rather than in direction of ever-increasing standard of living. (8). These points serve to awaken for an extended care for fellow human beings and all life on Earth. The responsibility for the necessary changes lies with each one of us. I do not see anywhere a mention of technology, or even of good and evil. There is no value judgement in the platform, but more something like policy objectives... Therefore in my opinion, the starting point of John McClelland's reasoning is misdirected, or invalid. Attributing to deep-ecologists a hatred of out-of control technology and comparing it with the wild fear which uncontrolled nature triggered in our ancestors, is difficult to justify. I would think that what adepts of deep-ecology would most likely resent, is the lack of control of technology by humans, rather than the technology itself..This in turn can be compared to the attribution of the responsibility of natural catastrophes to the Devil in old superstitions.. I do not buy the attribution by John McClelland of a dualistic view to the adepts of deep- ecology. The philosophy itself does not specify good or bad. This does not exclude that some deep-ecologists do attribute labels of good to nature and evil to human impacts on nature. But this is also true for people who have not relations with D-E.. Therefore, what is the point? 3. I am really ill at ease with the unqualified and undocumented bulk-packaging of all contributors to the deep-ecology philosophy into a garbage box. I have not read Nicholson and Rosen, Lovelock or Thomas Berry on this subject, but if they express the ethical points and value judgement John attributes to them, these positions belong to them and are not necessarily an expression of the D-E philosophy. The Gaia movement, as per Lovelock, is different from D-E, in that it places considerable mysticism in the pantheism associated with Gaia. I do not know who are the 27 authors John McClelland refers to, but I know of a good half dozen theoreticians of D-E who do not share the view you attribute to the D-E movement. 4. Nor do I buy the interpretation the author makes of biocentrism and of anthopocentrism. These are unjustified cartoons of otherwise justified positions.. John McClelland's polemic and somewhat deprecatory tone when he writes about the D-E philosophy does not reinforce his position. In particular, the paragraph on Page 2, where he ridicules biocentrism, as opposed to anthropocentrism is difficult to qualify. Biocentrism, to me is a philosophical interpretation of the fact that homo sapiens is no more no less than another animal species on Earth, with its characteristics, and an exceptional ability to tame other animals, plants, and inanimate objects and matter. Anthropocentrism is another philosophy, based on the religious (monotheistic belief that homo sapiens is the pinnacle of carbon-based life, and has received from God the mandate of taking care of the wellbeing of the other forms of life on Earth (which he distorted into straight ownership for immediate enjoyment by the powerful members of the species). 5. Although I heard and will hear loud cries of disagreement with me on the subject, I do not agree at all with the qualification of biology as negentropic. Life, however long it has existed on Earth, and however diversified it has become with time, is absolutely not a challenge to the second law of thermodynamics. This law is correct and applies everywhere to closed systems. Living forms have operated as open systems as long as they did not hit limits to their expansion. They have operated as open systems within the closed system which is the Earth by feeding their growth and development on other species, minerals, water, air, etc.., and at the expense of their integrity. This is quite normal. By compressing the limits of the domain within which the sources of its existence operated, life has reduced their lifespan, and precipitated the growth of their entropy. Now that life, and in particular one species, Homo sapiens, has reached its limits, it has to function in a closed system, back to a steady gain in entropy, because it cannot replenish any longer its energy and re-order it at the expense of external supplies. What, then remains of the nondual ecology argument presented by John McClelland if his bases are as flimsy as they seem to be? Not that I don't agree with nondualism.. In many ways, biocentrism is an affirmation of nondualism. Therefore, where does John McClelland want to drive us? To mysticism and Buddhism adapted to the jargon of present generation? 6. The repetitive use of sentences such as "Those systems are build out of and on top of and into each other in endless shells of interdependent co-arising fields" represents a confusing way to state that in the evolution of carbon-based life toward greater sophistication of structures new structures develop from past structures and interrelate in space and time. 7. The logic of assimilating the replicating powers of the genetic message in the DNA and that of human memes (especially when applied to the invention of technical artifacts which may or may not be sentient (no difference to me in reality)) is disputable. There is a difference in dimension, both in time and in effect. Has John visited places which had been occupied by communities during decades and centuries, and where carbon-based non-human life (aka nature) had taken over? I would contend that as soon as humans leave the scene, the technical replicators they invented will cease to operate in a matter of months, perhaps a few years, but no longer. How long has the DNA replicating process existed without any need for outside inputs such as the human exclusive input to technological replicators. 8. I have read the entire paper, and really wonder. John must be living in a city, with lots of concrete, asphalt, steel, plastics and very little carbon-based nature around. I wonder also if John has examined solid research such as the one carried out by Peter Vitousek, Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Pamela Matson on the human appropriation of Net Primary Production by the Sun on Earth, and whose results were published in Bioscience in 1986. Does he not enjoy life, that he is so resigned to the demise of our civilization by our own carelessness and stupidity, and propose mystical reasoning treating all non Buddhists (according to his interpretation of Buddhism) as silly idiots? I agree that the situation is critical as to our common future. I also want to keep on existing and allow other sentien beings (human or not) to keep on doing so until they die their natural death. I want this to ahppen under a more reasonable and sustainable form. I am not sure that it si possible, or that the cost of shifting from current course to another, safer path, will not be terribly costly in capital, resources, biological species, and human suffering and death. Yet, faced with the choice between on the one hand, pessimistic inaction and refuge in mental constructs of disputable value with a religious proselytic undertones, and on the other, reasoned, logical and persistent action to avoid the materialization of the risk we are all incurring and which is mainly of our own doing, I have chose the second. Very clearly and determinedly, without letting my angst and fear take the better of my determination. Because I am human a much as anybody, subject to doubts, to weaknesses, pains and sufferings and hope, not encesarily rational. Whatever the result of this discussion, which I am afraid I am going to leave soon, I want my grand children to have a chance to live, and the grandchildren and children of all my fellow humans to also have a chance to live, decently, and happily. Period. All the rest is literature. Best regards, Yves Bajard. National Centre for Sustainability For an insight into what we are doing, consult our Homepage at URL: http://www.islandnet.com/~ncfs/ncfs/homemenu.htm Mail address: 1 - 800 Gorge Road West, Victoria B.C. Canada V9A 1N9 Telephone (250) 480 5016 Fax: (250) 480 5261 e-mail: ncfs @ islandnet.com From rcoon @ carroll1.cc.edu Wed Nov 20 18:11:53 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 20:16:35 +0000 From: Rich Coon Subject: TO FIGHT, CRY & BOW AT SAME TIME References: MAJOR DOCUMENT i liked your response (to fight,cry & bow) the most of anything you have posted to date. It showed me something i wasn't sure was there up to this point -- emotion, someone who gives a damn, someone willing to act in the real world vs intellectualize about it. BUT, it still doesn't convince me that a mach., or as some have put it "a screw driver" has an evolutionary "life" unto itself. Respect tech., yes, but that seems to me to be quite dif. than much of the connotation i have destilled from your paper and other posts. Maybe this will further clear things up for me -- at least it will help clarify where you stand re acting in the world. What do you feel are the implications of holding a stance such the one you propose in your paper -- be down to earth here please, i'm not looking for a well versed rhetoric or diatribe here just straight talk. Talk to me as if i'm an eight grader and you are telling me what you think we need to do now, here, in this world. What do you think we should do? How do you see this effecting the way real people live their real live? Green Dreams, r.c. From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Wed Nov 20 18:26:33 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 18:26:27 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: More on Bowing, Civilization & Technology MAJOR DOCUMENT -- We Americans & Westerners in general don't like to bow. We call it kow-towing, or groveling, and feel it means a loss of personal power. We would like to think of everything as smaller than we are, less powerful, less important. Bowing threatens our independence and authority. We won't even bow to the earth or sky. We're so tough we won't even bow to death, but order our Doctors to chase it away. When death comes in the end, unless we're over 90, we consider it not something natural, but an accident, a failure of medicine somehow. Above all, we refuse to bow to Technology, or its creation, Civilization. This is a mistake, because Civilization today completely and utterly rules this planet. -- Civilization has, in the last 10,000 years, become the dominant lifeform and lifeforce, sweeping everything else aside before its immense evolutionary momentum. Consider its pitiless march across the landscapes and creatures of this planet. Has it ever spared those who stood in its path, slowed or turned aside its inexorable advance? Consider the fate of native peoples on every continent, consider the forests and wild animals of Europe, Central Asia, China and Japan, all gone. Consider our own buffalo, grizzly bears, wolves, the ancient forests of the North East, mid-West, north West, the tall grass prairies, Indian peoples, gone, banished from their natural state, kept now in tiny reservations and national parks. I think it is time we acknowledge this force we are up against, and bow to it. -- We humans like to think of technology as our toy, our plaything. We assume we have complete control over it, and argue among ourselves how best to use it. We don't realize that we are the sorcerer's apprentice, and this Toy has slipped out of our control, and now rules the planet. *We* have become *its* plaything. -- What do you do when you finally meet death face to face? You bow. What do you do when you think you *might* be meeting death? You bow, just in case. -- In presenting the case for the power of Technology, I sometimes feel like Chief Red Cloud, when he realized that the White Men were overwhelmingly powerful, and could not be stopped. It's not that he liked this situation, but rather realized the immense evolutionary momentum, vast resources, and endless numbers of Western Civilization. He told his people to stop fighting, and try to learn to live with a force that probably would try to absorb or destroy them completely. This was a subtle, complex perception that was very difficult to communicate. Usually people are more comfortable either hating or loving something. But trying to learn to live with something you may dislike, and which is trying to destroy you and all that you love, that's a really complex and confusing problem. I think that is what deep ecologists are facing today. Deep ecologists seem to want to stand in opposition to Technology. Is that possible? I doubt it. So then what sort of relationship do we seek with this force, the Civilization that will probably try to finish the job of absorbing or destroying all wild biologies? I'm not sure. The first thing is to bow deeply, sadly, gazing with clear and open eyes. Then see. Please help me understand what comes after this. I don't know. From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Wed Nov 20 21:54:20 1996 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 21:54:17 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: Meet The Moderator Has anyone gone to the Seminars On Line web page and met the Moderator of this entire discussion? [December... The Moderator is still there, on the web page you are getting these Proceedings from. ThereŐs still time for a Personal Interview!] Go to http://csf.Colorado.EDU/sol/nondual-ecology/ and click on Meet the Moderator. Consult with him. I would love to know what he has to say to various people. Every interview is different. This is an extremely sophisticated web site, allowing a fully interactive exchange. Let's bring this presence into our discussion. John McClellan From jrmiln @ globalnet.co.uk Thu Nov 21 07:18:41 1996 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 14:20:59 GMT From: Joseph Milne Subject: More on Bowing, Civilization & Technology MAJOR DOCUMENT John has suggested today that technology has created civilisation. Such a suggestion needs to be carefully elaborated before we know what it might mean. from the discussion on this seminar to date it is evident that we have not even reached an understanding of what technology actually is, let alone what it may have produced or may produce. There is a tendency in recent thinking to regard practically everything in technological terms. For example the social sciences are now analysing society in terms of technological mechanisms. I would suggest that, at best, such a mode of thinking can only be metaphorical. I am concerned, however, that the metaphor is now being taken as literal. This means that the technological paradigm is being taken as a *key* to how all things work. Taken this way it is a classic instance of empirical reductionism, and I wish to suggest that it is this type of reductionism that is creating our modern problems and also many of the confusions in our present discussion. I would wish to suggested that the causal order is the other way round to the one John has suggested. It is civilisation that has created technology. Technology is an aspect of human civilisation, not is cause or its defining feature. This problem of reductionism is occurring also in our use of the term 'nondual'. The nondual grasp of reality, as presented in Buddhism and especially in Advaita Vedanta, is not a view that simply includes the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly and all such other pairs. It is a view known only to the enlightened and it cannot serve as an intellectual paradigm of nature, society or the universe. Advaita does not say the universe is nondual, it says Reality is nondual. But since this knowledge is beyond mind, it cannot be represented intellectually or used as an intellectual construct with which to analyse the world. Strictly speaking, the ecosystem is a plurality, not a nonduality. It may indeed be a holistic or unified plurality, but it is not a nonduality. Nonduality cannot be applied to perceptions or conceptions or to models of the world. It is therefore misleading in the context of this discussion. We are confronted with a double problem here. On the one hand, John is suggesting that we make ecology into a kind of religion, while on the other hand it is being suggested that science (of which ecology is a branch) be taken as a model of the universe. It seems to me that both these moves are erroneous. If religion involves coming into a natural relation to the whole of reality, then it need not pick out ecology as a special concern because it would already be spoken for. On the other hand, if scientific investigation provided us with the keys to understanding how to act appropriately in relation to the whole of reality, then ecology would not need to be a special case here either. Science would already be ecological. In short, religion and science would already converge and there would be no need here to discuss the question as to whether technology was sacred or not. Science would already be sacred and practised in a sacred way, and religion would already be scientific and practised in a scientific way. But this is not the case and cannot be the case because (a) the sciences deal with the plurality of the universe and the mechanisms involved in the processes and structures open to empirical investigation and (b) because religion deals with the call beyond plurality to ultimate truth and meaning. The sciences, by definition, observe only a certain strata of existent things and so cannot, by itself, make judgements on matters outside its scope or remit. It cannot, for example, deal with values and it cannot serve as a basis for making values. A hammer cannot tell us whether or not we should bang a nail home. So likewise, it cannot tell us what do about suffering, population, pollution or poverty. It is the supposition that scientific facts imply any course of action that is a major problem in ecological or environmental thinking. The sciences may well bring facts to our notice, but how we are to take action in relation to them calls for an entirely different mode of understanding. And here I do not think a religious cosmology, such as nondualism or any other such as pantheism, emanationism, atheism or creationism, can indicate of themselves what course of action ought to be taken. Simply to decide to regard the universe as sacred or divine or even as merely material or biological, does not provide a basis for decision either. All these paradigms are simply structural models or mental constructs, like maps or circuit diagrams, but they cannot tell us what values to apply in their use. So the problem seems to me that 'ecology' is presenting us with difficulties because it is only a map of the world, not a value system or a philosophy. What is needed, it seems to me, is a philosophical way of reflection on the presentations of ecological findings to our attention. Some process of reflection is required to mediate between what we see and what we ought to do. Our difficulty seems to be that we jump simply from the scientific model to the sacred model - from the findings of scientific investigations of the plural to a model of nonduality - supposing this jump indicates a course of action. I fear it does not. It is simply comparing two paradigms of reality, not facts with a possible course of action. I am not suggestion that our discourse is therefore futile! I am simply wishing to home in on the nature of the problematic we are confronted with. In a way I am saying we are tending to confusion becauase we are trying to answer the big questions first without slowing down to clearly see the real nature of the problem we are addressing, which is a more modest task yet one that requires great care. The problem itself is what reality is presenting us with, and so the problem itself has to be taken on in all its complexity and subtlety and approached in a reverent way. We may, so to speak, begin with a bow to the problem and try to see where it itself is leading us with its own intelligence. Joseph Milne __________________________________________ Joseph Milne Department of Theology & Religious Studies University of Kent at Canterbury Canterbury Kent CT2 7NY U. K. __________________________________________ From dlachape @ ptialaska.net Thu Nov 21 08:30:14 1996 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 05:41:40 +0000 From: David Lachapelle Reply-To: dlachape @ ptialaska.net Subject: sutras III MAJOR DOCUMENT Greetings, The arctic high still holds to the north. Yesterday morning a lenticular cloud, (very rare for this area) was sailing down the Taku river channel towards Stevens Passage. The rising sun, (which takes its pleasant time in the north coutnry) bathed the mountain formed breath of sea vapor in gold with a crimsom edge. The ground is beginning to freeze and the dried leaves of autumn are dessicated by = the chilled wind. A local motel was held up last night. (hold ups are rare in Juneau because we are land locked and its not really a smart idea to leave your get away car running at the edge of nowhere with nowhere to go).... When an English Sailing ship visited a south seas island the boat dropped anchor in a bay and they lowered the row boats and went to shore. Upon meeting the natives a discussion ensued and the natives pointed to the row boats and asked if they had come across the open sea in them. The Sailors pointed to the large ship in the bay and said, "No we came in that vessel." = The natives replied, = "We can't see any boat out there." So they rowed the natives out and had them climb aboard. Only then were the natives able to see the boat. World War I opened with the much celebrated stalemate on the Western Front. For nearly four more years the generals and military technicians insisted on throwing human waves at machine gun nests. Nine million deaths later it dawned on the military aristocracy that you might need to up your own technology to match that of your enemy. microtubules are the thread like structure which supports the structure of our cells and are intimately involved in cell mitosis. There is a particular brand of anesthetic which blocks the calcium flow along the microtubules. Consciousness is disconnected from the body at that time. How deep is our physical ecology? Mystical experiences are a state specific event. i.e. the nervous system and energy matrix of the perceiver must be at or above the level of phenomenon perceived. When I was a child I had the good fortune to spend each summer on a glacier in the Olympic National Park. ( It helps to have a father funded by the National Science Foundation) The cathedral of my senses extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Cascade range and north to the Coast Range in B.C. The fabric of that experience was my most profound understanding of deep ecology. And I, Homo Sapien that I am, delighted in wreaking havoc on my local cliff side by throwing boulders of all conceivable sizes down towards the icefalls below.I spent several summers working on one particularly large boulder, (we're talking room size here). The day that boulder went was one of my first intimations that actions in this here Nirmanakaya can propel one towards stabilizing a view of the Dharmakaya. I would submit to the melting crucible of our discussion that mystical experience is an extension of the ecological matrix which bathes our senses and our consciousness each precious breath of our existence. Just because we don't see the ship doesn't mean its not there. As I am propelled through the many views of this discussion I struck by the overwhelming sense of passion which emerges. No matter what compass point the voices speak from the anchor of the content is a magnificent cry in the darkness of a world which is all too real in its destruction. I heartened to find so many souls that are caring enough to forge with the craft of words ships of many sails to ply the sea of mutual love for this earth. A salute to John for casting the first stone in the pool of this collected wonder and for his bravery in riding the waves which constantly reflect so many different understandings. What you need to know about a slipstream is that the shape of the vessel determines the nature of the turbulence. When you=92re flying, everything= that=92s going forward leaves something behind itself as a memory, a trai= l or an understanding. Many things are consumed in order that flight may be possible. This is true in airplanes, but very much more so in human beings. From bbarnum @ polaristel.net Thu Nov 21 09:56:11 1996 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 10:57:24 -0600 From: bbarnum @ polaristel.net (Betsy Barnum) Subject: whatever is, is as it should be MAJOR DOCUMENT Hello, discussion group. As I walked the two blocks to my neighborhood coffee shop/cafe this morning for a cup and a bite and a pleasant place to read a while, it was just beginning to snow (later to turn to sleet, if predictions hold true). Suddenly I became aware of a multitude of bird voices all chirping, squawking, and singing together in several trees. It sounded like hundreds of birds, and of at least several different kinds. I stopped to listen and try to spot the cause of the ruckus. I couldn't tell, but it was delightful to stand in the falling snow, listening to the winged ones and knowing that, even in the middle of concrete and asphalt, they are still here. John asked about whether we see the world as "sacred" or as divided into good and bad, or sacred and profane, "zones." I have a somewhat difference response, as I'm not ready to say "yes" to either of those possibilities. But I can go this far, and I'm really just restating in my own way an idea put forth by many in this discussion: It is essential that we as deep ecologists, environmentalists, spiritual seekers and whatever else we are, recognize that what *is*, is. Just that. Whether or not we want to include machines in the realm of "sentient beings," whether we want to take a particularly Buddhist approach or a different spiritual perspective, whether or not we perceive that there is still time to turn away from our self-destructive course--we must start from a position of recognizing and honoring what *is*. I have been pondering John's use of the word "perfect" to describe the entire reality that is here today, explicitly including the things and conditions that cause suffering, such as famine, drugs, television, unemployment, clearcut forests and so on. We tend to think of the word "perfect" as meaning "it couldn't get any better." The term contains a value judgment. But if we think of it as meaning "complete in itself," without the value judgment--"it couldn't be any more itself"--then it is deeply correct to say that the world as it is right now is perfect. Does this mean the same as "sacred?" Sacred usually implies a value judgment, unless I look at it differently than I am used to (i.e. in contradistinction to "profane," which also carries a heavy load of value-meaning.) To say something is "sacred" because it exists is not a dictionary meaning of the word, but it is one I'd like to add, at least in terms of the natural world. It is essential to *honor* the perfectness of what is, just as it is essential for an individual to recognize and honor every aspect of herself, or every self within her self, even the ones that she doesn't like or is afraid of. As individuals, and as a culture, we European Westerners have spent many centuries projecting our own "dark side" onto others, including the entire natural world (and now the technological world?). This kind of projection happens when thinking is dualistic, when we are constantly making distinctions and value judgments and placing ourselves in opposition to other beings. When thinking is open and inclusive, it recognizes everything that is--not calling it "good," nor "bad," but simply seeing it and validating its existence. I'm going to risk sharing a story here that some may find embarrassing or even silly--but it is to me an illustration of the importance of accepting what is. When I was a young person I was plagued with severe acne. After trying many allopathic treatments, mostly a variety of drugs, I turned to some alternative methods and found myself in a biofeedback clinic (this was about 20 years ago). Among other things I learned there, was this: If I consciously, deliberately and out loud voiced acceptance of each blemish, every day, they actually went away faster than if I actively hated them or refused to look at them. Learning to look at myself in a mirror every morning, point to each inflamed area and say, "This is supposed to be here," of "this is just as it should be," was very difficult--and now, so many years later, it seems a bit silly even to me. Yet it was a great lesson in accepting *all* of what makes up "me." How does this relate to our struggle with ecosphere destruction and the suffering of sentient beings? I'm not sure I can go so far as to look at the destructive forces and the suffering they cause and say, "This is all supposed to be here." And yet, at some level, as John said, if it *is* here, then it is supposed to be here. To me, it isn't the same as saying, "Famine, globalizing corporations, depleted fisheries and so on are *good*"--just that they are what they are; and refusing to recognize that can reduce or even take away our ability to be make any changes for the better. Last summer I heard Joanna Macy speak at the summer training on deep ecology at Whidbey Island. She stressed over and over how important it is that we not demonize those people or institutions we see as causing the destruction and the suffering. It's very easy to look at, say, Charles Hurwitz, or pornography, or Texaco, and feel contempt, anger, even fear. We tend to think--at least I do--that this is the "normal" human way to react to such things. Deeper reflection, however, reveals that there is another place to go with those feelings, a place of integration which, while it may require discipline (I still maintain anything other than a dualistic thought pattern is very difficult for Western-trained minds), actually releases energy for the work of reducing suffering and engendering healing. This doesn't mean we *don't* feel the strong emotions that come when we see what is happening to the Earth and to people everywhere--it is essential to allow ourselves to feel those feelings, and not to get hung up there. And moving past the tendency to make judgments about people and situations has several good results. One, it saves precious time and energy that would be squandered on blame and continual focus on how bad everything is. Two, it reminds us that projecting our own rapaciousness and capacity for destruction onto these people and institutions does not make us innocent. There is no us-them--there is only us, as John also said. Three, only when we accept *all* of ourselves, including our destructive impulses, both as individuals and as a culture, can we reach a place of nonattachment, where the deep well of compassion is found. Blessings, Betsy +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ One speaks of living on the earth but in truth life is held within the earth. An atmosphere woven from life encircles the planet. Every movement, every breath, every response, the least thought is shaped to the curve of this mass. Even time and space bend to it. Like a child in a womb, all we know exists inside this outer body. And all is dependent on it. Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From michaelz @ mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu Thu Nov 21 11:06:21 1996 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 12:32:03 -0600 From: michaelz @ mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu (Michael Zimmerman) Subject: Author Answers His Mail !?! MAJOR DOCUMENT I'm sitting in front of my computer here at Tulane U. in New Orleans. My window affords a view of the lawn with trees and shrubs. The sun shines, but it is very muggy==about 90% humidity (or more!) and about 75 degrees. Excellent weather for the flu and various other ailments that hit us around here when the fronts move in and out, and often get stalled as they slam into the warm Gulf of Mexico. The discussion so far has been overwhelming--I can't keep up with all the postings, though I examine each one as much as I have time to do so. What strikes me above all is the extraordinary diversity of perspectives. All the participants care about what is going on--ecological devastation caused, in part, by modern technology and vast human populations. But each participant comes to the issues from his or her own perspectives, a fact underscored by the reports about where people are physically located--what's the weather like in Perth, in Boulder, in Boston? Reminds me of the importance of the theme of "humility" that has been running through the discussion. Each of us has a perspective, a point of view. The perspective is not "true," in the sense of revealing any absolute truth, even though it may seem like "Truth" to any one of us at any given time. Very difficult to remember this, especially when locked in a debate about something about which one cares deeply. My own perspective continues to shift. I recall how astounded I was more than twenty years ago to put on the lenses of Marxism, and suddenly to discover the complex phenomena associated with "class structure." Likewise, some years later when I put on the theoretical lenses of feminism, how startled I was to see popping into being all sorts of patriarchal structures that had once been hidden from view. Buddhism--another startling perspective. Language plays the crucial role here, and is what in fact distinguishes humans from many other kinds of beings (I'm quite open to the possibility that whales and dolphins, higher primates, Klingons, etc., etc. have powerful languages of their own). Language, as Heidegger said, "lets things be," in the sense of disclosing them in a way that eyesight or hearing alone cannot do. Language is not something "controlled" by human beings. Notice the next time that you blurt something out that you shouldn't have said. Try shutting up the "voice in your head," as it goads you about this or that. The human conversation is far vaster and older than any one of us, or than any particular culture. This conversation--religion, science, technology, ecology, economy--generates the linguistic distinctions in the light of which all sorts of phenomena can manifest themselves and thus "be." The current conversation about Buddhism and deep ecology is complex, because--as has been pointed out--there are many different versions of Buddhism and deep ecology. Yet from the complex conversation distinctions arise that will prove useful for many of us, as each of us--in our own limited ways--attempt to curb the excesses of industrial modernity while learning to celebrate what is astonishing about it, attempt to preserve species diversity while not turning a blind eye to the violent character of life in the wild. Attempting to "be" nondually involves coming from a place of non-attachment. But such non-attachment is precisely what allows the Bodhisattva's compassion to do its work most effectively. I recall those extraordinary Tibetan Buddhist thankas, extraordinary paintings in which a particular delusion-destroying entity is represented with large fangs, carrying a big sword, and dangling hundreds of bloody skulls around his neck as if they were pearls. Life and death are deepy intertwined, as my fify years teach me ever more profoundly. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same phenomenon. Each of us makes judgments based on what we think should be protected and what we think should be created. Each of us can also become aware of the perspectival nature of such judgment, i.e., of the fact that such judgment is limited. This fact, if understood adequately, is what leads us to explore the perspectives adopted by other people. These perspectives allow a broader and deeper apprehension of the phenomenal display. Such discovery invites less clinging to my own perspective--I discover that I can live without it! The sun continues to rise, even if I no longer believe in the version of God that I had in my Catholic youth, and even though my perspective on modern technology and deep ecology has changed over the years. I honor and respect all of you for sharing your perspectives with me and with the rest of us. You are teaching me/us how to dance more lightly and more compassionately, as we find our ways through life. Namaste, Michael Michael E. Zimmerman Department of Philosophy Tulane University New Orleans, LA 70118 504-862-3391 504-862-8714 (fax) michaelz @ mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Thu Nov 21 12:26:19 1996 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 12:26:13 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: Latest Results: THE DEEPEST ECOLOGY THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: THE DEEPEST ECOLOGY In 100 words or less, spontaneously and freshly describe the deepest, truest, most irrefutable "Ecology" you can imagine and would be willing to defend. Send them to me or to the List, with the Subject heading The Deepest Ecology. Everyday I will post the "Latest Results", most recent and most excellent submissions loosely gathered at the top, not sorted too finely as yet. This is what I picked up this morning. It's a good start. Keep them coming. With 225+ subscribers, I am looking for at least 100 of these statements. Thanks... John McClellan _________________________________________ (Note: I think this first entry is the strongest statement so far on an authentic practice of living in this world. After we establish some sort of view, to each his/her own of course, the next thing is to find a way to practice it, to live it. What about this one? J. McC) My 100 words about deepest ecology: > > Forget any sense of superiority. Respect your context, be it animal > (including humans), vegetal, mineral or artificial. Belong in that context. > Do not pretend you own it. Don't mix mysticism or metaphysics with ecology. > Live by a geological timescale, as part of a universe where everything > interrelates. Look, listen, feel, dream and live. Do your darnedest, > individually and in your communities not to impact the earth, water and air > beyond what they can sustain, and to reconstitute what our species is > squandering through carelessness and inadequate premises and vision. Manage > yourself in your context. Don't try to manage the ecosphere. > > > Yves Bajard > National Centre for Sustainability > For an insight into what we are doing, consult our Homepage at URL: > http://www.islandnet.com/~ncfs/ncfs/homemenu.htm > Mail address: 1 - 800 Gorge Road West, Victoria B.C. Canada V9A 1N9 > Telephone (250) 480 5016 Fax: (250) 480 5261 e-mail: ncfs @ islandnet.com ______________________________________________ -- All existence is marked by Emptiness, Luminosity, and Compassion. Emptiness: All things arise from nothingness and have no inherent abiding personal self. Luminosity: All things dweell in and are made of light, and are extremely beautiful to behold. Compassion: All things arise in, are made out of, and dwell in Love. -- A passionate, loving Lifeforce imbues every particle and energy field in this universe, and is built into the fabric of timespace itself. From this all things arise from the background Void, in the beginning and also afresh in each moment. This Lifeforce is Awake, and has a personal, loving Intention. You can talk to It. -- All things are the direct and immediate expression of this Lifeforce, and are therefore holy, sacred, and primordially pure. All things, whether they are good for us, bad for us, or indifferent to us. Because of this, we should walk through this world with the greatest reverence and respect for what arises around us. -- We are of course invited to take care of ourselves, our homelands and planet, and others to the best of our ability. The only requirement for effective, caring action of this kind, is that it be done out of respect and love for all things, good and bad. Action based on respect and acknowledgemnt of universal Sacred Being is stronger than action based on likes and dislikes. John McClellan ________________________________________ Breath. All beings breathe. Humans breath in a recognizable way, insects in a less appreciable way; rocks and oceans breath in ways we call tides and rheidity; solar systems expand and contract in observeable ways; Universes breathe over vast amounts of time; electrons shift from one state to another in tiny, powerful inbreaths and outbreaths. As all beings breathe together in various ways and in different time frames and places, we form the one great breath of Life, an intricate, dynamic weave, interdependent, complete, musical, surprising. -Bruce Nygren ________________________________ My thoughts on deepest ecology would, first of all, have to be based on an economic community that has moved from a monetary bottom line to a human/earth/compassion based bottom line. Secondly, I see an earth on which the human population has decreased to a sustainable and stable level. Then and only then do I see a return to family, community and envirnmental values that are so important to human society. I see a resurgence of the beautiful dynamic of human interaction and of compassion for the world and community in which one abides. I see an earth on which human communities have formed and have come to know and understand the bioregions in which they reside. I see these communities living in absolute harmony and with appreciation for their bioregions. I see renewed support for the ecosystems native to each bioregion. I see food and shelter being native to and produced in the respective regions. I see an earth where technology is non-destructive and serves for the true betterment of humanity. I see communities and families that honor the earth and all the incredulous mystery that is ours to experience as each wondrous moment unfolds. I see human beings that have, as their prime goals, love and compassion for all about them, that live joyously in the light of the universe. These are, in my mind, fairly simple ideas that are pipe dreams at most. But they are mine and therefore valid ideas that are part of my reality. Ed Lehner, Iowa _____________________________________________ All is Resonance. Cheers, Claudia Robinson Physics Department Clemson University ______________________________________ One speaks of living on the earth but in truth life is held within the earth. An atmosphere woven from life encircles the planet. Every movement, every breath, every response, the least thought is shaped to the curve of this mass. Even time and space bend to it. Like a child in a womb, all we know exists inside this outer body. And all is dependent on it. Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life >From Betsy Barnum ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Life wants to be--wherever, whenever, however there is opportunity. Life, this dance of being/becoming, flings itself through the eons, across the galaxies, joyful and thrilling, scattered like seed, like a spray of light into every corner. Pulses, throbs, pushes always to *be* anew in ever-varying form, color, texture, movement. Existing beings--sacred and beautiful manifestations of life's exuberance--move with its beat, delighting in all of life's myriad expressions and co-creating in ways that open up new opportunities for life to flow in. This is the deepest ecology. Blessings, Betsy BARNUM _____________________________________ How 'bout in 1 word. Permaculture Eugene Monaco ______________________ I close my eyes and try to imagine the potential depth of deep ecology and immediately see the problem. I see people currently acting upon the basis of projected outcomes, which no one can possibly know, instead of upon their feelings, which can be experienced directly. Take no action? Nonsense! Act upon what we know, instead of what we think we know, and remain fully open to the possibilities inherent in unforeseen outcomes, guided by love and compassion. MoCtrLite ______________________ By The Deepest Possible True Ecology do you mean as it is, or as it should be? The greatest artists only express what they see, and leave us to draw our own conclusions (if any). Robin Faichney _______________________ Each encounter reveals a way: my new self the new being of the other and the ways among us and beyond. The forest, the city, the deer the bus are neither sacred nor valid -- but my lovers in whose embrace I find myself and who, therefore I wish to nurture. "Santipala (as instructed - without thinking too much) Stephen Evans ________________________________ From amcgowen @ hposl02.cup.hp.com Thu Nov 21 13:09:05 1996 In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 21 Nov 96 17:54:52 +1100." Date: Thu, 21 Nov 96 12:09:20 -0800 From: Alan McGowen Subject: Control Over Technology Hello, Bruce I would argue, we have no choice but to try to steer technology (and culture generally) towards sustainability, as hard as that may be. Ecosystems *cannot* adapt at the rates of cultural change, so the "coevolution" of human culture with the biosphete has to be largely a matter of cultural adaptation to essentially fixed biological limits. That is just life. And it means that, hard though it may be, there is no alternative to trying to manage technology for improved biological sustainability. But this is nothing new -- though the scale of the problem has never been as large as it is today. There is nothing more characteristically human than using culture, shaping culture, making culture, trying to influence culture -- this is the major way in which we secure fitness. Sustainable traditional agricultures are the outcome of people "controlling technology" for compatibility with natural ecosystem processes. People have been "controlling technology" for as long as we have had it -- not always successfully, of course. In fact, the idea that we ought to "bow down" to "technology" as some external, incomprehensible god strikes me as an abdication of our own humanity. We are the culture makers. If not us, then who? Of course, that doesn't mean that one can't "bow down" to particularly nice bits of innovation -- but then one is bowing to other people, to ingenuity, not to inevitability. And one can also bow to those whose personal efforts have prevented particularly nasty bits of innovation, such as the biologists who looked at Edward Teller et al. and said, "we aren't going to have analogous biological weapons programs". That was control of technology! So is the Endangered Species Act, or a carbon tax... The idea that technology is out of our control is a politically loaded idea. It suggests there is no point in having regulations or economic institutions that try to manage technology for the health of ecosystems: what will happen is whatever The God wills, not what we want. So why try? This is a position that will sit very well with those whose short-term profit depends on unsustainable technology. In the terminology of Paul and Anne Ehrlich's new book _Betrayal of Science and Reason_, it is a "brownlash" position. Now, I'm not saying that McClellan is in cahoots with Julian Simon or Greg Easterbrook, but brownlash views have been growing increasingly fashionable in some uncritical and scientifically ill-informed circles. Mention the human-wrought mass extinction, and these days someone is bound to argue that asteroid impacts put hair on Gaia's chest; that they are salutory episodes of progress towards the inevitable postbiological transcendence that will happen (very soon) when we are all downloaded into computers. Fed with Star Trek almost daily, people begin to find such claims plausible. The failure of science education is partly culpable, but we are up against a myth-making engine which, like all the myths human societies generate, bolsters the social status quo. So Bruce MacFarling is certainly right when he says that "changing what we know how to do is one of the hardest things". A large part of what makes it hard is that you have to let go of enculturation sources that feed you your mythic image of reality, which in our culture is the fantasy of progressive evolution towards eventual transcendence of biology. A very good recent book puncturing that progressibe myth is Stephan Jay Gould's _Full House_. Alan McGowen From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Thu Nov 21 15:43:45 1996 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 15:43:40 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: On What Do We Depend? -- A String of Thoughts: -- The traditional vision of deep ecology assumes the inherent self-worth of natural biologies. There is no doubt about this. By extension however, in addition to the "rights" that such self-worth implies, it is often assumed that human society needs and depends on the good health and diversity of biological systems. This is a foundation plank of conservation biology, and of all those who love the earth in its natural state. However, modern civilization behaves as though healthy naural biological systems were of little at least marginal interest. What in fact does today's techno-civilization really need to survive? The answer to this question will go far to predict our society's behavior toward the background biologies it rests on. My guess is that in the 20th-21st century, we need surprisingly little from natural or wild biologies. What's really essential for us? Strong industrial, technical and economic systems obviously. Some minimal good health in our biosystems, such as air you can breathe without filtration (it is scary to realize water is already filtered almost everywhere on the planet, and air is filtered in most big buildings and in places like Mexico City). Low enough levels of toxins and poisons so that disease and death levels are kept to acceptable rates. A few parks and and wildlife areas, recreation facilities, etc. A strong police and military to keep social and national inequalities from destabilizing society. Things modern civilization seems to think it can do without: Independent native peoples. Naturally evolving wild biologies Most wild plant, animal and insect species Social justice or equality Large blocks of natural ecosystems Water clean enough to drink or use directly, and in many places air. Our society is obviously making a big gamble on these questions. We deep ecologists think Society is wrong on many of its calls, but setting all question of value, or inherent worth aside, how far down do you think a powerful modern techno-civilization can actually go in stripping down the earth's natural systems? I am astonished at how far we've gone already without disaster. From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Thu Nov 21 15:56:13 1996 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 15:56:07 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: Deep Ecology Writing Why Serious Vegetarians Should Eat More Meat Or, Taking Full Responsibility for Being in This World There would seem to be little justification for eating meat. There's no nutritional need, it's hard on the earth and not that good for us, and the factory conditions in which we produce 'animal products' are so appalling they beggar description. But let us consider further. Not eating meat might be playing things too safe. The function of all our actions as human beings should be to deepen awareness and arouse compassion, for the liberation of all beings. But in my own experience, being a strict vegetarian seems to give rise to a subtle buffer between myself and the suffering world, shielding me from the very feelings I would most like to arouse. Vegetarianism is so "karmically correct" it can isolate us from the experience of other beings, from those mindless ogres who do eat meat, and from the poor meat products themselves. It's a plea of innocence-"Myself, I don't eat the stuff..." I must confess that many of the other "green" practices, like recycling, green voting, shopping, and money donations give me the same feeling. You don't get off that easy. Living in a society based on industrial strength meat production, we know what is happening to these animals, we are in on the game. History holds no greater horrors than those we have created today in our factory farms. Each one of us through our passive and active acceptance of this has a hand on the cage door, on the knife. Each of us is an accomplice in this epochal crime. But every creature under heaven makes its living this same way, causing harm to others, leaning on them for food, shelter, and recreation. All day long creatures are bumping into other creatures, squashing them, killing and eating and drinking, wearing and using them, walking and lying on them, destroying their homes. Nor is there any personal boundary to this karmic responsibility-it radiates through all existence, the actions of each one reflected in every jewel in Indra's net. A karmic debt "owed" by one is owed by all. Vegetarians owe as much as meat eaters, pacifists as much as fighters. There are no personal safe zones, no useful strategies for self-protection. Therefore, rather than seeking only to avoid causing harm, which is impossible, perhaps we should also be asking ourselves: What can one do with one's life to offset this "karmic expense", to repay the debt of harm that has inevitably accrued to our personal-universal account? No one would begrudge the Buddha his private operating expenses, his robe (monocultured cotton crops) and bowl (forest products) and daily rice (irrigated rice paddies), or the hecatomb of grasses, flowers and insects crushed under his many lotus seats. Through his awareness and compassion he took responsibility for his costs, and redeemed them. On our own level, we might strive to do the same. We could use our precious and expensive (to others) human life to acknowledge and repay the grandmotherly kindness and the sacrifice of all beings who have willingly or unwillingly surrendered their lives or territory so that we may live. When one is coming into a first awareness of the frightful suffering of our meat animals, being a vegetarian makes sense. Once this sensitivity is properly established however, some might wish to resume the eating of meat-out of compassion, to take further painful responsibility for the suffering of all beings. To arouse broken heart and knowing mind. Joshu Sazaki Roshi, Zen Master, was sitting at the end of a long table all by himself toward the end of his 81st birthday party, watching the flies-when he suddenly snatched one out of the air and killed it-just for the sake of practice, for the precision, speed, and beauty of it. This is the way he catches students; it is the practice of a Zen master, and he enjoys it. To a silent inquiry from a surprised student, he replied, "Die with the fly." So like this, die with your dish of meat, with everybody else's dishes of meat. Embrace the death of all creatures as though it were yours, as though you were directly responsible for it, which you are. Liberate them this way. Die a thousand deaths with all sentient beings, uncountable ceaseless deaths in this and all past present and future moments. Get bad broken heart forever for how we are forced to live. Cry whenever you see a well-fed North American. Cry whenever you remember what it has cost this world to put you in the seat of ease you enjoy today. In the Tibetan and American Indian traditions, meat is a sacrament-eating it is a gesture of sharing in the pain and pleasure of life, a way of taking responsibility for one's existence, bowing to the law of cause and effect, and an offering of compassion. There is of course no difference in principle between meat and vegetables in this regard. Dogen Zenji eats grains of rice with this same fearless mind. Willing to die with everything together. So how to turn this nice abstract theory into a vivid personal experience, to give it the sharp edge of real practice? What you're looking for is a high ratio of awareness to consumption. Killing it oneself is of course the best, but no one wants to do that anymore. Try this: go visit a factory farm or slaughter house; wherever you live there's one nearby. This is not a nutty thing to do. You just want to have a look at the animals on our society's farm, like in those Little Golden Books from the fifties, when the city boy goes out to the country to see where all those hams and apples come from. This is a charming story we all remember, with red barns, grandpas with pipes, autumn foliage, and friendly animals. Has it gotten so bad no one is allowed to even look anymore? All the more reason to go there yourself in person. Be wary of trespassing charges, but be sure to meet your animal products face to face. Talk to the animals in their cages. Hear their cries. Honor them; they greatly deserve it. Pray with them, for their lives, for your own life. They are dying so that we may live, suffering so that we may enjoy. What can we do with our lives to redeem this? All the buddhas will help us investigate this difficult situation. Unlimited sympathy with all sentient beings is the main point. Food is one of the things we use to arouse such a mind. For those who cannot bring themselves to eat meat, no need-vegetables are living beings too. Whatever one chooses to eat, it should help us to abandon hope of personal safety, and accept the bill for universal karma on our personal account. For particularly stubborn and intractable students, including serious vegetarians, this practice might require fresh dead meat. There's nothing like it to tenderize tough heart. From Gusdz @ aol.com Thu Nov 21 17:53:25 1996 From: Gusdz @ aol.com Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 19:53:23 -0500 Subject: Deep Ecology Writing I just tuned back in this discussion here in drizzly, damp, misty, northern California. I flashed my falshsession (a goddessend for us computer-naive AOL types), and lo! our discussion has turned to meat eating, compassion, and vegetarianism. And this time I find myself in deep agreement with John McClellan, a position I am happy to be in. His posting is immediately followed by one suggesting that if eating meat builds compassion, maybe we should just set our sights on some poor blighter and blow him away, further building our compassion. McClellan's critic, Jonathan Kandell, seems to find no basic difference between eating meat and killing office workers. I suppose for him it is a continuum. My favorite quick answer is that the most famous vegetarian of the 20th century was Adolf Hitler. But there is a more interesting issue here. John put it very well, I think, and his critic didn't address any of his points. So I will put similar points differently - from a Pagan point of view which seems to me in harmony with a Buddhist one. I do not defend the monstrosities of factory farms nor some of what passes for hunting these days. But what is objectionable is not the killing, it is the attitude with which and the way the killing is done. If carnivores had never existed, all that would exist on this fair planet would be blue green algae. Most of the pressure for evolution, so far as we know, comes from the fact that some beings eat other beings. If the world is sacred then predation serves a sacred purpose, even if some or all of us are not necessarily wise enough to figure out what it might be. The natural community exists and survives only because of predation. Being "part of the meal" as Gary Snyder puts it, seems to be one of the rules of embodiment. Trying to avoid being part of the meal is OK - so long as we realize that ultimately we will sustain others, as we have ourselves been sustained by others. I do not know of any community of office workers where one of its sustaining rules is murder. We exist in both communities, and others as well. We avoid a lot of confusion if we do not mix them up. Kandell's letter evidences something that has long perplexed me about certain kinds of vegetarians. The anger that to all appearances motivates them, their apparent disdain of people who see things differently, and their seeming refusal to consider that moral passion is not in itself a compelling argument. They talk language of kindness and compassion, but do not much evidence it in their encounters with others. Certainly many have attacked us deep eco types for our lack of agreement with their position. Here in northern California we have many organic farms. I buy almost exclusively from them and from organic markets what produce I do not raise myself. Gophers are a major pest in this area. Organic farmers as well as others have to use lethal means to protect their crops. I use the most humane I can think of under the circumstances. When vegetarians eat organic broccoli or carrots, they consume crops that were brought to their tables in part because innocent gophers and other critters were killed. I suppose a vegetarian farmer could dig barriers deeply into the borders of his fields to keep the critters out, but the barriers he installed, besides making it impossible to produce organic food at a price people can afford, would utilize metals and other substances which destroyed much life in the process of obtaining them from the earth. We cannot avoid bloody hands. All we can avoid is thoughtless actions surrounding the fact that to live, we must kill. A vegetarian might answer, so kill as little as possible. I am sympathetic. But applying this abstraction properly is not immediately obvious. Factory farming and meat eating are two different things. Consider an animal decently raised to yound adulthood under pleasant surroundings, and then killed for food. At one time this was often how meat animals were raised. Consider that in the wild most young animals never make it to young adulthood. They sustain coyotes, wolves, bears, hawks, mountain lions, foxes, and the like. In the north squirrels are a major predator of baby snowshoe hares! Is it all that obvious that protecting an animal until it reaches adulthood is worse than having it serve as food as a baby? I would also add that in my experience, plants are quite aware of what happens around them. They are anything but inert. Death is one of the mysteries of life. Coming to terms with it is something we Pagans, Buddhists, and others must all do, in one way or another. I consider it a sacrament, and the more deeply I penetrate into its mysterry, the more deeply I experience the unavoidable moral ambiguities of being a embodied being in a beautiful world which survives only through the presence of death. I eat meat. I give thanks to the spirit of the animals, and the plants, that I consume, and I give thanks to All That Is, without which we would not be. That is my way. Funny, it never prompted me to take up a gun and shoot somebody. Gus diZerega From MoCtrLite @ aol.com Thu Nov 21 18:37:20 1996 From: MoCtrLite @ aol.com Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 20:37:17 -0500 Subject: PERSPECTIVE MAJOR DOCUMENT SCENARIOS *Worst Case* Deep Ecology fails miserably and life on this planet becomes what some would call a living hell. Afterwards, our sun explodes into a supernova and, eventually, the universe collapses back into itself. *Best Case* Deep Ecology triumphs and life on this planet enjoys what some would call Paradise on earth. Afterwards, our sun explodes into a supernova and, eventually, the universe collapses back into itself. ROLLERCOASTER I rode on a rollercoaster this past summer. It was crammed full of people. During the ride, there was yelling, screaming, and laughter, all expressing an exuberant joy so contagious, I found myself laughing and enjoying the thrill. Then the rollercoaster stopped. I think we all knew it would. Enjoy the ride. From hollick @ cwr.uwa.edu.au Thu Nov 21 21:19:42 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 12:19:37 +0800 From: hollick @ cwr.uwa.edu.au (Malcolm Hollick) Subject: MAIN DOC-Technology, hope and other things MAJOR DOCUMENT Dear All The other day I came across an article by Donella Meadows in which she argued that the best thing we can do to save the world is slow down. I've been trying to do that for quite a while: to balance the pressures for action against the need for reflection and time to be. As a friend said as we ate our evening meal on the beach last night as the sun went down: "We aren't human DOINGS we're human BEINGS" All of which is by way of explanation and apology for the time since I last logged in to this seminar. It's taken me about 2 hours to read quickly through the mass of contributions. So much depth of thought and feeling. So much wisdom. And so much acceptance and deep listening to each other without anger and aggression creeping in as it so often does. I've been challenged and stimulated in so many ways. Thank you all a thousand times. One strand has particularly caught my attention, because it's close to my heart and interests. I've been interested in appropriate technology and the interactions of technology and society for many years - along with many other interests. Several years ago, I was involved with a coalition of community groups which organised a series of annual conferences here in Perth under the title "Pathways to the Future". They focused on the interlocking global problems of peace, development and environment. They were intended for the general community, but more particularly for senior high school students in order to help counter the despair and the resulting apathy and hedonistic consumerism. I see the same despair coming through in some of the contributions regarding control of technology, particularly in Robinson McClellan's view that it is unrealistic and idealistic to think we can reverse the imminent destruction. Maybe. But I, for one, don't think the situation is hopeless, and nor do I think we should go down without a fight. It's that warrior bit again. Santipala challenged me when I wrote: "We humans created our technology, are conscious of what we have done and are doing, and are capable of changing our technology so that it has different effects. I believe the availability of this conscious choice and power makes us responsible for our actions in a way that no other species is. For the first time in the history of this planet, a single species can determine its future. An awesome responsibility." He responded: "This begs an important, and rarely addressed question: Is there, after all, a "we" a humanity which is conscious? Is "we humans" a being which makes choices and is responsible? This concept is poorly articulated and its meaning is vague. The relationships between the person (clearly: conscious, choosing and responsible) and community, society... species are by no means clear." I've been mulling this over as I read the rest of my mail. I still don't have a very well worked out response, but here goes. Society consists of individuals, who are more or less interdependent. Each of us as an individual has freedom of choice (despite the efforts of advertisers etc in the west, or dictators elsewhere), and at least some of the time we make conscious choices, weighing the pros and cons of alternatives for ourselves, others, and our environment. In this limited sense, society, as a collective of individuals, makes conscious choices. Whether or not there is a higher social consciousness which emerges from the structured interaction of individual consciousnesses is less clear, but ideas such as Teilhard de Chardin's 'noosphere' suggest that there is. This leads on to the question of whether or not 'we' are responsible for our actions. As conscious individuals making deliberate choices, I believe we are. And hence, in at least a limited sense, so is society. Technology has many of the characteristics of an uncontrollable genie let out of the bottle. Certainly, unless the collapse of human civilization and its essential natural support systems sends us back to the stone age or beyond, we cannot put this genie back in the bottle. Nor, on balance, despite my dislike (nay, hatred - how attached and un-Buddhist can I get!) of many of its manifestations would I want to get rid of it. But the fact remains, or at least it seems fact to me, that technology is a creation of society/culture. As such, we can reshape, recreate, revision it in any way we choose. And our scientific power to reshape it anyway we want is growing all the time. The issue then is one of choice. Someone likened our love affair with technology to an addiction. I think that's apt. But addictions, hard as they are to break, can be broken. If the stakes are high enough, if the motivation and desire is there, we can change our technologies. Our social, technical and economic system, like any complex evolving self-organising system, can potentially be transformed by small distrubances which are seized upon by positive feedback loops. In other words, the actions of individuals do count, each and every one. We cannot know in advance precisely what actions will trigger an avalanche of change, but we can be sure that it is possible to do so. At a deeper level, the issue isn't really technology at all. The issue is the emptiness and meaninglessness of modern life, and the consequent inability to see our addiction to consumerism, technology and all the rest. So social transformation comes back ultimately to personal transformation. And critical here are diverse spiritual movements including deep ecology and Buddhism. How does all this relate to questions such as the perfection of all that is, non-attachment and compassion? I'm a novice in Buddhism, and so may have many ideas confused, but here are some personal thoughts. Yes, everything is perfect as it is because it is an expression of the underlying Spirit of the Universe - it cannot be anything else because all objects, events, processes, etc are manifestations of that Spirit. And every state of affairs in the past and future has been or will be a perfect expression of Spirit. But our present understanding suggests that this Spirit can manifest in many ways. The future is not predestined, but creatively evolves in response to what is now, and the Spirit's drive for transcendence, for the evolution of ever-greater complexity. It is this drive which has brought the cosmos from the simplicity of the Big Bang to the emergence of self-consciousness. The future path of evolution is not predetermined, but is sensitive to every tiny event within the whole. And hence we humans, with our mental and technological powers, will affect the future of the planet and cosmos whether we wish to or not. The challenge for us is to find how to influence it in the direction of beauty, truth, love, harmony and compassion rather than greed, anger, aggression etc. Those who argue that technology is out of our control, that we are doomed, do not strike me as non-attached so much as detached - a distinction someone else has already made. Or maybe they are attached to their images of despair and hopelessness. To me, non-attachment sees the reality of our plight without being sucked into the emotional whirlwind of despair or frenzied activism. It sees clearly the dangers, but also the opportunities and hope. And it acts from compassion for the suffering of all beings, which in Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching include plants and minerals as well as animals (which include humans of course). Our motivation to try, to engage in the fight even against seemingly hopeless odds at times, surely must come from compassion, from the desire to reduce the sum total of suffering within the One body of the cosmos. Apologies for getting carried away and going on at length, probably without much clarity. This seminar invites us to step beyond our academic intellectualisms and to let our passions show. It's lunchtime here in Perth, and I'll leave my gloomy office for a while to eat a quiet lunch on the grassy, tree-shaded banks of the Swan River next to the campus. I'm not sure whether my relaxed schedule will prevent me contributing again before this seminar closes, but if it does, my love and thanks to you all for a wonderful week which has renewed my hope. Malcolm Hollick Senior Lecturer, Centre for Water Research, Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, W Australia 6907 Tel. 61 9 380 3082 Fax. 61 9 380 1015 From rtodd @ unlinfo.unl.edu Fri Nov 22 08:39:33 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 96 09:39:29 CST From: Richard Todd Subject: MAIN DOC-Awareness, experience, practice Many, many, many words. To this plainsman, it seems that the many words can be distilled to a few, potent in their concentration. How we express what is and what we must do is simple. Two examples that come to mind are P. Bunch, who left us with the five Buddhist precepts, or Y. Bajard with his thoughts on deepest ecology. There are others. The point, of course, isn't the cleverness of our words. It is how we practice what is behind the words. The precepts are simple, but their practice takes lifetimes. I kill my food whenever possible, whether pulling a potato from the earth or sending an arrow into a deer. One need not shock. It's not really shocking at all. Nor does it take a 1000 words. Say only 'Know where your food comes from and give thanks'. Won't this mindfullness lead to right actions? Dual, nondual, plural, unitary. Don't we experience all of these? It seems when people think or intellectualize or write and write and write about them, we become lost in thought, intellect and words and words and words. We here have computers, internet, academic jobs maybe. But most people are farmers, ranchers, homemakers, tradespeople, crafters, child raisers, many on the edge of existence. What do the concepts and words and words wrapped around them mean to us who ask 'How shall I live my life?'. Awareness, experience, practice. For me, these lead to the deepest ecology. __________________________________________________________ Richard Todd At the forks of the Platte rtodd @ unlinfo.unl.edu On the edge of the Sandhills From rcoon @ carroll1.cc.edu Fri Nov 22 10:24:36 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 12:29:17 +0000 From: Rich Coon Subject: Re: MAIN DOC-Truth, Being and Ecology References: <3294DEC1.45CE @ carroll1.cc.edu> MAJOR DOCUMENT Truth, what is it? I think, at least to some extent that is what we have been fooling with up to this point. In my contemplation this moring i received something i just thought i'd pass along -- it's a gift you can take or leave, i just want to give it (no arrogance intended). i think much of what is happening here is the articulation of our relative truths. Each of us is an assemblage of experience and our truths are statements shaped by these experiences. i think there is a fundamental Truth, but not one which can be articulated in words. Remember, i'm Taoist and i therefore lean on the "words" of Taoists and as the Tao Te Ching opens, it's teaching underlies my words -- "The way that can be spoken of is not the constat way; The name that can be named is not the constant name. The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth." It is also translated as : The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao". In either case i think you get the point. A couple of weeks ago i was at a small pow wow and native A. pres. and one of the native people said that he thought that one of the probs. that we faced today was that we placed all meaning or truth in the truth of the mind (thought, word, number, etc.). He didn't think we should do that. For him the "real" Truth was more likely to be apprehended with the heart. i guess i agree. See i have felt that much of what we have been doing here is trying to get our "colored" truths across to each other, each defending her/his own -- fun, but? It seems to me anyway that the Taoists had it right when they said the true sage was the fool. i had a hard time with that for a long time because i had bought into the idea of word based truth and that isn't what they are talking about. They are getting at what the Native guy was talking about. What i might call embodied truth. See, i don't think we would be having (or at least i wouldn't be) nearly as much trouble finding a common ground if we were sitting around a fire talking to each other. That way i could feel John's presence, i could embody his truth. It wouldn't be some disembodied string of words that carried specific meanings for him because of his pattern which might not carry those same meanings for me because of mine. Yes we would still be removed from each other's Truth by the words themselve but we would be closer. i could feel his anger, compassion, rage, empathy or what have you. This seems instructive to me. This tech.(the computer) we are using certainly does have many wonderful features (it has given me the opp. of participating in this) but it also removes us one more step from this simple truth of the heart. As a Taoist pagan Nativist (wow, what a mouthful) i find that the path to Great Truth/Tao is simplicity. i think the Truth is absolute simplicity -- THE SAGE *IS* A FOOL (he isn't so far removed from That Which Is by all of his/her words, ideas, theories,etc.). i'm not saying that this type of seminar shouldn't be done, i'm just saying that we should be diligent as to how seriously we take ourselves and our words, ideas, theories, etc.. i think most of us know what to do in our lives when we listen to our hearts/bodies and the hearts/bodies of those around us (and this includes the heart beat of the earth and all our relations). i know that most of the time i do know what i "should" do its just that on many occasions i'm to lazy or weak to do it. Maybe we need to talk less and practice listening to the heart beat of the Earth more. Its all there if we can but learn to listen!!!! Cool winds blow through the Fox river watershed this moring. Blue sky gives way to fecund clouds as the smell of snow once again permeates the air. i breathe in, i breathe out someplace in time and winter engulfs me. HO! Green Dreams, r.c. From bbarnum @ polaristel.net Fri Nov 22 10:37:47 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 11:38:56 -0600 From: bbarnum @ polaristel.net (Betsy Barnum) Subject: MAIN DOC-Re: More on Bowing, Civilization & Technology Bruce McFarling wrote, >CIVILIZATION > Civilization, by its timing, is what happens to people when there >is not enough unoccupied terrain (in terms human niche and pre-agrarian >technology) close enough at hand to make "stay and be conquered" a >proposition that is not absurd group of people. From that we get >increasingly complex societies and technologies, including organized >warfare, cities ("civilized" taken literally means "citified"), >agriculture, spinning jennies, etc. That's been the last 5 millenia, more >or less. Where did you get your information on the timing of what you are defining as civilization? Archaeological research in Eastern Europe, conducted and well-publicized for several decades, has found evidence of cities with advanced arts and religious ceremonies, agriculture and other types of food production, and no evidence that war was common, several millennia before the 3000 b.c.e. date you cite as the start of civilization. In fact, according to archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and many who have written about her interpretation of archaeological remains of these cities, they were overrun by warlike tribes from the north and east around 5 millennia ago, the time you say civilization started. I suggest you read The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, by Gimbutas, or any of her several other books, and The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler, a popularized explication of Gimbutas. I believe this is important (and it bears on the question of "How shall we then live?") because evidence seems to show that humans were capable of living peacefully in egalitarian societies during the Neolithic (to say nothing of indigenous peoples all over and in all times who have done the same thing with their civilizations). I have a big problem with the idea I have seen put forward several times in this nondual ecology discussion, that humans are somehow inherently destructive, that our impulses of greed and self-aggrandizement will always prevent us from living in harmony--that somehow we are fatally flawed. This strikes me as a melodramatic attitude--"Oh, woe is us! Beat our breasts, strike our foreheads, weep and gnash our teeth!"--as well a profoundly anthropocentric one since at bottom it says humans *are* fundamentally different from the rest of creation and are incapable of living nondestructively in the ecosphere in which we have co-evolved with the other beings who are here now. Well, which is it? Are we doomed by our fatal flaws? Are we somehow a mistake, an aberration, perhaps Gaia's death wish, or orphans from another planet abandoned here by aliens in flying saucers? Or are we a life form that began and has evolved in adaptation to our environment, a joyful manifestation of that Life that seeks always to be embodied in new ways, perhaps a life form that possesses not only the means to live harmoniously in our place but the ability to do that in a deliberate and conscious way? Humans evolved with physical characteristics that were adapted to survival. We evolved to favor sweet flavors--even in the womb, unborn infants will react to a sweet taste that is introduced. Why? Because sweet indicates calories, and caloreis are needed for survival. We are made to like what we need. Now, in an age of abundance, our taste for sugar has become a detriment to our health. Does that mean we are doomed to kill ourselves with sugar? No. Lots of people have learned to avoid exces sweets. Another example: shopping addiction. In Chellis Glendinning's book (My Name is Chellis and I am in Recovery from WEstern Civilization) she talks about foraging for mushrooms in the hills and feeling a wave of excitement when she found them. She instantly recognized that excitement as the same thing she felt at a shopping mall when she had "found" just the item she was looking for. Now, in an age when foraging for food is not part of our lives, that impulse, still ingrained in us through thousands of years of evolution, is transferred to what has become a sick and destructive activity. But are we trapped in it, doomed to shop till we drop? You tell me. I think the same thing is quite possibly true of greed and the tendency to accumulate. Surely, at one time these were survival skills, at least for northern peoples where for half the year it was very difficult to find food. Stock up! Make sure you have enough! How much is that? Just enough for the winter? Enough to last until the first shoots and roots are edible in the spring? Enough to last until my *favorite* roots and shoots come up later in spring? Isn't it possible this very natural, evolutionarily developed tendency is one that once served humans very well but just doesn't work anymore? And because we are conscious of our impact, self-aware enough to examine our actions and motivations, isn't there a chance we could understand these tendencies and impulses, and thus turn them again in positive directions? I am no more certain than any of you that humanity will be able to pull itself out of our current self-destructive drive. Most days I think it is probably already too late. But, dammit, I want to live for whatever time I have left, or my children have left, in as much dignity, compassion, integrity and harmony as I can! To me, that means doing everything possible to *move* this thing, even if it is an impossible task. And it also means believing that I am not full of original sin, or fatal flaws, or somehow a mistake or a being destined to cause destruction of all that Gaia has nurtured over billions of years--but that I belong here, I am meant to be here, now, as I am, doing what I am doing, seeking harmony and balance, seeking life in abundance for *all* sentient beings. Blessings, Betsy From roper @ csf.Colorado.EDU Fri Nov 22 12:05:58 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 12:05:57 -0700 (MST) From: Don Roper Subject: MAIN DOC-from Suzanne Duarte MAJOR DOCUMENT Dear John McClellan, I've been thinking quite a lot about "Nondual Ecology," and it's hard to argue with the overall premise, which you have stated so eloquently and with such warmth and humor. But it does still leave an irritating taste in my mouth, the same taste I get whenever I hear absolutist arguments against relativist positions. I know you don't regard "Nondual Ecology" as an absolutist stance, and I know that you yourself are not a cold, unfeeling technobiont, but your argument is still irritatingly abstract. It's interesting that this on-line dialogue is appearing just as the new Star Trek movie, "First Contact," is being released, which is about the war between the Borgs (the technobiotic collectivists) and Earth, where the "Federation" is based. The Borgs' purpose is to assimilate all beings in the universe into the collective Borg mind by making them technobiotic. Borgs are ruthless and fascistic. It is this fascist tendency of the technobionts, I think, that scares those of us who are not enamored with technology and who love biology. Biological evolution may not be exactly democratic, but it isn't fascistic either. The rub comes when we try to keep a nice camp that is "a reasonably safe and comfortable place where the gods are honored, the children are cared for, and good fun is had." I think Thomas Moore provides a helpful perspective on how to do this in his writings about "soul," and how to bring an attitude of sacredness to our home. By home, he means "eco," the planet. He talks about caring for beings and things with love, as living beings. It isn't such a different perspective from yours, but the emphasis is on loving them in their particularity and not treating things with a consumeristic disregard that disposes of them when they don't work with perfect efficiency, which is the way the technobionts relate with biological life. One question that we humans have barely begun to ask is now being posed by the emerging field of ecopsychology. (See The Voice of the Earth and Ecopsychology). That question is, what is the effect on human psychology, or mental health, of pristine biological nature, and what are the psychological effects of the destruction of biological wilderness and its replacement by industrial wastelands? Is environmental destruction a symptom of disorder in human psyches, or even psychotic? Do industrial wastelands produce psychosis in humans? I think these are worthwhile questions to ask of ourselves. Are our human capacities for love and compassion towards each other and nonhumans endangered by our being too willing to go along with the quick-and-easy fixes of technology? I guess the ultimate question, for me anyway, is whether Basic Goodness is really indestructible if the biological basis for our lives is replaced by technology. Can the Basic Goodness of carbon-based living beings be corrupted if biological gods are replaced by technological ones? This question was actually posed by King Ashoka, the Buddhist monarch who united India for the first time many long centuries ago. He prophesied that humans would become like machines, due to the influence of the West, and that this would be a serious threat to the survival of the dharma. And, as we know, dharma isn't just about accepting things as they are. Dharma is also about teaching all beings the value of compassion and loving kindness. Can we program love and compassion into our machines, or do we have to continue to be responsible for how we use them? So far, the answers seem to be no and yes, respectively. So it seems to be necessary to bring this discussion out of the abstract realm of metaphysics into the somewhat more messy realm of politics, where petty motivations are more evident. At this point, the technobionts who are crafting the "New World Order" do not seem to be motivated by love and compassion, but by the desire to dominate and control all life on Earth. Rather like the Borgs, our technobionts ruthlessly disregard the diverse particularities of cultures and species in their drive to assimilate everything into an efficient, uniform global consumer culture. Unlike the Borgs, our master technobionts are also motivated by greed. I think environmentalists are dealing with a major archetypal conflict in trying to preserve species and ecosystems. I don't think it's petty, or just a matter of nostalgic deep ecologists fighting the inevitable evolution of technology. I think it has to do with restoring and preserving the soul of the Earth which is inseparable from biological life, and also inseparable from the human soul. Soul isn't just the life force that we can see animating the "mad materialist technobic frenzy gripping the planet." Soul is the capacity to feel with, it's empathy, compassion for particularity, and it's what binds us together. It's Basic Goodness, and it resides in the particular. If you lose it in the particular, you lose it in the collective. As far as we know, the soul of the Earth, anima mundi, resides in Earth and her biological life and nowhere else. There may be life elsewhere in the universe, but does it have soul? We don't know. Maybe it's important for humans to maintain anima mundi for the benefit of beings elsewhere in the universe. Maybe anima mundi and dharma are inseparable. So, yes, we should bow to our enemies, and we should also fight them. We shouldn't underestimate them. And we shouldn't underestimate ourselves and the reasons we are fighting them. I think it's bigger than you're making it out to be, John. We could frame it as theAquarian struggle between the polarities of the collective and the individual (the particular) interests. It can be seen nondualistically as sacred combat in which we must participate in order to belong in our home, Earth. With love and compassion for all beings, Suzanne Duarte Instructor in Environmental Studies, The Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Fri Nov 22 12:11:47 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 12:11:39 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: MAIN DOC-From the Book NONDUAL ECOLOGY: Economics of Ecology, and the Issue of Control MAJOR DOCUMENT In despair at trying to keep up with the incredibly rich flow of letters and and thoughts, hardly able to even read them all, much less answer them as they deserve, I have decided to post a few sections from the book length version of Nondual Ecology here and there, which directly address the points I would like to make in this seminar. Here is the first of these. John McClellan ______________________________________________ I. THE ECONOMICS OF ECOLOGY Many feel that to use a computer, fax, phone and downtown office space to conduct environmental activities is a way of using technology against itself-that the 'content', i.e. the purpose or intention of their activities overrides the form or medium in which this activity takes place. But technology doesn't care about the content of our actions or communications. From an evolutionary point of view, the only thing Mother Nature counts is ergs or calories consumed, 'bits', or units of symbolic information manipulated, patterned, or exchanged. This is a tough equation. How is a poor deep ecologist or environmentalist supposed to get anything done without using information structures? The question is not the content of the communications, but how many computers phones and faxes are operating in the metropolitan area? How many cars are driving, jets flying, how much square footage of office, home, and recreation space is being consumed per hour, heated and cooled, occupied, janitored, decorated and rent paid on? Measure this in ergs, calories, joules, bits, bytes or any unit of energy or information you choose, and that's how much the technological system is being 'fed', or driven on its evolutionary path. It doesn't matter what you're talking about on that phone line, or what conference or nature hike you're driving or flying to. Could be insurance work, Earth First! manifestos, real estate deals, love letters or avant guard art on the fax machines-just add up the total ergs/bits and you'll see where the civilization is headed: the inter-entity technobiotic communications & sensory systems are evolving into electronic data interface modes. This is the way evolutionary biologists monitor negentropic activity. It doesn't matter what those trilobites were thinking about, way back when they ruled the earth. We'll never know or care. I doubt anyone has even thought to wonder about this until this moment. Evolution asks only how many shells they made (plenty), how elaborate their nervous systems and DNA codes were (quite), who their descendants were (none), and how many erg/bits they generated (a lot). =87 DEEP ECOLOGISTS DESPAIR The most famous deep ecologists I know lead lives which are indistinguishable on this objective, 'ergometric' scale from ordinary materialists. Often in fact the more ardently deep the ecologist, the more time they spend on the phone, on the computer, in planes & cars, at conferences and in expensive centrally heated meeting rooms and office space. This suggests some soul searching among those who claim to value nature over civilized life. The only thing one can do to reduce the reign of technobia is to reduce the level of consumption of calories and bits of symbolic information. To do this is to disappear from view in our modern civilization. To really do it is to disappear from metabolic interaction with the technobiotic landscape, because any form of interaction drives technobial processes. Where would anyone seeking such a life direction even go to live anymore? The Antarctic, the jungle? An undiscovered desert island? Give it up; this is a dead end strategy. Any humans alive today, along with most animals, plants, insects, fish, even bacteria and viruses, are on for the ride. We have no choice but to interact with technobiotic processes. If we're not benefiting from technologies, as a few lucky humans and favored animals and plants do, we're trying to survive them, to escape hunting, trapping, cutting ploughing grazing and burning, to escape chemical control systems, toxic waste products, or ecosystem-resource depletion. This is a global metabolic system by now. There are few remaining 'natural' hiding places. =87 II. TAKING CONTROL OF THE SACRED WORLD? In the reformist agendas there runs a common theme: We do not like what we see happening in the world around us. (Nothing wrong with that, who does? But watch,) Therefore, we will apply severe, global Corrective Measures to remove what is bad and promote what is good. We will not let this planetary landscape unfold its own inherent nature, we will control it!, for the good of various worthy constituencies, such as: nice, well-behaved humans (hopefully our children), enlightened technologies, harmless, attractive wild animals, natural ecosystems, planetary life-support systems, clean rivers, wild mountains, etc. We will continue this control =46orever, so our planet will always be free of: badly-behaved humans (i.e. other people's children), nuclear bombs, toxic pollution, urban megalopolis, harmful, unattractive wild animals, warfare, poverty, animal slavery, unfairness, etc. This strikes me as a curious way to approach a sacred world. It is not the way sacred cultures approach it, specially not the Stone Age societies from whom we deep ecologists learn so much. They have a hands-off relationship with the greater landscape they live in, and show respect for natural forces, even when these are dangerous, incomprehensible, or destructive. Even when they believe, as we do today, that the bad spirits that are destroying them were loosed on the land by their own fault, by misdeed and misintention, even then they show respect for these forces. Humility before them. This is a deep teaching that is often expressed in fairy tales, and that we would be wise to heed. Neither animals nor plants seek control over the world around them. Contemplatives and saints, buddhas and bodhisattvas, shamans and holy men, those with the highest professional qualifications in the science (knowing) of sacredness, none of them try to reform the greater world. It's just not done. Sacred world? OK, hands off. Sensitive, awake beings such as these tiptoe through the world in a state of reverence, showing respect for whatever they meet, and most pointedly refrain from trying to gain control over things. Maybe we deep ecologists are missing something here. Could there be more to this ethic of wildness than we have thought? Can we say in good faith, however benevolent our initial intent, that by gaining total planetary control over all human behavior, over all technological and biological processes, and maintaining this control forever, that we will allow true wildness a chance to flourish once again? The grace inherent in wildness, the kind of grace we most need today, that in which lies the preservation of the world, such a wild and carefree grace may not survive the ferocious regulatory regime well-meaning environmentalists have in mind for it. TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WORLD Why do we humans think we are responsible for the whole world? On the one hand we believe we are the cause of all this 'civilization' activity, that we created, or invented it, and on the other we feel responsible for fixing everything that seems wrong with it. What a megalomaniacal outlook! We are not the creators of modern civilization. All we did was evolve a huge cerebral cortex, for reasons still unknown. We aren't even 'responsible' for doing that; it was quite unintentional. It just happened to us. Evolution did it. This enormous abstract symbolic system processor which is our brain processed abstract symbolic systems, the way a cow's stomach processes grass, or the limbic system processes emotions. Unlike emotions or grass however, the processing of abstract symbolic systems gave rise to a whole new kingdom (the highest of biological groupings) of negentropic entities, the technozoa. These entities were so immensely successful, that to everyone on earth's immense surprise, not least of which our own, they-we took over the planet in the space of a few hundred human generations. The human brain served as the vehicle for this new kingdom of creatures, the host species in the symbiotic invasion, the fertile ecosystem in which this new class of being flourished. This is a very different view than thinking that we deliberately, consciously and responsibly, by our own powers created a new world order. Creatures can't do things like that. New world orders arise all by themselves. It is immensely naive of us to imagine that we are responsible for this astounding evolutionary development. It shows how childlike our understanding is of what is happening to us. Any creature who imagines itself to be responsible for having created the dominant world order is subject to hallucinations, delusions, or at the very least is holding primitive ideas about reality. Our second delusion, that we are responsible for fixing everything wrong with the modern world, follows naturally from the first. But consider 'primitive societies' who, feeling they are responsible for maintaining the order of the world, hold ceremonies to ensure that the sun will rise every morning, or turn back south at the winter solstice? When they try to call down rain, dispel microbes, or ghost dance the Wasichu (white man) away? At best we think they are charming, and interpret their beliefs as a quaint way in which they maintain a connection to the world, and try to find a place for themselves in it. As much can certainly be said of environmentalists in our world today, without condescension. This kind of primitive ritual behavior may be a healthy social characteristic, up to a certain point. But we expect such "believers" to be restrained in their ceremonies, and reasonably respectful of the greater reality they live in. If they get carried away, with illusions of power and grandeur, like the Mayans or Aztecs, and think themselves in charge of the world, we call them deluded. When they arm themselves with armies and nuclear bombs, with police and prisons and computer systems to ensure their benevolent control over the world's natural metabolic processes, we call them dangerous. When this behavior becomes too extreme, we fervently hope they will self-destruct, as no outside force is usually able to penetrate through to them at that point. Perhaps we humans have reached this level of delusion regarding our role in the global drama that is unfolding around us and through us. Feeling responsible for the world is a good thing up to a point. But when it goes too far, losing touch with reality, and indulging in dangerous delusions of power, then it is no longer helpful, but worrisome. From amcgowen @ hposl02.cup.hp.com Fri Nov 22 13:32:29 1996 Subject: Re: MAIN DOC-From the Book NONDUAL ECOLOGY: Economics of Ecology, and the Issue of Control In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 22 Nov 96 12:11:39 MST." Date: Fri, 22 Nov 96 12:32:44 -0800 From: Alan McGowen MAJOR DOCUMENT McClellan: > Unlike emotions or grass > however, the processing of abstract symbolic systems gave rise to a whole > new kingdom (the highest of biological groupings) of negentropic entities, > the technozoa. These entities were so immensely successful, that to > everyone on earth's immense surprise, not least of which our own, they-we > took over the planet in the space of a few hundred human generations. > The human brain served as the vehicle for this new kingdom of creatures, > the host species in the symbiotic invasion, the fertile ecosystem in which > this new class of being flourished. And without human brains, this whole cultural edifice would vanish. And without healthy ecosystems and a sustainable society, human maintenance of modern technological infrastructure is highly vulnerable. McClellan still assumes (as no biologically literate "Deep Ecologist" would assume) that human life is outside the biological order, that the cultural edifice frees us from biology. This is pseudoscientific nonsense, which he advances by mere assertion. For an extended reply to the brownlash dogma that humans have no significant dependence on natural capital, see: Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich 1996. Betrayal of Science and Reason. Island Press/ Shearwater Books. See also: Odum, E.P. 1993. Ecology and Our Endangered Live-Support Systems, 2nd Edition. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. Ehrlich and Ehrlich reprint a scientific consensus -- The World Scientists' Warning to Humanity -- signed by more than 1500 senior scientists and a majority of the world's Nobel Prize winners, to the effect that our society is unsustainable. I reproduce this document below. Readers may decide whether they are more inclined to believe McClellan's claims that "it's not clear what we can and cannot do without" or the likes of Norman Borlaug, Edward O. Wilson, and even Stephan Hawking (see the signatures below). Apologies for the residual html. Alan McGowen * * * * * * WORLD SCIENTISTS' WARNING TO HUMANITY Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about. THE ENVIRONMENT IS SUFFERING CRITICAL STRESS The Atmosphere Stratospheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultra-violet radiation at the earth's surface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level, and acid precipitation, are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests and crops. Water Resources Heedless exploitation of depletable ground water supplies endangers food production and other essential human systems. Heavy demands on the world's surface waters have resulted in serious shortages in some 80 countries, containing 40% of the world's population. Pollution of rivers, lakes and ground water further limits the supply. Oceans Destructive pressure on the oceans is severe, particularly in the coastal regions which produce most of the world's food fish. The total marine catch is now at or above the estimated maximum sustainable yield. Some fisheries have already shown signs of collapse. Rivers carrying heavy burdens of eroded soil into the seas also carry industrial, municipal, agricultural, and livestock waste—some of it toxic Soil Loss of soil productivity, which is causing extensive land abandonment, is a widespread byproduct of current practices in agriculture and animal husbandry. Since 1945, 11% of the earth's vegetated surface has been degraded—an area larger than India and China combined—and per capita food production in many parts of the world is decreasing. Forests Tropical rain forests, as well as tropical and temperate dry forests, are being destroyed rapidly. At present rates, some critical forest types will be gone in a few years and most of the tropical rain forest will be gone before the end of the next century. With them will go large numbers of plant and animal species. Living Species The irreversible loss of species, which by 2100 may reach one third of all species now living, is especially serious. We are losing the potential they hold for providing medicinal and other benefits, and the contribution that genetic diversity of life forms gives to the robustness of the world's biological systems and to the astonishing beauty of the earth itself. Much of this damage is irreversible on a scale of centuries or permanent. Other processes appear to pose additional threats. Increasing levels of gases in the atmosphere from human activities, including carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning and from deforestation, may alter climate on a global scale. Predictions of global warming are still uncertain—with projected effects ranging from tolerable to very severe—but the potential risks are very great. Our massive tampering with the world's interdependent web of life—coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change—could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand. Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threat. POPULATION The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair. Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth. A World Bank estimate indicates that world population will not stabilize at less than 12.4 billion, while the United Nations concludes that the eventual total could reach 14 billion, a near tripling of today's 5.4 billion. But, even at this moment, one person in five lives in absolute poverty without enough to eat, and one in ten suffers serious malnutrition. No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished. WARNING We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it, is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated. WHAT WE MUST DO Five inextricably linked areas must be addressed simultaneously: 1. We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth's systems we depend on. We must, for example, move away from fossil fuels to more benign, inexhaustible energy sources to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our air and water. Priority must be given to the development of energy sources matched to third world needs—small scale and relatively easy to implement. We must halt deforestation, injury to and loss of agricultural land, and the loss of terrestrial and marine plant and animal species. 2. We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively. We must give high priority to efficient use of energy, water, and other materials, including expansion of conservation and recycling. 3. We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning. 4. We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty. 5. We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions. The developed nations are the largest polluters in the world today. They must greatly reduce their overconsumption, if we are to reduce pressures on resources and the global environment. The developed nations have the obligation to provide aid and support to developing nations, because only the developed nations have the financial resources and the technical skills for these tasks. Acting on this recognition is not altruism, but enlightened self-interest: whether industrialized or not, we all have but one lifeboat. No nation can escape from injury when global biological systems are damaged. No nation can escape from conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. In addition, environmental and economic instabilities will cause mass migrations with incalculable consequences for developed and undeveloped nations alike. Developing nations must realize that environmental damage is one of the gravest threats they face, and that attempts to blunt it will be overwhelmed if their populations go unchecked. The greatest peril is to become trapped in spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse. Success in this global endeavor will require a great reduction in violence and war. Resources now devoted to the preparation and conduct of war—amounting to over $1 trillion annually—will be badly needed in the new tasks and should be diverted to the new challenges. A new ethic is required—a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement, convince reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes. The scientists issuing this warning hope that our message will reach and affect people everywhere. We need the help of many. We require the help of the world community of scientists—natural, social, economic, political; We require the help of the world's business and industrial leaders; We require the help of the worlds religious leaders; and We require the help of the world's peoples. We call on all to join us in this task. PROMINENT INDIVIDUALS AMONG MORE THAN 1,500 SIGNATORIES Over 1,500 members of national, regional, and international science academies have signed the Warning. Sixtynine nations from all parts of Earth are represented, including each of the twelve most populous nations and the nineteen largest economic powers. The full list includes a majority of the Nobel laureates in the sciences. Awards and institutional affiliations are listed for the purpose of identification only. The Nobel Prize in medicine is for physiology or medicine. WORLD SCIENTISTS' WARNING BRIEFING BOOK is available from the Union of Concerned Scientists. It provides the citations to support their WARNING. Union of Concerned Scientists, 96 Church Street, Cambridge, Mass 02238-9105, USA Phone: 617-547-5552; FAX: 617-864-9405 From mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu Fri Nov 22 13:46:12 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 13:46:03 -0700 (MST) From: mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu (John McClellan) Subject: MAIN DOC-Latest Results: THE DEEPEST ECOLOGY MAJOR DOCUMENT THOUGHT EXPERIEMNT: THE DEEPEST ECOLOGY In 100 words or less, spontaneously and freshly describe the deepest, truest, most irrefutable "Ecology" you can imagine and would be willing to defend. Send them to me or to the List, with the Subject heading The Deepest Ecology. Everyday I will post the "Latest Results", most recent and most excellent submissions loosely gathered at the top, not sorted too finely as yet. This is what I picked up this morning. It's a good start. Keep them coming. With 225+ subscribers, I am looking for at least 100 of these statements. Thanks... John McClellan _________________________________________ (Note: I think this first entry is the strongest statement so far on an authentic practice of living in this world. After we establish some sort of view, to each his/her own of course, the next thing is to find a way to practice it, to live it. What about this one? J. McC) My 100 words about deepest ecology: > > Forget any sense of superiority. Respect your context, be it animal > (including humans), vegetal, mineral or artificial. Belong in that context. > Do not pretend you own it. Don't mix mysticism or metaphysics with ecology. > Live by a geological timescale, as part of a universe where everything > interrelates. Look, listen, feel, dream and live. Do your darnedest, > individually and in your communities not to impact the earth, water and air > beyond what they can sustain, and to reconstitute what our species is > squandering through carelessness and inadequate premises and vision. Manage > yourself in your context. Don't try to manage the ecosphere. > > > Yves Bajard > National Centre for Sustainability > For an insight into what we are doing, consult our Homepage at URL: > http://www.islandnet.com/~ncfs/ncfs/homemenu.htm > Mail address: 1 - 800 Gorge Road West, Victoria B.C. Canada V9A 1N9 > Telephone (250) 480 5016 Fax: (250) 480 5261 e-mail: ncfs @ islandnet.com ______________________________________________ I tried to cut to a more elemental level when I asked "On what do we depend". And you also did the same when you asked "What is this world, and how do we live in it?" I don't know what the world is. But let me tell you some of the world I have experienced. I watch my children being born. Powerful, primal, intensely biological, overwashing emotions. I watch them grow into awareness. They continually amaze me. Pure wonder. I shoot a grouse. It wheels from the sky. I pick it up, its eyes open. We look at each other. Then I snap its neck, open the warm body and pull its guts onto the grass. Pure wonder. I camp in the shadow of Wind River Peak. I sit on a rock after supper. Everything around me wavers, turns gray. I am very scared and think I am going crazy. I struggle to bring the colors back, to bring my self back. Afraid then, but now I understand. Pure Wonder. I sit in the tipi. Coldest night of the year, -18. Stars through the smoke slit. Trees pop and moan. I tend the fire. I tend the fire. I tend the fire. And live. Pure wonder. How do we live? To the best of our abilities: with mindfullness of our relatedness; with respect for the roots which nourish us; with awareness of our motivations and actions; with softness and simplicity. Of course the challenge is to show, exemplify, teach. Richard Todd __________________________________________ -- All existence is marked by Emptiness, Luminosity, and Compassion. Emptiness: All things arise from nothingness and have no inherent abiding personal self. Luminosity: All things dweell in and are made of light, and are extremely beautiful to behold. Compassion: All things arise in, are made out of, and dwell in Love. -- A passionate, loving Lifeforce imbues every particle and energy field in this universe, and is built into the fabric of timespace itself. From this all things arise from the background Void, in the beginning and also afresh in each moment. This Lifeforce is Awake, and has a personal, loving Intention. You can talk to It. -- All things are the direct and immediate expression of this Lifeforce, and are therefore holy, sacred, and primordially pure. All things, whether they are good for us, bad for us, or indifferent to us. Because of this, we should walk through this world with the greatest reverence and respect for what arises around us. -- We are of course invited to take care of ourselves, our homelands and planet, and others to the best of our ability. The only requirement for effective, caring action of this kind, is that it be done out of respect and love for all things, good and bad. Action based on respect and acknowledgemnt of universal Sacred Being is stronger than action based on likes and dislikes. John McClellan ________________________________________ ONCE BORN One does not discard a gift lightly. You take the whole package, The whole estate -- Ribbons, trees, cats, and refuse, Houses, fireflies, snow, and quicksand. Friendly trespassers And malicious caretakers. It is a question of environment, A bell jar in a larger exhibition, Disposable in the larger scheme of things But no less precious for that. Sally Clay _________________________ The other day I came across an article by Donella Meadows in which she argued that the best thing we can do to save the world is slow down. I've been trying to do that for quite a while: to balance the pressures for action against the need for reflection and time to be. As a friend said as we ate our evening meal on the beach last night as the sun went down: "We aren't human DOINGS we're human BEINGS" Malcolm Hollick _________________________________________________________________ *Worst Case* Deep Ecology fails miserably and life on this planet becomes what some would call a living hell. Afterwards, our sun explodes into a supernova and, eventually, the universe collapses back into itself. *Best Case* Deep Ecology triumphs and life on this planet enjoys what some would call Paradise on earth. Afterwards, our sun explodes into a supernova and, eventually, the universe collapses back into itself. ROLLERCOASTER I rode on a rollercoaster this past summer. It was crammed full of people. During the ride, there was yelling, screaming, and laughter, all expressing an exuberant joy so contagious, I found myself laughing and enjoying the thrill. Then the rollercoaster stopped. I think we all knew it would. Enjoy the ride. MoCtreLite _____________________________ "The statement that the earth is our mother is more than a sentimental platitiude: we are shaped by the earth. The characteristics of the environment in which we develop condition our biological and mental being and the quality of our life. Even were it only for selfish reasons, therefore, we must maintain variety and harmony in nature." Rene Dubos, microbiologist. Rich Coon ____________________________________ Breath. All beings breathe. Humans breath in a recognizable way, insects in a less appreciable way; rocks and oceans breath in ways we call tides and rheidity; solar systems expand and contract in observeable ways; Universes breathe over vast amounts of time; electrons shift from one state to another in tiny, powerful inbreaths and outbreaths. As all beings breathe together in various ways and in different time frames and places, we form the one great breath of Life, an intricate, dynamic weave, interdependent, complete, musical, surprising. -Bruce Nygren ________________________________ My thoughts on deepest ecology would, first of all, have to be based on an economic community that has moved from a monetary bottom line to a human/earth/compassion based bottom line. Secondly, I see an earth on which the human population has decreased to a sustainable and stable level. Then and only then do I see a return to family, community and envirnmental values that are so important to human society. I see a resurgence of the beautiful dynamic of human interaction and of compassion for the world and community in which one abides. I see an earth on which human communities have formed and have come to know and understand the bioregions in which they reside. I see these communities living in absolute harmony and with appreciation for their bioregions. I see renewed support for the ecosystems native to each bioregion. I see food and shelter being native to and produced in the respective regions. I see an earth where technology is non-destructive and serves for the true betterment of humanity. I see communities and families that honor the earth and all the incredulous mystery that is ours to experience as each wondrous moment unfolds. I see human beings that have, as their prime goals, love and compassion for all about them, that live joyously in the light of the universe. These are, in my mind, fairly simple ideas that are pipe dreams at most. But they are mine and therefore valid ideas that are part of my reality. Ed Lehner, Iowa _____________________________________________ All is Resonance. Cheers, Claudia Robinson Physics Department Clemson University ______________________________________ One speaks of living on the earth but in truth life is held within the earth. An atmosphere woven from life encircles the planet. Every movement, every breath, every response, the least thought is shaped to the curve of this mass. Even time and space bend to it. Like a child in a womb, all we know exists inside this outer body. And all is dependent on it. Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life >From Betsy Barnum ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Life wants to be--wherever, whenever, however there is opportunity. Life, this dance of being/becoming, flings itself through the eons, across the galaxies, joyful and thrilling, scattered like seed, like a spray of light into every corner. Pulses, throbs, pushes always to *be* anew in ever-varying form, color, texture, movement. Existing beings--sacred and beautiful manifestations of life's exuberance--move with its beat, delighting in all of life's myriad expressions and co-creating in ways that open up new opportunities for life to flow in. This is the deepest ecology. Blessings, Betsy BARNUM _____________________________________ How 'bout in 1 word. Permaculture Eugene Monaco ______________________ I close my eyes and try to imagine the potential depth of deep ecology and immediately see the problem. I see people currently acting upon the basis of projected outcomes, which no one can possibly know, instead of upon their feelings, which can be experienced directly. Take no action? Nonsense! Act upon what we know, instead of what we think we know, and remain fully open to the possibilities inherent in unforeseen outcomes, guided by love and compassion. MoCtrLite ______________________ By The Deepest Possible True Ecology do you mean as it is, or as it should be? The greatest artists only express what they see, and leave us to draw our own conclusions (if any). Robin Faichney _______________________ Each encounter reveals a way: my new self the new being of the other and the ways among us and beyond. The forest, the city, the deer the bus are neither sacred nor valid -- but my lovers in whose embrace I find myself and who, therefore I wish to nurture. "Santipala (as instructed - without thinking too much) Stephen Evans ________________________________ From jrogers @ asis.com Fri Nov 22 17:51:17 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 16:51:08 -0800 From: J Rogers Subject: MAIN DOC-Responsibility for technology MAJOR DOCUMENT Following this discussion is the most involving online experience I have= encountered. The resources, the minds and hearts virtually gathered here= give me hope that a language is being created which will support a new= level of understanding and insight into human relationship to technology= and ecology and all that is. That it is happening through this ethereal= connection to people in so many different locations simultaneously is= tremendously exciting to me. It seems so clear to me, at least in this= case, that technology is an extension of our dualistic/binary thinking. = And that we animate this technology. Our thoughts are the life flowing= through it. If we can grasp a=20next step in relative terms and= communicate through this medium, the potential for the rapid emergence of= changes in global awareness is greatly enhanced. The organic,= non-hierarchical, interactive, and participatory structure of this= discussion is confusing at times, but it is also quite stimulating. Each= of us is able to connect to and respond to the particular threads of= meaning that resonate for us, to integrate multple perspectives on the= spot, and experiment and respond and inquire. This is such fertile ground. I am not an professional writer or academic. I am a wood worker and= homesteader living on forested land and working with sustainable forest= management issues and information technology. Many aspects of my concerns= have been articulated much better than I am able to by other contributors. = But there is one aspect that seems critical to me which I would like to= touch on. =20 It is unimaginable to me that we do not create technology. It is imbued= with spirit, it part of all that is, but it is clearly a product of a= dualistic aspect of ourselves: our rational ability to break the world into= discreet contrasting components. We are responsible for technology. There= is a perception that technology is out of control, that technology is evil= and destructive. As if it got away from us and turned on us. The idea= that technology is alive relieves us of responsibility for its behavior,= and seems to me a form of denial. We are also being called on to accept all that is and not to demonize the= perpetrators of relative evil. And, I assume, to accept that we each have= within ourselves aspects of relative good and evil which make up our= "perfect" selves. (Any buddhas present may wish to exempt themselves from= this comment.) As humans with family commitments, financial needs, ambitions,= self-interest, egos, etc., we operate in relative world views. We have all= created, participated in, been coerced by, cooperated with, or collaborated= with organizational structures (boards, businesses, legislatures,= government agencies, executive officers, shareholders) which have the= resources to determine which technologies are pursued and funded, and how= technologies are developed and implemented. We often feel that this is= beyond our control. It is not hard to believe that most of the= "relatively" small group of people making key decisions on R&D, capital= investments in new technology, and deployment of technological resources= are (or believe themselves to be) experiencing similar constraints.=20 J McClellen commented: .. =20 >Our lives of course manifest the kind of understanding we have arrived at >already. I don't mean just where we live or what we do all day--we don't >always have control over that.=20 It seems to me that it is right here that technology gets away from us. In= allowing our time and our intellectual and physical abilites to be used by= institutions and organizations which collaborate in defining directions for= technology and our very life/time, which do not manifest the "kind of= understanding we have arrived at already", that do not resonate with the= moments of clarity that remain after an experience of the absolute. At= this juncture, I feel we will have a difficult time sustaining the number= of people we have on earth without technology. But, the anti-ecological= effects of technology seem to stem in large part (though not exclusively)= from the planning=20and design of industrial technology to serve a profit= motive. =20 John, please, (or anyone else?) how can we communicate the "kind of= understanding we have arrived at already", the understandings so= eloquently, passionately and compassionately expressed in this discussion,= within the organizational structures which fund and direct our use of our= energies and our technologies? How can we manifest our compassion in "what= we do all day", particularly around funding and developing compassionate,= ecological and socially just technological innovation and utilization? Wouldn't this be engaged Buddhism? =20 How do we live: ******************* In a sacred way.??? ******************* Is relatively sacred enough? Hoping the compassion that comes from accepting the best and the worst and= everything that moves will be expressed in our industrial and political= lives, J Rogers From mcclelj @ csf.Colorado.EDU Fri Nov 22 19:50:33 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 19:50:30 -0700 (MST) From: John McClellan Subject: MAIN DOC-So How DO We Live?/From the Book NONDUAL ECOLOgy MAJOR DOCUMENT *HOW DO WE LIVE?* So how do we live in these wild times? Here is a positive vision as a guide to personal and social life. I think that living this way is the most helpful contribution anyone could make to a better world. Everything that happens is sacred activity, beautiful, precious, dangerous. Bow to it. A few corollaries follow from this single principle: *See this planet as a holy sacred wilderness.* It is pristine, never having been touched or even seen by any outside forces, as far as we know. Nothing on this earth is in violation of the laws of nature, nothing is unnatural. Therefore, respect everything that moves. As in any pure wilderness, all forces & presences are utterly wild, out of control. So, Watch out. Look to the food chain. Remember we are in it, and not at the top anymore. Technology feeds on humans, and breeds in the ponds of our desires and needs. We donUt understand this very well. This too will pass. This civilization is rising and collapsing simultaneously before our eyes. It is a spectacular sight. Others will rise in its place after a while, to collapse too. This is the Earth breathing in and out. *Know and respect your wild relatives.* All of them. Starting with the whole material universe, i.e. the rocks & clouds, matter and energies in the timespace field etc. The negentropic creatures, all of them: the microbes, plants, and animals, yourself and other humans, the machines, and the many symbolic systems, both concrete and abstract . Use them for your needs, for food, for shelter and for teachers; use them as we have always done, but be careful. Try to act properly, as we used to try to do with the bears and the eagle, with the mountains and rivers, and the buffaloe. Have more respect for all these forms of life, so we can live in the dharma of the wild together. Above all, *Take the freedom of no creature against its will. * This is the main guide to correct action for individuals, and is essential for societies as well. It applies to animals, plants, rivers, dirt, mountains and valleys, funguses, microbes, children, spouses, other humans, oneself, machines, social and religious behaviors, and abstract symbolic systems. (Stone Age societies respect this rule, civilized societies do not. This is one of the main ways you can spot the difference between them in the latterUs early stages of development. It may not be possible to harness industrial levels of power without taking the freedom of others against their will. For this reason, the Neolithic Age, the age of civilization, is essentially the age of slavery. First the animals and plants, then the rivers, meadows, and forests were enslaved. Humans we made slaves from the beginning, being used as primitive living industrial machines, to herd the animals, tend the fields, dig the irrigation ditches, raise the cities, temples, palaces and pyramids, power the ships, man the armies, meet the industrial production levels of babies, etc. Today we have enslaved not only our own populations, but almost all available biological systems.) *Keep a good camp. * This means A) _Knowing the Boundaries._ These are usually smaller than youUd like Proper boundaries should provide reasonable living quarters in camp, but are reduced to little more than personal body space on the trail, on the street or in common hunting grounds, whether these be modern or ancient. B) _Limited Self-protection._ In camp or on the trail you may defend yourself and your companions, and exert limited forms of control around your person and party; but outside these lines, you must respect the wildness of other beings. Outside youUre on the street. No one controls what goes on there, nor should they. ItUs the Land of No Man. So no preventive, sanitizing measures, such as Tridding the townU (or mountains) of: bandits, bears, snakes or wolves, mosquitoes or pests, or other human tribes, who may be different in religion, language, skin color, dress or livelihood. C) _Take No Excess Wealth_. There is no reason oneUs camp should not be comfortable and well provisioned, but accumulating more wealth than you or your immediate family reasonably need or can personally use is going too far. No other creatures in all the natural world accumulate more resources than they need from one summer to the next spring. So, respect others. Eat and get eaten. Die and be born. Honor the gods. Take care of the children and look after each other. Mind your own business. In pursuing these goals, one must remember to respect the freedom of other creatures. No agriculture. No animal or human slavery. No warfare. No wealth beyond real personal needs. And as for common hunting or gathering grounds, ownership or control over them, and no preventive or productive management or TcultivationU. This ancient wilderness ethic might be seen as a selfish, survivalist ethos in todayUs world, which has grown so accustomed to having everything TmanagedU by bureaucracies, police and armies. It is not a popular or widely shared view today among nice adults in the favored classes of the developed nations. But there are some who will know what IUm talking about. Kids on the street, in the schools, jobs and jails, searching for meaning in our pointless consumer behaviors, in our materialist frenzy and aggressive technological environment. Wild animals, plants, microbes, and rocks & clouds know the Code already of course. ItUs the way to stay alive and live well in any wilderness system, ancient or modern. Everyone understands this way of living in the ghettos, in Africa, in Russia, in Central Europe, South America, in India and other such places. Actually itUs only the affluent, adult population of the developed countries who are suffering under the illusion that the world can be Managed for the Good of All. Everyone else knows the situation is seriously out of control. Knowing this, they bow to forces greater than they, and try to live as one does in a wilderness. >From the point of view of freely evolving technobiotia, we are all wild creatures. The machines & symbolic codes are wild themselves. ThereUs no safety for wild things. Never has been. You canUt rid the whole valley of bears, or enemies, of bandits or bad spirits. You share the valley with them, and make your own provisional safety for you and yours around camp and on the trail as best you can, moment by moment. This is the good life as it is lived in a real wilderness, or in any big city for that matter. = >From the Book: Nondual Ecology John McClellan From mcclelj @ csf.Colorado.EDU Fri Nov 22 20:02:40 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 20:02:38 -0700 (MST) From: John McClellan Subject: MAIN DOC-OBSERVING NATURAL BOUNDARIES/ From the Book NONDUAL ECOLOGY MAJOR DOCUMENT OBSERVING NATURAL BOUDARIES Also know among Indian people as Staying Home Now then, to apply this wilderness code to our own lives. The Theory There is a natural sphere of influence that surrounds any kind of effort, whether of a personal, family, social or even global nature. OneUs focus and oneUs reach go only so far, so we restrict our personal efforts to this realm, fuss and worry about what goes on within this sphere of interest, and ignore or accept calmly what happens beyond it. Environmentalists, for example, usually specialize in a particular issue, ancient forests, perhaps, or wild rivers, a region, or constituency; they work hard and worry a lot about these, and ignore other, equally pressing agendas. Ask a forest activist about animal rights and they may be polite about it, but they really donUt care that much, and vice versa. (Why donUt we ever refer to Rforest rightsS?) Other issues are Tout of boundsU, even when they directly impact on the good health of forests, as water, air, energy and population all so clearly do. In our neighborhoods, we look after our own yards, and let our neighbors do what they will in theirs. The degree of unconcern with which we view a neighborUs lawn, only inches away from our own, must reveal a basic law of nature that hasnUt been fully explicated yet. This is seen also in the relaxed attitude we have toward other peoplesU children, who they go out with, what grades they get, what college they donUt go to . These are lines drawn in time, too; who cares what will happen in your neighborhood in a hundred years? OK, a thousand. Somewhere, thereUs a natural boundary to oneUs proper sphere of interest and responsibility. I donUt mean to poke fun at the lines people draw around themselves, but rather to point out that such lines are arbitrary, drawn more according to a pragmatic sense of what one can handle, of what one chooses to care and think about, rather than on what really needs doing out there. *How We Choose Our Causes* Population. A Case. The population RissueS is a good example of this. Hardly any social activist I know is interested enough in this to Ttake it onU, to make it their territory. Because itUs not that important? No, this is of overwhelming and pressing importance, a totally Major Issue. But nobody wants to work on it. People wonUt touch it because everyone can see that the human population is totally out of control, on all local, regional and global levels. The most dedicated and aware environmentalists canUt even control population levels in their own families, for godUs sake. ItUs a genetically driven behavior, what can you say. Population explosion is unstoppable, short of radical biogenetik re-engineering. ItUs so hopeless, no one thinks itUs any fun to work on. TheyUd rather work on easier problems, ones that break down into nice little bite-sized chinks. Is that a serious way to go about saving the world? IsnUt it a bit like Nazrudin, the Sufi Sheik, who was found looking for his keys under the streetlight? He had dropped them somewhere out in the darkness, but there was better light for looking over here. We environmentalists and others who would bring good to the world should examine our own motivation very closely, in choosing the kinds of issues and activities we do. Many people enjoy ecosystem mapping, for example, because it gives them access to incredible computer technology. Lots of people like writing things, and going to meetings, and giving talks. ItUs exciting! Most of us look for a nice piece of work, about the right size, that involves the sorts of toys we like to play with. But once the territory is chosen, we get so serious about the importance and necessity for the work that Rneeds to be doneS there. CouldnUt we lighten up a bit, and regard all this social action more as a form of play, or sport, a perfectly decent activity thatUs good for us and we enjoy, like jogging, or birdwatching, or making cookies for poor people. I donUt know. Sometimes I think that God must feel like a first grade teacher, supervising recess. All the little boys on this planet run off to build forts and cities, and make roads in the dirt and float boats in puddles, and draw lines around themselves in the sand and shout off their heads about it. It is mostly little boys, you know. Anyway, thereUs God, one arm draped over the moon, resting His beautiful Head on the back of His hand, watching us at play with a kind of distant look in His Eye... I wonder if He ever gets Bored with all this. Maybe weUre cute. = The Practice Learning to work with boundaries. Step one, first identify an unmistakable boundary line; then peer outside it, and closely examine your feelings regarding the no-manUs lands out there. Can you live with yourself if the pharoahs had unfair labor practices? Do you really mind if curbside recycling hasnUt yet come to Siberia? What about your neighbors who leave the lights on in the bathroom? OK, apply this understanding to more immediate issues. My father-in-law, Newell Brown, likes to get out of tight spots by imagining any one or several of these boundary shifting paradigms: A) it happened to someone else, B) it happened ten years ago, C) he was a thousand miles away at the time. Step two involves examining oneUs feelings about what happens inside oneUs own boundaries. This calls for a certain amount of philosophical detachment, to be judiciously mixed in with the caring and fussing, and is more difficult. *Ordinary Sanity.* For this we must find a suitable set of boundaries, and learn to live comfortably within them. Within our area of legitimate concern, we care a lot, and work hard to make things right. At the same time we must remain reasonably detached about the outcome. If things go badly for our lawn, our children, our neighborhood or our own bodies, well so the hell be it. Our own clothing or even skin is the fallback boundary position of this kind, to which we retreat under conditions of duress. This is where you try to hold the line if you are sent to prison, or take the subway in New York. For most wild creatures it is the main boundary. In better times it might be our house and yard, neighborhood, a culturo-bioregion perhaps. In rare cases it might include a whole country, if this is small and homogenous, but certainly not big countries like the United States, or Russia, and never entire continents, or the whole planet. Those are no manUs land, or every manUs land, whichever way you prefer to look at it. You must be reasonable, and realistic. No one for example, to my knowledge, expresses concern about the ecology of the Milky Way galaxy, yet. ThatUs a no aliensU land, and can take care of itself. We do live in it, but take no responsibility off-planet, and are prepared to defend ourselves here at home as may prove necessary. As for the planet, we must remember that although some things, like GaiaUs good health, may have an important and direct effect upon our lives, this does not mean that therefore we are entitled or able to take charge of them. They may still fall outside of any proper personal, tribal or national boundary area. The recognition of where no manUs land begins is essential understanding. *Extraordinary sanity.* This is the sanity of the buddhas. It means to attain the same degree of caring about what happens outside oneUs personal boundaries as inside; and vice versa, to attain the same degree of detachment concerning what happens inside as out. Very difficult, advanced practice. We aspire of course immediately to this. Another Case. Universal Suffrage. I personally am upset that after two hundred years of uninterrupted RdemocracyS, we still do not enjoy universal suffrage in this country, by which I understand the vote would be given to all resident North American sentient beings, to all flowers and grasses and shrubs, all trees and rocks and clouds, to all funguses, insects, worms and microbes and viruses, all animals of course, all negentropic entities, including machines, symbolic systems, etc, all children of course, all criminals and madmen, poets, prostitutes, the poor, people of color, the illiterate, retarded, revolutionary or simply anti-social, and any other groups that are still systematically barred from participating in our democratic process. And this is a pretty conservative view too. I know a few mystics, real democrats, who would challenge my restriction to voters who are A) sentient B) North American C) residents D) living in the present. I know universal suffrage is not going to happen right away. It may even be none of my business, as in objection to todayUs limited suffrage I do not vote myself. At most I hope this will somehow work itself out without my help. Perhaps others have noticed the same problem, and will redress it in time. Perhaps itUs not important. I also wish my neighbors wouldnUt use so much pesticides and herbicides, but thereUs nothing I can do about that either. Maybe they wished I used more! Help. Thank god for the little bit of democracy we do have. Clear recognition of boundaries would do much to clarify things for those who care about the world. ItUs not exactly indifference, but more of a deep recognition of otherness as beginning somewhere, and respect for that. Learning to see OKness in otherness, even when it may hold danger and uncertainty for oneself. You greet and salute it, rather than worry and fuss over itQthe way grown children wish their aging parents would feel toward themQlike that. ItUs called minding your own business, a wonderful characteristic which all wild animals have. Watch a coyote trotting along a forest-meadow edge in broad daylight. He sees everything, but keeps his head down and minds his own business. Maybe heUll come back later, you canUt tell. Anyone who walks the streets of a big city these days learns to mind their own business in the same way. Psychology refers to this as whose problem is it, yours or theirs? You take care of yours, and let them take care of theirs, (which of course RtheyS wonUt, but youUre not supposed to mind). We are reasonably good at this in our private lives, but have little understanding of it in the public domain. Public minded people are so eager to take care of the whole planet, trying to make the world safe for various good things... Poor dears, they must get so frustrated, and tired too! This never has been a safe world, and itUs getting unsafer and unsafer everyday. If the buddhas went about trying to save sentient beings by making the world RsafeS for them, they would have bummed and burned themselves out long ago. = Please forgive the rough typography and edit, but as you may know my computer crashed this afternoon and I'm hoobling along on a makeshift rig. John McClellan >From the book, Nonbdual Ecology From jrmiln @ globalnet.co.uk Fri Nov 22 21:05:11 1996 Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 04:08:27 GMT From: Joseph Milne Subject: MAIN DOC- SOME PROBLEMS TO ADDRES MAJOR DOCUMENT SOME PROBLEMS TO ADDRESS I have not had time to fully participate in our discussion and would like to offer some general impressions that occur to me after reading all the posts so far. These remarks will try to locate some areas which seem to me to require much deeper reflection in the future. I appreciate in making them that we are each coming to this discussion from quite different but equally legitimate perspectives. Naturally my own comments will be from my own perspective and concerns. 1. First, I think that we have a long way to go before we can forge a meeting between religion and ecology. Many contributors speak from the viewpoint of what might be called 'nature mysticism'. I use this term as inclusive of all religions or religious modes of understanding, including John McClellen's original paper. Yet this nature mysticism is clearly struggling when it comes to what may be included. On the one hand attempts have been made to be so inclusive that some of us protest. On the other hand it has been limited to nature untouched by man, and civilisation, culture and even man has been excluded. In particular society has been excluded, which is the natural condition of man, since without society we cannot realise our human potential and there is no scope for the immeasurable resource of creativity or goodness to flourish. 2. A main difficulty lies in our desire to delineate a clear representation of the world. There is a tendency here to 'reduce' the world to some simple all-inclusive picture. The commonest put forward here is that of reducing man to the 'biological' level, to level him down to that of any other species and to look at all his multiple activities and aspiration s solely from the perspective of a species fitting in to its environment and sustaining itself merely as a part of biodiversity. This, clearly, is *a* perspective from which man can be understood, but it is not whole but reductive. It tends to judge the worth of any human activity in terms of its effect on the environment. Such a narrowed view cannot possibly connect man or society adequately with nature because it implicitly disvalues the aspirations of most people. But also it has no resource with which to understand the depths of human nature. >From the religious and the philosophic viewpoint man is that creature on earth who seeks to understand his own being and meaning in reference to himself, to the creation and to the Ultimate. A subtler difficulty in this limited (or limiting) view of man and society is that it imposes or is used to impose an ethic on man, an ethic that says his first and last duty is towards other life forms or species. It says that man is to be judged good or evil by this measure alone. This juridical ecology, which attempts to compel action and judge action according to this single criteria, takes for granted an understanding of ethics, assumes it is self-evident, and in doing so precludes deeper reflection on the source and nature of morality. Because this view speaks from a command, it implicitly precludes any analysis of the nature of society or of economics. Yet it is quite clear that the damage currently being caused by industry is caused by the very nature of the economic systems of the world, over which individuals have no direct power. This is because the economic systems are all based upon the private ownership of land. It is a small handful of individuals that own all the productive land on earth. A careful study needs to be made of this and one can do no better than start with _Progress and Poverty_ by Henry George. 2. A second major difficulty lies in the language used in discussing ecology. There is a great deal of metaphorical language - of describing one thing in terms of another. This always confuses rather than clarifies. Also it conceals ideologies and hidden agendas. I mentioned in a previous post the distortions caused by the use of the word 'humans' for man. To deprive man of his personal name is to alienate him from himself. We are all human, but our collective name is Man. To say 'I am man' is to speak responsibly in my own person. To say 'I am a human' to speak about myself from outside. It is to avoid saying 'I am man'. This problem extends to a host of other such 'hot' words. For example 'anthropocentric'. That is now a pejorative term. So the name Anthropos also goes. I will not list the numerous others. My point is that we need, for the sake of clarity, to remove both metaphoric and pejorative language from this discourse of ecology. And along with this we also need to cease from always adding newly created terms to the vocabulary of ecology. Generally such terms are distortions of their more exact use in other disciplines. I would include all PC terms here, not because I deny their good intention, but because they are really an American dialect which is not shared by other nations. They have an emotive charge which stifles exact thought or investigation or forces it into a certain direction in advance of enquiry. Language erosion is part of the ecological crisis. The more we limit the language the more we limit possible action or insight. 3. A third point is that ecology needs to enlarge the number of disciplines that can contribute to its further understanding. It is curiously ironic that so much has been said against technology in this seminar, yet the discipline resorted to is the natural sciences which are at the forefront of technology. The natural sciences can reveal absolutely vital knowledge to us, but this knowledge does not provide by itself an indication of right action, although it obviously can inform it. Science of itself cannot stand in for ethical judgements, for example. Science does not deal with metaphysics, even though many scientists, in obvious ignorance of metaphysics, are today making metaphysical claims. But more important than this, the sciences are not a natural discourse for society at large. I am not a scientist and therefore I cannot speak the scientific languages that belong to each of the scientific disciplines. The kind of understanding that is needed in the world to change the way we live must be a kind of understanding naturally open to all. For non-scientists to adopt scientific terms can only lead to misunderstanding. Here I recognise the appeals of those who ask us not to speak intellectually all the time. Basically they mean the jargon of our various disciplines. Joseph Milne From jrmiln @ globalnet.co.uk Fri Nov 22 21:05:18 1996 Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 04:08:34 GMT From: Joseph Milne Subject: MAIN DOC- More on Bowing, Civilization & Technology MAJOR DOCUMENT At 17:05 22/11/96 +1100, you wrote: >On Thu, 21 Nov 1996, Joseph Milne wrote: > >> John has suggested today that technology has created civilisation. >> Such a suggestion needs to be carefully elaborated before we know >> what it might mean. from the discussion on this seminar to date it >> is evident that we have not even reached an understanding of what >> technology actually is, let alone what it may have produced or may >> produce. > >> There is a tendency in recent thinking to regard practically >> everything in technological terms. For example the social sciences >> are now analysing society in terms of technological mechanisms. >> I would suggest that, at best, such a mode of thinking can only >> be metaphorical. I am concerned, however, that the metaphor is >> now being taken as literal. This means that the technological >> paradigm is being taken as a *key* to how all things work. Taken >> this way it is a classic instance of empirical reductionism, and I >> wish to suggest that it is this type of reductionism that is >> creating our modern problems and also many of the confusions >> in our present discussion. >> >> I would wish to suggested that the causal order is the other way >> round to the one John has suggested. It is civilisation that has >> created technology. Technology is an aspect of human civilisation, >> not is cause or its defining feature. > > One of the empirical tools I like to use is historical sequence. > >TECHNOLOGY > We've had technology for so long that it goes well beyond history >into the realm of paleontology. A flint ax is technology, after all. >Technology is certainly not *everything* that we have been about for the >last 100,000's and millions of years, but it's been an important part of >the story. > >CIVILIZATION > Civilization, by its timing, is what happens to people when there >is not enough unoccupied terrain (in terms human niche and pre-agrarian >technology) close enough at hand to make "stay and be conquered" a >proposition that is not absurd group of people. From that we get >increasingly complex societies and technologies, including organized >warfare, cities ("civilized" taken literally means "citified"), >agriculture, spinning jennies, etc. That's been the last 5 millenia, more >or less. > >TECHNOLOGY: 100's, perhaps 1,000's of millenia old >CIVILIZATION: 5 millenia old, more or less. > > I very much doubt that it is a mechanical relationship between >technology and civilization, but technology leading to civilization (with >all the organized horror and mayhem that typifies civilized life) seems, >on historical sequence, a lot more plausible than civilization leading to >technology. Dear Bruce R. McFarling, Thank you for your comments and forgive me for taking so long to reply. I think we can understand that historical sequence is not the same as causal sequence, and that the final cause has to be taken into account if we are to understand the causal relations between things. In a certain sense you are right though, since neither civilization nor technology are themselves causes. Yet technology is not an axe or a computer but a methodology, and a method of doing things cannot be their cause. What caused the first tool was not the tool itself or the method that created it, but the *end* or *task* it was devised to accomplish. It is this peculiar power of man to envisage ends and seek means by which to accomplish those ends that opens up the possibility of the tool. And this envisioning of ends indicates a grasp of time and a relation between what is now envisaged and a line to its accomplishment. This power to grasp time is the power to anticipate, to predict and to direct an outcome. This is the same whether it involves the making of the first axe in an hour or bulding a vast city over a number of years. But is is also this grasp of predicting outcomes that opens the way to human community and the division of labour. There are a thousand things that cannot be accomplished at all except through a division of labour. All this depends upon the power of the mind to envision and predict and secure a definite outcome. The cause is the *desire* to accomplish a certain outcome. But this power of envisioning is preceded by a grasp of how things are and how something could be. And this power is what lifts the human species from a pack or herd to a community. And the envisioning power immediately makes possible language, representation, and language opens up all the infinite possibilities of community. > BTW, why, given all the nastiness that civilization adds on top of >the pre-existing nastiness that is part of the human condition, is "Being >Civilized" considered to be a compliment rather than an insult? I >suspect that the answer is that we institutionalize the rules of *our* >civlization, and come to see them as 'right' and 'normal'. So when >someone says "Be Civilized", he or she means "follow the rules of *my* >civilization, that I am comfortable with". To assess what civilisation is on such a narrow moral criteria is, I think, to almost willfully distort the very nature of civilisation. Civilisation is not a set of institutionalized rules. There must be community before any 'institutionalisation' is possible at all. And institutions are not rules. I think you are overlooking the fact of the possibilities of the division of labour. To equate all collective human activity with intentional ill-will is quaite absurd. I used to play in a string quartet and there was no ill-will in doing such a thing. And your notion of 'pre-existing nastiness that is part of the human condition' is a hopelessly inadequate view of human nature. By what do you measue such nastiness? And how do you demonstrate this is part of the human condition? Are you suggesting that man is an esentially evil being? And if so, how can you stand above that and pronounce judgement upon it? This kind of moral outlook upon civilisation and upon human nature can produce no useful thing. I am not addressing you personally, but this seminar generally. If we are acting from anger with mankind, then all our concern for ecology is surely hypocrasy. This is an aspect of the present seminar that very seriously concerns me. Joseph Milne __________________________________________ Joseph Milne Department of Theology & Religious Studies University of Kent at Canterbury Canterbury Kent CT2 7NY U. K. __________________________________________ From bbarnum @ polaristel.net Fri Nov 22 22:07:28 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 23:08:39 -0600 From: bbarnum @ polaristel.net (Betsy Barnum) Subject: MAIN DOC- SOME PROBLEMS TO ADDRES MAJOR DOCUMENT Joseph, Sorry to have to disagree here. You said. >2. A second major difficulty lies in the language used in discussing >ecology. There is a great deal of metaphorical language - of describing >one thing in terms of another. This always confuses rather than clarifies. >Also it conceals ideologies and hidden agendas. I mentioned in a previous >post the distortions caused by the use of the word 'humans' for man. To >deprive man of his personal name is to alienate him from himself. We are >all human, but our collective name is Man. To say 'I am man' is to speak >responsibly in my own person. To say 'I am a human' to speak about myself >from outside. It is to avoid saying 'I am man'. You can say "I am Man," Joseph. Since I am Woman, I can't truthfully say that. You say that using the word "human" deprives a man of his name and alienates him from himself. (Note the preponderance of masculine pronouns in your sentence.) By exactly the same token, calling half the human race by the name that refers distinctly to the other half deprives this half of our identity and alienates us from ourselves and from your half. The word "human" is not metaphorical; it is concrete and is at least twice as accurate as "Man" in reference to all of us. Betsy From dlachape @ ptialaska.net Fri Nov 22 23:03:13 1996 Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 21:10:18 +0000 From: David Lachapelle Reply-To: dlachape @ ptialaska.net Subject: MAIN DOC-rainmaking and boat house fires MAJOR DOCUMENT Greetings discussion group, The clear cold weather is still holding... in Juneau when we have had more than four or five days of sun it begins to get a little weird.. creatures of the clouds we generally are. I noticed the silver spruce tips of this years growth were more obvious than usual this morning, the wreath of their becoming alive in the light which slants like late afternoon in the northern winters. This discussion reminds me of many a talking staff circle which I have sat in (we're talking hundreds in the last so many years): A collection of humanity is assembled and we wait our turn for the talking staff to cue our server to download the next few layers of the circle. What I have grown to deeply appreciate as a practice in talking circles is the opportunity to witness the splendid difference in all our beings and the unique way in which we all contribute to and hinder our communication. From this center the argument is only a subtext.. the witnessing is the wonder. To watch as our thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, angers, aggressions and dreams thread their way through the planet in a dance of great power has been a gift to my week. Thank you all. And now on with the argument. I would like to take exception to Joseph Milne who sounds the alarm at metaphor... that they hide hidden agendas and obscurate discussion. They may at times do this... but I think they are necessary as ways to link our triune brain functions together. The reptile and the mammal and the neocortex have different symbol systems and need to be fed simultaneously or else they get real cranky. (try teaching philosophy to teenagers without a metaphor some time if you want to see cranky!)They are the keys to unlocking understanding which is not processed sequentially and involves radical figure ground shifts... your basic aha experiences. In my experience a good metaphor slips past the defense structure of our conscious mind and weaves a basket of understanding which we can call the doorway to our soul... Metaphor is the only way I think I could possibly approach the absolute and survive to tell the story... I would suggest a rigorous stroll down the path of Rumi and other Sufi poets if you want to come to appreciate the power of metaphor to instruct and soothe the heart. In the face of technology, which achieves its power based on predictable outcomes, metaphor is the savior our humanness, the flower of our ability to transcend the obvious and arrive at solutions to dilemmas which seem without cure. And a few thoughts about religion and deep ecology Now this is hot item! Let me tell you I have worked on this one for a long long time and still have not got it settled in my heart. This discussion has focused the issue quite nicely for me and I am grateful for the opportunity to explore this once again. I have noticed that the people I have met in my life time who I considered the best practicing ecologists were all deeply religious. (not I might add the other way round) By religion I mean the capacity to deduce meaning from the events which surround us and cohere that meaning into a purposeful way of living. John Fire Lame Deer, a Lakota medicine man I knew, put it as well: Life is symbol to be lived. This was at the heart of his "sacredness". He lived with an eye and heart to the interpenetration of events and mystery which were unfolding around him. I think that deep ecology asks us to attend to the multiple levels of connection which exist within and around us. This connection takes us only as far as we are willing to go, but can take us to the core of our being. The willingness is a big if in the journey. I believe that the mystics of the planet have taken the connection within themselves to a place which infuses their lives with meaning and purpose. And I think that this often has radical political consequences. (you can chart a good degree of history based on the arrival of various prophets) The act of interiorization, the exploration of their own bodies and souls, (often accompanied with physical illness and breakdowns) pushes them through the boundary of physical ecology and into other realms of relationship... other webs of connection which constitute ecological niches of their own. (look at the phenomenon of rain making in various cultures.. I know of several stories of Medicine men changing the weather at Sundances in order allow the dance to continue... and then there is the famous rainmaker story which Jung tells, attributed to Richard Wilhelm, the translator of the I Ching, in which a Taoist rainmaker arrives in a part of China at the behest of village which is in need of rain. He arrives, takes the pulse of the environment and asks for a hut. After three days it begins to rain. Not only does it rain, it snows, which is unheard of in that area. The rainmaker is asked how he did it. To which he replied. "I came here and saw that this area was out balance with the Tao. I retired to contemplate until I was. What is there that I did?" my concentration has just been broken by the thundering arrival of my teen age step son and friends who have informed me that the largest boat merchant in Juneau has just gone up in flames two blocks from our house...I take this a statement about my awareness of my local environment and take it as a clue that its time stop talking for a while. Thanks for the heartfelt listening and sharing. David From mcclelj @ csf.Colorado.EDU Sat Nov 23 00:18:29 1996 Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 00:18:27 -0700 (MST) From: John McClellan Subject: MAIN DOC-Sigh. Big, long sigh. (fwd) MAJOR DOCUMENT I am forwarding this letter to the group because I feel it deserves to be heard and considered. In response to this, I composed the Author's Closing Statement Updated this evening, and posted it a few minutes ago. I am looking forward to your replies. John McClellan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 22:37:04 -0600 From: Betsy Barnum Subject: Sigh. Big, long sigh. John, I am feeling a bit weary, trying so hard to understand what you are saying and where you are coming from. Each time I think I get it, you post something that throws confusion over everything again. To wit, the two chapters you just put up tonight from your book. You seem to be advocating a return to hunter-gatherer existence. Maybe I'm just dense, and it's all metaphorical, but I don't understand how this can possibly be a positive vision for how we should live, given the situation we are currently in. How are 6 billion people supposed to eat with //No agriculture. No animal or human slavery. No warfare. No wealth beyond real personal needs. And as for common hunting or gathering grounds, ownership or control over them, and no preventive or productive management or "cultivation".//? See, I read this kind of thing and I think you are making fun of me, of us, of the idea that there might actually *be* a way to live with integrity in this world. It puzzles me, and it frustrates me. I certainly can't apply this as written to my life, at least not most of it. So your question is still live--how are we to live? I think you need to come down from the mountain, John, and meet the real people where they are. Cuz you're going *way* over my head. And I thought you agreed a few days ago to stop insisting that machines and whatever you want to include in "technology" were sentient beings and were eating us and colonizing us and merging with us and all that. I am still unsatisfied with your explanations of why I should even consider this interpretation of reality (how is it that technology is evolving, what is the scientific or other believable evidence that memes exist and behave like genes, etc.). Frankly, I just can't follow you there. As I've said before, I'm not a scientist, but I do have a pretty good brain, I read a lot and absorb a lot, and all this technobiotia stuff is just science fiction to me. I'm not a Buddhist, but from the responses of many in the group who are, I'd say you haven't applied Buddhism to technology in a way that is in keeping with the general understanding of that spirituality, either. I thought that what Suzanne Duarte wrote to the seminar on this topic was much closer to speaking my mind. I also felt my mind and heart were spoken by Malcolm Hollick in his post on technology and hope, earlier today. This has been a fascinating experience, this virtual seminar. I already knew several of those who posted from other listservs, and it was very stimulating to read the back-and-forth with them and so many other thoughtful and committed minds. Though it has also been consuming--timewise and in other ways. But I want to thank you for making it possible, and for being willing to put yourself and your ideas out as targets, not knowing for sure what would be thrown at you. Blessings, Betsy From Gusdz @ aol.com Sat Nov 23 00:29:39 1996 From: Gusdz @ aol.com Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 02:29:36 -0500 Subject: MAIN DOC-: From the Book NONDUAL ECOLOGY MAJOR DOCUMENT While it now seems that John McClellan's personal practices are far more friendly to nature, and to deep ecological values, than his writings, it is by his writings that most people will be influenced by him. I want to briefly touch upon what I believe to be some serious misunderstandings in his just published selection. He writes that stone age peoples had a hands off relationship to the world. Because we respect and admire these cultures, somehow that is supposed to support our taking a similar position. In point of fact the stone age peoples did not take a hands off approach. At least, the evidence we have, which must largely be extrapolated from the practices of more contemporary hunting and gathering peoples, is that they may have made widespread and deliberate use of fire. And it is contemporary and recent hunting and gathering peoples that provide us most of what we think we know about those very early ancestors. Certainly they do not "tiptoe" through the forest through fear of showing lack of respect. But even if some peoples did not use fire, or anything else that had much environmental impact, we need to ask why. There are two presumably likely reasons. First, ignorance. Maybe they did not know how to make a major impact. To the degree this is true it renders their example irrelevant to today's concerns. Second, and much more to the point, many of these peoples RESPECTED natural processes. By this, they referred to nonhuman processes. How this respect can translate into justifying doing nothing when people who do not respect natural processes use technologies to magnify their destructive impact upon them is utterly beyond me. John writes that these early peoples allowed the world to unfold its "inherent nature" whereas in our efforts to thwart the subordination of all of nature to human beings and their technology, we do not. Where is the logic in saying that tribal peoples allowed the world to unfold its inherent nature by trying not to interfere with it while we should emulate their example by accepting what technology will do to our world? I don't get it. I especially don't get it because technology will not do anything without human beings acting. John also makes some very denigrating comments about our efforts to change the way our society is relating to nature. But it is one thing to try and build a utopia, a project of which McClellan is properly skeptical. It is another thing to try and improve the world, without any expectations that our actions will make it perfect. They may, however, make the difference between keeping it on a more or less even keel, and making it very very imperfect. I admit I write from the necessarily dualist perspective of beings who have physical and psychological needs. But that is all of us. To my knowledge most deep ecologists are not utopian, unlike many social ecologists. We are not trying to change the world so much as preserve what already exists, or restore to health what exists in a wounded state. To do this the existing state of affairs must change insofar as it manifests trends which threaten to transform everything into the techno culture which McClellan intuits as our evolutionary destiny. Technology is not an autonomous force. Powerful technologies have been successfully banned. Japan banned guns for a long time. Here in northern California farmers are moving more and more towards organic practices. Nuclear technology as a means for building elecrical generating plants have been largely stopped in the US and many other nations. We have the technology to build many more big dams. It is human choice that has prevented new ones in this country. We are not completely helpless, despite appearances. The chief barrier to more benign uses of technologies (besides ignorance) are those who benefit from less benign uses to such an extent that they fight against efforts of reform. The outcome is based ultimately on persuasion modified by power. But both elements of this equation are human, not technological. What does make a difference in our choices and which can make us appear powerless is not technology but social and political institutions. That is a big topic and takes us far astray. I will have a piece on this topic in the next issue of The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy. It is perhaps the major journal dealing with deep ecology on a regular basis. If you cannot find it, contact me and I will send you their address. Another problem is McClellan's treatment of traditional spirituality. When writing of the attitudes of traditional spiritual leaders to the world John again conflates utopian engineering with attempting to protect and preserve. He claims that traditional spiritual elders do not "try to reform the greater world. It's just not done." If we are dealing with utopian engineering, he is correct but irrelevant. If we are concerned with reform as I have described it, this claim is not true. Among the Indian nations many spiritual leaders took a very active role in trying to preserve their people and their way of life. Crazy Horse is a good example. Among contemporary native American people Western Shoshone elder Corbin Harney is an eloquent but by no means isolated example. After saying that traditional spiritual leaders have the "highest professional qualifications" in the science of the sacred, McClellen then denigrates what they actually do, their rituals and practices, as "charming" and "quaint." Apparently because they did not successfully resist the white man and the white man's diseases, they are useless. Deep ecologists are supposedly similarly "quaint." Here we have dualism at its most extreme. Rituals are either all powerful, or they are useless. This is silly. I can say that many rituals of the sort denigrated as "primitive ritual behavior" are anything but. There was once a time when I thought these things were as McClellan says. One teacher of mine asked the powers to provide me with an attitude adjustment when I went away on a vision quest. They did. I hope John McClellan will be similarly blessed. McClellan's basic argument is ferociously dualist. We are given two choices. We either are responsible for everything and create everything, or we go along for the ride. This is bad advice for living an narrowly individualistic life, let alone asking ourselves how to relate compassionately to other beings. We exercise responsibility where we can, and where it is appropriate, and we adapt and accept when what is happening is beyond our ability to influence. But it is hardly obvious in advance which is the case in many instances. What is obvious is that our situation is not all one or all the other. Nondual insights are completely useless in determining what we should do. If the world is perfect, it will be perfect if I try, and succeed in saving endangered species. It will be perfect if I try, and fail. It will be perfect if I go out and exterminate endangered species. It will be perfect if I ignore these issues completely. Nonduality is perfectly useless as a guide to what to do, because it encompasses every possible action. Nondual insights are only useful in the world of duality, the world within which we unenlightened beings live, at giving us a context within which we do whatever it is that we choose. It helps us be nonattached to the outcome. That is ALL it does. That "little" is a lot - but it does not say what to do. Others in our seminar have said it, and it cannot be said enough, nonduality cannot be taught. It must be experienced. It is the meaning behind the sutra "Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise." (I want that sutra for a bumpersticker!) Once we no longer experience nonduality, we are back in the world of samsara, and have to act in a dualist context the intensity of which is modified by our remembrance of nondual experience. But the choices remain. "nor are they otherwise." Gus diZerega From rtree @ stout.entertain.com Sat Nov 23 09:50:00 1996 Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 09:49:59 -0700 From: rtree @ stout.entertain.com (Bruce Nygren) Subject: MAIN DOC- from Suzanne Duarte ....I think it's bigger >than you're making it out to be, John. We could frame it as theAquarian >struggle between the polarities of the collective and the individual >(the particular) interests.... > >Suzanne Duarte >Instructor in Environmental Studies, The Naropa Institute, >Boulder, Colorado ______________________________________________________ Suzanne - I find your argument compelling, especially the focus of keeping a good camp. And I think it is, indeed, a monumental battle. What confuses me, however, is what happens when you divide the sides up. What is the collective Good, what is the individual Good? Obviously, philosophers have been debating this issue for millenia (mostly male philosophers, by the way, and might that not be a large part of the problem?). While some interesting thought has come out of the debate, we are still stuck in the same conundrum: what is the collective Good, what is the individual (or particular) Good? When we say Collective Good, are we talking about collective Human consciousness; collective Gaeian consciousness; collective Universal consciousness? The Borg, to cite the fictional analogy, were engaged in promoting a "collective" good; so were the members of the Federation. We environmentaly caring souls promote various ideas of collective good; technocrats also promote their idea of the collecive good. When we talk about individual good, likewise, whose individual good do we mean? You fill in the blanks, you get the idea. I'm really not trying to be argumentative or nitpicking here. I think we have, in our collective thinking as humans on the individual/collective problem, trapped ourselves in a closed loop. What I, personally, see John doing is making an attempt at breaking out of the loop to stimulate fresh thinking, by purposefully obliterating the lines of distintion between the two. Because, do they really exist? Look, I'm having a hard time doing this on an intellectual level, so let me try to illustrate the problem as I see it in a more personal way. I am a cabinetmaker, using wood and manufactured wood products to create hopefully beautiful and functional THINGS for peoples' homes and businesses. I try to imbue these THINGS with as much consciousness as I can, but competitive economic necessities often dictate that I do things - like using laquer products and creating too much waste and driving my vehicle too many miles - which I know are harmful to the planet I love and especially to the trees who gave me a large part of my identity. For me, I see my continual struggle to live in harmony with my family, with my society, with my surroundings, with the collective will of the Universe, with my own deep longings for peace - in short, to live for the Good of All - as a personal attempt to synthesize many threads of existence into one acting being. The focus in this universe which is uniquely mine has a role to play in something - and I'm not at all sure I could quantify what - universal. Most spiritual paths, but especially Buddhism, teach this in some form, and none has come up with a clear explanation of just Who we Are. At least in words. In Direct Transmission, perhaps. You know, on a day like today, when the sky is a faceless reflection and the stillness and impending cold urge me inward, I long to be back in my cabin in the Canadian woods where I lived for so many years with no electricity humming in the walls, no pollution except the gentle wafting of wood smoke, no vista but the mountains and the lake below. God, how I miss it! But is simply is no longer mine to have in that way. My personal spiritual path led me to involve myself in the vibrant immediacy of building a family and nurturing the beings given into my care. My personal/universal desire led me to this semi-urban landscape to try to synthesize a vision born in silence and solitude with the crazy world in which we all live. I think a lot of us writing here are in a similar boat. Who is the enemy? Is there an enemy? Do we circle endlessly, or do we spiral toward something? What do we people of Deeply Good Will do in the face of possible imminent destruction of our place of being and the beauty we hold so dear? In each of our cases the answer is bound to be different, but driven by something quite similar. Experiments like the one in which we are involved, thanks to John, are vital to deepening our awareness. To the extent that we suspend judgement yet struggle to portray our own viewpoints, our viewpopints deepen. This has been a remarkable seminar for me. From my heart, I thank all of us. -Bruce ________________________________ Bruce Nygren 1515 Redwood Avenue Boulder, CO 80304 ________________________________ The Buddha sat down. Soon after, he got up and said, "There is a rock under my seat." Lifting his blanket, he saw Nothing. From mcclelj @ csf.Colorado.EDU Sat Nov 23 12:28:39 1996 Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 12:28:37 -0700 (MST) From: John McClellan Subject: MAIN DOC-AUTHOR'S CLOSING STATEMENT UPDATED MAJOR DOCUMENT THE AUTHORUS CLOSING STATEMENT In response to the sensitive and perceptive letters posted this evening by Joseph Milne and Betsy Barnum, I have decided to make a closing statement. There is still time of course to take this discussion further, as the lights do not go out on this List until Sunday at 10 pm. It will be interesting to see whether what happens between now and then gives me any reason to change or add to this statement. I would hope it does. This isnUt yet the time for thanks and goodbyes and all that. This is still a working discussion. ___________________________________________________________ <> This from Joseph Milne, one of the most caring and thoughtful of our contributors, to Bruce McFarlane, another such. *Of Anger and Compassion* Many sorry things have been done by humans in the brief history of civilization, to each other and to the rest of the earthUs creatures. But there is no ground here for anger. The relationship of anger requires two things: first a vantage point, a clear, blame-free ground on which to stand and from which to direct oneUs displeasure, and second, a valid and reliable split or separation between self and other. As humans ourselves, members of the very civilized societies whose actions we would condemn, we possess neither of these. Anger does not lead to the kind of purification we look for from it. Anger, when it is based on the kind of self-deception and false view that usually surrounds it, only drags one further into the bitterness we would free ourselves from. It is the path of compassionate understanding that liberates and soothes the wounds that we have given each other. Such a path avoids blame, but rather seeks to join those whose actions need purification, to take responsibility with them for the kinds of relationships and deceptions that gave rise to the trouble in question. This taking of responsibility might not always or even often shift the actions of society away from harmful activities, but it would deepen the feeling of relatedness, sympathy, and love which is the foundation for any functional community. This is the path we as deep ecologists should seek out, learn to understand more fully, and use in dealing with the troubles of todayUs reckless civilization. Although the tone of our discussion has been free of the self-rightous acrimony I am told often flavors such Lists, nonetheless, it has not quite reached the kind of compassionate, cooperative group effort at understanding I had hoped for. I take responsibility for this, and feel it is due to my own slightly aggressive, provocative, almost supercilious style. Such a style is good for attracting attention to the subject, but not for delicately helping to unfold a unified group understanding in new and unfamiliar areas. *Of Compassion for the World As It Is* It is this attitude of compassion, , sympathy, and forgiveness,which I feel we as deep ecologists and human beings must learn to have toward the world we live in. That is why in my article I worked so hard to try to arouse some sort of compassionate understanding of the demon Technology, and its clever and often wicked children the Technobia. My attempt to bring these into the fold of sentient or at least valid negentropic beings has largely been a failure. People just donUt like it. I think we are still too anthropocentric and biocentric to accept such an idea. It would be like telling people in the Middle Ages that animals have souls, just as good ones as humans, and that plants do too, and rocks and clouds! ItUs better not to talk about some things I guess, until the time or company is just right. I do think time will prove me right on this, and that the Dalai Lama, out of his great compasion for all beings, *will* at some point choose to be reborn as a self-aware, sentient computer. But meanwhile, there are other ways to awaken a sense of reverence and respect for the world around us, more skillful, useful ways to bring people into alignment with the landscapes they live in. I do think that our outlook as environmentalists and ecologists is basically one of anger at technology, and idealized love for natural biology. The same kind of anger that Milne refers to hereabove. I think this must change, if we are to take our place properly in our own world, and take responsibility for those things that we all depend on, and that we have created here together. Can anyone show us all better ways to understand and cultivate this attitude of repect and compassion toward our own world? This very world right here *is*, after all, our natural landscape, our habitat. How can we learn to make our peace with this world we actually live in, and learn to treat it with the same respect and honor that native peoples show for their natural landscapes? I feel this is the greatest need of modern times. *Of Civilization and Technology* The origins of civilzation and technology remain one of evolutionUs greatest mysteries. This is addressed in some depth by these two gentlemen in this eveningUs letter from Joseph Milne: More on Bowing, Civilization and Technology (Please look at this excellent letter.) The Paleolithic Age lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, age after age of dreamy, slow-moving Stone Age cultures. They had finely crafted tools, sophisticated language and symbolic systems, competent and functional working communities, cooperative hunting and gathering and ceremonial behaviors, everything one would need to begin the process of developing technology and rousing the giant of civilization. But nothing happened. Then suddenly, for no discernable reason, some 10 or 15 thousand years ago, human societies exploded out of the Stone Age into the Neolithic. Agriculture, irrigation, herding, cities, money, specialized social roles, slavery, organized, large scale modern warfare. Why then? Why not before then? No one can explain it. There are a number of similar evolutionary mysteries in the life of this planet, such as, why did single celled organisms fail to go multi-cellular for so many billions of years, and what caused them to finally take this enormous, and obvious step? We may never know. These things may have to do with evolutionary harmonics and punctuated, dynamic equilibriums, that may eventually be elucidated by systems theory. Today they remain mysteries. *Of Control versus Respect* Anyway, to my mind the critical shift in attitude was this, the Single Idea:We humans, with our cooperative social structures and foundation techologies can take control over natural systems, over animals and plants, over rivers and meadows, over other humans even, and reshape them to our own immediate and longterm benefit. They thought this tremendous, revolutionary thought, and then organized themselves in order to accomplish it. No paleolithic society had ever had the arrogance, the aggression, the cruelty or the *hubris* to think such a thing. The _absence_ of this single thought remains to this day one of the principle identifying features of native peoples on this continent and around the world. Primitive technologies already in hand were developed at a furious pace once this idea took hold. Social structures changed just as fast to create more powerful ways of altering and controling the world. So then, which came first, technology or civilization? Neither. They arose together from the background of paleolithic society, in response to the Call to Control. Technology is the hand maiden of civilization, and both arise from the same single enormous idea, Take Control of the World. I am convinced that the reason Paleolithic socieites avoided taking this giant step of cultural evolution for so many hundreds of thousands of years, is because of the Reverence in which they hold the natural world. Paul Shepard and others have remarked on how many native peoples refuse to accept this aggressive manipulative relationship that civilization requires, and point out how many societies have refused the bargain offered them by Western Civ. They will fight to the death in many cases to avoid being drawn into what they condier is an unnatural, disrespectful, and ungodly relationship with their relatives and companions, the plants and animals, rivers and plains, with the Mother of Life, the natural world, and with the spirits and gods that inhabit these natural landscapes. *Of Nondual Ecology Today* It is this attitude of respect and gentleness that I would like to see restored in the world today. It is a hands off attitude, based on respect for What Is, no matter how dangerous, inconvenient, wild and untamed it might be. This is the mind of wilderness, which I have written of in the article and book excerpts. This is the original, Paleolithic Mind, which was the foundation of a stable, sustainable, peaceful and liberated human culture for more than a million years. A culture which tolerated no warfare, slavery, or exploitation of the natural landscape, but rather deliberately and intentionally saw as its highest goal to live in harmony with all things and creatures. This mind exists on this planet still today. It is the mind of the buddhas, the mind of the saints and sages of all traditions, it is the mind of native peoples still, wherever they can be found. It is the mind of non-doing, the mind of peace. It arises from intelligent and perceptive, conscious love for other beings in their natural way of being, and it dwells in harmony. Its foundation plank is an uncompromising attitude of respect for others, and for natural forces, whoever or whatever they may be. Dangerous, mysterious, foreign, unpleasant, troublesome, or toxic--delightful, attractive, helpful or nourishing--whatsoabsolutelyever the forces and creatures of this world may be like, the attitude is one of respect. This does not imply a passive or helpless approach to life. One provides for oneself, and defends oneself too, of course, 1;0cand oneUs family and tribe--but always there is this foundation of respect. See more on this in the book excerpts. This is what I have tried to point to, what I call a Nondual Ecology. I am convinced that despite the enormous differences in scale and living situation between Stone Age tribal peoples, and the lives of working men and women in modern landscapes, that this same attitude of Respect for All Beings is relevant still today. That still today, in our cities and suburbs, this Respect is the foundation and platform for an authentic relationship with the world we live in. I am convinced further that this world today is, in its essentials, the same world we have always lived in, containing the same death, the same life, the same love, the same misunderstanding, the same hope and the same fears. No more, and no less. In attempting to describe a way of living in such a world, the excerpts from my book used the metaphor of hunting and gathering society rather too freely, without explaining carefully why and exactly how this analogy is useful to todayUs world. I apologize for that, Betsy, and will try to remedy this at some point. *Of How We Are To Live* Based on this kind of understanding, respecting and honoring what we find around us, I would hope that we humans could begin to return Home, begin to re-inhabit our own landscapes, and take control of our lives back from the techno-information-industrial systems that today control so much of the way we live. The priceless 100 words contributed by Yves Bajard describe this process perfectly. <> Indian people call this, Staying Home. In the course of this seminar, I have tried to describe my own efforts in this direction, long walks in the mountains, much time fooling around with woodpiles, tipis, and wild animals. Also I am a homemaker, and though my children are grown now, always stayed home with them when they were young. I think it is good for us to share these things with each other, to encourage easch other to stay home more, do less, become more real in the natural landscape we may gravitate to. *Of the Discussion List* I feel that I have failed in my attempt to communicate these ideas. Many people grasp the concept immediately, as a native and intuitive self-recognition of what to them is already obvious. The challenge has been to try to present the idea to others, to clear minds and good hearts who have not seen this perspective on their own. Adopting such a view as oneUs personal outlook is a different matter. Not all will choose to do that of course, nor should we all. IUm just talking about seeing clearly, ... By now, as this seminar draws to a close, it seems clear I have failed to communicate my understanding properly. I have certainly attracted attention to the subject, and the intelligent, caring people who have come together here are fully capable of exploring the territory themselves. But I am sorry that what seem to me like very simple, self-evident ideas appear to most people to be either outrageous, dangerous, or incomprehensible, and worse, often seem unfounded in fact or theory, or history. I hoped that others might catch the drift of my thought, and step in to help me explain some of these things, but IUm not sure that has happened as much as I had hoped. *Of Good reading, and Future Study* In closing here tonight, I would suggest that those of you who remain interested in this kind of thinking read Paul Shepard. Nature & Madness, and Manin the Landscape are good. The Tender Carnivore is great. His wise, richly informed and well spoken voice may open doors for you that I have not been able to. Carefully consider his view of the Paleolithic/Neolithic boundary, and his description of what qualities, what attitudes and social behaviors lie on either side of that. Read *Ishmael*, by Daniel Quinn. Absolutely do not fail to read this essential text. ItUs not that well written, but goes fast, and explains some of these subjects better than anything else I know. If these writers make sense to you, then try to apply their ideas to the modern world we all live in together today. I consider Shepard to be a brilliant, compassionate and deep thinker, but I do not think that either he or Ishmael have able to extend and apply their conclusions and values to the problem of modern civilization. This is what I have tried to do in Nondual Ecology: to apply the outlook and attitudes of gentleness, awakeness and respect to the raging, exploding/collapsing troubled landscapes of todayUs world. To better understand what this world is we are hurtling forward into, read *Metaman*, by Gregory Stock. This is an extraordinary description of the rapid synthesizing of all creatures and energy systems into one integrated, larger planetary superorganism. This may sound far fetched, but itUs not. Read it. See what we deep ecologists and nature lovers are really up against. Think about your own life, how we here have spent this very week together, our minds merged in the small meta-organism mind of the Discussion. I want to learn how to apply a compassionate understanding to our world, not just for the theory of it, but to help us find a way to walk through this world with reverence, in a sacred manner, as we were born to do. In spite of the alrming changes that have taken place in the last ten thousand years, or last hundred, or ten, I am convinced that nothing in todayUs world hinders us from fulfilling our original birthright, this godgiven purpose, this natural heritage we have as human beings and sentient beings: Walking in peace through a sacred lanscape. I know people who have learned to walk in this way. I would like to learn to walk this way myself. I hope that all of us can learn this together. Please forgive me for presuming to take up these most delicate and important matters, and failing to carry them carefully and skillfully enough, home into the heartmind, where they could be useful to those of you who came here to further your understanding and practice. I know this is not wasted effort in spite of those areas of failure this week. We will slowly begin to swing these doors open wider and wider, through efforts such as this. PS I will trim and edit the Proceedings of this discussion, so they are readable and useful, and they will be available to read or download on csf next week. From jrmiln @ globalnet.co.uk Sat Nov 23 19:36:21 1996 Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 02:40:08 GMT From: Joseph Milne Subject: MAIN DOC- Response to AUTHOR'S CLOSING STATEMENT MAJOR DOCUMENT Comment on John McClellan's Closing Statement At John's request I offer these few observations on his closing statement. I shall try to be concise and therefore ask that they are not to be taken too dogmatically. Since this will be my last chance to make a considered contribution to the seminar, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed and for the spirit in which they have contributed. I would especially like to thank those who disagreed with some of my observations of language for putting their point of view to me constructively and for showing me things that I had not seen. I have read with delight the resolution of several differences between participants. It has been a feature of this discourse that such differences have been accommodated and not ended up in slanging matches as so many lists do! I feel that there is a kind of fire generated in such differences that can be refined and that this refinement has occurred several times in our conversation and led to a transformation and fresh mutual insight. So my first comment on John's closing statement must be to correct him when he says he has perhaps not conducted the seminar well. If we cannot allow each participant to put their cards on the table, then we might as well not come to the table! I will make one brief comment on John's notion that technology, its products and symbolic systems are beings in their own right. I think the real difficulty with this idea is not so much that they are sentient but that John suggests they have autonomy. It seems clear to most of us that they are expressions of the human spirit, just as the nest is the expression of the spirit of the bird. Nevertheless, John's real concern is our relationship with technology. And here I agree with him that it is to be respected along with every other created thing. I think we make it harder to see what to do about technology if we demonize it and say it is to blame for our present world problems - starvation, abuse of nature and consumerism. Clearly these are the abuses of a human power, but it is no good blaming the tool for bad workmanship. If we look at consumerism quite carefully we see that most people in the rich nations are more the victims of it that the wicked perpetrators of it. And if we look at the lives of so many thousands who work in the factories and do the dirty jobs we see human beings denied the opportunity ever to find their own gifts and talents. It is no wonder that so many can only sit vacantly before the TV in the leisure ours, because their finer energies have been expended beyond proportion doing inhuman work. It is no wonder that for thousands of people their only solace is looking forward to their annual vacations. But that too is now just another part of what Heidegger calls the 'vacation industry' (see his _The Question Concerning Technology). John says 'I do think that our outlook as environmentalists and ecologists is basically one of anger at technology, and idealised love for natural biology.' This is certainly to be detected in much ecological environmental thinking, although it has not been dominant in our discussions. I agree wholly with John that such anger cannot be the basis of proper action. All action initiated from such anger, no matter how virtuous its ends are claimed to be, carries a poison in it which becomes a seed of corruption in the end accomplished. One knows those things that have been created by love. They are life-giving. Yet even anger can be turned to life and I would be hesitant to dismiss as lost those who commence from anger. The real danger, it seems to me, with this anger lies in its blindness. It leaps straight from blame to solution, and in doing so it does not really grasp reality in its wholeness. It is action from a limited fragment. This brings me to a suggestion of an alternative to John's suggestion that we regard technology as sentient life in its own right. First, I think that leaping to nonduality is too large a leap for most of us. I believe there is a more graspable point between dualism and nondualism, and this is 'unity in diversity'. I think this view has been implicit in nearly all the present discussion. It has been observed that evolution has unfolded in a certain direction - towards higher and higher form of complexity, or complex organisation. The ecosystem itself is precisely a unified complex organisation. Its diversity expresses unity, and the unity unfolds itself in diversity. This is the principle of evolution which Teilhard de Chardin saw with both scientific and mystical insight, and which is embodied in his principle "unity differentiates". Thus unity is an *active* and shaping principle, not a passive ineffable perfection. The highest flowering of this principle of unity is consciousness, in which biology transforms itself onto another plane. John has said much of compassion. Compassion is possible only with consciousness, and in his Buddhist tradition compassion and wisdom belong completely together. Compassion is at once a comprehension and an action. Yet we cannot simply will to be compassionate, as many have observed in this discussion. We cannot persuade people to become compassionate. We cannot oblige a morality. And any compelled morality is a distortion. It also is blind like anger. But we can decide to look and observe the world, and try to understand it. We can apply our intelligence. That is my first suggestion in response to John's nondual paradigm. I should qualify this by saying that I am myself a nondualist in the Advaita Vedanta tradition, so I am not rejecting nondualism as the ultimately true view. But we cannot leap to it. It comes by grace. We cannot will enlightenment. I would add a second suggestion. This is to do with understanding humanity itself. I have already suggested in previous posts that there are dangers in adopting reductive views of mankind - such as a material or biological view. Here I would like to suggest that the waste of talent we see in so many inhuman types of work, as I mentioned above, is itself part of the erosion of nature. For human beings to be denied the full flowing of their gifts and being is an ecological problem too, part of the same ecological problem. It would in fact be amazing if the spoliation of the earth did not show immediately in the spoliation of human lives. Clearly it does. We do not have to wait for the future to see the consequences on our species of what we are doing to the environment now. I suggest there is an exact correlation between the unfulfilling work that most people are obliged to spend their lives doing and our wrong relationship with nature generally. So I believe we have to think far beyond the object of simply cleaning up the environment and ceasing from spoiling it. We need to reflect on the relationship between the realisation of human potential and its part in the cosmos as a whole. This is a vast problem and I will not go into it in detail here. A few suggestive directions of exploration can be briefly mentioned. 1. It is not sufficient simply to think of human society returning to some idealised simple life or replicating the lives of the simpler societies that still exist. We can take the essence of this, but we cannot unknown what we now know, as has been pointed out by others. 2. We can consider how a pattern of society can be formed in which the greatest diversity of human activity is possible. By this I mean a type of society that opens the way to the flowering of every possible human talent. This aim of diversity is not a reduction in the complexity of society but rather an increase in its complexity. And this increase in diversity means an end to the vast industries and forms of production that are far beyond the human scale, or the scale of an individual to fully participate in. Most of our huge industries are concentrated on producing a very limited number of products and the market place is dominated by a few products that everyone 'must have' (the car, the TV, the freezer etc.). And it is largely this mass production of a few products that so violates nature and natural resources. Each decade or so a 'new' product becomes the one everyone must have. In this endless pattern we see the 'worker' and the 'consumer' are both enslaved. So, once again, it is no good blaming the media and advertising or technology for this enslavement. Once we begin to see that it stifles and cripples the human spirit both in production and in consuming, we see that it the human spirit itself that needs to be set free. Rather saying humanity is to blame for all the wrongs of the world, we see that it is the thwarting of the human spirit that is at the root of it. In this way we can begin to see that there is a natural life for society itself which, in the very nature of things, is harmonious with the whole of reality. A human talent is on the scale of the individual. There is no 'mass talent'. And this human scale of the talent, I feel, is the key to each individual's relation to the whole. But for all the possible gifts of the human spirit to flower society is needed as the garden in which they can be cultivated and flourish. Our modern societies are focused on too few activities to accommodate the infinite range of human talents. On the one hand this creates the office and factory slave and on the other the criminal. People are not just alienated from society (which is the official view) but, more important and deeply, from themselves, from their inner potentialities. I feel these comments have already got too lengthy and I had better stop here. I hope these suggestions and observations offer a positive response to your closing statement, John. I would like to close by thanking you for your kindness and thoughtfulness to me and to everyone else in our discourse. It has left me with much to reflect on and avenues to investigate further which had not occurred to me before. I feel there is more to be done now at the end than there was at the beginning! With warmest wishes, Joseph Milne From dlachape @ ptialaska.net Sun Nov 24 11:14:02 1996 Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 09:20:54 +0000 From: David Lachapelle Reply-To: dlachape @ ptialaska.net Subject: MAIN DOC-final sutras from alaska MAJOR DOCUMENT Greetings Discussion Group, The first dusting of snow to reach sea level is outside my house this morning. We watch the snow level rise and fall leaving tide marks on the hills all fall untill finally the white blesses our doorstep. To the north is a cobalt blue/grey sky which glows in balance to the slight orange tinge to the eastern cloud cover. A squirrel ran onto my garage roof as I looked down, leaving the first tracks on the roofing we replaced last summer. The fire nearby was still smoldering yesterday when I went to look and I was joined their by a parade of onlookers. We watched as the owners picked their way through the debris... set apart by the yellow police tape. The schock of destruction was evident in how their bodies moved. The establishment was one of the primary sources of technology in the area: Boats being the vehicles of our watery world we use them in all the ways one can imagine and then some. I know that the burning is associated in my heart with the passion of our discussion this week, but it hasn't found its way to words yet... So, thank you all for a new experience in community. I have been delighted, amused, irritated, awed, inspired, confused, challenged and tickled... I have enjoyed the intellectual challenge and the writing challenge which coming up with responses have posed. Thank you. A few final offerings: This is me: at times hidden, and at times revealed, at times a faithful muslim, at times a hebrew and at times a Christian, for me to fit inside of everyone's heart I put on a new face every day. -Rumi Technology is the veiled extension of our own impulses. The crafting of matter into tools is an art form if the heart is attending and a prison if the soul is not present at the making. I agree with Joseph who said so eloquently that experiences of the abosolute are a function of grace. Whenever we turn our attention to where we make something "other" we are repairing the torn fabric of our world. A salute to all you fine seamstresses out there. John.... then fine beauty of your passion is the the turning point around which we have whirled for this week. I think words and intellect fail the passionate heart all too often. Do not despair you have been understood in ways that you may not even understand yourself and that echo will catch you unawares one day soon just as the moon stops to kiss the morning as the winds blow down from the divide singing of their ocean born gifts to the plains below. ps... I lived for a winter near the twin sisters in '78 and have enjoyed walking with you there again. Creation, destruction, nourishment, withdrawal and the award of grace are considered the five basic energies of the universe in some yoga systems of philosophy.... The "Vision Quest" model of inquiry leans heavily on the last two: withdrawal and award of grace. When I have too much despair I have to be alone for a while so that the lightest fingers of hope have the space to comb my hair for me. Language is probably our most important technology and the one that has migrated deepest into our form: Just look what it can do! The web of life will always have the last word because its information potential is enourmous beyond our comprehension. A deep ecologist is one who takes the time to search out the rhizomes of the web and plucks them like harp strings, to make music to soothe the fear of our world. And finally one last bit from Rumi on the winds of this discussion: O morning breeze, out of kindness Perhaps you could tell my story to the moon. No, no I was wrong, if you were one of us then who are you still seeking, spinning around the world? From bbarnum @ polaristel.net Sun Nov 24 12:09:06 1996 Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 13:09:46 -0600 From: bbarnum @ polaristel.net (Betsy Barnum) Subject: MAIN DOC- AUTHOR'S CLOSING STATEMENT UPDATED MAJOR DOCUMENT Nondualists: The scene out my windows this evening is one of the reasons I love my place, here in the Northland. A gentle snow is falling, has been most of the afternoon and evening. Everything is soft and white, and the uncountable minute crystal facets of the uncountable snowflakes both on the ground and filling the air reflect uncountable minute rays of light so that the darkness doesn't seem dark--even the sky has a pinkish gray cast rather than then velvety black of northern night. I was born here, and have lived here for all but 5 of my 45 years. When I have been away from here, especially on a trip in the car or on the train, and I approach this place where the Mississippi, already Old Man River just a few hundred miles from its source in a north woods lake, is joined by two other great rivers of this region, the Minnesota and the St. Croix, suddenly I notice a change in the air. It happens every time. I smell a sweetness, feel a freshness. It tingles my senses and stirs my blood. Something inside shifts, stirs, stretches and wakes up. Every cell of me knows: this is my place. John, my heart reaches out to you after reading your closing statement. Its full, open expression of your own humility, doubt and compassion are truly moving. My first reaction was, as I wrote earlier, why, oh, why, didn't you just put it this way at the start, instead of getting bogged down in the sentience of technology, painting dire pictures of the future of technobia, and issuing provocative challenges on meat-eating? You characterized yourself at one point as a coyote leading the dogs on a merry chase--fun for the coyote, maybe, but perhaps not really conducive to the dogs learning much other than to follow you around until they got too tired to keep up! What you have said in your closing statement is (with a few exceptions) pretty much my own view, as I have tried to express it in my own way during the past week. I'm going to start with the exception and get it over with. You wrote, > That is why in my article I worked so >hard to try to arouse some sort of compassionate understanding of the >demon Technology, and its clever and often wicked children the Technobia. >My attempt to bring these into the fold of sentient or at least >valid negentropic beings has largely been a failure. People just don't >like it. I think we are still too anthropocentric and biocentric to >accept such an idea. It would be like telling people in the Middle Ages >that animals have souls, just as good ones as humans, and that plants do >too, and rocks and clouds! It's better not to talk about some things I >guess, until the time or company is just right. I do think time will >prove me right on this... And I am equally certain time will prove you wrong. And it's more than "people just don't like it." We who disagree with you on this are not just stamping our feet and saying, "No! I don't like that! You can't make me believe it!" The fact is, at least to my perception, you have still not presented a convincing case, in terms of evolution, in terms of what technology and civilization are, or in terms of the current state of things either technobiotically or spiritually. I have to say here that I see your eyebrow going up a bit again. I take some umbrage at the suggestion that someday, when I'm ready--when I can bring my mind out of the Middle Ages--I, too, will understand technology as deeply as you do. End of exception. Your many paragraphs on compassion were lucid and full of depth and feeling. One such excerpt: >It is the path of compassionate understanding that liberates and soothes >the wounds that we have given each other. Such a path avoids blame, but >rather seeks to join those whose actions need purification, to take >responsibility with them for the kinds of relationships and deceptions >that gave rise to the trouble in question. This taking of responsibility >might not always or even often shift the actions of society away from >harmful activities, but it would deepen the feeling of relatedness, >sympathy, and love which is the foundation for any functional community. >This is the path we as deep ecologists should seek out, learn to >understand more fully, and use in dealing with the troubles of todayUs >reckless civilization. This is precisely what I meant about living with integrity, compassion and dignity no matter what the outcome. This is important in every conceivable way--individually, for emotional and spiritual health and well-being; for the functioning of communities, as you pointed out; for the future of humanity's time on this planet, insofar as any of us can have an impact on that. It is important in terms of the spiritual integrity of the universe, for holding the seams together (and, these are really all the same thing). I have noticed over and over how people in this culture--and this includes people who embrace deep ecology--want to do only what is "effective." They want to *know*, to be assured, that their actions will have a discernible impact. Absent that assurance, they often do not want to act. "That won't work." "What good will that do if I'm the only one doing it?" "We have to convince the people in power to change their ways, otherwise it's no use." I believe people's need to have a course of action that "works" comes from unhealthy attachment, as well as from fear and anger. It is also a typically western, externalized way of perceiving. This is where I see the need for deeper understanding among western people of the spiritual understanding, typical of the east, of nonduality. I think it is probably impossible in an embodied world to shift all the way to nonduality--as someone pointed out earlier this week, our embodied life is full of seeming opposites such as male-female, black-white, hard-soft, good-evil, friend-enemy, and so on. But we need nonduality to see the unity behind those dualities, to see our identity with those things we perceive as evil or as enemies. And from there, to compassion for that enemy or evil, which paradoxically makes one *more* effective (deeper, broader, less limited?) than continuing to fan the flames of anger and hatred. In the case of destructive technology, it is, again as some other wise person in this discussion said, an extension of ourselves, and therefore as deserving of our compassion and acceptance and forgiveness as any of our other acts of selfishness, cruelty or greed. >Can anyone show us all better ways to understand and cultivate this >attitude of repect and compassion toward our own world? This very world >right here *is*, after all, our natural landscape, our habitat. How can we >learn to make our peace with this world we actually live in, and learn to >treat it with the same respect and honor that native peoples show for >their natural landscapes? I feel this is the greatest need of modern >times. To me, it's all about connection--with "the world," other species, rocks and mountains, trees and weeds, clouds and lightning and sun and moon. There are many, many layers to this connection; for me it began with a weeklong immersion in science at an adult ecology camp, learning the names and characteristics of the lichens and mosses, the white and red pines, the sponges and tunicates, the boulders tumbled for centuries on the Atlantic shore, the meaning of shifts in the wind and changes in the color of the sky. I experienced an epiphany of diversity, an encounter with the multitude of ways Life had found to express its eagerness to be, on one small island off the coast of Maine. Feeling included, encompassed--not apart or different, but, though a visitor to that place, yet a fellow manifestation of Life, of All That Is, with the white pines and the puffins and the salty vast ocean. The deeper one goes into this connection, the more one merges, identifies, feels the beat of all beings beating in one's own blood. The more difficult it becomes to live heedless to those other beings, the more painfully aware one becomes of the ecological impact of every smallest act. Apart--entirely apart--from whether or not living in sensitivity to this connection is going to "work" in either an immediate or an ultimate sense, it is the path to harmony, in my opinion. And in a time of extreme stress, a critical time of tremendous transition, whatever it is a transition *to*, it is important to support each other along that path, understanding it is incremental, and allowing ourselves to live each moment the best way we know how even if we don't and can't live in complete harmony. It takes time to gradually shed the layers of belief and habit that will return us from "control" to "respect." I know that I don't fully comprehend all the changes that are required of me. I sit in my heated house, wondering how I would keep warm if I didn't have a working furnace. Yet I am moving toward belief that burning fossil fuels to heat large buildings--my house is much larger than needed for 3 people and a cat--is not living respectfully. I use a computer, telephone, CD player and radio, car and lots of other technology whose manufacture and use cause untold damage to Gaia. I don't justify it because I am using it for a good cause--but I still use it. This will continue for a while--but I am aware this is not a part of a life of respect for the holiness of All That Is, as you, so eloquently described: >I am convinced that the reason Paleolithic socieites avoided taking this >giant step of cultural evolution for so many hundreds of thousands of >years, is because of the Reverence in which they hold the natural world. >Paul Shepard and others have remarked on how many native peoples refuse to >accept this aggressive manipulative relationship that civilization >requires, and point out how many societies have refused the bargain >offered them by Western Civ. They will fight to the death in many cases >to avoid being drawn into what they condier is an unnatural, >disrespectful, and ungodly relationship with their relatives and >companions, the plants and animals, rivers and plains, with the Mother of >Life, the natural world, and with the spirits and gods that inhabit these >natural landscapes. snip > This mind exists on this planet still today. It is the mind of the >buddhas, the mind of the saints and sages of all traditions, it is the >mind of native peoples still, wherever they can be found. It is the mind >of non-doing, the mind of peace. It arises from intelligent and >perceptive, conscious love for other beings in their natural way of being, >and it dwells in harmony. And so, how are we to dwell in harmony? I think almost everything we can do in this direction is not only going to help Gaia and ease the destruction, but is also good for the human being--psyche, soul, body, the whole. One of the most straightforward and yet potent ways to live this out is, as you said "staying home," >to re-inhabit our own landscapes, and take control of our lives back from >the techno-information-industrial systems that today control so much of >the way we live. I'd feel it as a deep loss not to be in touch with people all over the world through forums like this, made possible by computers. But I am also aware that having the capability to link with you all, wherever you are, this way actually interferes with my finding people here in my own city with whom to have similiar conversations and build supportive communities that would be healthful for me in every way. I just learned yesterday, for example, at a strategy meeting for the Green Party of Minnesota, that the precursor of the party here was a group of people in the bioregional movement who got together in 1984 to develop a political approach to some local environmental issues. 1984! 12 years ago! I have searched (ironically, mostly using the Internet!) for local contacts, organizations, events, etc. with a bioregional focus and found only a few isolated individuals, like myself, posting to e-mail lists from their separate homes and offices just a few miles apart. I only found out about the others--probably because they are closer to living with a bioregional commitment than I am, and so are not even using the Internet--in a face-to-face meeting with people, some of them my direct neighbors, who share my concerns and interests. >Indian people call this, Staying Home. In the course of this seminar, I >have tried to describe my own efforts in this direction, long walks in the >mountains, much time fooling around with woodpiles, tipis, and >wild animals. Also I am a homemaker, and though my children are grown now, >always stayed home with them when they were young. I think it is good for >us to share these things with each other, to encourage easch other to stay >home more, do less, become more real in the natural landscape we may >gravitate to. It's through staying home, building communities around us, living as locally as we can, that we will reclaim so much as humans embedded in the landscape--health care that is based on plants and on intimate loving people to care for us when we're ill; entertainment with a local, nonprofessional focus, such as storytelling, music and singing, games we play ourselves; education that teaches children and adults to know the ecology of their place, and to honor it, to feel their connection and learn from the other beings with whom they are connected, and to do work that restores damage and engenders Life. I don't know if we can live as hunter-gatherers, even metaphorically, but we can recover a sense of the sacredness of not only the wild landscape, but also of ourselves--not the destroyers, the alien force, the flawed, sinful creatures--but holy and sacred, beloved of Gaia. >Please forgive me for presuming to take up these most delicate and >important matters, and failing to carry them carefully and skillfully >enough, home into the heartmind, where they could be useful to those of >you who came here to further your understanding and practice. I know this >is not wasted effort in spite of those areas of failure this week. We will >slowly begin to swing these doors open wider and wider, through efforts >such as this. My understanding and practice have been furthered, John. Immensely. "Failure" is not bad, and "success" good--perhaps another dualism we could dispense with? ;-) Learning has occurred--we have all, I'd venture, been changed. No need for self-flagellation. Yet I appreciate the humility your sense of failure represents. This is too long already, and it's Sunday noon, so I will post quickly and save thank you and goodbye for another (brief) post later. (And I apologize for the bandwidth--I'm feeling the pressure of time not to refine and edit this!) Many blessings, Betsy From mcclelj @ csf.Colorado.EDU Sun Nov 24 18:04:13 1996 Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 18:04:11 -0700 (MST) From: John McClellan Subject: MAIN DOC-AUTHOR'S FINAL REMARKS MAJOR DOCUMENT *Concluding Remarks on Nondual Ecology* I would like to draw your attention to a letter posted by Joseph Milne this morning, Nov 24, Response to AuthorUs Closing Statement. This, together with my own AuthorUs Closing Statement Updated, of Nov 23, are a good expression of the fruit of the rich discussion we have had here. I do not share quite all of MilneUs interest in reshaping society, but I think that many of us here do, and that you will appreciate his comments. Milne has tempered, enriched and extended my own thinking in a way which it much needed, and which I could not have done myself. Here is what I feel is his most important point: This brings me to a suggestion of an alternative to John's suggestion that we regard technology as sentient life in its own right. (Quote) First, I think that leaping to nonduality is too large a leap for most of us. I believe there is a more graspable point between dualism and nondualism, and this is 'unity in diversity'. I think this view has been implicit in nearly all the present discussion. It has been observed that evolution has unfolded in a certain direction - towards higher and higher form of complexity, or complex organisation. The ecosystem itself is precisely a unified complex organisation. Its diversity expresses unity, and the unity unfolds itself in diversity. This is the principle of evolution which Teilhard de Chardin saw with both scientific and mystical insight, and which is embodied in his principle "unity differentiates". Thus unity is an *active* and shaping principle, not a passive ineffable perfection. The highest flowering of this principle of unity is consciousness, in which biology transforms itself onto another plane. John has said much of compassion. Compassion is possible only with consciousness, and in his Buddhist tradition compassion and wisdom belong completely together. Yet we cannot simply wll to be compassionate, as many have observed in this discussion. We cannot persuade people to become compassionate. We cannot oblige a morality. And any compelled morality is a distortion. It also is blind like anger. But we can decide to look and observe the world, and try to understand it. We can apply our intelligence. That is my first suggestion in response to John's nondual paradigm. I should qualify this by saying that I am myself a nondualist in the Advaita Vedanta tradition, so I am not rejecting nondualism as theultimately true view. But we cannot leap to it. It comes by grace. We cannot will enlightenment. (End Quote) Of course many many other beautiful and important contributions have been made as well, but they are so numerous and scattered, that I am not able to point them out individually, as I had hoped to do. In the Proceedings it will be possible to outline the main areas our discussion has reached into, and group or reference some of the central material, so that we can see what we have accomplished here. *The Experiments* We tried a variety of experiments, some of which worked better than others. The weather and field reports were an outstanding success. They created a beautiful tapestry of human presence in living landscapes which I think will be one of the strongest aspects of the Proceedings. Thank you so much for sharing your lives in this way. The 100 word patch quilt on The Deepest Ecology was also a success. Not as many of these came in as I hoped for, but enough to create a good mosaic. To be found in Latest Results, The Deepest Ecology, Nov 22. Hardly anyone but me posted writing excerpts, which is probably a good thing, and almost no jokes came in, which I think we all would have enjoyed. Oh well. I unwisely dragged the herring of vegetarianism across the trail of our hunt, and I thank you all for not following it too far or furiously. There is one experiment we did not conduct, which I wish we had launched early in the week: to wit a brief report on the kind of spiritual or ecological practice we may or may not have in our lives. I know that many of us have deliberate ways of cultivating an awakened and aware state of being. IUm sure these ways of ours are enormously diverse and interesting, and would have enjoyed seeing a mosaic of them. Oh well. So thanks, and good night. I may check in one last time before the 10 pm closing, but for now itUs almost six oclock, and IUm going for a long walk in the shining snow full-moonlight. Next week this reclusive hermit and his family are hosting a jolly five day Thanksgiving house party and Feast, to which you are all welcome. CouldnUt be any more chaotic than a computer filled with hundreds of disembodied minds in full thought! Please feel welcome to write or call me if you are so inclined, or send me anything you choose. I have so much enjoyed spending this week with all of you. Together we bow in the shining light of Truth to which our lives and landscapes give complete/incomplete and perfect expression. John McClellan 1567 Twin Sisters Road Nederland, CO 80466 (303) 449-1346 mcclelj @ csf.colorado.edu From ncfs @ islandnet.com Sun Nov 24 21:55:14 1996 Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 20:54:49 -0800 (PST) From: "National Centre for Sustainability (Yves Bajard)" Subject: MAIN DOC- AUTHOR'S CLOSING STATEMENT MAJOR DOCUMENT Dear John McClelland, dear participants in the Seminar: This mesasge is in response to the Author's closing statement, and also a farewell with thanks for an enriching conversation. I would alo like to invite those of you who would like to, to join a puiblic formu we are opening tight now as Deep-sustainability @ csf.colorad.edu I send the details of the invitation at the end of this message. Welcome to those of you who will want to deal with the issue of our common future alone lines which will not always be easy, but which may be rewarding, individually and colelctively. First a general impression. I never was part of a discussion (eletronic or not), whihc aslted so long, was so itnese and so devoid of disputes, acrimony, or attempts by participants that their position was the only one to be correct, and that those who thought differently were stupid. Therefore, thank you for an exceptional experience. I have not particiapted as much as I would have wished, but my few inputs summed up all I think about the nondualist ecology: it is not necesary to be animated by a faith of any type in any divinity of metaphysical philosophy to accept the nondualism of ecology. Hopwever, i see it differently from what I undersatnd was the initial position of John. Dualism places homo sapiens (or supersapiens as I sometimes name our species with some derision), as separate and superior to all other species and central to the organization of things. Nondulaism places homo sp. as a "pars inter alia" (part among others) of the universe, submitted to the same laws and risks. The ide of technobia and the inclusion of technology in the forms of life is not acceptable to me, because, as I said it in other places, technology will not and cannot survive the extinction of our civilization. I also make a clear separation between the processes the mind, spiritual, mental or affective, and ecology as a science dealing with the liveability of the collective habitat of all living species. They are not separable, but they are as different as the tradesman and his or her tools. This is a general response to John McClelland closing statement made two days ago. I want to provide a few comments on some of his propositions: John says:<> I agree fully with this. I would like to add that anger is a reaction of a hurt ego, and that if we start considering our self as a part of a much wider context in whihc teh ideal accomplishment is continuation of life for all, udner decent conditrions of wellbeing, anger ceases to have a reason to exist. John says: >It is the path of compassionate understanding that liberates and soothes >the wounds that we have given each other. Well, there is some sense of superioirty in the person who shows compassion toward another. I would take away "compassionate" and replace it by "full and unconditional" understanding. > >About "Civilization and Technology", I would strongly recommend the reading in depth of Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, already recommended in this seminar. It is good and a nice way to discover and think about waht we are doing now... John says: >*Of Control versus Respect* >Anyway, to my mind the critical shift in attitude was this, the Single >Idea: We humans, with our cooperative social structures and foundation >technologies can take control over natural systems, over animals and >plants, over rivers and meadows, over other humans even, and reshape them >to our own immediate and longterm benefit. They thought this tremendous, >revolutionary thought, and then organized themselves in order to >accomplish it..... I respond: and we failed. like the sorcerer's apprentice. What we need to do now, it to learn to belong in Nature, not to own it.. We never really owned it. Let's wake up and look at reality the way it is... >*Of Nondual Ecology Today* I responded already to John and to many others on this point. When John says:*Of the Discussion List* >I feel that I have failed enormously in my attempt to communicate these >ideas. Many people grasp the concept immediately, as a native and >intuitive self-recognition of what to them is already obvious. The >challenge has been to try to present the idea to others, to clear minds >and good hearts who have not quite arrived at this perspective on their >own. I do not think that John has failed to communicate his message. What happened is that several of us (me included) did not agree with his view of the world and ecology in particular. This did not prevent a full and friendly conversation. Therefore, I consider the discussion group a success. I learned a lot, many of us did, and perhaps, John learned a lot too.. >*Of the Future, like Next Week* In addition to John's proposal, I renew my inviation to Deep-Susatinability., and here is the invitation: DEEP-SUSTAINABILITY This CSF forum is a challenge to people worried by the conflict between human activities and nature's resilience and the apparent ineffectiveness and complications in official reaction. Much has been said and written on the theme, and various meanings given to the word "sustainability." Most everything now is labeled sustainable, without a reality check on the word. Yet, the non-sustainability of human endeavour may cause the highest threat ever on our common future. Deep-Sustainability will be a constructive conversation on the theme, with the idea of understanding its root causes, then of dealing with it in concrete, practical and effective ways. "Engineering" the move to deep sustainability may require changes to society and to our vision of ourselves and of the world, but these changes need not be sacrifices to our qualify of life. On the contrary, they may be enriching in many ways. The challenge now is to become mature as a species and a civilization. This is the reason why we are asking people to join an action-oriented conversation toward future safety and security. A personal will to face the issue and a commitment to simplicity are keys to success in the process. The issues are simple, but resolving them may be difficult. Therefore simplicity is crucial. We invite you to join us and work constructively, positively, and in full respect for one another to identify the problems and develop solutions in a joint endeavour. To succeed, we must avoid pre-conceived ideas, avoid unfounded statements and respect one another, while innovating dynamically. Also, what will distinguish Deep-sustainability from many discussion groups, is that it will go beyond just examining worries about the future and sustainability. We will focus on process, i.e., analysis, understanding of causes, establishement of common understanding, and identification of possible paths for action. We strongly discourage intellectual gamesmanship and ideological sword-crossing. Attention to process and sincerity will be required in a frutiful dialogue. The list is moderated and those who trespass agreed upon rules will be taken off the list by a moderation committee. Decisions can be appealed and may be reversed. The list has a Board of Editors: 1) BILL REES, Ph.D., Director, School of Regional and Community, University of British Columbia. At the forefront of the issue of non-sustainability for three decades, he is the "father" of the concept of Ecological Footprint. 2) LAURENT DOBUZINSKIS, Associate Professor, Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby (B.C.) Canada. Laurent Dobuzinskis is a long time, member of the NCFS (National Centre for Sustainability). 3) YVES BAJARD, D.Sc., Secretary and Founding Member, National Centre for Sustainability, already mentioned above. In most of his professional life, which took him to many development schemes around the world, Yves Bajard focused on a search for ways to reduce the risks, endemic in most decision-making, which created a threat to nature and society. The initial moderators will be Yves Bajard and Laurent Dobuzinskis. The moderating committee is to be augmented to four persons, and subscribers are welcome to join the team. We'll make sure that the process of moderation aims only at keeping the conversation on topic, at making sure that statements made are founded and can be referenced to sources, and at making sure also that there are no personal attacks or foul, insulting language on the list. There will be no censorship within the framework of operation spelled out above. To subscribe to Deep-Sustainability, please send the message subscribe deep-sustainability Yourfirstname Yourlastname To LISTPROC @ CSF.colorado.edu We look forward to seeing you there, and thank you for a good fiw days with the seminar on nondual ecology. Yves Bajard National Centre for Sustainability For an insight into what we are doing, consult our Homepage at URL: http://www.islandnet.com/~ncfs/ncfs/homemenu.htm Mail address: 1 - 800 Gorge Road West, Victoria B.C. Canada V9A 1N9 Telephone (250) 480 5016 Fax: (250) 480 5261 e-mail: ncfs @ islandnet.com