As I said, yesterday, things seem to be on the up and up with Grace, after a belated, and somewhat rocky, start. At least they now have a partial understanding of from whence I come, and whither I go. It's only a question of timing, relative to the Endtime events, for which they are already well primed.
The Baltimore Green Forum is, this week, going to be the focus of my attention, in preparation for the meeting on Sunday. But, at the spiritual side meeting of that group, I will be focussing on this topical contrast between 'Grace and Green'.
My point to the Greens is that they are not prepared for the Tough Times ahead..... certainly not as well prepared as my newfound friends, over at Grace.
The Greens simply don't know how we got into the present environmental pickle, nor do they have a clue as to how deep that pickle jar actually is. Sam will be addressing the depth of the pickle-jar, in his presentation on Sunday....
The Greens totally fail to understand the nature of the Beast with which they are dealing.
They think they are dealing only with human depravity, namely...... greed and ignorance.
But, no, the problem goes much deeper than that..... Behind all the smoke, there is a fire.... There is no point in trying to combat the smoke, if you ignore the flames.
Instead, the Greens add fuel to the fire by, almost inadvertently, running their own little spiritual flag, up the flagpole, to which the Christians quickly respond, in kind..... with the Green Dragon and the Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, etc...... The political outpourings of the Tea Party are largely founded on these same, reactionary fears.
So what is my point, finally? It is simply that, in the End, we will have no choice, but to fight fire with fire. Why, because everyone is ignoring the real urgency..... the dire straights in which humanity now finds itself.
Yes, we have tough times, ahead! And this is putting it mildly.....
Ok, let's try this......
Behind the smoke of pollution is the fire of (economic) Progress. Are the Greens going to come out against Progress? No, they're not quite that dumb..... They come out in favor of Smart Growth, for instance.
But, rather more circumspectly, the Greens do admit that the only rational goal of Smart Growth is Sustainability.
Hmmm...... And what exactly is this.... Sustainability? And how will it grapple with, or tame, the engine/fire of Progress?
From whence cometh the notion of Sustainaility? Does it simply stand for the negation of Growth? Is it simply a matter of the Calculus of Survival in a finite world? Well, who even said that the world is finite?
Sustainability has its roots in the Ethos of a natural harmony, of living in balance or in harmony with Nature.
Has there ever been such a balance.... that is, ever since we climbed down from the trees, our spears in hand, jabbering our hunting strategies to each other? Was that about harmony? Hmmm.......
But let us not quibble about history...... certainly not yet....
Let us consider Deep Ecology, just on its own terms.....
Deep Ecology has its spiritual roots in pantheism. Is there any quibble on this point?
Deep ecology is all about animating the world, such as in Mother Nature, Gaia, etc.....
The roots of modernism and material progress are to be found just in the Objectification of nature. Any quibble there?
Yes, if we wish to get serious about anything to do with the Spirit, we're going to have to get serious about the stark contrast between any sort of environmental ethos, and our very modern minded culture. We are dealing with two very different Worldviews or Paradigms. Spiritually speaking, these two paradigms are Incommensurable. There is no common ground or language which could provide the basis of a public discourse.
The only common ground between pantheism and modernism is the question of Survival. But neither side wishes to broach the issue of Survival, not other than very occasionally, and, even then, only in the most abstract manner.
Yes, doomsaying and survivalism is a growth industry, but, as you will note, it shows no signs of ever being other than a cottage industry. Can it ever be about more than just finding a hole in the ground, where you and a few of your friends can hide a food and weapons cache?
Even just the very modest notion of a 'survival town', is turning out to be an oxymoron.
Can we ever hope to turn the Juggernaut of modernism around, on a dime, in time? How much time do we have?
Talk of tree hugging and animal sprites is certainly not going to get us there.
A little while ago, I said something about fighting fire, with fire...... But, still, we are only seeing a lot of smoke.....
The fire that I have been cautiously circumnavigating is, very crudely put, the fire in our bellies.... Whoa, Nelly.... what is this?! In a very literal sense, it was the fire that forced and/or enabled us to climb down from the trees. In a negative sense it was the fire that burned our forest. In a positive sense it was the campfire that we stole from the gods, and around which we told each other stories about who we were, from whence we came, and whither we go. Perhaps we were from the Earth, but, somehow, we were not of the Earth. We were the naked apes. We stood out. We stood apart. Can we go home again? Where is our home?
The existentialists capture the sentiment to which I point..... It is as if we had been thrown into the world. As if we had suddenly woken up, and discovered ourselves to be lost in time and space. Now, life is an absurdity in a meaningless universe, and who are we, but meat machines? Survival? What is that but stealing each others lunches? Survival of the fittest.....
Can we now turn back the clock, to our supposed ecological roots? Many Greens have fond hopes, lying somewhere in that direction. But where is the Vision? Where is the Plan, beyond the nearest food and arms cache?
Until we face the reality that we are on a Juggernaught, and, for sheer survival, it's going to have to be turned on a dime..... if not today then, very likely, tomorrow.
How can we do this? Well, mainly by not trying to be something that we are not.
Mainly, by simply recognizing that we are Naked apes, with the emphasis on our spiritual nakedness, not on our apehood, but on our personhood that makes us standout like a sore thumb, from the rest of the world. Are we going to grow hair, and climb back in the trees? I wouldn't want to stake our lives on that vision.
Fire.....?? Where is the fire? In its crudest, rudest form, it is in the belly of the Jihadist, who straps on the explosives, and does her 'Allahu Akbar' in the middle of the marketplace. Yes, my friends, this is what we are talking about, in its utter nakedness. Is that not just stark-raving insanity? Or is it, possibly, the extreme expression of our (non-?!) Existentialism?
This is exactly the fire with which we must 'play', if we are to have a prayer of turning around our Juggernaut. This is the fire with which I 'play', every Sunday, over at the
GFC/SfA.
2:15-----------
If we can't turn the clock back, then we'll just have to turn it forward. This is what the New Agers were up to..... also the Marxists, the national socialists, the social darwinists, the Transhumanists, the Futurists..... utopians of all stripes..... Once we get past this little bump in the road, it will be clear sailing, off into the sunset.....
Somehow, spiritual and material evolution will be coordinated into a cosmic Evolutionism. There will be Perpetual Progress. Our destiny lies in the stars.
I'll never say never, but may I be just a tad skeptical? If our transcendental impulse is to take us to the stars, to be astronauts, why haven't the star-seeds already come here? Or are we they, and 'they' just forgot to leave the instruction manual?
But what is the object/telos of Progress, if it is not toward omniscience and omnipotence? And, perchance, has Omniscience already visited us, and forgot to leave the instruction manual? Or, wait a minute........
If God didn't already exist, then surely we'd be trying to invent Her.... Or are we? Or have we? If we're supposed to be waiting for Godot, then we haven't been waiting all that patiently, now, have we?
Our transcendental impulse is encapsulated in the Prophetic tradition, as in no other. I would hardly be the first to suggest that our notion of Progress, quite naturally, grew out of that tradition. The very idea of progress was just a slight redirection of that basic impulse, into a temporary, mundane project or projection. Now that this projection may have reached its logical and/or material limits, we may need to revision the project. It was a project from which we were never intended to just walk away.... to turn our backs on it. We take a deep breath, and consider the precipice to which we have now arrived.
Are we being forced to jump..... to take a leap of Prophetic faith? Well, sports fans, how else are we to read the tea-leaves that constitute our history? How else will they make any semblance of sense? Is history just a tale of sound and fury, as told by an Idiot?
Are we not Homosapiens? If we did not eat of the tree of Knowledge, of what did we eat? Whatever was it that got into us, pray tell? Was that our original sin? Are we now going to take it back? Was that gate not locked, way back when?
If we have come to the end of Progress, clearly we are being compelled to search our souls, as never before. But is there anything there, to search? Is there only an emptiness, like the emptiness of infinite space? Is there only our lostness? Do we begin to understand why the prophetic fundamentalists have been clinging to their bibles, korans and talmuds, as if for dear life? To what do the rest of have to cling?
Well, it's not much, but it's not nothing, either..... In the end, we are left with a fragile sense of personhood. Our very fragile sense of humanity, without which, we truly are nothing. Is this not our last shred of hope..... before we commence the task of growing hair, and climbing back up in the trees?
If the struggle for survival is not going to turn very ugly, very quickly, we had darn well better take stock of whatever meager possessions may have, somehow, been bestowed upon us.
And, can we not also, hope against hope, wonder against wonder, suppose that, somehow, this indefinable, almost nothing could not be our pearl of great price? If there is going to be just a smidgen of hope, will someone begrudge us, if, in the process, we vouchsafe ourselves two or three smidgens? Three for the road, as it were..... We are beggars. Can we truly afford to be stingy with our hope? We stand at the edge of the precipice. Someone hands us a package that sort of looks like a parachute. Are we going to strap it on, and then ask questions, or are we going to set it aside, and go looking for an aeroplane? I suggest that we play it safe. Sure, we can spend all the rest of our days, looking this gift horse in the mouth, but why don't we first put on the saddle, just in case?
Is this a hard sell? Well, I'm just trying to get a foot in the door, and I'm hoping that you won't slam the door, too quickly. That's my only prayer.
Our pearl of great price? Hmmm...... Are we counting our chickens.....? What I am saying, what we're almost compelled to say, is that we have been the victims of a bait and switch operation, of cosmic proportions. If that is the case, then the great Switch had better have been worth the trouble. We couldn't have been led down the primrose path of Progress, just to be sent away, empty handed. Am I appealing to a cosmic Justice? To fair play? I'm only appealing to a sense of proportion. Whoever baited this trap, created an act that would not be easy to follow. Who would know that, better than the Baitsman?
5:40-----------
Whoever is the Baitsman, is clearly not averse to a bit of Brinksmanship. Would it be unfair to think of her as a drama Queen? Someone.... something has figured out how to get our attention, outstanding on the cliff, as we are. Why don't we bring on the choirs of angels? You know, the Trumpet and the whole nine yards..... This is just a wild guess, but I'm thinking that this is a bit like the case of the sleepwalker, standing out on the ledge. It's just common sense, but probably the last thing you'd want to do is blast an air-horn in his ear! Are we not still embraced by the Slumber of materialism? Are we not the spiritual sleepwalkers? Even drama queens know how to tip-toe, when necessary. No?
If I have any marching orders, at all, they are to muffle the drums and to use my tippy-toes. As if I had a choice? I can afford to walk softly, knowing that someone else carries a big stick. How do I know that? I don't. But, then again, maybe I do. Sure, the mice continue to play, but I just can't quite ignore the feeling that many of those same mice are wont to sneak a peek over their shoulders, every now and then. Yes, one does have to watch pretty closely, not to miss it.
(cont.)
