Earth in the Balance Part 2

Book review

In Part 3 of Earth in the Balance: Ecology and Human Spirit, Senator Al Gore tells us in Chapter 3: Climate and Civilization: A Short History, that: “Perhaps it can be said that civilization has passed the formative stage and has reached a mature configuration, a worldwide community or global village.” “Is our species now on the verge of a kind of midlife crisis? The actions of any isolated group now reverberate throughout the entire world, but we seem unable to bridge the chasms that divide us from one another.” “Is our civilization stuck in conflict between isolated nations, religions, tribes, and political systems – divided by gender and race and language?” “Are we mature enough to care for the earth as a whole? Or are we still like adolescents with new powers who don’t know their own strength and aren’t capable of deferring instant gratification?” “Are we instead on the verge of a new era of generativity in civilization, one in which we will focus on the future of all generations to come? Are we ready to shift our short-term thinking to long-term thinking?” “To cope with this dangerous turn of events, we must somehow find a way to accelerate our movement to a new stage of development, one that embraces a mature understanding of our ability to shape our own future.” “This crisis will be resolved only if individuals take some responsibility for it. By educating ourselves and others, by doing our part to minimize our use and waste of resources, by becoming more active politically and demanding change – in these ways and many others, each one of us can make a difference.” “Perhaps most important, we each need to assess our own relationship to the natural world and renew, at the deepest level of personal integrity, a connection to it. And that can happen only if we renew what is authentic and true in every aspect of our lives.”

EARTH IN THE BALANCE

ECOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT

SENATOR AL GORE

Houghton Mifflin Company            1992

PART 1II

 

PART II: THE SEARCH FOR BALANCE

Chapter 9: Self-stewardship

Chapter 10: Eco-nomics: Truth or Consequences

Chapter 11: We Are What We Use

Chapter 12: Dysfunctionl Civilization

Chapter 13: Environmentalism of the Spirit

 

PART III: STRIKING THE BALANCE

Chapter 14; A New Common Purpose

Chapter  15: A Global Marshall Plan

Conclusion

• With slow-motion videos and computer simulations Bak and Chen watched very carefully as sand is poured – grain by grain – on a table, first to form a pile and then to build it higher.
• They counted how many grains of sand are dislodged as each new grain falls on top of the pile.
• Sometimes a single grain of sand triggers a little avalanche. Less frequently, bigger avalanches occur. Small changes reconfigure the sandpile and ultimately render it vulnerable to larger changes.
• There is a precise mathematical relationship between the number of grains of sand dislodged by each new grain and the frequency with which sand avalanches of various magnitudes occur.
• One can apply the sandpile theory to the developmental stages of a human life. A personality reaches the critical state once the basic contours of its distinctive shape are revealed. Then the impact of each new experience reverberates throughout the whole person.
• Sometimes at mid-life one becomes vulnerable to a cascade of change, releasing the combined force of many small and subtle changes accumulated over time.
• This theory has helped me understand change in my own life. Change came cascading down the slopes of my life, and now as I settled back into what had felt like maturity before but was now fuller and deeper. I now look forward to the future with both a clearer sense of myself and of the work I hope to do in the world.
• Perhaps it can be said that civilization has passed the formative stage and has reached a mature configuration, a worldwide community or global village.
• Is our species now on the verge of a kind of midlife crisis? The actions of any isolated group now reverberate throughout the entire world, but we seem unable to bridge the chasms that divide us from one another.
• Is our civilization stuck in conflict between isolated nations, religions, tribes, and political systems – divided by gender and race and language?
• Are we mature enough to care for the earth as a whole? Or are we still like adolescents with new powers who don’t know their own strength and aren’t capable of deferring instant gratification?
• Are we instead on the verge of a new era of generativity in civilization, one in which we will focus on the future of all generations to come? Are we ready to shift our short-term thinking to long-term thinking?
• The ozone hole represents an unprecedented consequence of a global pattern by which civilization has accumulated dangerous chemical gases in the atmosphere. The phenomenon of ozone depletion was anticipated, but the sudden avalanche of nearly total depletion above Antarctica came as a complete surprise.
• Avalanches of change in climate patterns are certain to occur and persist if we keep making this sandpile steeper and larger. The combination of several significant changes occurring almost simultaneously increase the risk of catastrophe significantly.
• The dramatic changes now taking place within civilization are also likely to pose serious threats of their own to the integrity and stability of civilization itself.
• The accumulation of another billion people every 10 years is creating a whole range of difficult problems, and all by itself the exploding population is liable to push world civilization into a supercritical state, leaving it vulnerable to very large avalanches of unpredictable change.
• To cope with this dangerous turn of events, we must somehow find a way to accelerate our movement to a new stage of development, one that embraces a mature understanding of our ability to shape our own future.
• This crisis will be resolved only if individuals take some responsibility for it. By educating ourselves and others, by doing our part to minimize our use and waste of resources, by becoming more active politically and demanding change – in these ways and many others, each one of us can make a difference.
• Perhaps most important, we each need to assess our own relationship to the natural world and renew, at the deepest level of personal integrity, a connection to it.
• And that can happen only if we renew what is authentic and true in every aspect of our lives.
• For several years I have been engaged in an intensive search for truths about myself and my life; many other people are doing the same. More people than ever before are asking, “Who are we? What is our purpose?”
• The resurgence of fundamentalism in every world religion is evidence for the conclusion that there is indeed a spiritual crisis in modern civilization that seems to be based on an emptiness at its center and the absence of a larger spiritual purpose.
• The key is balance – balance between contemplation and action, individual concerns and commitment to the community, love for the natural world and love for our wondrous civilization. This is the balance I seek in my own life.
• If it is possible to steer one’s own course – and I do believe it is – then I am convinced that the place to start is with faith, which is a spiritual gyroscope in a stabilizing harmony with what is inside and what is out.
• My own faith is rooted in the unshakeable belief in God as creator and sustainer, a deeply personal interpretation of relationship with Christ, and an awareness of a constant and holy spiritual presence in all people, all life, and all things.
• But I also want to affirm what people of faith from long ago apparently knew and that our civilization has obscured: that there is revelatory power in the world.
• This is the essence of faith: to make a surrendering decision to invest belief in a spiritual reality larger than ourselves. And I believe that faith is the primary force that enables us to choose meaning and direction and then hold to it despite all the buffeting chaos in life.
• I believe also that – for all of us – there is an often poorly understood link between ethical choices that seem quite small in scale and those whose apparent consequences are very large, and that a conscious effort to adhere to just principles in all our choices – however small – is a choice in favor of justice in the world.
• By the same token, a willingness to succumb to distraction, and in the process fail to notice the consequences of a small choice made carelessly or unethically, makes one more likely to do the same when confronted with a large choice.
• Both in our personal lives and in our political decisions, we have an ethical duty to pay attention, resist distraction, be honest with one another and accept responsibility for what we do – whether as individuals or together.
• It’s the same gyroscope; either it provides balance or it doesn’t. In the words of Aristotle: “Virtue is one thing.”
• For civilization as a whole, the faith that is so essential to restore the balance now missing in our relationship to the earth is the faith that we do have a future. We can believe in that future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours: the earth is in balance.