Category: Wisdom

I’ve been thinking, reflecting on Einstein’s thought that we can not solve a problem with the same thinking that created it. What thinking do we need to solve the world’s most pressing problems? What is today’s thinking that is not allowing us to see solutions?

One start is that our current thinking is mechanistic in nature.

Three centuries ago, when the world was an exquisite machine set in motion by God–a closed system with a watchmaker father who then left the shop–the concept of entropy entered our collective consciousness. Machines wear down; they eventually stop…This is a universe we feel that cannot be trusted with growth, rejuvenation process, If we want progress, then we must provide the energy, the momentum, to reverse decay. By sheer force of will, because we are the planet’s consciousness, we will make the world hang together. We will resist death. (Leadership and the New Science, Margaret Wheatley, pg 49)

Within the mechanistic thinking, all of the earth’s components are manipulated and controlled. This thinking promised great things: “the promise of domination of nature, of material abundance, of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and of unimpeded personal freedom.” (To Have or To Be, Erich Fromme, pg 1)

Progress was made. The future was bright.

With industrial progress, from the substitution of mechanical and then nuclear energy for animal and human energy to the substitution of the computer for the human mind we could feel that we were on our way to unlimited production, and hence, unlimited consumption; that technique made us omnipotent, that science made us omniscient. We were on our way to becoming gods, supreme beings who could create a second world, using the natural world only as building blocks for our new creation. (Ibid, Fromme pg 1)

Until it wasn’t: progress became sacrificial and the future charred in the Anthropocene–the human era:

The Anthropocene is a condition that chokes our airways with the smoke of uncontrollable wildfires, toxic leaks, megastorms, agricultural poisons, air pollution–and novel runaway viruses. It’s an embodied realization of inescapable danger, one that stands in contrast to the still-dominant 20th-century myth that the world’s dangers can be contained and forgotten. That myth rested on an endless supply of security zones, hiding places blocked off from dangerous poisons and people with illusory barriers. (Orion, Winter 2020, The Snarled Lines of Justice, Janelle Baker et al., pg 14)

If that is the mechanistic thinking that got us here, what is the thinking that takes us from here?

One possibility is the re-imagining of ecological consciousness. Re-imagining because humans were ecologically conscious pre-industry, indigenous history tells us. It was required for survival. We need to re-imagine that thinking for survival in the 21st century and beyond.

The almost unbelievable fact is that no serious effort is made to avert what looks like a final decree of fate. While in our private life, nobody except a mad person would remain passive in view of a threat to our total existence.

How is it possible that the strongest of all instincts, that for survival, seems to have ceased to motivate us? (Fromme pg. 8)

Ecological consciousness is thinking in a holistic, interconnected way. Unfortunately, we can’t change our thinking without changing our underlying conception of the world.

Our current mechanistic thinking is manipulative and controlling, secular and alienating. Ecological thinking comes from a place that is reverential and holistic, spiritual and participatory.

Ecological consciousness must not aspire to be just another attempt to soften the hard edges of mechanistic consciousness. It must be an altogether different entity, an altogether different cast of mind…

Instead of seeing the world as disconnected atoms, ecological consciousness envisages it as one seamless web/ As we perceive all things in the universe holistically, we also celebrate them as a part of the miracle of creation. To celebrate the world as a miracle of creation is something distinctive to ecological consciousness. This aspect is absent in mechanistic consciousness. Moreover, to celebrate a miracle of creation is to behold the world reverentially. Thus we not only behold the world holistically, we also behold it reverentially. First of all, by taking nothing as given, nothing as ours for the taking. Beholding all forms of life reverentially is honouring human beings and all beings as divine specks of creation. Reverence for life means the re-enchantment of the world. (A Sacred Place To Dwell, Henryk Skolimowski, pg. 22)

Our altered thinking is kinder, gentler and respectful. And we do need to start with thinking. A famous actor/director once said that eighty percent of success is showing up. Elevating our consciousness to start an ecological revolution is showing up to the first step in living with reverence upon the earth.

Putting our inner house in order will prove the key to re-inventing work for the human species. And not only individuals have inner houses: the inner houses of our communities, our churches and synagogues, our economic and political systems, and our neighbourhood and family relationships all need our attention at this critical moment in human and Earth history. (Learning Toward an Ecological Consciousness, Edmund O’Sullivan & Marilyn Taylor, pg.99)

Start with the only person we can truly change, yourself.

• Baker, Janelle et al. (2020). The Snarled Lines of Justice. Orion Magazine, Winter 2020. Great Barrington, MA: The Orion Society.
• Fromme, Erich (1976). To Have or To Be. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
• O’Sullivan, Edmund & Marilyn M. Taylor (2004) Learning Toward an Ecological Consciousness. London: Palgrave McMillan.
• Skolimowski, Henryk (1993). A Sacred Place to Dwell. Rockport, MA: Element Books Ltd.
• Wheatley, Margaret (1992). Leadership and the New Science. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers.