Discuss: From the Editors

Well, it still sounds rather hopeful to me. There are still the coal lobby, big oil and a hundred other forces resisting change or ignoring danger. We must still get our message heard, in places where it doesn’t naturally resonate. This requires, it seems to me, local, personal face-to-face interactions, not just reading.

“...the better the chances that humanity will rise to meet the challenges that lie ahead”

Let us hope not. Every time we’ve “risen” to meet perceived challenges, we’ve left behind a trail of unintended consequences.

Instead, humanity needs to descend into an authentic humility and leave well enough alone.

Excellent.  Our failure to put our problems in their deep and universal context dooms us to short term fixes.  The environmental problem is a problem of human consciousness.  Solutions that bypass the need for deep transformation of the human mind, ignore the real source of our difficulties.  The means to change people at depth exist.  Until we commit to developing small groups to facilitate birthing a new mind, we will continue to work within the very unexamined world views and false narratives that are trapping us in repetitive cycles of failure, i.e. “revolutions”, “new deals”, “hope” etc.

  Consciousness raising groups were the cutting edge tool that changed many women’s minds as to who they were beyond the narratives they had unconsciously bought into, and made real liberation possible for the first time.  This was an example of how a process that began with four women getting together to share deeply, led to major changes in society. There are other examples.  Two men sharing their problems with alcohol led to a world movement involving millions of people.  Not only did these folks stop drinking, but their lives were deeply changed in almost every dimension.   

  Today we face a matrix of problems that have the potential to destroy us and much of the life on our planet.  Maybe it is time we got together and shared with each other what we are going to do about it?  The changes that need to be made are not all “out there”.  The most crucial changes necessary are in each of our hearts, minds, and lives.  From there, inside us, many things become possible.  New women and men could bring a whole new energy and consciousness to the tired old games of our culture.

  It really is worth trying.  Time is short.

  I could write an article outlining some useful principles for formatting these kinds of groups, based on my fifty years of participating in and helping start trans-formative gatherings.  If there is interest…

I share your hope that “the more people relish this good literature, the more they come to understand the danger we are in ecologically speaking, the better the chances that humanity will rise to meet the challenges that lie ahead.” And I agree with Mike K. that “the environmental problem is a problem of human consciousness.” And with Riversong that “a trail of unintended consequences” has accompanied humanity’s rising to meet its challenges. And with Henry McHenry Jr. that change “requires…local, personal, face-to-face interactions” in addition to reading.

I would quibble, however, with the idea that literature—or the desire to care about something larger than oneself—must be smuggled into a person’s heart. I think our capacity to care, as evidenced by the writing in this magazine, is something that is innately human yet sadly corruptible by social forces larger than our ability to control (i.e. the inertia of history, etc). So perhaps instead of using the Trojan Horse, a war metaphor after all, we talked instead about awakening what is already latent in us all: our love for one another and this Earth. We may not need “to promote the idea that nature is what makes us human”—we may simply need to be more authentically human. The literature that would arise out of such a shift? That’s what I want to read.

Mike K: Thanks; I’m interested, anyway.  I’ve been looking for a way to produce an interchange between opponents locally (Charlottesville)over the issue of mountaintop removal coal mining, maybe, or local water supply. Do you have suggestions for ways to invite people into authentic dialogue?  (I’m .; and I’ve been in communication about this with Madeline Cantwell at the magazine, too.  Shall we collaborate?)

Speak out as if you were a million voices.
It is silence that kills the world.

St. Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380