[Oe List ...] Thomas Berry, the Social Imbalance and the US Supreme Court

Mon Jan 25 09:38:39 CST 2010

Herman,  thank you for taking the time to share these important segments - as well as those from David Orr's book (see message "Another book").  I wish that President Obama could find the time to read both of these.  Re David Orr's  three tasks of "The Great Work" of changing our framework of thinking:
1.       We will need leaders first, with the courage to help people understand and face what will be increasingly difficult circumstances.[4]

2.       Second in the "long emergency"[5] leaders will need uncommon clarity about our best economic and energy options.

3.       The third quality of leadership in these circumstances is the capacity to foster a vision of a humane and decent future.

It seems to me that #3 needs to come first - and this Obama has often done well.  Then immediately after #s 1 and 2.  (Inspiring vision before contradiction, then proposals.)   He often does this in his speeches - we'll see what he does in the State of the Union address this week.  

Meanwhile, clarity and efforts from us at the grassroots level is critical.  Yesterday I attended a good power point presentation titled The Effect of Climate Change on the Northeastern U.S.  It was given by a retired Binghamton University professor who is deeply involved in changing the framework of our thinking as well as influencing policy locally and globally.  I'm pondering how to get some of his important presentation on public access TV.  There is a local sustainability coalition that I support when I can.  My major responsibilities involve providing resources to faith communities in the area via the Peace with Justice Committee of the active county Council of Churches. As the church has full permission to do!, we get involved in all kinds of things that have to do with the welfare of the universe.  

Janice Ulangca

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Herman Greene 
  To: 'Order Ecumenical Community' ; dialogue-request at wedgeblade.net 
  Sent: Monday, January 25, 2010 9:26 AM
  Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Thomas Berry,the Social Imbalance and the US Supreme Court

  I have read a remarkable book by Paul Schafer called Revolution or Renaissance: Making the Transition from an Economic Age to a Cultural Age, which I highly recommend. Here is what he says about the economic:

  Schafer's book is about a transition to a cultural age (I would call it an ecological-cultural age). It would be very different from our present age, which he describes as an "economic age." He writes:

  Like every age, the economic age is predicated on a very specific way of looking at the world, acting in the world, and valuing things in the world. It is based primarily, if not exclusively on economics, which yields an "economic worldview" that is by far the most powerful worldview in existence today. This worldview is based on the conviction that satisfaction of people's needs and wants in all areas of life can be attended to most effectively by making economics and economies the centerpiece of society, and the principal preoccupation of individual, institutional, municipal, regional, national and international development. Through commitment to this conviction, it is believed that wealth can be increased most effectively, the supply and demand for goods and services can be satisfied most efficiently, living standards and the quality of life can be improved most fully, population growth can be curtailed most judiciously, poverty can be reduced if not eliminated, and the natural environment can be managed and turned to humanity's advantage. (pp. 93-34)

  Schafer identifies the fundamental flaw in this conviction as the belief that economics, economies and materialism "cause[s] everything in society and constitutes the basis of everything." To the contrary, he explains that basing everything on economics defeats the objectives thought to flow from it.

  The economic age makes it impossible to achieve balanced, harmonious and equitable relationships between the economic part of human activities and other activities, because everything is reduced to economics, economies, and materials, and made dependent on them. It also makes it impossible to deal with major excesses, imbalances, and deficiencies in the world system and in people's lives because the emphasis is on means-production, distribution, consumption, profits, products, the market-rather than ends, such as a healthy environment, people, human welfare, sustainable communities, cities, countries and societies, and real fulfillment and happiness in life. (pp. 93-94)

  In assessing the economic age he says, on the good side, it "has produced countless benefits for people and countries in many if not all parts of the world and for the world as a whole." (p. 130) On the bad side, he says that effects of the economic age, which are "almost diametrically opposed to [the good side]," mean

  there are real dangers and risks ahead for humanity if the economic age is perpetuated. Material demands will be created that are beyond the capacity of the natural environment to fulfill, and substantial disparities will be experienced in income, wealth, and resources, between the rich and poor countries and people of the world. This will cause real hardships as resources are used up. (p. 130).

  With regard to the environment, he writes,

  Clearly the environmental crisis will not be resolved as long as the economic age is perpetuated. The economic age is predicated on the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, rather than on intimate relationship between people and the natural environment. The more economic growth takes place, the more damage will be done to the natural environment and the carrying capacity of the Earth, the more resources will be consumed and contaminated, and the less will be available for future generations. This will result in even more rapid depletion of scarce renewable and non-renewable natural resources, as well as a great deal more pollution, global warming, the spread of toxic substances, the extinction of many species, far more environmental damage, and growing shortages and higher prices for strategic resources such as wood, water, gas, oil coal, electricity, fish, precious metals, and arable land. These problems will be exacerbated whenever consumer demands and expectations are created that are high in material inputs and outputs, as they are in various parts of the world.

  The problem here is that no distinction is made between consumer needs and consumer wants in the economic age, because both contribute to economic growth and development. Nevertheless, since consumer wants have a way of multiplying indefinitely, if the experiences of the western countries are any guide, this will aggravate even more an ecological situation that is close to the breaking point. (p. 131)

  He concludes, 

  This is why perpetuation of the economic age into the future is so dangerous and potentially life-threatening. People will not sit idly by while their environments are devastated, higher and higher prices are charged for increasingly scarce resources, living standards are reduced, and life takes on negative rather than positive connotations. This is a recipe for revolution and for global disaster. This acts as an early warning signal that violent outcomes are in store if the problems confronting humanity are not dealt with successfully. (p. 134)

  He makes the case for why violent revolutions (including terrorism) will not avert the catastrophe and calls for renaissance, which he says 

  is best realized by incorporating the economic age and a great deal more, into a broader, deeper, and more fundamental way of looking at living, reality, history and the human condition . . . . The world needs strong economies and the strengths of the economic age if improvements are to be made in material living standards and people's lives, but it needs them to be counterbalanced and constrained by powerful social, artistic, educational, scientific, spiritual, and human activities. (p. 134-35).

  Further, he says renaissance cannot be based on the ideas of the current economic age:

  [Some] contend that the problems [confronting humanity] can be solved by developing further the theoretical ideas and practical policies [of the economic age.] However, while making such improvements is imperative, they will not make it possible to come to grips with the demanding and debilitating problems that have loomed up on the global horizon in recent years. The economic age is based on theoretical, practical, historical and philosophical foundations that aggravate these problems more than alleviate them. Take the environmental crisis, for example: It is not possible to incorporate the natural environment into the economic age after the fact. Clearly what is needed now, more than ever, is a body of thought and practice, a world system, and an age that open up a commanding place for the natural environment and for the intimate relationship that people have with it at its very core. (p. 133)

  He then identifies these key directions for the future:

  1.       Surely the most important of these is the creation of a new theoretical, practical, historical and philosophical framework for the world of the future.

  2.       Secondly a very high priority will have to be placed on dealing with the intimate relationship between people and the natural environment. Failure to deal with the environmental crisis will cause severe hardships in every part of the world, as well as even more conflict, confrontation, hostility, and violence.

  3.       Thirdly a much higher priority will have to be placed on people and matters of human welfare than on products, profits and the market, in order to create the sensitivities and sensibilities that are required to open up many more opportunities for people to live creative, constructive and fulfilling lives, as well as to participate fully, actively and freely in the public and private decisions that affect their lives. 

  4.       Finally, a more effective balance will have to be achieved between consumption and conservation, competition and cooperation, scientism, aestheticism and humanism, economics and ethics, and spiritualism and materialism. This is imperative if nature and other species are to be treated with the dignity and respect they deserve, if people are to be provided with opportunities to realize their full potential and if humanity is to go fruitfully into the future.[1]

  It seems to me that the last two (three and four) are dependent on the first two (one and two). Out of this new framework and this new intimacy with the natural environment will come changed priorities and balance.

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  From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of R Williams
  Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 9:01 AM
  To: Order Ecumenical Community; dialogue-request at wedgeblade.net
  Subject: [Oe List ...] Thomas Berry,the Social Imbalance and the US Supreme Court

        Colleagues,

        Many will remember the analysis we did of the imbalance of the social process wherein the economic dynamic dominates, the political dynamic is the subservient lackey of the economic and the cultural dynamic has collapsed into relative insignificance.

        An example of the continuing validity of that analysis is seen in the decision of the US Supreme Court this past week to treat corporations as individuals in terms of their ability to participate in and influence federal elections--and this in an environment where already the pandering of the US Congress, both parties, to special interests has rendered it almost totally ineffective.

        In that light I ran across this quote from Thomas Berry in his 2006 book EveningThoughts, pages 102-103.  The underlining is mine.

        The economic corporations--industrial, commercial, financial--now, in a sense, own the planet...

        The educational (cultural) establishment functions within the context of a plunder-consumption economy...

        Political decision-making is so extensively controlled by economic powers that the democratic principles of personal freedom and participatory government are subverted.  The money needed for elections must come from corporate wealth in some form.  Legislatures are controlled by the economic powers.  What needs to be understood is that the legal establishment in the United States, including the judiciary, at an early period, bonded with the commercial-industrial establishment against citizen groups and agricultural interests.

        This is as good a summation of the current situation as I've found!

        Randy

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  [1] Number 4 will be especially important, if, as David Orr asserts, "under the multiple stresses [described in this book], it is likely that economic contraction, not expansion will become the norm," (Orr, p. 29) and "economic growth, as presently conceived, cannot be sustained nor should it be." (p. 31) He reaches these conclusions because (i) on a humanistic level, "economic growth beyond some threshold [, rather than increasing humanistic values,] generates consumerism, selfishness, and egoism, corrodes character and foreshortens concern" (p. 30); (ii) on an ecological level, the faster economies have grown, the greater the cumulative ecological damage"; (p. 31) and, (iii) finally, on a human survival level, because our politics, economy and manner of living do not fit bio-physical realities (p. 33)

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