ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Reprinted

Christopher Chase
I have been sharing this with my university students in Japan. We are looking at the ego-centered "empire thinking" that gave rise to colonialism and the economic paradigm of globalization, contrasting that with indigenous models of social organization, more earth and community centered. A key point I'm trying to share with them is that our systems of social organization are tied to culture, and so are like the software in computers, these can be easily evolved, redesigned and changed. The authoritarian patriarchal alpha-centric systems of social organization that humans have constructed are not fixed, not part of our hardware.

Ecological Consciousness
"Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." ~Carl Jung

"We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate. If the world had more ubuntu, we would not have war. We would not have this huge gap between the rich and the poor.." ~Bishop Tutu

"Love is patient, love is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." ~ I Corinthians 13

"The water is sacred. The air is sacred. Our DNA is made of the same DNA as the tree. The tree breathes what we exhale. When the tree exhales we need what the tree exhales, so we have a common destiny with the tree… We are all from the Earth. And when the Earth & atmosphere is corrupted, then it will create its own reaction. Our mother is reacting…" – Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman

We Are All One (Native American Prophecy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWtVTu6S51M#t=11

Image: Ego vs. Eco: Generated by J. Gonzalez Cruz & L. J. Lucero.

"For thousands of years, those in power have sought to perpetuate mindsets of competition, insecurity, scarcity and fear among the masses, in order to maintain their “ruling” positions. Nationalism, militarism, materialism, sexism, racism, colonialism, slavery, industrialization and consumerism are culturally conditioned ways of thinking and behaving rooted in a competitive and cold hearted view of fellow human beings and the natural world.. Jesus understood this, as did the Buddha, Lao Tsu, Gandhi, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Jr. and countless others down through the ages..." ~Christopher Chase

Perpetual Curse of the Warrior Mindset
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/perpetual-curse-of-the-warrior-mindset/

"We are trapped in unstoppable civilisational momentum of collapse and decay. An elite class of humanity has brought about the sixth mass extinction on Planet Earth, including the extinction of humanity. This is all thanks to the culture of separation that has been instilled by this mode of civilisation going back thousands of years." ~Samantha Suppiah

“I think the difficulty is this fragmentation. All thought is broken up into bits. Like this nation, this country, this industry, this profession and so on… And they can’t meet. Wholeness is a kind of attitude or approach to the whole of life. If we can have a coherent approach to reality then reality will respond coherently to us.” ~David Bohm, physicist

Wholeness & Fragmentation - David Bohm
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfHzfonAgX4&t=7s

Christopher Chase
​Thanks Gary... I should add this information also... Because of our advanced technology, many modern humans think of themselves as more intelligent than Nature. We look at Indigenous cultures and call them "primitive" but don't realize the wisdom they had, that we need.

Why are modern high tech humans the most powerful species on the planet? In this TED Talk excerpt, Yuval Harari, describes how our power comes from cooperation skills and imagination. With our imaginations (and language skills) humans have created powerful cultures that can unite large numbers together.

Harari calls these "fictions" because human values and beliefs (like racial superiority, nationalism, even money) are narratives in our minds that groups of people share and see as truth. Sometimes these stories can be very helpful but sometimes they can become a mechanism of mind control, like with Nazi Germany or North Korea, even modern consumerism.

Another way to think about this is that Nature gave us our hardware (biology, multiple intelligences, social community) but culture is like software. The recent "ego-logic" of empire civilizations is something new, that we have the power to change. We cannot change our biology or the laws of Nature, but we can change our cultures and the human systems (political, economic, military, industrial, educational, technological) that we have created.

Nature took over a billion years to design countless species using creative, regenerative (and degenerative) processes. Our own species is rather young. We spread out from Africa over a hundred thousand years ago and now we have come together again. It's a miracle that we are here, but we need to unite together and change how we think and act (transform consciousness and cultures) if we want to create a sustainable future and avoid extinction.

COMMENTS

Christopher Chase
[Because of our advanced technology, many modern humans think of themselves as more intelligent than Nature. We look at Indigenous cultures and call them "primitive" but don't realize the wisdom they had, that we need.]

Gary Smith
Not to dispute, but to discuss - haven't humans thought of themselves as more intelligent than Nature long before our advanced technology?

For example, "26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Genesis

I am not an historian, but am aware of numerous examples of the attitude of superiority of one race or culture over another, and of the human species over other species, which runs through human history. Much of it is driven by economics.

Christopher Chase
["....Harari calls these "fictions" because human values and beliefs (like racial superiority, nationalism, even money) are narratives in our minds that groups of people share and see as truth....

Another way to think about this is that Nature gave us our hardware (biology, multiple intelligences, social community) but culture is like software. The recent "ego-logic" of empire civilizations is something new, that we have the power to change. We cannot change our biology or the laws of Nature, but we can change our cultures and the human systems (political, economic, military, industrial, educational, technological) that we have created.]

Gary Smith
Wouldn't the foundation of such a change be in our identification as spiritual beings? Otherwise an approach for change of "our cultures and human systems" feels hollow and not lasting. I've just posted in this group an approach to a shift in the understanding of who and what we humans are....

Christopher Chase
[....It's a miracle that we are here, but we need to unite together and change how we think and act (transform consciousness and cultures) if we want to create a sustainable future and avoid extinction.]

Gary Smith
Yes, and it will require a coordinated effort of multiple approaches to be effective.