The Power of Ideas & Feedback in Nature & Human Nature
Gore tried to bring the power of ideas to our rescue in his 1992 masterpiece, Earth in the Balance, illuminating by way of metaphors solutions to the challenges humanity is facing – not in some far off future, but in our lifetime.
Imagine a car crash…in slow motion. “What is now occurring in the global environment can be seen in similar terms,” Gore explains. “Our ecological system is crumpling as it suffers a powerful collision with the hard surfaces of a civilization speeding toward it out of control.”(p.42) Because “the crunching and crushing and shattering all take place over a longer time of span than we associate with a violent collision,” we have been able to ignore the cumulative effects, lulled into a false sense of security by the scale of our perception. “We are not unlike the laboratory frog that, when dropped into a pot of boiling water, quickly jumps out. But when placed in lukewarm water that is slowly heated, the frog will remain there until it is rescued,”(p. 42)…or not.
“Sameness and gradual change often lull the senses” as we reserve our attention for sharp contrasts. In this way, patterns go unnoticed…when we are inside them. And “too often we don’t let ourselves see a pattern because we are afraid of its implications,” especially when the evidence may suggest a need for changes in the way we live or the things we believe.
But even in 1992, “skeptics [were] vastly outnumbered by former skeptics who now accept the overwhelming weight of the accumulated evidence.”(p.39) The world’s best science has shown overwhelming evidence that “that we are in danger of passing a kind of point of no return, after which we will have missed the last good opportunity to solve the problem before it spirals out of control.”(p.38)
Unfortunately, while“98 percent of the scientists…share one view,” and only “2 percent disagree,”(p.38) it is nonetheless reported by the news media as a balanced controversy. What’s more, “uncertainties are [being] cynically used by partisans of the status quo for the express purpose of preventing the coalescence of public support for action,”(p.39) So we are “vulnerable to the false reassurances of a tiny group within the scientific community who argue that the threats don’t exist.”(p.38) And in this way, our well-intended, but misguided "efforts to be unbiased can itself become a form of bias."(p.71)
Of course, “we know that truth is often best discovered through a vigorous give-and-take between people holding opposite points of view. But there is a difference between scientific uncertainty and political uncertainty. Where science thrives on the unknown, politics is often paralyzed by it.”(p.38) And the consequent is that “…most people do not yet accept the fact that this crisis is extremely grave. Of course, there is always a degree of uncertainly about complex issues…but it is all too easy to exaggerate the uncertainty and overstudy the problem…in order to avoid an uncomfortable conclusion”.(p.36)
“Resistance to seeing the…threats often focuses on the lack of complete information and perfect understanding,” but “we will never have complete information. Yet we have to make decisions anyway; we do this all the time,” drawing conclusions from incomplete information “by recognizing patterns.” Galileo was persecuted for seeing patterns in the heavens that seemed to contradict what we believed about the nature of the universe, and those who proposed pangea and continental drift were ridiculed, just as have many who thought beyond the perimeters of what had already been, albeit prematurely, concluded to be true. Likewise, we’ve long held the “dangerous assumption” that the earth’s “natural equilibrium…simply cannot change.” And when we make such assumptions, “we have to deal with the limitations imposed by our perspective, which is often sharply limited in time and space.”(p.41) “Geological time may seem to move very slowly in the context of a human life.” So “It takes a leap of imagination,” and perhaps a good metaphor, to ‘see’ the limits of our vision.
We cannot readily ‘see’ the patterns we are inside of, if only because we cannot get a vantage from which we can see the contrast. In this way, slow time obscures even relatively fast and dramatic changes, which we could see better if we had some distance. And for this we need imagination – the ability to step back and shift our temporal perspective in order to perceive patterns that connect the past and future in ways we cannot see from within a single lifetime.
Something similar was needed once upon a time for explorers to “somehow transcend their geographic limitations” in order to ‘see’ that the world was not flat. “The only way we can hope to understand [what is happening to us now] is to imagine it from a new and distant perspective.”(p.44) “In order to recognize the pattern of destruction [underway], we have to see it from a distance, both in time and space.”
“If we focus on just a small area of the earth, the pattern will remain invisible.”(p.46) But “since the pattern is truly global, we have to see the entire world in our mind’s eye.”(p.46) What’s more, “since the pattern is unfolding over time, we must find a way to see the startling contrast between the incredibly rapid changes now under way and the ordinarily glacial pace of change in the environment throughout history.”(p.46)
We might have predicted such changes, but until now, Gore explains, we have lacked a language to talk about the kind of patterned changes as are now occurring. It was Chaos Theory, or what some call global systems theory, that has given us such a language.
With its illumination of feedback dynamics, chaos or systems theory can help us see that “A given behavior may at first seem harmless…[but] we are unlikely to know enough about the effects of what we are doing to predict the consequences for others parts of the system – precisely because all it’s parts exist in a delicate balance of interdependency.”(p.50) And without that (arguably) ancient wisdom, we can see only too late when we have exceeded those “critical boundaries [that] define that overall pattern” that is life on earth as we have enjoyed it, boundaries that “cannot be exceeded without threatening the loss of its equilibrium” after which “the system suddenly shifts into an entirely new equilibrium…a new pattern with new boundaries”.(p.47) Since human life can exist only within the narrow perimeters that have sustained life on earth for the last ten thousand years, these changes are not likely to bode well for human beings.
We have seen these ideas before, Gore notes, in the way that crescendo marks the point of maximum instability in a symphony… “coming just at the point when the music flows to a new equilibrium with resolution and harmony. Soon we will learn,” he forecast optimistically, “to recognize crescendos in human affairs more easily – and see that they frequently signal the beginning of systemic, chaotic change from one form of equilibrium to another,” such as “the wave upon wave of discordant calls of distress [we now hear] from every corner of the globe.”(p.47) But “our challenge is to accelerate the needed change in thinking…to shift the pattern of our civilization to a new equilibrium – before the world’s ecological system loses it’s current one.” As chaos theory would predict, little change will be “evident until a threshold is passed, and then…a flood of dramatic changes will occur all at once.”(p.48)
Twenty plus years ago, Gore optimistically predicted that these new insights would have the kind of revolutionary effect on our thinking and way of life that Newtonian physics had on the politics, economics, and the social life of the time. But he underestimated the extent to which politicians and academics could actively ignore the philosophical implications of even the most powerful advance in human understanding.
And it’s for this reason that Gore’s analysis is worth repeating…for all indicators now reveal that his visionary speculations and early warnings were on the mark when it came to how soon and dramatically we could reach those tipping points that chaos theory would have predicted. (As I write this, in July of 2012, we are enduring extremes of weather and climate change that have made this last year the hottest in recorded history, and have already brought unspeakable suffering to many millions of people in the US and abroad, not to mention other life forms who depended on us to be better stewards.) And we can only lament now that, had we listened in 1992, there might still have been time to catch our balance, and maintain that “dynamic equilibrium” upon which all life on earth depends.
“The phenomenon of interdependency is probably best illustrated by what scientists call positive feedback loops, which magnify the force with which change occurs. In fact, almost everywhere you look throughout the ecological system, natural mechanisms tend to accelerate the pace of change once it is set in motion.”(p,50)
Gore gives us examples of both simple and complex feedback in natural systems. Most of us are, by now, familiar with the ice-albedo process through which the greenhouse effect takes place. This begins as a simple positive feedback loop that magnifies the effect of melting snow and the consequent increase in the absorption of sunlight at the surface,” because whereas ice would have reflected sunlight back out into space, foliage and dark water absorb sunlight, with increases its temperature, and further melts increasing amounts of ice, snow and permafrost. To make matters worse, thawed permafrost is likely to release methane gas that had been locked into soil, sometimes for millennia, and as greenhouse gases go, methane is many times worse that CO2.
“The overuse of pesticides presents a similar danger, again because of a feedback loop. Pesticides often leave the more resistant pests behind as athe more vulnerable ones disappear. Then, when the larger quantities of pesticides are used in an effort to kill the more resistant pests, and the process is repeated. Soon, enormous quantities of pesticides are sprayed on the crops to kill just as many pests as were there when the process began. Only now the pests are stronger.” A similar process occurs in what we now commonly call ‘antibiotic resistance.
Consider a more complex feedback loop that involves both global warming and ozone depletion. When “global warming increases the amount of water vapor throughout the atmosphere and traps infrared heat in the lower part of the sky which would otherwise radiate back out to space, passing through the stratosphere. As a result, the stratosphere actually cools as the lower atmosphere warms. A cooler stratosphere with more water vapor means more ice crystals in the ozone layer, especially in the polar regions, where chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) mingle with the ozone in the presence of the ice, thus depleting the ozone at a faster rate. The thinner the ozone layer, the more the ultraviolet radiation strikes the surface of the earth and all the organisms living there. The ultraviolet radiation strikes vegetation that normally absorbs vast quantities of CO2 through photosynthesis and…disrupts its ability to do so. As the vegetation absorbs less CO2, more of it accumulates in the atmosphere, causing still more global warming – and still more stratospheric cooling. The cycle is reinforced and magnified. It feeds upon itself.”(p53-54)
“Since we are interfering with the operation of complex systems, the relativity simple rules of linear cause and effect cannot explain, much less predict, the consequences of our interference.”(p.50) And the butterfly effects of such knowledge without humility can be catastrophic.
We find ourselves in a positive feedback loop which the ancients understood better than we seem to today…and as such changes are apt to do, this could very quickly spin out of control. But should we simply throw up our hands, or is there still something that could be done to avert or buffer these changes?
“It is the human factor in all of these feedback loops that is critical to saving the global environment,” Gore argues. “We need a positive feedback loop that feeds on itself in a good way and accelerates the pace of the positive changes now so urgently needed.”(p.54)
The challenge for each of us is this -- which will we listen to? Who will we respect -- those who would teach us to get what we want, or those who would teach us to want what is actually good for us? For it is the great teachers of human history who have shown us that ideas too produce feedback loops, for better or worse (just as the idea that human nature is ‘bad’ can actually bring out the worst in us by self-fulfilling prophesy).
Seeing this, we can also see how to plant the seeds of healthier butterfly effects in our young than those we currently teach them. But this requires we stop teaching our young the same bad habits that we find so hard to change in ourselves.
Closer to the whole truth of the matter, not as many live as we western capitalists do as might seem through our window on the world. In fact, just beyond the notice of too many of us, most of the rest of the world lives in or near what we might think of as poverty. They consume only what they need, and make the most of what they have. And what’s more, and would be surprising to many of us, they are also fairly content, and even happier, by most measures, than even the most affluent among us. Because once they and theirs are fed, warm, and safe, they can enjoy all the intrinsic goods of life – talk and laughter, music and dance, friendship and love --which are all, as the cliché says – free. Goods that too many of us have learned to ignore.
What Can One Person Do? What’s Worth Trading for What?
So whenever you start thinking this way, try this thought experiment...
In a piece he wrote many years ago, McKibben suggested another kind of divestment. According to McKibbon, polls show 94% of Americans say they would "make sacrifices" for the sake of a healthier future on this planet. And if that’s the case, how many more of us would do it, or do it more enthusiastically, for the sake of our own good, seeing that the quality of our own lives depends on it? Indeed, there is a sense in which this seeming self-denial could actually turn out to be the very best thing for us, and this crisis could ultimately work to our own greater good – if it moves us to learn what we’ve been ignoring…while there is still time.
McKibben offers us the following dilemma worth asking ourselves and one another:
"Say, just for argument's sake, that we decided to cut world fossil-fuel use by 60% -- the amount that the UN panel says would stabilize world climate. And then say that we shared the remaining fossil fuel equally. Each human being would get to produce 1.69 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually -- which would allow you to drive an average American car nine miles a day.... If you carpooled, you'd have about three pounds of CO2 left in your daily ration -- enough to run a highly efficient refrigerator.”(p. 428)[1]
So ask yourself -- how many more miles would you give up of driving your car, for instance, for the sake of running "your computer, your TV, your stereo, your stove, your dishwasher, your water heater, your microwave, your water pump, your clock...[and] your light bulbs"? (p.428)
The question is, now as it was in ancient times, "What is worth trading for what?" We may very well need computers, at this point. But do we need ever bigger cars? We may need music and films and sport, but do we need over-reaching and money-sucking corporate institutions managing it all? And when it comes right down to it, somebody is going to live in all those grand homes that McKibbon says look like they're made for "entry level monarchs."[1]
So the question then is, who will that be? Who will we teach our young to respect? What kind of character will we elevate to positions of leadership in the future? These are questions of what we learn to value and who we learn to respect – not a nature we are born with, but a value system we learn.
So if the choice actually were - as it will soon be - between losing everything OR keeping only those things you really need to be truly happy - what would you choose? The problem for most us is, as it has long been, that we have yet to learn the difference in intrinsic and extrinsic goods - different kinds of wealth. If we understood what is truly potential in this life, we might dream different dreams, we might happily trade the mere appearance of so many goods for the real things. But we can still and always learn -- and will, like it or not, when crisis is upon us. Still, must we wait that long?
I can only speak for myself, of course. And for my part, I’d like to think that -- rather than lose everything -- I for one would happily settle for what I need - maybe a little house on a riverbank with a fireplace and a big garden. I might even want a chicken or two, and maybe a goat, and a horse. And I’d need some solar panels, and maybe a bike by which I could collect enough electricity to run my refrigerator and recharge my batteries, so that I could use my computer a few hours a day, while I stay healthy.
I’d hope to have a community nearby, where I might trade goods and services, and secure work for myself as a teacher and a counselor (though these are not actually different things). I’d try to pass along the wisdom of reciprocity with those who have agreed to live by the golden rule, to pay it forward, and live by the principle of fair shares, which involves the understanding that one person's freedom ends where another person begins. And of course, I'd hope to have my family nearby, safe among these others who understand their self-interest in an enlightened way.
I'd surely also need pencils and paper, of course, and paint and clay, and maybe access to a library (although I’d still want to scribble in my books, so I’d need to be able to purchase my own too). I'd want a scooter to get me around, and bike friendly streets. And I'd like public access resource centers (maybe even as an alternative to schools as we know them), where we all could come and go as students and teachers, gathering for ongoing dialogues, taking tests to earn our degrees as we advance in our understanding at our own pace (because the truth is, we need the actual learning, not merely the grade and the degree).
And I'd hope for regular gatherings for dining, discussion, laughter and dancing, games, sports and all forms of play and celebration. And, of course, an amphitheater where musicians can perform, and actors can put on plays that I myself might want to write. In fact, I think I want to do all this every day. :-)))
There is so much of such great value left to do in this world -- even without fossil fuels, and even when almost everything else that seems normal and necessary to us, everything we think we want, is gone. Satisfied need is the foundation upon which intrinsic goods are to be found. Isn’t it time to help our young learn what’s actually good for them?
So it goes back to the old saying, Live that others too may live, and therein lies one’s own happiness. Seems paradoxical, but only if we haven’t thought it through. Would it really be so difficult to settle for what we really need, that is, what’s actually good for us? If the choice was clear that you could have only what you really need, or nothing at all – what would YOU choose? What would you teach your young to choose?
Perhaps it only seems like a difficult choice because we have been conditioned, in a sense, spoiled, into wanting more than our fair share, in fact, more than is good for us. We must remember what the ancient Vedics taught, that the universe is like the magic Kalpatura tree – it will give us everything that we want…AND all the consequences of those wants. It’s not too late for us to learn to want what’s good for us.
The truth is, intelligent and fair people could still have all of these things -- as long as we recognize how truly precious they are, appreciate them, and use them sparingly. Is this really so much to ask of us...considering the eternal cost of our ignorance – not only the potentially hellish future we deliver out children into – but an eternity thereafter that depends on us, and just us, right now, for it’s very existence!
And it may be tempting to think that one person can’t make much difference, especially when others aren’t doing their part. But it may help to remember the blind monk… *
Of the stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - Daphne Whasham says, "I've discovered a new sixth stage: doing The Work. This means taking courage from each other as we look this monster in the eye and fight side-by-side in the battle of a lifetime. Systemic change -- not just light-bulb change -- is what's required now. This must include everything from replacing the GDP as an outdated measure of progress to getting schools to teach climate science and arm the next generation with the facts. Together, we can get a glimpse, beyond despair, of a world of transformation and rebirth that is possible if we're courageous enough to fight for it. After all, our planet will eventually restore itself to a state of equilibrium -- we just have to make sure humankind is around to witness it."(Huffington Post, 9/4/12)
Human Nature? Or Just a Bad Habit?
And so perhaps we should begin by understanding our own nature better. We like to call it ‘human nature’ that we tend to be selfish and greedy, but is it really? Or is it only a bad habit, learned young, but possible to unlearn and worth the effort in intrinsic goods? Because the good thing about bad habits is that they can be broken. What’s more, they need to be learned in the first place, so we might simply stop teaching our young the same bad habits we find so difficult to change in ourselves.
If our situation is the predictable result of being raised in a world that ignores its higher potentials and the ancient primal voices who tried to teach us, those who learned directly from nature and so understood her better than those who live in denial of change today – then we would be wise to listen to those still available to teach us.
Because the sad fact is (as Peter S. Beagle observed, "We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers -- thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last [learn to] praise the colonizers of dreams."
There is the temptation to blame fallen humanity, for it certainly seems there is no hope for a species that refuses to be bothered to stop indulging its every desire. But the idea that this is our nature ignores all the conditioning processes that go into making sure we are this way, which amounts to blaming the victim – since we first teach our young to be selfish, and then call them ‘natural sinners’ for learning what we’ve taught them so well.
It's too easy to look around and think of what is normal in our culture is the same as in every other culture, much less human nature, as if this is the way it's always been. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves. While many of us have been persuaded by traditions and institutions (some of which have ulterior motives of their own) that no such thing as goodness exists in human potential, this is more illusion than actuality in this. We’re fond of looking at the surface of things, and on the surface it seems that most people are ‘naturally’ scoundrels…or so we tend to think, if we don’t look beyond the obvious. But one thing the ancients understood is that living beings are bound to have both higher and lower potentials, and choosing which to actualize is what it is our human nature to do. There are reasons worth understanding why so many choose their lesser selves.
In fact, if it was our nature to be selfish and greedy, humans would have been this in all times and all places, and we would not see so many exceptions to the rule. Instead, an honest study of history shows us that the good has thrived and flourished in many times and places, and in countless individuals. Yes, there have always been scoundrels...but they've only ever become the dominant force when their influence has poisoned so many so young. Modeling our behavior on the worst of humanity is a very potent error with consequences so far reaching that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could teach their young this view of human nature…except those who simply don’t understand nature to begin with. Unfortunately, this includes most of us who grew up in the more developed parts of the world. But again, the ancients would remind us that we are born with both potentials, and it is up to us to actualize them. Which of our potentials we develop is our choice. We choose whether we will follow those that tend toward the divine, or those that tend toward the diabolical. And for this reason, what we find when we look inward has less to do with our natural inclinations, and more to do with our choices. What we find when we look inside ourselves depends largely on what we put there.
In fact, far from the so-called 'human nature' we tend to think it to be, this tendency to capitalize on vulnerable others is (arguably) only a bad habit, and a relatively new and still fairly localized one, at that -- not as universal as it seems, and not much older than the religious and economic traditions from which it has evolved. It's true that egoism can seem to be almost universal when we grow up surrounded by so many who seem to be capitalistic at heart, but (like the statue of Glaucus that Plato tells us fell to the bottom of the ocean) the human soul, as we know it, is crusted over by too much unhealthy experience and calloused by the myriad hurts, none of which are born with us, but all happen to us after birth. In fact, if this were our inevitable nature, then we would not see the myriad exceptions that we do, throughout history, and even among and around us everyday. We need only learn to emulate those worth honoring, those whose character express the higher human potentials that are still and always potential in every human life. The realization of human excellence is all around us, and the potential for it is in all of us. As Plato tried to help us see - our real hope is in the fact that each generation is born fresh.
What those in the Christian tradition think of as a fall from grace, might better be understood as karma in eastern wisdom traditions. For the latter is not a hand dealt by God, as we are encouraged to think, but one that we deal ourselves, and so might do well to rethink what we think we knew about our nature and the causal forces at work. For it may not be too late to change our course, and learn from our mistakes, while there’s still time to save this paradise that is our home – which may not be a place at all, as much as a state of mind.
And one cannot help but wonder if this is how Adam and Eve might have felt. For surely once the opportunity is past, we will see more clearly what we have lost. And we will wish then that we had acted sooner, better, wiser to save this paradise while we still might have. And we will wonder then, if not sooner, was it the fruit of the tree of knowledge that was our demise? Or seeking the wrong kind of knowledge? Knowledge without humility, without temperance, courage, justice, and wisdom - this is the danger that we face.
“You can all read the signs of the earth and the sky,” Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas. “How is it you cannot read the signs of the times?”
There have been many incarnations of the Genesis story and of how the first people were cast from the first garden. Some of these make it more clear than others that it is knowledge without humility that precipitates the fall – not merely there in the primordial garden, but here and now, in the garden we are planting for our children. The ancients understood that humility is the source of all grace and wisdom – which is the same thing as knowing how little we actually know, and therefore, how much we have to learn.
One can’t help but wonder these days when we’ll recognize ourselves in that fall from grace story, when we’ll recognize this cautionary tale is speaking to those of us still living in this paradise. How could it be that those who adhere most religiously to that mythology seem most oblivious to its meaning for our time and predicament? For centuries now we’ve been telling ourselves that paradise is already lost, that humanity is already fallen, ignoring the self-fulfilling prophesy of such beliefs and actually crating the very circumstances we’ve assumed in the process.
Some people call this looming change the apocalypse, and we’ll be lucky if they’re right – for the word (in Greek) literally means ‘to unveil...or ‘to reveal.’ In one especially optimistic work of recent fiction, Dan Brown put it this way: “The Apocalypse is literally a reveal-ation. The Book of Revelations in the Bible predicts an unveiling of great truth and unimaginable wisdom. The Apocalypse is not the end of the world, but rather, it is the end of the world as we know it.” For all we know, it could be the beginning of an “age of enlightenment.”(p.467)
Philosophy has long had a tenuous relationship with fiction, but I will give it this: it can help us see our selves and our blessings more clearly and remind us to appreciate what we have while we still have it. Fiction can remind us of our better selves, and of what is still and always possible, if we are grateful and wise.
There is a scene in Thorton Wilder’s play, Our Town, that illustrates this point well. A young woman who dies in childbirth is given a chance by her spiritual guide to go back to revisit just one day of her life. Her first impulse is to choose a very memorable day, her sixteenth birthday perhaps, or maybe her wedding day. But her wise guide cautions her that it would be best to choose a perfectly ordinary day - for even that will seem so truly miraculous as to be overwhelming to experience. If only we could see our blessings for what they are, while we still have them!
It’s all too easy to take for granted the people, times, opportunities and the many gifts we are fortunate to enjoy. Too often, we let days pass in busy distress as we live them, not as ends in themselves, but as mere means to other ends. I’d surely spent too much time that way when my own daughter was young…worried, working, wanting what was still around the corner. But then I had a dream, in which my father, long gone by that time, reminded me to “pay attention!” The day will come, he said, when you will wish, and would give anything, to be back here and now, watching your child at play. Now that those hard but good times are just a memory, I understand clearly what he meant.
And maybe crisis is opportunity, after all. Maybe Dan Brown is right - maybe we have “been born into wonderful times… a change is coming…[and] human beings are poised on a threshold of a new age when they will begin turning their eyes back to nature and to the old ways…back to the ideas in… ancient texts from around the world.”(p.60)
Brown reminds us that many have forecast the potential for “a moment of great human transformation,”(p.240) and it is likely to be “preceded by a brilliant explosion of knowledge, a flash of clarity to illuminate the darkness -- and give mankind a final chance to veer away from the abyss and take the path of wisdom.”(p.54)
Maybe “we are on the verge of a truly great period of illumination, and all of us -- all of you -- are profoundly blessed to be living through this pivotal moment in history. Of all the people who have ever lived in all the eras in history,” he says, “we are in the narrow window of time during which we will bear witness to our ultimate renaissance. After a millennial of darkness, we will see our sciences, our minds, and even our religions unveil the truth.’”(p.409)
He’s certainly right though when he says that “Powerful truth has it’s own gravity and eventually pulls people back to it.” And there may well be good reason to hope that “There will come a day when modern science begins in earnest to study the wisdom of the ancients…that will be the day that mankind begins to find answers to the big questions that still elude him.”(p.60)
What can one person do? Perhaps we need only take seriously the claim (made in a beautiful book entitled, Picturing Climate Change) "The most significant role for individuals is to let your voice be heard."
Gore tried to bring the power of ideas to our rescue in his 1992 masterpiece, Earth in the Balance, illuminating by way of metaphors solutions to the challenges humanity is facing – not in some far off future, but in our lifetime.
Imagine a car crash…in slow motion. “What is now occurring in the global environment can be seen in similar terms,” Gore explains. “Our ecological system is crumpling as it suffers a powerful collision with the hard surfaces of a civilization speeding toward it out of control.”(p.42) Because “the crunching and crushing and shattering all take place over a longer time of span than we associate with a violent collision,” we have been able to ignore the cumulative effects, lulled into a false sense of security by the scale of our perception. “We are not unlike the laboratory frog that, when dropped into a pot of boiling water, quickly jumps out. But when placed in lukewarm water that is slowly heated, the frog will remain there until it is rescued,”(p. 42)…or not.
“Sameness and gradual change often lull the senses” as we reserve our attention for sharp contrasts. In this way, patterns go unnoticed…when we are inside them. And “too often we don’t let ourselves see a pattern because we are afraid of its implications,” especially when the evidence may suggest a need for changes in the way we live or the things we believe.
But even in 1992, “skeptics [were] vastly outnumbered by former skeptics who now accept the overwhelming weight of the accumulated evidence.”(p.39) The world’s best science has shown overwhelming evidence that “that we are in danger of passing a kind of point of no return, after which we will have missed the last good opportunity to solve the problem before it spirals out of control.”(p.38)
Unfortunately, while“98 percent of the scientists…share one view,” and only “2 percent disagree,”(p.38) it is nonetheless reported by the news media as a balanced controversy. What’s more, “uncertainties are [being] cynically used by partisans of the status quo for the express purpose of preventing the coalescence of public support for action,”(p.39) So we are “vulnerable to the false reassurances of a tiny group within the scientific community who argue that the threats don’t exist.”(p.38) And in this way, our well-intended, but misguided "efforts to be unbiased can itself become a form of bias."(p.71)
Of course, “we know that truth is often best discovered through a vigorous give-and-take between people holding opposite points of view. But there is a difference between scientific uncertainty and political uncertainty. Where science thrives on the unknown, politics is often paralyzed by it.”(p.38) And the consequent is that “…most people do not yet accept the fact that this crisis is extremely grave. Of course, there is always a degree of uncertainly about complex issues…but it is all too easy to exaggerate the uncertainty and overstudy the problem…in order to avoid an uncomfortable conclusion”.(p.36)
“Resistance to seeing the…threats often focuses on the lack of complete information and perfect understanding,” but “we will never have complete information. Yet we have to make decisions anyway; we do this all the time,” drawing conclusions from incomplete information “by recognizing patterns.” Galileo was persecuted for seeing patterns in the heavens that seemed to contradict what we believed about the nature of the universe, and those who proposed pangea and continental drift were ridiculed, just as have many who thought beyond the perimeters of what had already been, albeit prematurely, concluded to be true. Likewise, we’ve long held the “dangerous assumption” that the earth’s “natural equilibrium…simply cannot change.” And when we make such assumptions, “we have to deal with the limitations imposed by our perspective, which is often sharply limited in time and space.”(p.41) “Geological time may seem to move very slowly in the context of a human life.” So “It takes a leap of imagination,” and perhaps a good metaphor, to ‘see’ the limits of our vision.
We cannot readily ‘see’ the patterns we are inside of, if only because we cannot get a vantage from which we can see the contrast. In this way, slow time obscures even relatively fast and dramatic changes, which we could see better if we had some distance. And for this we need imagination – the ability to step back and shift our temporal perspective in order to perceive patterns that connect the past and future in ways we cannot see from within a single lifetime.
Something similar was needed once upon a time for explorers to “somehow transcend their geographic limitations” in order to ‘see’ that the world was not flat. “The only way we can hope to understand [what is happening to us now] is to imagine it from a new and distant perspective.”(p.44) “In order to recognize the pattern of destruction [underway], we have to see it from a distance, both in time and space.”
“If we focus on just a small area of the earth, the pattern will remain invisible.”(p.46) But “since the pattern is truly global, we have to see the entire world in our mind’s eye.”(p.46) What’s more, “since the pattern is unfolding over time, we must find a way to see the startling contrast between the incredibly rapid changes now under way and the ordinarily glacial pace of change in the environment throughout history.”(p.46)
We might have predicted such changes, but until now, Gore explains, we have lacked a language to talk about the kind of patterned changes as are now occurring. It was Chaos Theory, or what some call global systems theory, that has given us such a language.
With its illumination of feedback dynamics, chaos or systems theory can help us see that “A given behavior may at first seem harmless…[but] we are unlikely to know enough about the effects of what we are doing to predict the consequences for others parts of the system – precisely because all it’s parts exist in a delicate balance of interdependency.”(p.50) And without that (arguably) ancient wisdom, we can see only too late when we have exceeded those “critical boundaries [that] define that overall pattern” that is life on earth as we have enjoyed it, boundaries that “cannot be exceeded without threatening the loss of its equilibrium” after which “the system suddenly shifts into an entirely new equilibrium…a new pattern with new boundaries”.(p.47) Since human life can exist only within the narrow perimeters that have sustained life on earth for the last ten thousand years, these changes are not likely to bode well for human beings.
We have seen these ideas before, Gore notes, in the way that crescendo marks the point of maximum instability in a symphony… “coming just at the point when the music flows to a new equilibrium with resolution and harmony. Soon we will learn,” he forecast optimistically, “to recognize crescendos in human affairs more easily – and see that they frequently signal the beginning of systemic, chaotic change from one form of equilibrium to another,” such as “the wave upon wave of discordant calls of distress [we now hear] from every corner of the globe.”(p.47) But “our challenge is to accelerate the needed change in thinking…to shift the pattern of our civilization to a new equilibrium – before the world’s ecological system loses it’s current one.” As chaos theory would predict, little change will be “evident until a threshold is passed, and then…a flood of dramatic changes will occur all at once.”(p.48)
Twenty plus years ago, Gore optimistically predicted that these new insights would have the kind of revolutionary effect on our thinking and way of life that Newtonian physics had on the politics, economics, and the social life of the time. But he underestimated the extent to which politicians and academics could actively ignore the philosophical implications of even the most powerful advance in human understanding.
And it’s for this reason that Gore’s analysis is worth repeating…for all indicators now reveal that his visionary speculations and early warnings were on the mark when it came to how soon and dramatically we could reach those tipping points that chaos theory would have predicted. (As I write this, in July of 2012, we are enduring extremes of weather and climate change that have made this last year the hottest in recorded history, and have already brought unspeakable suffering to many millions of people in the US and abroad, not to mention other life forms who depended on us to be better stewards.) And we can only lament now that, had we listened in 1992, there might still have been time to catch our balance, and maintain that “dynamic equilibrium” upon which all life on earth depends.
“The phenomenon of interdependency is probably best illustrated by what scientists call positive feedback loops, which magnify the force with which change occurs. In fact, almost everywhere you look throughout the ecological system, natural mechanisms tend to accelerate the pace of change once it is set in motion.”(p,50)
Gore gives us examples of both simple and complex feedback in natural systems. Most of us are, by now, familiar with the ice-albedo process through which the greenhouse effect takes place. This begins as a simple positive feedback loop that magnifies the effect of melting snow and the consequent increase in the absorption of sunlight at the surface,” because whereas ice would have reflected sunlight back out into space, foliage and dark water absorb sunlight, with increases its temperature, and further melts increasing amounts of ice, snow and permafrost. To make matters worse, thawed permafrost is likely to release methane gas that had been locked into soil, sometimes for millennia, and as greenhouse gases go, methane is many times worse that CO2.
“The overuse of pesticides presents a similar danger, again because of a feedback loop. Pesticides often leave the more resistant pests behind as athe more vulnerable ones disappear. Then, when the larger quantities of pesticides are used in an effort to kill the more resistant pests, and the process is repeated. Soon, enormous quantities of pesticides are sprayed on the crops to kill just as many pests as were there when the process began. Only now the pests are stronger.” A similar process occurs in what we now commonly call ‘antibiotic resistance.
Consider a more complex feedback loop that involves both global warming and ozone depletion. When “global warming increases the amount of water vapor throughout the atmosphere and traps infrared heat in the lower part of the sky which would otherwise radiate back out to space, passing through the stratosphere. As a result, the stratosphere actually cools as the lower atmosphere warms. A cooler stratosphere with more water vapor means more ice crystals in the ozone layer, especially in the polar regions, where chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) mingle with the ozone in the presence of the ice, thus depleting the ozone at a faster rate. The thinner the ozone layer, the more the ultraviolet radiation strikes the surface of the earth and all the organisms living there. The ultraviolet radiation strikes vegetation that normally absorbs vast quantities of CO2 through photosynthesis and…disrupts its ability to do so. As the vegetation absorbs less CO2, more of it accumulates in the atmosphere, causing still more global warming – and still more stratospheric cooling. The cycle is reinforced and magnified. It feeds upon itself.”(p53-54)
“Since we are interfering with the operation of complex systems, the relativity simple rules of linear cause and effect cannot explain, much less predict, the consequences of our interference.”(p.50) And the butterfly effects of such knowledge without humility can be catastrophic.
We find ourselves in a positive feedback loop which the ancients understood better than we seem to today…and as such changes are apt to do, this could very quickly spin out of control. But should we simply throw up our hands, or is there still something that could be done to avert or buffer these changes?
“It is the human factor in all of these feedback loops that is critical to saving the global environment,” Gore argues. “We need a positive feedback loop that feeds on itself in a good way and accelerates the pace of the positive changes now so urgently needed.”(p.54)
The challenge for each of us is this -- which will we listen to? Who will we respect -- those who would teach us to get what we want, or those who would teach us to want what is actually good for us? For it is the great teachers of human history who have shown us that ideas too produce feedback loops, for better or worse (just as the idea that human nature is ‘bad’ can actually bring out the worst in us by self-fulfilling prophesy).
Seeing this, we can also see how to plant the seeds of healthier butterfly effects in our young than those we currently teach them. But this requires we stop teaching our young the same bad habits that we find so hard to change in ourselves.
Closer to the whole truth of the matter, not as many live as we western capitalists do as might seem through our window on the world. In fact, just beyond the notice of too many of us, most of the rest of the world lives in or near what we might think of as poverty. They consume only what they need, and make the most of what they have. And what’s more, and would be surprising to many of us, they are also fairly content, and even happier, by most measures, than even the most affluent among us. Because once they and theirs are fed, warm, and safe, they can enjoy all the intrinsic goods of life – talk and laughter, music and dance, friendship and love --which are all, as the cliché says – free. Goods that too many of us have learned to ignore.
What Can One Person Do? What’s Worth Trading for What?
So whenever you start thinking this way, try this thought experiment...
In a piece he wrote many years ago, McKibben suggested another kind of divestment. According to McKibbon, polls show 94% of Americans say they would "make sacrifices" for the sake of a healthier future on this planet. And if that’s the case, how many more of us would do it, or do it more enthusiastically, for the sake of our own good, seeing that the quality of our own lives depends on it? Indeed, there is a sense in which this seeming self-denial could actually turn out to be the very best thing for us, and this crisis could ultimately work to our own greater good – if it moves us to learn what we’ve been ignoring…while there is still time.
McKibben offers us the following dilemma worth asking ourselves and one another:
"Say, just for argument's sake, that we decided to cut world fossil-fuel use by 60% -- the amount that the UN panel says would stabilize world climate. And then say that we shared the remaining fossil fuel equally. Each human being would get to produce 1.69 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually -- which would allow you to drive an average American car nine miles a day.... If you carpooled, you'd have about three pounds of CO2 left in your daily ration -- enough to run a highly efficient refrigerator.”(p. 428)[1]
So ask yourself -- how many more miles would you give up of driving your car, for instance, for the sake of running "your computer, your TV, your stereo, your stove, your dishwasher, your water heater, your microwave, your water pump, your clock...[and] your light bulbs"? (p.428)
The question is, now as it was in ancient times, "What is worth trading for what?" We may very well need computers, at this point. But do we need ever bigger cars? We may need music and films and sport, but do we need over-reaching and money-sucking corporate institutions managing it all? And when it comes right down to it, somebody is going to live in all those grand homes that McKibbon says look like they're made for "entry level monarchs."[1]
So the question then is, who will that be? Who will we teach our young to respect? What kind of character will we elevate to positions of leadership in the future? These are questions of what we learn to value and who we learn to respect – not a nature we are born with, but a value system we learn.
So if the choice actually were - as it will soon be - between losing everything OR keeping only those things you really need to be truly happy - what would you choose? The problem for most us is, as it has long been, that we have yet to learn the difference in intrinsic and extrinsic goods - different kinds of wealth. If we understood what is truly potential in this life, we might dream different dreams, we might happily trade the mere appearance of so many goods for the real things. But we can still and always learn -- and will, like it or not, when crisis is upon us. Still, must we wait that long?
I can only speak for myself, of course. And for my part, I’d like to think that -- rather than lose everything -- I for one would happily settle for what I need - maybe a little house on a riverbank with a fireplace and a big garden. I might even want a chicken or two, and maybe a goat, and a horse. And I’d need some solar panels, and maybe a bike by which I could collect enough electricity to run my refrigerator and recharge my batteries, so that I could use my computer a few hours a day, while I stay healthy.
I’d hope to have a community nearby, where I might trade goods and services, and secure work for myself as a teacher and a counselor (though these are not actually different things). I’d try to pass along the wisdom of reciprocity with those who have agreed to live by the golden rule, to pay it forward, and live by the principle of fair shares, which involves the understanding that one person's freedom ends where another person begins. And of course, I'd hope to have my family nearby, safe among these others who understand their self-interest in an enlightened way.
I'd surely also need pencils and paper, of course, and paint and clay, and maybe access to a library (although I’d still want to scribble in my books, so I’d need to be able to purchase my own too). I'd want a scooter to get me around, and bike friendly streets. And I'd like public access resource centers (maybe even as an alternative to schools as we know them), where we all could come and go as students and teachers, gathering for ongoing dialogues, taking tests to earn our degrees as we advance in our understanding at our own pace (because the truth is, we need the actual learning, not merely the grade and the degree).
And I'd hope for regular gatherings for dining, discussion, laughter and dancing, games, sports and all forms of play and celebration. And, of course, an amphitheater where musicians can perform, and actors can put on plays that I myself might want to write. In fact, I think I want to do all this every day. :-)))
There is so much of such great value left to do in this world -- even without fossil fuels, and even when almost everything else that seems normal and necessary to us, everything we think we want, is gone. Satisfied need is the foundation upon which intrinsic goods are to be found. Isn’t it time to help our young learn what’s actually good for them?
So it goes back to the old saying, Live that others too may live, and therein lies one’s own happiness. Seems paradoxical, but only if we haven’t thought it through. Would it really be so difficult to settle for what we really need, that is, what’s actually good for us? If the choice was clear that you could have only what you really need, or nothing at all – what would YOU choose? What would you teach your young to choose?
Perhaps it only seems like a difficult choice because we have been conditioned, in a sense, spoiled, into wanting more than our fair share, in fact, more than is good for us. We must remember what the ancient Vedics taught, that the universe is like the magic Kalpatura tree – it will give us everything that we want…AND all the consequences of those wants. It’s not too late for us to learn to want what’s good for us.
The truth is, intelligent and fair people could still have all of these things -- as long as we recognize how truly precious they are, appreciate them, and use them sparingly. Is this really so much to ask of us...considering the eternal cost of our ignorance – not only the potentially hellish future we deliver out children into – but an eternity thereafter that depends on us, and just us, right now, for it’s very existence!
And it may be tempting to think that one person can’t make much difference, especially when others aren’t doing their part. But it may help to remember the blind monk… *
Of the stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - Daphne Whasham says, "I've discovered a new sixth stage: doing The Work. This means taking courage from each other as we look this monster in the eye and fight side-by-side in the battle of a lifetime. Systemic change -- not just light-bulb change -- is what's required now. This must include everything from replacing the GDP as an outdated measure of progress to getting schools to teach climate science and arm the next generation with the facts. Together, we can get a glimpse, beyond despair, of a world of transformation and rebirth that is possible if we're courageous enough to fight for it. After all, our planet will eventually restore itself to a state of equilibrium -- we just have to make sure humankind is around to witness it."(Huffington Post, 9/4/12)
Human Nature? Or Just a Bad Habit?
And so perhaps we should begin by understanding our own nature better. We like to call it ‘human nature’ that we tend to be selfish and greedy, but is it really? Or is it only a bad habit, learned young, but possible to unlearn and worth the effort in intrinsic goods? Because the good thing about bad habits is that they can be broken. What’s more, they need to be learned in the first place, so we might simply stop teaching our young the same bad habits we find so difficult to change in ourselves.
If our situation is the predictable result of being raised in a world that ignores its higher potentials and the ancient primal voices who tried to teach us, those who learned directly from nature and so understood her better than those who live in denial of change today – then we would be wise to listen to those still available to teach us.
Because the sad fact is (as Peter S. Beagle observed, "We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers -- thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last [learn to] praise the colonizers of dreams."
There is the temptation to blame fallen humanity, for it certainly seems there is no hope for a species that refuses to be bothered to stop indulging its every desire. But the idea that this is our nature ignores all the conditioning processes that go into making sure we are this way, which amounts to blaming the victim – since we first teach our young to be selfish, and then call them ‘natural sinners’ for learning what we’ve taught them so well.
It's too easy to look around and think of what is normal in our culture is the same as in every other culture, much less human nature, as if this is the way it's always been. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves. While many of us have been persuaded by traditions and institutions (some of which have ulterior motives of their own) that no such thing as goodness exists in human potential, this is more illusion than actuality in this. We’re fond of looking at the surface of things, and on the surface it seems that most people are ‘naturally’ scoundrels…or so we tend to think, if we don’t look beyond the obvious. But one thing the ancients understood is that living beings are bound to have both higher and lower potentials, and choosing which to actualize is what it is our human nature to do. There are reasons worth understanding why so many choose their lesser selves.
In fact, if it was our nature to be selfish and greedy, humans would have been this in all times and all places, and we would not see so many exceptions to the rule. Instead, an honest study of history shows us that the good has thrived and flourished in many times and places, and in countless individuals. Yes, there have always been scoundrels...but they've only ever become the dominant force when their influence has poisoned so many so young. Modeling our behavior on the worst of humanity is a very potent error with consequences so far reaching that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could teach their young this view of human nature…except those who simply don’t understand nature to begin with. Unfortunately, this includes most of us who grew up in the more developed parts of the world. But again, the ancients would remind us that we are born with both potentials, and it is up to us to actualize them. Which of our potentials we develop is our choice. We choose whether we will follow those that tend toward the divine, or those that tend toward the diabolical. And for this reason, what we find when we look inward has less to do with our natural inclinations, and more to do with our choices. What we find when we look inside ourselves depends largely on what we put there.
In fact, far from the so-called 'human nature' we tend to think it to be, this tendency to capitalize on vulnerable others is (arguably) only a bad habit, and a relatively new and still fairly localized one, at that -- not as universal as it seems, and not much older than the religious and economic traditions from which it has evolved. It's true that egoism can seem to be almost universal when we grow up surrounded by so many who seem to be capitalistic at heart, but (like the statue of Glaucus that Plato tells us fell to the bottom of the ocean) the human soul, as we know it, is crusted over by too much unhealthy experience and calloused by the myriad hurts, none of which are born with us, but all happen to us after birth. In fact, if this were our inevitable nature, then we would not see the myriad exceptions that we do, throughout history, and even among and around us everyday. We need only learn to emulate those worth honoring, those whose character express the higher human potentials that are still and always potential in every human life. The realization of human excellence is all around us, and the potential for it is in all of us. As Plato tried to help us see - our real hope is in the fact that each generation is born fresh.
What those in the Christian tradition think of as a fall from grace, might better be understood as karma in eastern wisdom traditions. For the latter is not a hand dealt by God, as we are encouraged to think, but one that we deal ourselves, and so might do well to rethink what we think we knew about our nature and the causal forces at work. For it may not be too late to change our course, and learn from our mistakes, while there’s still time to save this paradise that is our home – which may not be a place at all, as much as a state of mind.
And one cannot help but wonder if this is how Adam and Eve might have felt. For surely once the opportunity is past, we will see more clearly what we have lost. And we will wish then that we had acted sooner, better, wiser to save this paradise while we still might have. And we will wonder then, if not sooner, was it the fruit of the tree of knowledge that was our demise? Or seeking the wrong kind of knowledge? Knowledge without humility, without temperance, courage, justice, and wisdom - this is the danger that we face.
“You can all read the signs of the earth and the sky,” Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas. “How is it you cannot read the signs of the times?”
There have been many incarnations of the Genesis story and of how the first people were cast from the first garden. Some of these make it more clear than others that it is knowledge without humility that precipitates the fall – not merely there in the primordial garden, but here and now, in the garden we are planting for our children. The ancients understood that humility is the source of all grace and wisdom – which is the same thing as knowing how little we actually know, and therefore, how much we have to learn.
One can’t help but wonder these days when we’ll recognize ourselves in that fall from grace story, when we’ll recognize this cautionary tale is speaking to those of us still living in this paradise. How could it be that those who adhere most religiously to that mythology seem most oblivious to its meaning for our time and predicament? For centuries now we’ve been telling ourselves that paradise is already lost, that humanity is already fallen, ignoring the self-fulfilling prophesy of such beliefs and actually crating the very circumstances we’ve assumed in the process.
Some people call this looming change the apocalypse, and we’ll be lucky if they’re right – for the word (in Greek) literally means ‘to unveil...or ‘to reveal.’ In one especially optimistic work of recent fiction, Dan Brown put it this way: “The Apocalypse is literally a reveal-ation. The Book of Revelations in the Bible predicts an unveiling of great truth and unimaginable wisdom. The Apocalypse is not the end of the world, but rather, it is the end of the world as we know it.” For all we know, it could be the beginning of an “age of enlightenment.”(p.467)
Philosophy has long had a tenuous relationship with fiction, but I will give it this: it can help us see our selves and our blessings more clearly and remind us to appreciate what we have while we still have it. Fiction can remind us of our better selves, and of what is still and always possible, if we are grateful and wise.
There is a scene in Thorton Wilder’s play, Our Town, that illustrates this point well. A young woman who dies in childbirth is given a chance by her spiritual guide to go back to revisit just one day of her life. Her first impulse is to choose a very memorable day, her sixteenth birthday perhaps, or maybe her wedding day. But her wise guide cautions her that it would be best to choose a perfectly ordinary day - for even that will seem so truly miraculous as to be overwhelming to experience. If only we could see our blessings for what they are, while we still have them!
It’s all too easy to take for granted the people, times, opportunities and the many gifts we are fortunate to enjoy. Too often, we let days pass in busy distress as we live them, not as ends in themselves, but as mere means to other ends. I’d surely spent too much time that way when my own daughter was young…worried, working, wanting what was still around the corner. But then I had a dream, in which my father, long gone by that time, reminded me to “pay attention!” The day will come, he said, when you will wish, and would give anything, to be back here and now, watching your child at play. Now that those hard but good times are just a memory, I understand clearly what he meant.
And maybe crisis is opportunity, after all. Maybe Dan Brown is right - maybe we have “been born into wonderful times… a change is coming…[and] human beings are poised on a threshold of a new age when they will begin turning their eyes back to nature and to the old ways…back to the ideas in… ancient texts from around the world.”(p.60)
Brown reminds us that many have forecast the potential for “a moment of great human transformation,”(p.240) and it is likely to be “preceded by a brilliant explosion of knowledge, a flash of clarity to illuminate the darkness -- and give mankind a final chance to veer away from the abyss and take the path of wisdom.”(p.54)
Maybe “we are on the verge of a truly great period of illumination, and all of us -- all of you -- are profoundly blessed to be living through this pivotal moment in history. Of all the people who have ever lived in all the eras in history,” he says, “we are in the narrow window of time during which we will bear witness to our ultimate renaissance. After a millennial of darkness, we will see our sciences, our minds, and even our religions unveil the truth.’”(p.409)
He’s certainly right though when he says that “Powerful truth has it’s own gravity and eventually pulls people back to it.” And there may well be good reason to hope that “There will come a day when modern science begins in earnest to study the wisdom of the ancients…that will be the day that mankind begins to find answers to the big questions that still elude him.”(p.60)
What can one person do? Perhaps we need only take seriously the claim (made in a beautiful book entitled, Picturing Climate Change) "The most significant role for individuals is to let your voice be heard."