To the extent that we are bound up with our own ego, we will also be without a long view. Even if our ego concerns seem to us better than Trump’s ego concerns, we can still be missing a long view—a view for something larger than our own selves or our own tiny concerns.

So Who Does Have a Long View?

The writers of the Old Testament had a long view. They reflected back hundreds of years and they reflected forward centuries as well—seeing their peoplehood as a servant body on behalf of all the nations of the world.

Jesus had a long view. In laying down his life for the people of Israel, he was laying down his life for the restoration of this servant people and thereby for the whole of humanity.

Paul had a long view. Augustine had a long view. Martin Luther had a long view, Paul Tillich had a long view. The priest and author, Thomas Berry, had a long view. He not only had a long view for Christianity, Berry promoted a next Christianity that has a long view for the whole of humanity. He viewed humanity as an integral part of the planet. He saw humanity as Earth’s champaign of deep awareness and joyous celebration on behalf of this wondrously unique planet that can sustain life, including human life.

The Battle of Two Regimes

We who comprise the progressive portion of the United States voters and activists need a simple and easy-to-teach narrative about where we are as a society and how the various types of Republicans and Democrats relate to some “big story” of our existing conditions and our possible futures.

Before the beginnings of the industrial revolution in about 1760, there was only one regime of governance headed by a King or perhaps by a Queen, or perhaps by a Royal Council. These high class members of the traditional caste system controlled both political and economic life. The rise of the industrial revolution assisted by colonialism enabled the accumulation of great pools of privately controlled wealth. This wealth-power had significance in both the economic and political governance over the course of events. The economist and author, Robert Heilbroner, called these pools of wealth “the regime of capital,” This second regime of governance initiated a tension with the regime of state —a fight between these two regimes of powerful governance.

As the regime of capital became more independent, the regime of royalty was weakened and social space was opened for the more democratic form of state initiated in the United States and elsewhere. The democratic state retained legal and coercive force, but the regime of capital with its powers of investments and conditions of employment also possessed a strong governing reality in the lives of people and in direct influences upon the decisions of the state.

These elemental dynamics of history are important for seeing clearly the historical options we face today in the United States and elsewhere. Here are five styles of governing that are being pursued in our world today:

option 1: This style of governing is illustrated by the Vladimir Putin type of control of both the regime of the state and the regime of capital—both regimes are in the hands of very wealthy oligarchs of which Putin is one as well as head of state. This is the option that Donald Trump and his cronies favored and still favor. They lie about their poorly hidden dictatorial direction for their governing. Lying, misinformation, and deception in order to assemble support is a characteristic of this option for governing. When taking this option, democracy becomes a social veneer that has no real power over the course of events. Option one policies seek support from the super wealthy and from the long-enduring forms of the caste system—racism, patriarchy, gender, and so on.

option 2: This style of governing is illustrated by those U.S. conservatives who are quite critical of various aspects of the reigning caste systems, but who insist that the regime of capital must manage the regime of the democratic state. The policies of this political constituency are crafted to benefit big business leaders and their corporations. They claim that “business friendly” policies benefit everyone with a “trickle down” of prosperity. Many anti-Trump Republicans hold this view. A number of Democratic Party leaders and thinkers also hold this view. The majority of the Democratic Party, however, now hold the view that the “trickle-down” of wealth is microscopic compared with the “siphon-off” going to the upper classes. Option 2 style governing persons are also typically uneasy about a “too powerful” democratic government regulating the regime of capital “too severely.” In the view of U.S. option 2 policy-makers, “small” government, which they favor in the regulations department, does not exclude, “large” outlays for the defense industry, or “large” tax give-aways to the fossil fuel industries, and other governmental perks to the existing economic powers.

option 3: This style of governing is illustrated by those who view the need for a strong regime of democratic governing that sets the rules and enforces fairly and strongly the rules that structure the economic playing field for the players of the regime of capital. Option 3 policy-makers expect the capital-owning forces to control the micro-economic choices, but they maintain that the macro-economic choices are to be made by a democratic government focused on serving all the people. The still valued regime of capital takes on a secondary role with regard to the basic ecological, economic, political, and cultural directions for the society. The regime of capital is expected to be obedient to these large-direction choices made by the representatives of a democratic government.

option 4: This style of governing is more aggressive than the option 3 style with regard to the role of democratic government in regulating the regime of capital. The option 4 style of governing applies especially to those portions of the society that are fundamental for everyone. Currently, these topics include healthcare, education, energy provision, water quality, soil quality, air quality, basic transportation, internet fairness, and the building of a whole new infrastructure designed to moderate the climate. Option 4 directions on such topics currently include specific policies like: Medicare for all, the Green New Deal projections, and the long-range energy polices that will compel oil companies to submit their business plans for how they are going to phase out their product from its current massive use to a mere trickle in the next three decades. According to option 4 voices, this huge, but necessary, energy transition cannot start someday; it must start now. Under this option, energy companies (such as oil, coal, and nuclear) would start now facing severe penalties if they do not assist rather than oppose these necessary directions of energy transition.

option 5: This style of governing is illustrated by those members of almost every society who support some form of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”—the style of governing that we now find manifest in China and Cuba. This option has a slim following in the United States, but we do find a significant amount of appreciation for the accomplishments of China and Cuba in their ecological policies and in their ability to sustain a solid social order that is not ruled by the regime of capital. The obvious downside of option 5 is the absence of an ever-deepening democracy. Concern for the working population does not make a dictatorship into a democracy. Even if we agree that a strong state government may have been required in China or Cuba to put a ruthless regime of capital in its subservient place and keep them there, option 5 still amounts to a revival of a strong economic caste system—a “new class” as some critics have spelled out, a new form of dictatorship that resists serious challenges to democratize.

Naming Some U.S. Names

Richard Nixon in the U.S. story might be viewed as a bridge person between options 1 and option 2 politics. While Nixon had a strong enough hold on democracy and on international affairs to remain an illustration of option 2 polices, he leaned into “the unitary executive” strongly enough to be a preview of Trump’s more thoroughgoing option 1 authoritarianism. Also, Nixon’s “southern strategy” was a move toward Trump’s more fully developed white-nationalist appeals. And, Nixon’s “tricky Dick” politics pre-stage Trump’s more incredible lack of respect for truthfulness and fair dealing.

Ronald Reagan is a good historical example of option 2 policy-making in U.S. politics. He consistently supported the regime of capital over the regime of the democratic state—viewing regulative government as a “problem” and democracy as a process that needs to be “managed” by big business experience and loyalties.

Option 3 policy-making has been given prominence by Barack and Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and in 2021 is being carried on by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Whatever be the leanings that any of these competent persons have toward Option 4 policy making, Option 4 policy-making is better represented by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ortega Cortez and an expanding “squad” of young women of color. Many other persons might be named as strong voices in one or the other of these two types of politics, but these well-known persons approximately define the trends of these two styles of policy-making.

Cooperations

Option 3 and 4 political styles can currently work together in their common love of a competent, strong, and thoroughgoing democracy—of, by, and for the people.
However passionate the differences between option 3 and 4 persons may be, they are currently able to cooperate on many measures of good government. They also cooperate well in their firm opposition to an option 1 autocracy laced with racism, patriarchy, or other forms of caste system.

The cooperation between option 1 and option 2 policy holders is much more strained than the cooperation between option 3 and option 4 policy holders. Indeed, following Trump‘s take-over of the Republican Party, those persons of option 2 leanings have become a much slimmer group of people. In fact, most option 2 Republicans are now conflicted between (1) their need for support from option 1 citizens in order to “manage democracy,” and (2) their reluctance to support option 3 and 4 lovers of a more aggressive democracy in their regulation of the regime of capital. Option 2 persons find themselves choosing between: (1) remaining a Republican voter in a Party that remains a Trump-ruled authoritarian body, and (2) choosing to become more strongly democratic, yet bringing some of their conservative leanings with them into the Democratic voting constituency.

If the cooperation between option 3 and option 4 remains strong enough to actually accomplish a large number of systemic changes, then a coalition of political power may come into being that remains in power for a very long time. However frightening large systemic changes may be to millions of people, not making these changes is becoming even more frightening to increasing millions of getting-wiser people. Also, realism in social affairs, however frightening, is also a source of joy and confidence—especially among the young, the oppressed, and the steady students of history. Reality in its Wholeness of Power is on the side of those who are living realistically. Though a tough taskmaster, Reality is producing our best case options. Fighting with Reality creates the maximization of our suffering, and realistic living, in spite of our setbacks, includes the benefits of more freedom and of simple joy.

Option 5 members within our U.S. society will, at least for now, tend to go along with options 3 and option 4 policies. But even for the long haul, I believe that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” will continue to be viewed by most U.S. citizens as a ditch of doom—an avoidable destiny almost as grim as the Trumpian ditch of doom. I do not believe that U.S. citizens will go along with or need to go along with the option 5 route.

“Democracy rather than authoritarianism” has become our core political conflict, all across the planet. “Capitalism versus socialism” has become less severe. Everyone is a socialist now, in some ways. And everyone is a capitalist now, in some ways. All realistically thoughtful persons are drinking water from both of these fountains of economic and political discoveries and action policies. Option 5 members of our U.S. society will do well to join the consensus building going on between the option 3 and option 4 democracy lovers, and forget any dreams they may have for a working-class dictatorship.

Ecological Democracy

If ecological solutions are to be forged and carried out for the big ecological challenges, a fuller and fuller democracy is the key correction that must be made in each society on the planet. Climate moderation is the biggest of the big matters among these ecological challenges. Without a solution to the climate crisis, we face irresolvable difficulties afflicting progress in all our other challenges. We have already delayed solutions to the climate crisis so long that many catastrophes are now unavoidable. But if we are to bet our lives on the emergence of possibilities for the survival of our species, we must now put the climate crisis first on our list of challenges and see every other challenge in that context.

I understand writers and teachers who recommend that we turn our attention to accommodating to the inevitable collapse of our current societies before the impending climate impacts. But instead of any mere accommodation to the collapse of current societies, let us imagine investing trillions of dollars in the search for ways we cannot yet see to replace these collapsing societies with better ways of doing human socializing. Several years ago I began advocating “building Eco-Democracy societies.” In order to be successful, building Eco-Democracies must not wait until after the current societies finish collapsing. Rather, we can take charge now of our collapsing civilizations—transforming the energies of these societies into opportunities for designing and building societies that are substantially better.

The great transition from hunter/gather societies to civilized societies took thousands of years. The transition from agricultural societies to industrial societies took hundreds of years. We now face the opportunity, and the necessity of doing our great transition in a few decades. In the next three decades, we might get half way there. Two hundred years form now, we may still be finishing up some elements of this transition, unless, of course, we have missed the turn with our further delays. This is a “long emergency” as David Orr calls it in his book Dangerous Years. We are being challenged to exercise our freedom in the light of this living now—to form right now a long view about which we can continue to be more specific.

The post Freedom and the Long View first appeared on Realistic Living.

But the “total obedience” I want to describe is a devotion to the mysterious all-powerful encounter that includes everything that happens to us in every event we face. Such realism means taking in what is actually happening to each of us and to us as societies. This includes possibilities as well as limitations. It includes the consequences of human choices as well as the processes of nature over which humans have no control. It includes the horrific as well as the glorious. In addition to our everyday content, the Reality we actually face includes the Abyss of No-thing-ness from which each thing, including our own lives, have come and to which each thing, including our own lives,will return. Reality also includes the Every-thing-ness of that Expansive Sea of Mystery within which each identifiable thing exists for now. Reality includes the Awesome Otherness that we encounter as well as the Awe that the Awesome occasions in our inner being.

The Word “God” is a devotional word that is attached to this inclusive view of Reality. The Word “God” adds no reality to Reality: this holy word is but a human expression of obedience to Reality—a devotion to realism. the word “God” adds only trust in the trustworthiness of Reality. The word “God” renders Reality, all of it, “holy.”

The rational content we have about Reality is created by human beings and is, therefor, a limited knowledge of Reality. Reality in its wholeness is an enduring mystery. As every realistic research scientist knows, science is a progressive movement of thought that approaches Reality with ever-greater correspondences with Reality, but science never reaches the final fullness of comprehending Reality. In truth, the perceptive scientist knows that the more we know about the nature of things the more we know we don’t know. Our vision of the Mystery of Reality grows greater the more we know about Reality.

The same dynamic of “never fully arriving” also applies to our contemplative approaches to Reality. Our years of meditation upon our inner beings never exhausts what can be learned about our own consciousness and what it means to be conscious of anything including consciousness itself. All the fine arts are contemplations about Reality. Great music is expressing our deepest inner awarenesses. Note that composing music never ends. We never get “there” with a “final” symphony.

Back to the troublesome word “God” As used by the monotheistic religions, “God” binds all the parts of the “One Whole” of Reality into a single devotion to the entirety of Reality. The God-devotion to Reality promotes our learning about Reality, even though our learning never reaches an end point of final truth. The-God devotion affirms both the search for Reality and the endless nature of that search. In other words, the God devotion affirms our always being ignorant in spite of however vast our wisdom becomes.

Humans are indeed avid in creating an overall “sense of reality” based on our physical senses and our inner experiences, but our “sense of reality” never corresponds entirely with Reality. Looking back over our lives we can notice that our “sense of reality” has changed many times. But the Reality I am pointing to with this capitalized word is not our changing sensibilities, but the continually Encountered Power of Mysteriousness that is occasioning in us these perpetual changes and is always revealing our ignorance. Wisdom is indeed an awareness of our perpetual ignorance. The word “God” makes our ignorance “holy.”

Further, Reality is like an active power that is always asserting itself. Reality operates like a blood hound that chases us down and bites our “sense of reality” with some “sense of truth” we have been escaping or have never considered before. Our obedience to this blood-hound Reality is a freedom from our illusions, and compulsions. Reality roots us out of our slavery to illusion. It is in that sense that Reality sets us free.

Here is a simple example with which anyone in their 80s, like me, can identify. As a teenager and into my 70s, I was pushing the edges of exhaustion in my running, my basketball, my study, my teaching, my organizing, and more. This long-practiced pattern of living now has life-threatening consequences in my eighties. Reality is requiring of me a different sort of obedience. This requirement is, however, freedom, for it requires me to give up slavery to my old push-push life style and make choices that fit the reality of my current being and the environments I now face.

Here is a sociological example of Reality opening freedom: Many oil executives and politicians who thrive on oil-industry wealth are making up an alternative reality to the “inconvenient truth” of an already present climate crisis. The truth of the climate crisis is supported by 97% of the climate scientists. We cannot honestly deny that fossil-fuel burning has changed and is changing the atmosphere with devastating consequences. The Reality we confront in the climate-crises requires humanity to leave about six trillion dollars worth of already discovered fossil fuel wealth in the ground. Such is the obedience required for plain realism.

That such obedience would be freedom is an insight not squarely faced by wealth-addicted fossil-fuel executives. Giving up a fossil-fuel powered society opens in us the freedom to build a society powered by the sun, the wind, and falling water. Such a response of freedom builds a society that has no pollution, abundant power falling on ever part of the Earth, human societies that is more decentralized and stable, a prosperity that can extend to the last village on this planet, and much needed aid for ending tyranny and oppression thus providing more democratic power to the currently poor. We have all these advantages simply by giving up an energy source that makes the rich richer, the poor poorer, and the Earth devastated. This fossil-fuel hierarchy is also destroying democracy, wrecking honest education, and enslaving the working classes. Obeying Reality in this instance is as Exodus from an Egypt of slavery. Such obedience means an expansion of freedom for humanity as a whole.

This very real freedom I am identifying here is not an indulgence in our druthers, ambitions, desires, emotional feelings, wealth, and status. The profound freedom that results from obedience to Reality is an intentional spontaneity of our profound being, an actual dance of living from our profound awareness. Such obedience is a holy facing of the following truth: We humans with our own creativity invent all our values and principles with which we make our decisions. Our choices are ambiguous with regard to all of these value inventions. It takes courage to embrace our freedom over good- and-evil values, but this courage is also an experience of our primal strength and joy.

Our profound freedom is also the opposite of fatalism. The oil, gas, and coal establishments tend to argue that we cannot get along without fossil fuels, that the sun does not always shine, that the wind does not always blow, and that falling water is never enough to power a viable and just society. But such talk is a failure of imagination. Freedom is our capacity for embracing the imagination that can create a way through the problems we face. Freedom cuts through the logic of the past and creates whatever new logic is needed to do the job that is called for.

For example, a problem that comes up when we actually face doing away with fossil fuels is storing the sun and wind energy. Fossil fuel is already easily stored and transported. Fossil fuel is already stored sunshine. It takes imagination to invent ways to store sunshine on the scale that fossil fuels already store. Freedom means finding the way to do that. A very promising way already found is to use our almost unlimited amount of sunshine to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. Then we turn the oxygen loose to make up for what the disappearing forests are failing to provide and put the hydrogen gas in liquified hydrogen tanks that can fly airplanes cheaper and safer that jet fuel. (These claims are made by the hydrogen expert David Scott). Following such creative imagination is what profound freedom looks like in its relations with the climate crisis.

Here is another example of how obedience to Reality can lead to freedom. A fight has gone on in Christian circles in relation to the topic of evolution. Christian thinking for many people has been locked up in a bondage to a literalistic understandings of the Bible. This view not only prompts a rejection of evolution in favor of an authoritarian creationism, it also blocks a true understanding of most biblical texts. For example, Genesis One is poetry, a story-time literary gem about the goodness of the natural world. This crucial meaning is lost when that opening chapter of the Bible is viewed as scientific statements about a literal creation of the cosmos in 7 days.

Also, the poetic nature of all speech using the word “God” is lost by this literalism. In Genesis One, God is a character in a story. This fictitious character “God” is speaking to his fictitious angles, “Let there be Light” etc. This is a poetic story about Reality and the demand for human realism. Such realism is lost when we insist that “God” is a literal being in a heavenly realm. In Genesis, “God” is Reality—Reality colored with a God-devotion to be realistic—that is, to be obedient to a good and trustworthy Reality. Genesis One is telling us that everything that Reality does is good for humans, and that includes our death and our suffering as well as our birth and our pleasure. It includes the consequences of our deluded living as well as our realistic living. This goodness also includes our evolution from the yet unexplained appearance of those enclosed cells of livingness on this well-positioned planet.

The famous Sufi poet, Rumi, expresses the core issue of our literalism with this short poem: “Life and death are two wings on the same bird.” Only living beings die. And death is part of the life story of anything living. When we humans insist on a devotion to birth, but not death, we are in rebellion from the God-devotion to Reality in the first chapter of the Bible. We reject thereby the holiness of death and suffering. The God of Genesis One is the source of all things, including our evolution from simpler forms of conscious being, and including our return to the dust from which we come as the 90th Psalm spells out.

Why do some find it humiliating that we humans have emerged from a common ancestor who grand-mothered two other chimpanzee species: the pigmy chimpanzees, and the larger chimpanzees. The human species (every race of it) is remarkably close in DNA with these other two primate companions. We can be viewed as a third species of chimpanzee. To reject this very well documented “theory of evolution” because it is inconsistent with a very poor means of Biblical interpretation is a fight with Reality that cannot be won. Obedience to Reality requires the freedom of abandoning any view of the Biblical heritage that in any way contradicts the still evolving theory of evolution.

If trusting God means obeying Reality then a God-devotion means submission to the absolute power of Reality that cannot be defeated or avoided. We are driven to despair by each attempt to fight or flee Reality. A God-devotion to Reality means nothing more nor less than openness to being realistic. And being realistic turns out to be a manifestation of the very deepest experience of human freedom.

Our openness to be being realistic also includes our openness to the contemplative discoveries of Reality as well as to the scientific discoveries of Reality. In terms of the consciousness capacities of our species, we are gifted with a capacity for language, art, intimacy, social forms, and thoughtful reflections that the other two species of chimpanzee cannot match, however much we attempt to train one of them in our form of awareness. The process of evolution took a turn in creating us that we need to notice.

Let us return to how obeying Reality is perfect freedom. It might seem that obeying Reality would restrain our freedom. Perhaps we ask, “Why can’t I believe whatever I want to believe or what my peers believe, or what my ego finds more pleasant to believe?” “Why is obedience to Reality perfect freedom?

The second story in the book of Genesis is about this obedient freedom and the tragedy of its loss. Eric Fromm, a renowned psychologist and writer, interpreted the Garden of Eden story as an example of authoritarian religion. God in this story does seem like a authoritarian Pope. God in this story forbids humanity “the knowledge of good and evil.” Fromm sees all religion as either authoritarian or humanistic, the later of which he favors. So he sees the Eden story as authoritarian. But let us examine how the Adam and Eve story is not authoritarian or humanistic. Let us note how this story is a witness to what is real for all of us in every generation. Reality does indeed forbids to humans a knowledge of good and evil. Every decision we make requires some reflection on values, but our decisions are still ambiguous. Our values conflict; our principles do not always apply; our thinking only brings us to the raw cliff of making a choice—to leap into the dark of the impending future and the unknown consequences of our decisions. We do this every day without the benefit of an absolute knowledge of good and evil. We eat from the forbidden tree when we assume this ignorance is not so.

Fromm, like many others, misunderstand this story-time tree to be about knowledge or the quest for knowledge. But “knowledge” is not the name of this tree. The ongoing quest for knowledge is a way of loving Reality. Knowledge of Reality is not what Reality is forbidding in this story. This tree has to do with value—the knowledge of good and evil, not the knowledge of Reality.

Reality requires realism. An obedience to realism includes human freedom, for this profound human freedom is part of realism. Our freedom is a limited freedom in terms of controlling outcomes, but our freedom is also real in the sense that our free acts do participate in bending the course of history—doing so in tension with many other forces. In the interior sense, perfect freedom is creating our responses out of nothing but freedom. Freedom is our real lives, even though we flee from freedom. Perfect freedom is our human essence, our authenticity, our realism, our holiness if “holy” means obedience to Reality.

Therefore, eating from the deadly tree means some sort of bondage or slavery to a set of values, rules, or principles made up by human beings. Any obedience to our own creations, our own desires, our own status, our own public brand, our favorite peer group, etc. is eating from the deadly tree. Obedience to Reality includes living beyond all those “good and evil” human creations. This total freedom is freedom from every self-created good-and-evil set of values, acquired from whatever source we learned those values. Total freedom is the essence of the radical monotheistic God-devotion. Any time we suppose that we have a final ultimate knowledge of good and evil, we are in a fight with Reality—we are employing an illusion, created by us or by some other human being, who has eaten from the forbidden tree. Freedom is our real life. Any other program of living is an enslavement.

“Plant your feet firmly, therefore, within the freedom that Christ has won for us, and do not let yourselves be caught again in the shackles of slavery.” Paul (Galatians 5.1 J. B. Phillips translation)

The post When Total Obedience is Perfect Freedom first appeared on Realistic Living.

Loving God
means trusting the Final Reality to be doing all things well.
Denying the climate crisis mean denying
the scientific facts
about God’s doings –
denying responsibility for the stronger winds in tornado alley,
for the fiercer droughts and fires in Western places,
for the wilder oceans in New York City subways.
And these clearly undeniable facts
are only the beginning.

As Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets slide into the oceans,
entire Pacific islands disappear beneath the brine,
along with coastlands in Florida and Bangladesh.
Let us also weep for New Orleans.
Yes, even a few Texans know
that it is not wise to mess
with Mother Nature.

The poetry of prophetic ethics for Century 21 includes recognizing that loving God means loving planet Earth and all that takes place on this planet and all the fails to take place. Loving God means loving the plain truth of things, loving that human choices matter – that human choices play a role in historical outcomes. The human actions that have derived from our addiction to the great benefits of the fossil fuel enhancements have played a role in Earth-life consequences. Our future actions as a species can play a role in moderating these consequences, perhaps significantly extending the life of our species and other Earth species.

Too often missing from this ecological conversation is the vision that the familiar symbol “Mother nature” is one of the masks of God, the God of the prophets, the devotion of these ancient Hebrew luminaries, the devotion of Jesus, of Paul, and yes of Mohammed. Loving the Earth is part of loving the Creator of this Earth. Yes, creation is a story, a myth taking place in a fictitious other realm where a humanoid-like Supremacy calls for the coming into being of the coming into being. But this old story, while clearly just a story, is a story about the Mysterious truth of our being here on Earth. This story also claims that our earthly being here is derived from a Final Source that does all things well. “It is good,” God cries out in this story, “it is all very good.” This is still a faith to live by.

Loving this good Earth is part of loving God, the God of biblical lore. If we are not devoted to this planet, we are not devoted to this God. This is a clear axiom for Christian, Jewish, and Muslim ethical thought, as well as for ethical thought everywhere. “Global warming,” “climate crisis” (or by whatever name) is a realistic challenge to the human species by that Final Reality revered as Divine by the true prophets of every age.

And global warming is not the only challenge being faced in this comprehensive love of Earth-and-God. Our reckless species has acquired the power to wreak havoc, and has succumbed to the thoughtless greed of polluting for quick benefits the rivers, the oceans, the air, the soils, the diversity of life of this one inhabitable planet within our reach. This thoughtless addiction to recklessness seems to respect no bounds. This attitude includes hatred of governments that have the power to restrain it. It hates any democratic movement that might issue in a responsible governance of our excesses. It must therefore hate the poor and middle classes for fear that they might awaken to their mistreatments and take charge of governing power. This defensive hatred toward the needed changes has corrupted education into a fight against, instead of for, the truth. It has underfunded education lest too many poorer people become wise about the hateful scam that is taking place. It has over-policed and filled the jails with those who are unlikely to vote for the status quo of unrestrained destruction. However unconsciously these measures are being taken, the root malady is a lack of love for humanity, for Earth, for Reality as a Whole.

The wide-spread rulership of “Satan’s Liars’ Kingdom” was a powerful symbol known to Jesus and his first century listeners. This strange symbol has the power to interpret life in the 21st century as well. This grim vision of the human condition provides us with a foil for understanding Jesus’ announcement of a now arriving and surely coming “Kingdom of God.” We can now view the Kingdom of God (the Reign of Reality) as a rebirth of love for the Earth and for that Mysterious Final Power revered as the Earth’s Creator. This Kingdom of God is not an escape from Earth to some other planet, nor an escape from material existence to some spirit realm of our flawed imagination. Rather, the Kingdom of God comes here on Earth as the Gospels clearly say. This Reign of Final Reality comes here on Earth among the living and dying, flourishing and suffering, human and inhuman communities of consciousness. Our sin, our estrangement from the Real, our despair over our real lives is vast beyond our comprehension. But our deep essence of trust in the Truth, our liberation from ego, and our compassion for all things is even more vast than our depravity.

The recovery of our true being begins today with a recovery of our material nature, our identification with dirt, air, water, fire, our body and blood participation in the horrors and glories of history. This fresh materialism is very different from the mechanistic materialism fostered by the now defunct types of physics, biology, psychology, and sociology. Our fresh materialism sees the enigma of consciousness mysteriously interpenetrating the bodies of living beings and their inescapable relations with the soils, air, waters, flora, fauna, of Earth. This consciousness is boundlessly WILDER than anything capable of old or new mathematical ordering. This consciousness is a capacity to make choices that have no cause except the conscious choice itself. This WILDNESS, so unthinkable in the older sciences, so incomprehensible by any science is very deep. It is so deep that only consciousness itself and look upon consciousness and partly describe its mysterious presence. Like the plain dirt of Earth, consciousness is also part of what we mean by “Earth.” As far as we know, consciousness has appeared no where else. And if it has appeared elsewhere, it is only because consciousness is somehow built into the cosmos as a dynamic we are barely beginning to understand. What we do know if we are willing to look into our own conscious beings is that we are engaged in a powerful sensual relatedness to this planet and to this planet’s Mysterious Creator. This is not a debatable truth held only in somebody’s religious dogma. It is a description of the WAY IT IS, and an affirmation of the WAY IT IS. This understanding of the WAY IT IS reveals how a love of the Earth is part of the love of God and how the love of God includes a love of the Earth.

Loving the Earth

Loving the Earth begins with our sensual awareness of our sights and sounds, tastes and smells, and every feeling of our body – outwardly and inwardly related. This sensual awareness is also an awareness of the sensor, the consciousness that is the aware being having the awareness. Loving the Earth continues with an awareness of our desires, emotions, & thoughts in both their essential and neurotic forms. And all this wondrous psychology of personal awareness reveals only one part of our love of the Earth.

Love of the Earth also includes an awareness and participation in our intimacies – of our consciousness-to-consciousness relations with every living being. We all experience this dynamic, however poorly we understand what consciousness is or what intimacy is.

Still further, love of the Earth includes participation in the essential social processes of human society – those inescapable commonalities of cultural, economic, and political processes. We can be aware of our inability to escape from all these ever-present social processes, while at the same time we can also be aware of the fragmentary, changing, and corrupted qualities of the historical manifestations of each of these essential processes. We can also be aware of our capacities to change these social manifestations.

By “cultural processes” I mean our participation in languages, arts, and religions; our participation in the disciplines of learning, methods of thinking, and fabrics of education; and our participation in the styles of association, moralities, and roles of participation. We are inescapably Earthlings participating in a set of cultural processes. By “economic processes” I mean all the ways we turn Earth gifts into useful goods and services. By “political processes” I mean all the ways we make group decisions about anything and everything. The fact that all these essential social processes have been corrupted in their existing manifestations by our various estrangements from Reality does not undo the fact that these essential processes are an unavoidable gift of our Creator. And this inexhaustible Source is also giving us the wherewithal to improve, repair, and replace the manifest forms of these social commonalities.

Loving the Earth is loving our lives as Earthlings and loving all the other Earthlings who Earth along with us. It is a complex thing to love the Earth, it violates all the rules, it constantly makes better rules, it exceeds infinitely living by the rules. At the same time it has respect for rules, it sees how rules can be collected wisdom for realistic living. Nevertheless, realistic living is too vast to be entirely captured by any set of rules. Loving the Earth is a form of ecstasy, of numinous connection to the Final Mysterious Source of the Earth and its attendant sun, moon, planets, and stars. Loving the Earth is axiom number one of an adequate ethics for realistic living in the Century 21 and beyond.

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