Natural World Consciousness

Humankind faces many issues, real and imagined, but without a life sustaining habitat there is no existence. All of humankind's other issues pale to insignificance in comparison.

You've very likely heard before how humanity can't go on the way it is, but just as likely either don't see the immediacy/seriousness of the issue, or dismiss the idea as fringe lunacy, or are resigned to humanity ending in some cataclysmic event regardless of our actions. On the other hand, you might have enough of a grasp of the ecological underpinnings to appreciate the issue, but as an individual are either confused about what you can do, or too intimidated to challenge culture's steamroller.

It is scientifically accepted that on a cosmological timescale the Earth’s period of habitability is at least half over. In about another billion years the Sun will start to be too luminous and warm for water to exist in liquid form on Earth. Even within the next billion years, there are numerous factors we can't control that threaten our existence on Earth (e.g. volcanism, earthquakes, asteroids, global epidemics, etc.). The future is undoubtedly a bumpy ride.

The issue here though is not about factors over which we have no control, that are likely to occur within the next billion years. It's about factors we're creating now, that we could better influence. Factors we're already seeing the detrimental consequences of, and which at the current scope and pace will cause substantially increasing harm to humanity well within the next couple hundred years. That is, the issue is about surviving our own controllable actions in the shorter term, to have time to possibly learn to survive uncontrollable factors in the longer term.

This isn't another prophecy, or mythology, but rather is based on our accumulating objective understanding of natural world ecology, in which our continuing existence is rooted. Our expanding knowledge and focus is more realistically encompassing the discontinuity in the gradient of human interaction with the natural world, yet the scope and pace of our detrimental actions are accelerating frantically. The shorter term state of human existence on Earth depends on whether wisdom or irrationality prevail. That is, whether objective understanding or subjective beliefs prevail.

To read the full rewritten article see:
http://achinook.com/journal/2011/1/11/natural-world-consciousness.html

"We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain." ~ Aldo Leopold

"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise." ~ Aldo Leopold

My best to you and yours,
Lee C

PS: For the younger minds that can't yet fully understand the above article, there is the short story Nature's Magic Mirror at:
http://achinook.com/journal/2008/11/9/natures-magic-mirror.html