sustainability

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3059/

It makes sense, based on this article, that my writing on betrayal be about the world we live in, how we are betraying our home, family, and selves when we continue in the way we do. Fuel, energy, the opportunity to live in a different way, all contribute to the energetic answer to the footprint humanity has on this planet. We will not survive unless we choose something different in the way we live. The excitement we feel when we buy something new or drive to the mall must be transformed into something else, something locally based and oriented toward a new kind of creativity. The idea of “sustainability,” while admirable, will never survive because we are not a sustainable race—we are adventurous, creative, dynamic, and exploratory. Like the “cargo cults” of Polynesian Islands, we are copiers of the numinous. When we see or imagine something special or incredible, we want it for ourselves. We choose things to make us unique as much as we do to make ourselves part of something. These two paradoxical aspects of our psyche are hard wired into every one of us! Unfortunately, when confronted with the numinous (see note below) we have a tendency to make facsimiles rather than create our own relationship with the numinous. We appropriate ideas and forms from others and try to make them ours. Just look at spirituality and technology! We go into Lakota Sweat Lodges to pray rather than find our own heritage of the sweathouse and leave the Natives to their traditions. Of course, there will always be an argument. It will not matter if I am doing a Celtic Sweat, it will be viewed by many as theft—but this is the other part of being human. We are jealous! “I will fight to the death to keep you from taking something away from me!!!” Says the rich man about the dollar in his wallet. Just imagine what a people afraid of losing their traditions will say! Regardless, the path to salvation (lower caps intentional) is not through the current catch words of sustainability, or save the planet, but through a genuine call to emulate and create something new that will stand the test the planet is giving us. We must, as humans, have something to work toward rather than solely against. When we can find that—or more accurately, those things—then we will have a chance at living in this world for a few more generations! Our task, then, is to be creative and adventurous in ways that few have entertained—a daunting endeavor!

(Numinous indicates a divine connection. The cargo cults believed the planes and ships that were so alien to their existence and experience were divine in nature and therefore to be desired and worshiped. Of course, without the underlying technology, they stood on their ritual genius to have a relationship with the divine through the iconic images of the “cargo”)