The best reason to consider serving in the corps may be the same that Pico Iyer offers for going to college: "to learn that the world is more than the issues that divide us." And, "the best reason to go to school, even if you’re a so-called teacher, is to find out how much you don’t know." Socrates never said it better.
Then, in CoPhi, two of the topics nearest my heart: cosmic and peripatetic philosophy. But from the perspective of motion they're the same topic, as I was saying yesterday in class: it's all about getting up and moving, investigating your environs, indulging your curiosity, giving your imagination free reign, wondering and wandering. It's about the adventure and the journey (wherein lies the nectar, as John McDermott always said), and about boldly going to see what's out there.
“Although walking arises from our deep, evolutionary past, it is our future too: for walking will do you all the good that you now know it does.” And,
"walking enhances every aspect of our social, psychological and neural functioning. It is the simple, life-enhancing, health-building prescription we all need, one that we should take in regular doses, large and small, at a good pace, day in, day out, in nature and in our towns and cities. We need to make walking a natural, habitual part of our everyday lives.” Shane O'Mara, In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration, g'r
In Environmental Ethics we'll finish Attfield's Very Short Intro. The penultimate chapter on religion and the environment seems to me to give a pass to those who insist that the world is in His hands, not ours, and that we're all covered by The Plan. On cosmic philosophy day I have to recall Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot reminder that we've seen no sign of help coming to rescue us from our own cupidity and Oncelerism.
"walking enhances every aspect of our social, psychological and neural functioning. It is the simple, life-enhancing, health-building prescription we all need, one that we should take in regular doses, large and small, at a good pace, day in, day out, in nature and in our towns and cities. We need to make walking a natural, habitual part of our everyday lives.” Shane O'Mara, In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration, g'r
In Environmental Ethics we'll finish Attfield's Very Short Intro. The penultimate chapter on religion and the environment seems to me to give a pass to those who insist that the world is in His hands, not ours, and that we're all covered by The Plan. On cosmic philosophy day I have to recall Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot reminder that we've seen no sign of help coming to rescue us from our own cupidity and Oncelerism.
Sagan's little book The Cosmic Connection was mind-expanding and perspective-multiplying for me, when I discovered it in youth. It propelled me to philosophy as surely as anything. Then, as I commenced grad school, Cosmos came along and confirmed my emerging cosmopolitanism.
Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (based on his 1985 Gifford Lectures in Scotland, echoing William James's Gifford Lectures of the early 20th century which became The Varieties of Religious Experience, also makes an important point that most religion heretofore has been not only anthropocentric, but geocentric: “we have a theology that is Earth-centered and involves a tiny piece of space, and when we step back, when we attain a broader cosmic perspective, some of it seems very small in scale. And in fact a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less of a universe.” We're going to need a bigger god, if religion is going to serve in the present crisis.
I fear the extremity of our politicized fundamentalist/evangelical religious culture in the U.S. makes E.O. Wilson's appeal for unity across the religious-political divide futile, though still noble.
Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (based on his 1985 Gifford Lectures in Scotland, echoing William James's Gifford Lectures of the early 20th century which became The Varieties of Religious Experience, also makes an important point that most religion heretofore has been not only anthropocentric, but geocentric: “we have a theology that is Earth-centered and involves a tiny piece of space, and when we step back, when we attain a broader cosmic perspective, some of it seems very small in scale. And in fact a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less of a universe.” We're going to need a bigger god, if religion is going to serve in the present crisis.
I fear the extremity of our politicized fundamentalist/evangelical religious culture in the U.S. makes E.O. Wilson's appeal for unity across the religious-political divide futile, though still noble.
We have not met, yet I feel I know you well enough to call you friend. First of all, we grew up in the same faith. Although I no longer belong to that faith, I am confident that if we met and spoke privately of our deepest beliefs, it would be in a spirit of mutual respect and goodwill. I write to you now for your counsel and help. Let us see if we can, and you are willing, to meet on the near side of metaphysics in order to deal with the real world we share. I suggest that we set aside our differences in order to save the Creation. The defense of living Nature is a universal value. It doesn't rise from nor does it promote any religious or ideological dogma. Rather, it serves without discrimination the interests of all humanity.
Pastor, we need your help. The Creation—living Nature—is in deep trouble. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
The appeal is admirable, if now a little desperate.
In the final chapter, Attfield makes a direct and startling appeal of his own, to American readers in particular, "encouraged to use their voices (and if necessary their votes)..." to get their country back on the right side of eco-responsibility.
And he ends with a plea for unity among Deeps, Greens, ecofeminists, seculars, et al, to "preserve the Earth and its sacred places. For the future of the planet and all its species is at stake." Again, an admirable appeal. But the game is in its late innings. As Pico Iyer says, we must understand that the world is more than the issues that divide us.
And as Ann Druyan says, for that we need a global spiritual awakening.
"The pale blue dot is a silent rebuke to the fundamentalist, the nationalist, the militarist, the polluter -- to anyone who does not put above all other things the protection of our little planet and the life that it sustains in the vast cold darkness... We all feel the chill our present casts on our future. Some part of us knows that we must awaken to action or doom our children to dangers and hardships we ourselves have never had to face. How do we rouse ourselves and keep from sleepwalking into a climate or a nuclear catastrophe that may not be reversed before it has destroyed our civilization and countless other species? How do we learn to value those things we cannot live without -- air, water, the sustaining fabric of life on Earth, the future -- more than we prize money and short-term convenience?" Cosmos: Possible WorldsI ask a lot of questions. None are bigger than those.
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