Saturday, April 24, 2004

It seems a little strange that despite all the information we have, the knowledge gathered and claimed from centuries of historical experience, that we still haven't found how to put theory into action. The world both produced us and is produced by us. As was highlighted by the Gaia Theory - James Lovelock - the world came into being as a self-regulating organism in line with parameters of existence/maintenance set up by biological requirements. So , the world in this sense is a product of the needs of our earliest biological ancestors. Likewise, we, as a species, are born into a world with physiological faculties adapted to the existing environment: so we are also a product of the pre-existing environmental parameters - taken together, this suggests that both we and our world are symbiotically linked: we are one functioning organic whole. We are made in the image of the Universe itself. Yet why do we act as if we are separate from it?

Our understanding of the world must come through our perceptions - if we do not change the manner of our thinking, the world will not 'appear' to change for us. In this way, in order to 'change the world', we must first change ourselves. Or rather we need to change our way of thinking - this is why it is crucial to shift from a mechanistic Newtonian viewpoint, from one of separate parts, to a holistic understanding where everything fits in as part of ever dynamic processes and relationships that form an organic wholeness. If this can be achieved, then a perception of a sustainable world in balance will emerge. Our thinking at times is barbaric, held in check by fossilised beliefs and out-moded dogmas.

We are often unwilling to change because certainty is safe for us. Well, it used to be. Now it is in danger of becoming our downfall, because if we do not change our way of thinking and behaving, our global world is in danger of large-scale rape and instability. Certainty and static-ness is no longer a viable evolutionary trait.

We need to move our conscious into evolutionary drive in order to educate our thinking processes into better understanding the needs of our global predicament. We, as conscious custodians, must press the evolutionary process forward, and deliberately.

Check out the Worldwatch website in terms of ecological sustainability.

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