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Sacred Ecology and Capitalism
By Charles Sullivan (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)
Another prediction of global warming is the worldwide melting of glaciers, accompanied by a rise in sea waters. We are also seeing this phenomenon. These effects exert a profound impact on global climate and hence every living being. Ignoring the consequences of our actions will have dire consequences that will probably result in the death of billions of human beings, and untold numbers of other species, all of which contribute to the ecological health of the planet.
As these phenomena worsen the American consumer continues to expend enormous quantities of fossilized energy in order to drive inefficient, polluting, petrol guzzling hulks of steel, oblivious to the harm they are doing to the biosphere. Because so many Americans lack ecological literacy and social conscience, they do not have a clue. They have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the advertisements of Madison Avenue to consume and waste, as if the earth was infinite and their actions were without consequences. But there is no cause without its attendant effect. Superfluous consumption in one place creates want and impoverishment in another. That is what happens when the world's wealth is not equitably distributed.
We are a materially wealthy but spiritually impoverished people lacking a land ethic because we lack a spiritual connection to the land.
Those who are running rough shod over the global economy do not care if they destroy the earth. They view the earth is a resource to be exploited for private gain at public expense. They have no spiritual connection to the earth or the processes that create life. Their industrial strength religion has taught them that the earth is an imperfect and vile place that must be subdued and conquered. For them wilderness is evil and unruly. By the time they succeed at annihilating the earth they will be dead, rising into the clouds with harp strumming angels in a beautiful harmonic convergence on the last day, gently flapping white feathered wings of their own. It certainly would be beautiful to be rid of them.
The indigenous cultures that once populated this earth of majesty viewed the world with a deep sense of reverential awe and respect. They knew the earth was endowed with a living spirit that made their own existence possible. The world view of the American Indian, for example, prior to being Christianized, was far more sophisticated and appropriate than the modern industrial view wrought from capitalism and industrialized religion. The Indian understood the world in terms of interconnectedness and interdependence. All things are connected. Destroying the webs of interdependence that bond the world together is to obliterate the sacred relationship that exists between all beings, both animate and inanimate. It is the path to self-annihilation. Who but a fool or an idiot would choose to take that path?
Among the Indians, consensus decisions were made based upon how the proposed actions would affect the next seven generations. That is the kind of visionary thinking that is wholly absent from corporate board rooms.
With the rise of capitalism as a dominant paradigm the sense of the sacred is nearly lost. Nature was commodified and placed under the private ownership of multinational corporations. The world's indigenous cultures were systematically obliterated and a great cancer was unleashed upon the world that would consume everything in its path like a cloud of locusts. Because capitalism requires new markets and an inexhaustible supply of raw materials the world lost much of its biological and cultural diversity to corporate plunder. In biological systems diversity is the key to long term stability. Left to continue its destructive course, capitalism will reduce the world to a nearly sterile monocultureĀa monument to gluttonous depravity and waste.
Whereas the Indian saw the great Appalachian forest as a complex web of relationships that were the source of life, the capitalist saw the forest as mere commodities measured in board feet, free for the taking. The Appalachian forest was clear-cut and hauled to the lumber mills, making the mountains bald before their time. The forest was put on short cutting rotations, like a crop of corn that provided the robber barons with enormous wealth, all of it stolen. Today they are managed for multiple abuse by industrial foresters trained at our finest universities.
Eventually the mountains themselves would be blown apart when the mining companies sought cheaper and faster ways to mine coal. The process is known as mountain top removal and it is in vogue in West Virginia and other regions where the great Central Appalachian forests once flourished. Ecologically and economically devastated communities are left behind, while the timber and mining companies move on to greener pastures to repeat the process over and over. These destructive practices spread across Turtle Island like a cancer, destroying world class biodiversity and leaving only a few fragmented, ecologically impaired islands behind. The same destructive forces have been set loose upon every part of the word. This is socialized cost and privatized wealth in the most extreme, subsidized by our tax dollars.
Wherever the extractive industries have gone they have left polluted waters and depauperate landscapes, and exhausted and impoverished workers in their wake. The company owners get rich while the workers continue to live in abject poverty and are still dying in the mines. This is the legacy of capitalism, as witnessed by a historical record that is beyond dispute. It is there for the entire world to see, as if etched in granite. You can see it in the face of the miners and the impoverished remnant forest, in the toxic waste left behind in Butte, Montana, where the water in the aftermath of copper mining has the acidity of battery acid.
It makes no moral, ecological or economic sense whatsoever for us to continue down this path of self-deception and self-annihilation. As we have seen, capitalism produces only a few winners, and leaves death and devastation in its wake. Either we rebel or die. Think about the kind of world we are leaving future generations. How can they ever forgive us this trespass?
Imagine, if you can, living in a world based upon mutual aide and cooperation, rather than cut-throat competition; a world where people cared for the earth and for one another, and the world's wealth was equitably shared among all beings.
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