Seeing nature and extinction thru Buddhist and evolutionary eyes

Here I share a remarkable article exploring a Buddhist perspective on activism, extinction, and “nature”. I also share the evolutionary core of my own work and activist passion.

Dear friends,

I invite you to read something profound: “The Witness: Opening our eyes to the nature of this earth” by Paul Kingsnorth.

This remarkable article – which I am not including here because its pictures are so evocative (or were to me) – brings peace and disturbance to us as an integrated whole.

Reading it and being moved by it, I realized that my own center of gravity resides next to that of the author, intimately related but different. My orientation is not (as is his) to the earth in its natural manifestations, but to the possibilities that human existence presents to and within the 13.8 billion year evolutionary adventure. We humans are an unfolding of that adventure and our presence here makes certain things possible that weren’t possible before. For me, there is a profound rightness to the healthy integration of human conscious choice into the dynamics of natural evolutionary unfolding, and a profound sadness about the high likelihood that our failure to bring about that integration will result in our extinction and the vanishment of those evolutionary possibilities.

I can’t deny that change is fundamental to existence and that extinction is an inevitable and powerful part of the evolutionary adventure. But so is possibility. And evolution is testing what happens when we bring consciousness and choice – or at least the human manifestations of consciousness and choice – into the dynamics that shape what is possible and which possibilities become real.

That is the adventure that fascinates and grips me. That is what I touch and witness that brings aliveness into my world and into the stories I tell myself and share.

Meanwhile, alongside of that, I resonate with nearly every sentence in this article. It bears tremendous gifts of perspective, gifts I very much want to pass on to you.

Coheartedly,
Tom

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We received $5110 of our $20,000 target – plus two in-kind contributions. Thank you to the 49 people who responded to our call for support.

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Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440
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3 Responses to "Seeing nature and extinction thru Buddhist and evolutionary eyes"

David Macek says:

February 10, 2015 at 7:25 pm

Thanks Tom – a critical perspective to skillfully bring into the conversation on climate change and beyond. Another article I usually site in a similar vein is http://www.tricycle.com/special-section/nondual-ecology.

Reply
1. Tom Atlee says:
  
  February 12, 2015 at 2:41 pm
  
  That’s a powerful article, David, which, among many other things (and without saying so), provides a Buddhist rationale for the Transhumanist vision that humans are a transitional species whose evolutionary role has been to bring into being the next dominant species of “artificially” intelligent entities whose survival capacities will exceed our own and very likely replace us. After all, why should Buddhists be so attached to human or even organic manifestations of Life. (As the dark joke goes, “What do you mean ‘we’, carbon-based life form?”)
  
  Author John McClellan equates “sentience” with “universal life force”. Usually “sentience” refers to the ability to perceive and feel. A nuclear bomb is as “natural” as a forest in the sense that everything on earth is a product of nature. But it is an entirely other stretch to see a nuclear bomb as itself able to perceive and feel.
  
  On the question of what is “natural”, I find it most useful (and expressive of what many people think when they think of that question, although they can’t articulate it) to see it as expressing the value and wisdom of patterns that nature has evolved over millions of years, patterns that humans with our arrogance and technologies and colonization of everything are especially inclined to disrupt. I think it is this that people mean when they say “Humanity is violating natural law” and see that as unsustainable.
  
  However, in the other (more McClellanian) sense, our “violations of nature” are themselves totally natural, since they evolved out of earlier forms just as every other natural phenomenon did. The fact that those “violations” may lead to our extinction is also totally natural, following in the footsteps of over 90% of other species that have ever lived and are now extinct.
  
  But going one step further, our reactions to the destruction of our life support systems – our rage, our activism, our witnessing – are also totally natural. While McClellan acknowledges this late in his essay, his article seems largely an argument against being a committed activist. I find it a major weakness in most non-dual writers, that they ironically fault dualists! It seems dedicated nondualists would welcome the gifts brought by dualists as intrinsic facets of the nondual whole.
  
  Finally, I must say that I do not resonate with his conclusion that, “As environmentalists, we must learn this way too. Bowing to what is, working hard and politely to improve it on a local level at the same time. Not trying to change the larger design. but simply contributing some tidiness and sanity to our immediate surroundings. Keeping a nice camp in this great howling universal wilderness, a reasonably safe and comfortable place where the gods are honored, the children are cared for, and good fun is had.”
  
  This approach is so different from my evolutionary activist spirituality in which we take on the evolutionary challenge of creating systemic change with choice and consciousness, seeing ourselves as evolution becoming conscious of itself and the 13.8 billion year story of Evolution as perhaps our greatest teacher. I view our challenge as generating a new form of organism, a coherent global system that integrates humanity, technology, and non-human nature in one sustainably self-organizing whole, filled with dissonances finding their way to greater wholeness. And we can undertake that mindfully without being attached to outcome and without necessarily manifesting our Buddhism by limiting ourselves to local improvements aimed at neatness and fun.
  
  None of which is to say that the article is not a powerful, worthwhile read and contribution to the conversation about the fate of humanity and the spiritual implications of our challenges.
  
  Reply
  1. David Macek says:
    
    February 15, 2015 at 2:28 pm
    
    Thanks so much for sharing Tom. I agree that non-dualism can be a very slippery slope, and in many cases be used as superior philosophy to other philosophies – how dualistic!
    
    The most impactful takeaway from McClellan’s article for me is the message to “join with” reality – the interconnected, impermanent whole that contains everything from what we love to what we hate. I find this practice helpful in relating to those parties I might have vastly different opinions with. In joining with, I accept mutual responsibility and avoid the dark path of blaming, shaming, and resenting.
    
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