Earth thought 156 of 365: There is nothing currently as vivid as the Gulf oil spill to show us our thoughtless economy. We have allowed a major corporation to destroy the Gulf's life-systems perhaps in perpetuity for generations. Can you wrap your head around that -all the fishermen, all the coastlines, the teeming ocean bottoms, the life that would migrate through, the breeding and hatching grounds, the birds depending on the ocean life -all of that? And now wrap your head around human culture, around the communities and visitors who depended on the teeming Gulf life, their rituals, sense of beauty, and their meaning?
Earth thought 157 of 365: The sixth mass extinction is not simply an extinction of life-forms, but also of forms of life. What's the difference? The former is a biological notion, a "life-form". The latter is a cultural form, "a form of life". Human cultures are woven around life forms -whether through hunting and fishing, agriculture, religious symbolism, literature, or even a sense of the world (what would upstate N.Y. be without four seasons?). And the ecological processes that drive life-forms extinct also drive forms of life extinct.
Earth thought 158 of 365: I saw a Western last night -1868. And also a film about Beijing now -2005. In those 137 years, we have found electricity, cars, airplanes, computers, and industrial processes about which I can only guess. Population has rocketed skyward on a chart. A species did all this in not even a century and a half, in five generations? It's almost unimaginable to put the world of the Western next to 21st century Beijing.
Earth thought 159 of 365: The Buddhists aspire to a world without anger. Anger's an affliction, a root and form of suffering. In its place, they put compassionate responsibility, the intention to free themselves and others from the cycle of suffering. If we became as Buddhists think, we would evolve beyond our animal order, beyond homo sapiens. We would self-evolve and regard what evolved in us as unworthwhile. We would seize our nature's contingency in a form of moral necessity.
Earth thought 160 of 365: People talk about environmental “aesthetics”. But aisthesis is passive, and the development of the aesthetic approach, concomitant with the creation of the word “aesthetics” in the 18th century, is equally passive –about how a subject views the world. I agree with Karsten Harries that this approach gradually desiccates art and its meaning. Instead, we should talk about an ecological ethos. An ethos is a way of life, in which things are meaningful. It is more than what we now call “ethics”. It includes beauty and truth, not just goodness. An ecological ethos is active, because it is a way of living, not simply a way of perceiving.
