The Earth is a patient Mother.
You can run around all over,
Even misbehave.
She knows that in the end
You will come back
And crawl into her arms.
Blessed by the forgiveness of the world, human beings by and large have enjoyed a fabled history of playfulness and experimentation. Endlessly patient and accepting, the earth has endured every wound we have inflicted without complaint, without objection. Myriad life forms on this planet come and go; this world is very old, and whatever impacts human beings cause, the earth, with a view to almost endless time, abides.
This is not to say that human beings and the other living things of this world won’t suffer at our hands. Our conduct is stretching the forgiveness of the world perhaps beyond that which will sustain us. Ours has been an extraordinary cultural experience of less than mindful conduct as of late – thoughtless, wasteful, messy conduct – as if forgiveness were endless. It may well be that, as R. Buckminster Fuller predicted 30 years ago, we have reached such a narrow spot in the “critical path” of our existence that wrong choices at this point will result in irrevocable negative consequences.
Global warming is the most obvious example, but depletion and pollution of the resources needed to sustain human culture are also close at hand. For most of human history, the forgiving and patient nature of the world masked the consequences of all but our most egregious assaults, but today’s increasing population and its growing clamor for material wealth are impacting the future in highly serious ways. Our attachment to things as they have been done before may yet undo the very systems we are striving to enjoy.
What does this mean to us, we who witness the full effect of our actions? Do we have any individual responsibility or are we just complicit in a collective cultural movement beyond control, lemmings rushing to the sea? Perhaps we will come to fully appreciate how lucky we have been to exist upon this generous and forgiving planet, and wake up in time to change the course of the future. The messages and signs are all around us, though it’s hard to pay attention to them amid the endless sales pitches and juicy headlines about this celebrity divorce or that political mishap.
It takes great discipline to see the big truth of what is coming and keep looking straight at it. Few of us can do so without a break, a retreat to our cloistered fantasy of endless forgiveness, a tomorrow bright with promise despite what we know of cause and effect. On one level, hopefulness is essential; nihilistic selfishness or despair is for many the sorry alternative. On another level, though, if we increase our sensitivity and completely open up to the full realization of the impact human billions have on this planet, we might just decide that it is not too late to change.
The earth will be here for us, no matter what we do; she has always offered us that choice. We have played and run around like children for a long time, but now we are well past adolescence. It is time to grow up and become responsible adults. The age of worldly forgiveness is drawing to a close, and a new age of rapid global consequences has arrived. It begins, and perhaps will end, with us.
