Why Our Eco-Perils Are too Big for Civilization
The Consciousness of OneEarth Living Addresses the Perils
All of us have lived our entire lives in the Civilization story. Yet, in the 4.5 billion year history of Earth, and the 200,000 year history of humans, Civilization is a young story, no more than 12,000 years old. Yet, because it’s the only story we’ve known by experience, we rarely consider that a greater story actively influences our lives and our planet.
But consider this. The Civilization Story began when human egos decided we could improve on the story of Earth and Cosmos. It began looking bright. Today we see the death and devastation it delivers to all species, humans included. Civilization requires the resources of more than one planet to sustain its extractive greed, so let’s call it MultiEarth. For the millennia prior to the emergence of the MultiEarth Civilization Project, humans shaped small societies of OneEarth living, living close to the land and within Nature. Today, some human egos believe that by acquiring more power and more wealth, they can continue the MultiEarth Civilization Project, and to do so to their benefit at the expense of the wellbeing of all. But ego consciousness is not all of who we are. And Earth is much bigger than the ego-shaped Civilization Project.
Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung 1875-1961), believed that the anatomy of our psyches, or souls, had two identity centers, ego and Self. The consciousness of the Self is far, far greater than the consciousness of ego as the diagram above shows. Consequently, Self can live in ways that are ever out of reach for ego consciousness, but in touch with Earth.
Another “map” of our psyches identifies five topographies of consciousness, from the smaller immature consciousness of magical thinking all the way to spiritual consciousness, the largest of all, the most diverse, and most mature. it helps us see the way out of the destructive MultiEarth Civilization Project and into topographies of OneEarth living. I borrow the five topographies map from David Korten in his book The Great Turning, in which he speaks of five levels of consciousness. I prefer “topographies” to levels. Magical and Imperial topographies equate with the MultiEarth Civilization Project; Cultural and Spiritual consciousness are topographies of OneEarth living. The Socialized topography in the map represents a consciousness that has become uncomfortable with Magical and Imperial ways, but needs more persuasion to risk moving on.
Civilization: A Project of Immature Consciousness
[The rest of this article is taken from my book, From Egos to Eden, (2017) pages 53-61, a chapter entitled “Our Great Work.” Minor changes appear here.]
What we’ve been fashioning throughout the history of the world—at least as most of us have learned that history—is called “civilization.” Given all that our species has invested in it, I’ve resisted saying that MultiEarth civilization has been a project of immature consciousness. Yet such a conclusion is confirmed by the two consciousness maps above. To see the immaturity of MultiEarth civilization we need go no further than how it shapes dominating ways of living that are beyond the means of Nature and feels justified in doing so. Living beyond our means does not line up with maturity. A more mature consciousness shapes collegial ways of living within Nature’s generous limits and admits that our civilized systems have been “living on the dole.” Civilization has not paid its own way nor taken responsibility for its theft from Earth, from other species, or from disadvantaged humans. Instead, civilization has glorified super achievement, especially when the devastations such achievements continue to exact can be hidden. So to sing the praises of MultiEarth civilization as a success story is possible only within MultiEarth, immature consciousness.
From an Earth-size perspective, the Civilization Project has been more illusion than success, though calling it that can feel shocking in the extreme. What our species has pursued for millennia, and much of what we’ve worked so hard to achieve personally—often with simple, worthy intentions of improving life—is now being exposed by Earth herself as not only unsustainable, but as unable to fulfill the purpose of our species as well.
Gambling is one way to talk about it. Casino gambling is not my thing, so I can readily walk past the gaming machines in the Las Vegas airport. But I do expect to see Lady Luck walking among those machines. Her tempting, smiling invitations and lures will,
she hopes, tip the balance in us humans so that we’ll believe in our luck to win against the odds. Civilization, based on MultiEarth living, has similarly counted on Lady Luck. Over the centuries, so many human choices that changed the direction of ecological relationships assumed we “owned the house.” We gambled that Lady Luck would reward us and that our take came without strings.
But the immaturity of such magical thinking is now being exposed. Earth is showing us decisively that we don’t own her—and that we can’t. Instead we owe her, and the total is far more than we can pay. But we’re hooked. Even though we hear what science has been telling us for decades about industrialized climate change, overpopulation, and using up Earth’s resources, when it comes to giving up MultiEarth ways, we continue to believe in Lady Luck.
As far back as 10,000 BCE, Lady Luck began enchanting us to civilize Nature if we want to win big. From that time on, we humans opted for civilizing tendencies that had not been our way before then. Enough data has been dug up by anthropologists and paleontologists to show us the early formations of civilization 10,000–12,000 years ago, following the last glacial period. Geology has dubbed the period that followed the ice, the Holocene Epoch (Holocene means “entirely recent”). (See articles in Wikipedia on geological periods.) With the massive movements of ice ended, climates and geographies stabilized.
Of all the “modernizations” in human behavior and culture that happened over subsequent millennia, none was more significant than the change in agriculture. By domesticating plants and animals instead of hunting them in their wilder, natural habitats, food was produced in greater quantities. Farming moved from tending Nature’s production and extracting from her to managing tilled plots. Though tilled plots yielded increased amounts of food, the revisions in farming that have come along up to the present also limited variety, biodiversity, and nutritional values.
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Histories of civilization praise the changes in farming and city-building … as progress; but there were strong downsides, and these increase when we view the Revolution from topographies of OneEarth consciousness. As regions began refocusing themselves from rural culture to new social and economic patterns shaped by city-centers, all eople were not empowered equally. Occupations became more specialized; but because some proved more lucrative than others, they shaped new divisions. The worth of human labor, far from being regarded as having equal value whatever the task, began to be calculated according to hierarchies of value and merit determined partly by what people wanted, but also by the policies of those with the most power. Power and wealth circulated in ways that separated societies into economic classes. Nature lost out to those who calculated that there were more benefits in controlling and abusing her than to be stewards of the balance she brought to life-sustaining eco-regions. These trends muscled their way into strategies of dominance. Those who rode the trends effectively dominated the community, set the standards of right and wrong, and determined what
had more value and what had less.
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As the civilization story proceeded …, we Homo sapiens became increasingly dominant over all other life forms. Using advances in technology and amassing economic power, our species configured a world divided into the dominators and the dominated. Earth and Nature, having long ago lost out as the context for the decisions that guided human
ways, suffered reckless domination. Instead of the context, Nature became a subtext for humans and our accelerating MultiEarth practices. No longer Mother Nature, she became an “it,” not a “her.” Humans determined “its” value according to their criteria of
Earth’s usefulness. As a result, humans moved into the position of Earth’s chief predator, relinquishing our evolutionary purpose to live within Earth’s community of life as a species able to increase consciousness about interdependent living.
Today, the 12,000 year civilization story continues to provide the frames in which the governments of the richest nations, executives of global corporations, billionaires, and voices of corporate media see our global situation. MultiEarth’s businesses and governments are largely led by those who see the Civilization Project as the story of human history, and the most important story one can tell about our human progress. Current MultiEarth-inspired leaders of the Civilization Project show only reluctant willingness to see our unfolding crises in frames of Nature’s ways and Earth’s
story. The larger frames of geological epochs lie well outside the frames of civilization and its smaller topographies of consciousness. Such Earth-centered frames are also missing from most religious institutions and the curricula of academia, though inspiring exceptions can be found.
Given the pressures upon leaders to act from a topography of ego consciousness, we can wonder how many of them are even able to move into the larger topographies of consciousness where they can use such epochal frames as the Cenozoic and the Holocene? The powerful and wealthy within governments, militaries, and corporations
continue to picture 21st century realities inside frames small enough so that they can manage them. Epochal frames aren’t manageable. Moving beyond the Holocene Epoch, for example, requires a maturity of consciousness beyond the capacities of the topographies where ego reigns. So it is that the conversation in the public arena has been, and continues to be, limited to the frames that human civilization can handle. As a result, and as the maps of consciousness show, the consciousness that controls public discourse remains too limited to get us in sync with the great movement underway in Earth’s unstoppable unfolding. For that, we need to use cosmic or geology’s epochal frames as well.
This sketch of the story of civilization from 10,000 BCE to the present is not complete without noting that many people have persistently resisted the civilizing powers that have carried the day and lived with a different consciousness. Though we cannot tell their story here, we can note their determination not to be engulfed in MultiEarth ways. Among them we find far more interest in naturalizing humans than in civilizing Nature.
Showing appreciation for their resistance and joining them in carrying it forward moves us along in our own Great Work. It is the work by which we move with Earth to end the Civilization Project. The most effective way to end the project happens as we create, from a larger topography of consciousness, the alternatives that carry us toward a new epoch, what cosmologist Thomas Berry (1914-2009) called the Ecozoic Era.