Whole Earth Thinking and Planetary Coexistence

Ecological wisdom at the intersection of religion, ecology, and philosophy

Sam Mickey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317497745
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Like never before in history, humans are becoming increasingly interconnected with one another and with the other inhabitants and habitats of Earth. There are numerous signs of planetary interrelations, from social media and international trade to genetic engineering and global climate change. The scientific study of interrelations between organisms and environments, Ecology, is uniquely capable of addressing the complex challenges that characterize our era of planetary coexistence.

Whole Earth Thinking and Planetary Coexistence focuses on newly emerging approaches to ecology that cross the disciplinary boundaries of sciences and humanities with the aim of responding to the challenges facing the current era of planetary interconnectedness. It introduces concepts that draw out a creative contrast between religious and secular approaches to the integration of sciences and humanities, with religious approaches represented by the "geologian" Thomas Berry and the whole Earth thinking of Stephanie Kaza and Gary Snyder, and the more secular approaches represented by the "geophilosophy" of poststructuralist theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

This book will introduce concepts engaging with the ecological challenges of planetary coexistence to students and professionals in fields of environmental studies, philosophy and religious studies.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315713359-1

Like never before in history, humans are becoming increasingly interconnected with one another and with the other inhabitants and habitats of Earth. Signs of planetary interconnectedness are everywhere. For instance, think of the ways that Twitter, Facebook, and other social media contribute to connections between people, or think of the ways that trade and transportation link people and resources together from hundreds and thousands of miles away. Think of cloning, genetic engineering, hydroelectric dams, and global climate change. Those phenomena indicate that humans are entangling themselves in the Earth’s life, land, air, and water.

Increasing interconnectedness can be beneficial, but it can also involve a tremendous amount of destruction and violence. Cars and airplanes provide a good example. On the one hand, they provide people with more and easier access to the world. On the other hand, the production and operation of cars and airplanes causes pollution, which is destructive to the integrity of the climate and harmful to the health of humans and other species. This does not mean that cars and airplanes are bad or that the people who make them or use them are bad. It means that increasing connectedness is complicated. Although connections can be beneficial, peaceful, and creative, they can also be detrimental, violent, and destructive. Currently, the predominant patterns of increasing interconnectedness are excessively violent and destructive. They are unraveling the health and integrity of the Earth community, obtaining good things for only a few humans while impoverishing many other humans, degrading ecosystems, and endangering the future of all life on Earth. In short, the current era is a time of crisis. Deriving from the Greek krinein (“to separate”), a crisis is like a fork in the road. One path leads toward more destruction, more pollution, more poverty, more extinction, and more inequality, and the other path leads toward a recuperation of life forms, ecosystems, and cultures that are currently undergoing exploitation and destruction. A crisis is risky and threatening, but it also opens up possibilities for change. This ambivalence of crisis is expressed in Chinese, where the ideogram designating crisis is a combination of the symbols for danger and opportunity (Hathaway and Boff, 2009: 8).

From social media and global trade to genetic engineering and global climate change, it is apparent that existing on Earth in the twenty-first century means coexisting with countless other beings in a time of planetary crisis. To be is to be situated in a multifarious crisis composed of numerous problems ranging from species extinction, water scarcity, pollution, and nuclear waste to poverty, discrimination, war, and human rights violations. To exist on Earth today is to face the challenges of planetary coexistence. The challenges are urgent. Action needs to be taken promptly, but how? Many of today’s planetary problems are unprecedented. Humans have never had to figure out what to do with things like plastic, Styrofoam, a globalized economy, or the planet’s climate. How, then, can one act with resolve and vision? Challenges of this scale require planetary ways of thinking. This book presents “whole Earth thinking” as a way of understanding and responding to the challenges of planetary coexistence.

There are many fields of study that contribute to an understanding of planetary coexistence, but one field stands out in particular: ecology. Since its beginnings in the nineteenth century, ecology has usually been defined as the study of the interrelations between organisms and environments. However, that is not the whole story. Ecological theories and practices are diverse and contested (see Chapter 2). There are many contrasting perspectives on what an ecosystem is and how to study it. Furthermore, those perspectives are changing as they account for interrelations in a more planetary context, wherein the impacts of human civilization have grown so large that they now pervade the water, air, land, and life around the planet. In response to our interconnected planetary context, wherein the natural and biological are becoming inseparable from the artificial and technological, ecology is becoming more inclusive and comprehensive, accounting for local as well as global interrelationships and for Earth’s physical and biological systems as well as the social systems, cultural values, traditions, technologies, and ideas populating the planet. In that sense, ecology is more than a science, more than an academic discipline. It is a cross-disciplinary engagement in whole Earth thinking, where knowledge from many sources (including sciences and humanities) comes together to facilitate ecological wisdom (see Chapter 5). To practice ecological wisdom is to practice integrative ways of being and knowing that cultivate care for the interdependent flourishing of the whole Earth community.

The whole Earth

From the Copernican revolution to Gaia theory, from colonialism to environmentalism, the past five centuries have seen the human species become increasingly planetary. It is ironic that, just as we are learning how closely humans are woven together with one another and with the rest of the planet, we are learning that we are unraveling the fabric of life on Earth. At the same time that we are learning about our evolutionary and ecological context, we realize that we are destroying that context. Although humans are more aware than ever before that they live on a planet in a time of ecological crisis, we still do not know what to think about that. We still do not know how to think through planetary problems. We are only just beginning to learn how to think of ways to contribute to the mutual flourishing of humans and the rest of the Earth community. For instance, even though we have more scientific information about climate change than ever before, the problem is getting worse. Carbon emissions are still increasing globally, contributing to the increasing destabilization of the planet’s climate. Many individuals, communities, and organizations are doing great work facilitating personal and political responses to climate change. That is necessary work, and people should keep doing it, but obviously it is not sufficient. As members of a planetary civilization, we still need to figure out how to coordinate a global response to the challenges of planetary problems like climate change. It is important to think like an individual, to think like a local community, or to think like an environmental organization, but more is needed in order to think through planetary issues. Baird Callicott (2013) makes this point in his recent work on the planetary implications of the land ethic of the American forester and conservationist Aldo Leopold. While Leopold is well known for his land ethic, which advocates “thinking like a mountain” (i.e., thinking at the scale of ecological community), Callicott shows that Leopold’s work also advocates “thinking like a planet,” which extends the land ethic to an Earth ethic (pp. 11, 30).

By introducing whole Earth thinking, this book provides some guidelines for undertaking a path toward ecological wisdom. Taking that path means crossing many disciplinary boundaries. Ecology is not just one academic discipline among others. Ecology is more than a physical or biological science separate from social sciences like economics, psychology, and sociology. Furthermore, ecology is not merely a scientific mode of inquiry separate from the philosophical and religious perspectives studied in the humanities. Ecology has always involved ways of thinking that move across the boundaries that separate academic disciplines from one another and separate ideas from practices. As ecology undergoes a mutation to adapt to its planetary context, it is turning its transdisciplinary investigations toward the study of the whole Earth. To engage in whole Earth thinking, one must question the meaning of Earth, examining one’s assumptions and inherited opinions. In short, Earth cannot be taken for granted.

Earth is not just a stage upon which humans play out the dramas of existence. Earth is not a giant background for human cultures. Earth is itself an actor, an active participant in history. This means more than saying that parts of Earth are active participants in human history, such as the volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, whose eruption destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, or the tsunami that triggered the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan in 2011. Not only do volcanos, oceans, mountains, rivers, and other parts of Earth play significant roles in cultural events. The whole Earth is an actor. Earth has been contributing to cultural developments with increasing frequency in recent centuries, beginning around the time of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), who revolutionized the science of astronomy in the sixteenth century by developing a theory that Earth revolves around the sun. Copernicus went against the grain of his time, asserting something that was contrary to the traditional understanding passed down from ancient astronomy: Earth is not a motionless center around which the rest of the universe turns. Earth is not a stable location surrounded by wandering heavenly bodies. Earth is itself a wandering heavenly body – a planet (from Greek planasthai, “to wander”). Although the ancient Greek thinker Aristarchus developed a similar heliocentric theory centuries earlier, it was only after Copernicus that there began a widespread recognition that humans are living on a moving body, a planet (Gassendi, 2002). It is a shocking realization. Taken out of their place in the center of the universe, humans were left with no stable place at all. The ground is shifting underneath our feet. Our place is spinning and flying around the sun in an evolving universe (see Chapter 8).

The Copernican revolution gradually changed people’s understanding of the world. Having understood their location to be a stable center in the universe, humans became decentered and disoriented as they learned about this astronomical revolution. With the decentering of earthly existence, the social systems and cultural traditions built upon the old model of the universe were forced to adapt to this new planetary discovery. The scientific evidence thus caused controversy throughout society, not only among scientists but also among political and religious authorities. The Copernican revolution opened up new questions about the place of humans in the universe and new questions about how we know who and where we are. Who are we? Where are we? Who gets to decide who and where we are? How do we know what to do? Living on a moving body, how should we act? Thus began the entrance of the whole Earth into human awareness.

Around the same time that Copernicus was starting a scientific revolution, explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus were starting to navigate uncharted territories and thereby contribute to the mapping of the whole Earth. Such mapping was one of many projects involved in the European colonial period, when missionaries, merchants, and political rulers made contact with other peoples and places, spreading Western culture around the planet through means that often involved violence, slavery, oppression, and coercion. In the tumultuous events of colonialism, there was a proliferation of world maps and globes. The whole Earth was coming into view. Even if most of the people looking at those maps and globes were interested mainly in finding riches, converting nonbelievers, or attaining power over conquered lands, the whole Earth was becoming an increasingly prevalent part of people’s lives, entering their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.

Maps, globes, and scientific representations of Earth increased in detail and accuracy over the centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that a vision of the whole Earth became widely available to the general public. Beginning with photographs taken in the 1940s, space exploration made possible numerous pictures of Earth taken from outside of the planet’s atmosphere, of which one of the most famous is the 1968 photograph of Earth taken from the moon, “Earthrise.” Of course, even a picture of the whole Earth does not show every single part of Earth. As one side is revealed to us, the other becomes hidden, and even if all sides could be represented simultaneously, Earth’s mantle and core would still remain invisible, hidden beneath the clouds, water, and land. Nonetheless, “Earthrise” and similar photographs and pictorial representations provided a visual sense of the whole Earth to everyone who could experience it, and growing capabilities of mass media have made it increasingly easy for people to have that experience.

Many people find inspiration in the pictures of our planetary home. Those pictures convey a sense of the unity of the Earth community. Among the people who have first-hand experience of seeing Earth from space, such a sense of unity is often referred to as the “overview effect” (White, 2014). The overview effect indicates that the experience of seeing the relative smallness of Earth suspended in space can occasion a feeling that humans are far closer to one another and to the rest of the planet than is often realized. There are many important differences that divide the planet’s denizens along lines such as species, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, race, class, and ability. Yet, as pictures of the whole Earth indicate, all of those differences take place in one planetary context. No matter how different we are, whether human or nonhuman, we are earthlings. We share a common dwelling, a singular home. There is only one Earth.

At around the same time that pictures of Earth began circulating widely, many people started to promote ideas and lifestyles oriented toward a concern for our shared planetary existence. For instance, in the 1960s, Stewart Brand began publishing the Whole Earth Catalog, which functions as a guidebook to give people access to tools, skills, and knowledge for living on an interconnected planet. As Brand (2009: 22) describes it, “The Whole Earth Catalog encouraged individual power,” facilitating a do-it-yourself approach to human–Earth relations. Brand’s work may be described not only as environmentalist but also as countercultural, emerging alongside many other 1960s countercultural movements, including feminism, civil rights, anti-war, and anti-nuclear movements. Brand’s emphasis on interconnectedness runs counter to the fragmentation and selfishness that pervade mainstream culture. However, the phenomenon of the whole Earth was not something celebrated only by the 1960s counterculture. Planetary coexistence became the focus of international celebration with the inaugural Earth Day in 1970, which continues to be celebrated worldwide every year on April 22. The 1970s also saw the development of a science of the whole Earth: Gaia theory. By bringing together multiple scientific perspectives on the interlocking systems that compose the whole Earth, Gaia theory is capable of describing the complex relationships between planetary systems. A crucial task of whole Earth thinking is to account for interdependent and self-organizing dynamics of Earth’s systems, including its living systems (biosphere) and its systems of water (hydrosphere), rock (lithosphere), air (atmosphere), and even human consciousness (noosphere) (see Chapter 7).

In recent decades, amidst the emerging scientific and cultural awareness of our terrestrial home, there has been a growing recognition of an ecological crisis. Whether mainstream or countercultural, many people began realizing that the dominant form of human civilization was severely damaging its own land base, fouling its own nest. In other words, it became obvious to many people that humans were killing themselves (suicide) by killing other organisms (biocide) and destroying the ecosystems (ecocide) on which human existence depends. The preservation, conservation, and environmental movements of the twentieth century raised awareness of numerous ecological problems, such as pollution, toxic waste, deforestation, water scarcity, soil erosion, and extinction. As the century progressed, the crisis became increasingly planetary, overflowing the boundaries of local and regional problems.

The planetary scale of the ecological crisis is reflected in the unprecedented challenges posed by phenomena like global climate change and the mass extinction of species. Those large-scale problems are symptoms of a transition out of the current geological epoch (the Holocene, which began approximately 12,000 years ago) into the Anthropocene – a term that an increasing number of researchers and scholars use to designate the currently emerging geological epoch, in which human actions impact planetary systems. The Anthropocene is named with the Greek word anthropos (“human”), but that does not mean that it is a time when humans are in charge. The Anthropocene is named after humans because it is a time when humans have massive, Earth-changing impacts, altering the chemistry of the atmosphere (climate change), changing DNA (genetic modification), and depositing non-biodegradable plastic, Styrofoam, and radioactive materials around the planet. A particular local community may have the knowledge needed to resolve a local environmental problem like an invasive species or a polluted waterway, but the planetary problems of the Anthropocene call for new ways of thinking. As Mark Whitehead (2014: 1) says in his analysis of the Anthropocene’s geography, “the Anthropocene appears to require a change in the ways in which we study environmental transformation.” It requires “a peculiar mix of analytic skills” from multiple disciplines to provide “a reliable toolkit for studying the geological force that is humankind” (p. 3). In short, it requires whole Earth thinking.

Planetary thinking involves more than following the slogan, “Think Globally, Act Locally.” It means rethinking the very relationship between the global and the local, the macro and the micro, the planetary and the personal. It even means rethinking what it means to think and act. From a planetary perspective, does thinking happen inside of one’s head, or does thinking emerge in relationship with the surrounding world? Do nonhumans participate in anything like thinking? Are actions limited to individual or local actions, or can action happen in massively distributed networks and groups that cross local, regional, and national boundaries? This book explores those and many ot...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Ecology: a household word
• 3 A geologian meets geophilosophers
• 4 Integrating environments, societies, and subjects
• 5 Roots of ecological wisdom
• 6 Reinventing the human
• 7 Emerging Earth community
• 8 Cosmic connections
• 9 Narrative imagination, dangerous dreams
• 10 Energy
• 11 Conclusion
• Index