The media has been all abuzz with the latest government plan for dealing with global climate change. As was expected, the Conservatives have come up with a program that really doesn't take the issue seriously. I was watching the CBC news last night and the usual morality play came on one more time. The government economists said that the economy cannot afford to follow the Kyoto Accord, and the climate scientist pointed out that Kyoto was supposed to be only the first step and much more has to happen beyond it if we are going to avoid a tremendous catastrophe.
As someone who has spend most of his life trying to help the human race avoid collective suicide, my later years are becoming a horror. No matter how hard my friends and I scream, the "powers that be" seem incapable of listening. I've attempted to be very careful through this process. I've bitten my tongue, tried to be "upbeat" and "positive", etc---even though part of me wants to get angry and hit everyone who lives their life as if there is no problem at all.
I wish I had the sort of religious faith of a Christian who can go through life in the assumption that nothing we do on earth really matters and the great "Daddy in the sky" will set everything right. But that simply seems like a cop-out to me. At times the one thing that does give me some release is to remember Zhuangzi's meditation on the issue of scale. If we remember that the life of humanity is a tiny pimple on the butt of the earth; and that the earth itself is a tiny planet around an average star, in an obscure corner of an average galaxy, in a universe that is so huge and so old that it is impossible for humanity to understand. And moreover, that our universe may simply be one of an infinite number that exist; and that it may simply be one that was created in a big bang only to collapse and be recreated in an infinite number of big bangs.
Well, then, we simply are just frogs sitting in a well thinking that we are everything. But I cannot help but care about what shape this well is going to be in for the tadpoles that are still swimming in the water---.
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2 comments:
How is the Christian idea a cop out? God, who created the world, is going to see to it that everything gets made right. Those who are destroying the earth will pay for it, but those who don't honor their Creator will surely smart for that more. Check out this link to see how God will judge us.
I apologize for the tone of my post. I have a great many Christian friends and it doesn't do anything to make the world a better place to offend others.
Having said that, I have been exposed to a fair number of a certain type of evangelical Christian who seemed to think that the doctrine of personal attonement made all personal and social ethical issues irrelevent. This seemed to give them great personal solace but I fail to see how it helps deal with the big issue of environmental collapse. To be honest, it seems a lot to me like "I'm alright Jack".
I looked at your test, but it is based on the assumption that the Christian Bible (and one specific interpretation and translation) is a final authority on all issues spiritual. This may have made sense when people lived parochial lives and had never met anyone from another culture. But all human societies have their own traditions. Why would anyone who came from outside of Christendom care about the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament?
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