An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore’s first book, Earth In The Balance: Ecology and The Human Spirit, came out in 1992. The evidence cited within its pages seemed irrefutable and turned me into a big Al Gore fan. Oddly enough it seemed the rest of the world took greater notice of the data than did the US. Much has changed in our world since then, but upon reflection the greatest change has occurred within me. How I responded to An Inconvenient Truth reflects not so much the changes our planet has gone through in the past fourteen years, as it does the changes I have gone through.

In session 1328 Elias responds to an individual inquiring about the environment and his business: Therefore, you yourself may incorporate actions in association with those preferences, but in genuine acceptance of the beliefs, you do not express a threat or a judgment in association with an individual that may be choosing to participate in actions which are not associated with your individual preferences.

In the exchange from which this blurb is lifted the questioner is an environmentalist. This is his preference, and as such he will act in alignment with his preference. He will recycle, use CFL bulbs, and do all he can to align with his beliefs about the environment. This is action in alignment with his beliefs. Elias tells him there is no right or wrong with his preferences, but goes on to talk about judgments and threats in association with those beliefs/preferences.

In 1992 I was quite familiar with Seth, but would not learn about Elias for another eight years. I was unaware of a key component of the Elias information known as Acceptance. I’ve written about it before on my blog, but my preferences regarding the environment are so strong I wanted to write about my reaction to Earth In The Balance before coming upon Elias, and compare it to my reaction to An Inconvenient Truth.

When reading Earth In The Balance I believed in absolutes and in particular I believed that I was right and you were wrong. I believed that there are ‘moral imperatives’ that if adhered to by all, then all would be hunky dory. If I saw a McDonald’s bag fly out of a car window I’d get angry at the perpetrator, spew a few expletives at him, and pat myself on the back for my righteousness. I was one of the good guys. I’d jot down the license number and report the infraction. It was my civic duty. I was doing my part. The real bad guys, though, were those mega corporations who defiled the planet for the sake of a quick buck. They were very easy to judge. You can all see the beliefs interwoven in my belief regarding the environment. To name a few there is:
1) Greed is bad.
2) Capitalism is bad.
3) Polluters are bad.
4) People are irresponsible.
5) Humans are destructive.
6) Earth cannot cope without my help.
7) Carbon based fuels suck.
8) Oil and coal industries are evil.

The list is almost endless, but you can get an idea that there are poles here, and when polarization occurs there will be friction and opposition. What I didn’t understand at the time of Earth In The Balance was that my truths were a paradox. They were true for me, but not true at the same time. I was seeing my beliefs as absolutes and when I did that it was so very easy to judge those who represented or held opposing beliefs. What do you do when someone opposes you? You dig in your heels and oppose back. What does holding a belief in the absolute do? It eliminates choice, and when there is no choice there is no freedom.

The idea is not to eliminate opposition. This is not a 21st century idea. In The Book, Alan Watts said: For the enemy/friends of man are his pruners. They prevent him from destroying himself by excess fertility, so that a person who dies of malaria or tuberculosis should be honored at least as much as one who has died for his country in battle. He has made room for the rest of us, and the bacteria which killed him should be saluted with proper chivalry as an honorable foe. The point is not that we should forthwith abandon penecillin or DDT: it is that we should fight to check the enemy, not to eliminate him. We must learn to include ourselves in the round of cooperations and conflicts, of symbiosis and preying, for a permanently victorious species destroys, not only itself, but all other life in its environment. (Pg. 76)

So how do I cooperate with that which I oppose? By understanding that there is not a truth and your truth and this is where I was when I saw An Inconvenient Truth a few weeks ago. There were no more bad guys. There was only me, and through extension, my environment. You are just as much my environment as is a plant and a rock, just as I am as much your environment. So when I oppose you I oppose myself. Cooperation, however, does not preclude action.

I do the same things now in my quest for a clean environment that I did fourteen years ago, but now I am no longer at war with myself. I will not throw my energy against what I oppose by way of judging, for I know that will lock what is not my preference into defensive mode. We have jointly created this environmental crisis for six billion different reasons. What I take away from it will not be exactly the same as any other human on the planet. Your response to An Inconvenient Truth is yours and yours alone. I leave you with one last quote from Alan Watts, one of my favorite philosophers:

“I repeat that the difficulty of understanding the organism/environment polarity is psychological. The history and the geographical distribution of the myth are uncertain, but for several thousand years we have been obsessed with the false humility - on the one hand, putting ourselves down as mere “creatures” who came into this world by the whim of God or the fluke of blind forces, and on the other, conceiving ourselves as separate personal egos fighting to control the physical world. We have lacked the real humility of recognizing that we are members of the biosphere, the “harmony of contained conflicts” in which we cannot exist at all without the cooperation of plants, insects, fish, cattle, and bacteria. In the same measure, we have lacked the proper self-respect of recognizing that I, the individual organism, am a structure of such fabulous ingenuity that it calls the whole universe into being. In the act of putting everything at a distance so as to describe and control it, we have orphaned ourselves both from the surrounding world and from our own bodies - leaving “I” as a discontented and alienated spook, anxious, guilty, unrelated, and alone.”

Bill Marshall