Natural Religion 06
Chapter six — Earthlife cult
Earthlife cult
“There is no promise for the future of the biosphere apart from a story that can inform us about how things really are in the physical world, and which things ultimately matter for sustaining the viability of natural and social systems.
We have no hope […] apart from a story that can unite diverse cultures with a vision of their shared natural history, their shared problems and their common destiny.
We shall be doomed […] unless we embrace a story that can move us to enlarge the scope of our interests and affections to include all humans, all species of life, and the biosphere itself.”
In his cited book, professor Rue calls humanity to the urgent task of mythopoiesis — the creation of a new myth that can unite us at the dawn of the planetary era.
“We must articulate a common story, a narrative of origins, nature and destiny that can give us orientation in nature and history. So whence comes the story that can begin to unify the globe? […]
We know the problem: exceeding the Earth’s carrying capacity. We know the urgency: red alert, no time to lose. We know the causes of the problem:excessive human population and excessive material consumption.
We know the general solution: reduce human impact to sustainable levels of population and consumption. We know on what the general solution depends: changes in social, political and economic goal and policies.
We know the fundamental forces that can drive such changes: values, attitudes, goal hierarchies, self-esteem links. And finally, we know how to manipulate these fundamental forces: a full court press on behaviour mediation systems [by adopting] a morally relevant mythic tradition.”
Ursula Goodenough — close friend of Rue, distinguished biologist and president of the Religious Naturalist Association (RNA) — argued in her 1998 book “The Sacred Depths of Nature” that the new global myth needs to focus mostly on geodiversity and biodiversity, and thereby a scientifically-informed earth cult is better suited to the purpose than the old ancestor cults or sky cults:
“Religions have always provided the moral basis, the justifications, for political systems, and a global earth cult would aspire to no less. But it needs a text, a canon — the equivalent of the Bible or the Koran. The earth sciences could be such a text, a starting point for making such decisions, a basis preferable to the authority of custom. Such a canon would not dictate what choices are made — these would still have to be worked out by humans, on the basis of what is in the end deemed most fair and most feasible. But the scientific texts would help to identify what is fair and feasible, in a vocabulary that speaks of the entire biosphere and not just of a particular tradition.
Rue and Goodenough agree that a new planetary culture is necessary due to the problems facing our species and our planet as a whole — as the pollution of the oceans and atmosphere, or the loss of biodiversity. And a global culture requires a global story, rather than particular stories for particular cultures.
For Goodenough, “Humans need stories — grand, compelling stories — that help to orient us in our lives and in the cosmos”, stories that can “anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of nature, our place, our context. […] And then, after that, we need other stories as well, human-centered stories, a mythos that embodies our ideals and our passions.”
Rue believes that only by becoming aware of the common evolutionary thread that weaves together every human and every living being on the planet can we save ourselves from provoking a catastrophic mass extinction. Inspired by such vision, we may find new ways to enhance the solidarity and cooperation within our species, which could in turn enable us to think more ecologically, and eventually unite us all in a sustainable planetary culture.
“[The] story of cosmic evolution reveals to us the common origin, nature, and destiny shared by all human beings. It documents our essential kinship as no other story can do […] This story shows us in the deepest possible sense that we are all sisters and brothers — fashioned from the same stellar dust, energized by the same star, nourished by the same planet, endowed with the same genetic code, and threatened by the same evils.[…] This story, more than any other, humbles us before the magnitude and complexity of creation. Like no other story it bewilders us with the improbability of our existence, astonishes us with the interdependence of all things, and makes us feel grateful for the lives we have. And not least of all, it inspires us to express our gratitude to the past by accepting a solemn and collective responsibility for the future.”
Rue criticizes the dualism and individualism that have been associated with the old religious traditions precisely on the grounds that “they allowed humans to think of themselves as essentially apart from the mundane order, free to overlook the integrity of natural systems in the pursuit of ideals, goals, and projects” — and endorses a New Axial Age:
“Our calling is no less than to achieve for our time what these ancient traditions did for theirs [ — ]to transform social and psychological realities in ways that effectively redress the global problematique. To do this we must find the courage to be no less radical in our storytelling than were the Axial prophets and poets. Their achievement is our source of courage and hope for a new Axial Age.”
Religious naturalism — he argues — can become for our time just what the Axial religions have been for theirs. These traditions had provided a number of key motives which religious naturalism must now provide, including: a sense of intellectual and moral failure, a new vision of the cosmos, an emphasis on individual morality as well as collective solidarity and cooperation. Today, the major religious traditions are no longer able to do this effectively because their old cosmologies have become implausible, and as such they can’t help us deal with the urgent global problems we now face as a species. And as things get worse, their credibility will just decline further.
Professor Rue urges us “to participate in the most important intellectual endeavour of the new millennium” — which is:
”to stimulate the emergence of a new wisdom tradition based on the integration of evolutionary cosmology and ecocentric morality. This new story, everybody’s story, is full of potential for uniting our species around a common understanding of how things are and which things matter. United by a shared story, we may come to possess a sense of solidarity and cooperation sufficient to inspire us to seek human fulfillment within the limits of biospheric integrity.
At its centre, this story needs a compelling root metaphor, one that can infuse the cosmos with value”.
Let’s now dive deep into the matter and take a closer look at the cosmological (what is?) and moral (what matters?) foundations of our new planetary myth.
