Our Earth: A Finer Harmony

"Care, critically and creatively think through solutions, and ideas of how we can move forward to live in a world, live in an Earth that is in finer harmony with nature, and the natural Earth."
​Shazi! :) 

Related Reading:
Why It Matters
Nature's Teaching
​Nature's Teaching: Foil Or Oil? 
Our Resource: Earth.
Our Earth: Whose Responsibility? 
Learning and Memory

*** 

---

As I close my eyes and drift away to a land where there is love, health, peace, and blessings. I wanted to take the time to think and reflect.

     The truth is that I have been taking some time to think through the many ideas and thoughts with regards to the environment, sustainability, and the kind of future that we must envision for future generations to enjoy. It is enough to say that we human beings are already consuming more than we need to, not only the for resources that we need for survival, but also in terms of taking from the Earth, and not replacing what we took. Whilst I do want to acknowledge individuals, groups, or even companies who do in fact care about the resources that they take, and also do replace, I do want to raise into our awareness the idea that more efforts are needed to be put in place for this kind of replenishing.

     We could argue that the Earth has the ability to replenish itself, because everything exists through an ecological system. This may have been the case, but through the interventions of human kind, I don't think that this is the case anymore. Human intelligence has grown far beyond that of the Earth's own capacities. We are able to see, do, or even control our environments through technological advances. There is a danger point to this thought. Imagine: groups / individuals possess the technological capacity for destruction, can you imagine this? 

     This is why we have to be more aware about how we treat the Earth, our World. Even if there are individuals / groups who possess this type of intelligence, they too have to exercise a certain amount of control, because the last thing that we want to do is to destroy the Earth. For Human existence there must be both Earth and Human Beings. There is an interdependent relationship, that needs to be maintained for the purposes of our survival.

     There are technological advances that can both protect and harm the Earth. There is also the idea of socially constructed problems that happen because of systemic barriers, or even a conscious violence that takes place to keep certain communities marginalized. We can think in terms of developing countries, but we can also think closer to home, such as Flint, Michigan, where the water crisis began in 2014. We can wonder why in an advanced country - do we have problems where people cannot gain access to clean water? Access to clean water is a human right.

    Think about it: Water for drinking, cooking, personal cleansing, laundry, etc ... We can think of the many uses of water. The example of Flint and the ideas with regards to technology reveal that the protection of the environment is not just about making sure that the recycling is done, no, it boils down to a social and moral imperative. 

     To understand what it means to think about sustainability as a moral imperative, we can ask simple questions such as: 1) Should there be a river built near a residential area? 2) Why do you think the Flint water crisis is still not resolved? 3) Do you think that trees should be logged, without being replaced?

     The above questions are in place as examples, you could think of any questions that are related to enviromental  issues. The chances of the answers simply being a yes / no answer are very low. Also questions like these will go far beyond thinking about sustainability, because our own personal, moral, and ethical values will be called into question.

   This is why we have to think about the environment, sustainability, or sustainable development  through a holistic level. One decision will impact something else. Taking care of our Earth is not an isolated choice. There is much more to think about. We have to move beyond the idea of Earth replenishing itself (This thought is derived from the Principle of Limits), because the interventions of human kind have taken over, or out - weigh the Earth's capacities. While there are technological advances and sociological constructions, we owe it to the present and future generations to: Care, critically, and creatively think through solutions, and ideas of how we can move forward to live in a world, live in an Earth that is in finer harmony with nature, and the natural Earth.  

Dedication: The words of this being are dedicated to all beings, our present and future generations, our Earth, our world. My thoughts to share with love & Kindness! :)    

Notes: These thoughts were originally hand - written on August 15th, 2017.

All opinions expressed are my own.

​Image 1 - Web Link