Perennialism Deep Roots for a Resilient Culture

1. PerennialismDeep Roots for a Resilient Culture Bill Vitek, PhD SOAR Presentation April 6, 2012

2. Our Work Today Put on your Philosophy Goggles! Consider the deep questions, and the concepts and systems advanced to answer them. Consider three transformational or axial periods in history that reflect different approaches to the “big” questions. Help us to see that we may be living in the third period right now.

3. My Assumptions • Nature/Natural World left out of or abused by the first two transformations. • The world is showing signs of this exclusion, and they’re not positive or healthy signs. • We are 150 years into a new transformation that puts nature back in. • It’s an exciting time to be a philosopher!

4. Terms of Engagement • Paradigms and Worldviews • Types of Paradigm Change • Connections between Collapse, Complexity and Paradigm Change. • “Isms” as systems of meaning • The big Philosophical Questions • Material and Formal cultures

5. The Original Great Transformation • Axial Age • War and violence • Teachers and philosophers • Social change • Axis of change • Divided “earlier peoples” from modern humans • Psychological shift in consciousness “What is new about this age...is that man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations…He asks radical questions. Face to face with the void he strives for liberation and redemption. By consciously recognizing his limits he sets himself the highest goals.” Karl Jaspers

7. The Two Great Isms • Monotheism • Judaism • Christianity • Islam • Humanism • Greek and Hellenistic philosophy • Buddhism • Confucianism Homo Sapiens: Happiness is the pursuit of Wisdom

8. Where is Nature? • Cosmos • An “And it was good” creation • Logos….. • Expressed MathematicallyOrdered • Applicable to Social Systems • But…… • The central relationships, goals, and goods of human life are expressed in human relationships with God, each other, and by understanding our own minds.

9. Left Behind in the Pre-Axial Age Humans-Nature-Divinities part of one whole Totemism Animism Many gods Immanent Divinity Spirit in all things

10. Corresponding Material Culture Scriptures, manuscripts…..Writing Places of study/worship Forms of education designed to further the paradigm Complex and stratified civilizations Agriculture….The first human break from nature

12. A Great Transformation In consciousness In being In value In customs, rules, practices, social systems In material culture Over a long period of time Still with us today

13. Second Great Transformation • The Enlightenment: 1691-???? • Three great revolutions • Scientific • Political • Economic • The Age of Reason: “Dare to Know” • Focused on individuals pursuing happiness as sovereigns in a limitless way

15. Enlightenment Assumptions • Nature is a Boundless Source and Sink • Human Mind/Knowledge is Sufficient • Human Concerns are First and Foremost • Transgression of Limits is a Right and a Duty • Science • Engineering • Economics • Ethics • Nature is a supermarket, laboratory, playground and dump

16. Material Culture

17. Focus on Economics as the Engine of Happiness • The Great Transformation, Karl Paul Polanyi • Nation state had to co-evolve with self-regulating markets in order ensure market survival • If not, markets would break away from the state • The state would become secondary • Markets would no longer be sustainable • Consumerism is the new Ism Homo Economicus: Happiness is the pursuit of stuff

18. Review Pre-Axial Enlightenment Axial God Nature Humans Economics God Social Systems Humans Religion Nature Nature

19. Our World Delivered The Disturbing Data of our Times Illustrative of the desacrilization of nature, and economics’ disconnection from social and natural systems A call for another Great Transformation Already underway

20. The Age of Environmentalism1836 - ???? Emerson-Thoreau: Transcendentalism Charles Darwin: Evolutionary Biology Ernst Haeckel: Ecology John Muir: Nature as Cathedral Aldo Leopold: The Land Ethic Rachel Carson: The End of Nature James Lovelock: Gaia

22. Environmentalism’s Assumptions Nature is not passive Whole not equal to the sum of the parts All life is interdependent Living systems are complex, emergent, diverse, self-organizing There is no “environment” or “downstream” Nature’s rules Rule Human’s are more ignorant than knowledgable

23. American Environmentalism • Sources: 1880’s-1940’s • Conservation • Sinks: 1950’s-1980’s • Pollution Control and Risk Management • Systems: 1990’s-Present • Sustainability • Life Cycle Analysis • Industrial Ecology • Precautionary Principle

24. An Expanding Ethical Circle • Sources • Conservation • Utilitarianism • Anthropocentrism • Sinks • Rights • Individualism • Systems • Species • Ecosystems

25. Weak Sustainability

26. Strong Sustainability http://nz.phase2.org/glossary Strong sustainability refers to the need for human activity to reflect the asymmetric interdependence of the economic, social, and environmental spheres of life. The health of the worldwide economy is totally reliant on the existence of a healthy society, which is totally reliant on the existence of a healthy environment. The reverse is not true. 

27. The New Paradigm’s Goal? Prosperity in a Sun-Powered Ecosphere Homo Ecologicus

28. Our Earth Not just “an” Earth, but the only Earth there is. “Our” additionally indicates a sharing with others. It is not my or your Earth exclusively, whether as property owners or as human beings.

29. Sun Powered Solar energy, as we are discovering in the race to build solar panels and wind turbines, is steady, but not particularly dense. Over long enough time frames the sun’s capacity to do the work of fueling life can be stored as soil fertility, water in high places, wood fiber, coal, natural gas, oil, and even plutonium. But it is otherwise more tortoise than hare.

30. A Living Ecosphere The local star—an auspicious distance from our Earth—in cooperation with a long list of elements (around thirty) left over from long-ago stellar explosions, and combined with mechanisms we still don’t fully understand, created single cell organisms. The rest, they say, is (evolutionary) history. It’s a localized 4.5 billion year enterprise that even asteroids the size of Manhattan could not destroy. Despite this resilience it is nevertheless a precarious venture since what is living (individuals, ecosystems, and even the ecosphere itself) can cease to live or have its life degraded.

31. Systems Science Resilience Theory Complexity Theory Thresholds and Adaptive Cycles Panarchy: “The cross-scale and dynamic character of interactions between human and natural systems” (Walker and Salt, 89)

33. Perennial Agriculture Nature as Measure Natural Systems Agriculture Perennial Polycultures that mimic natural systems Focus on the grains (wheat, corn, rice)

34. Wes Jackson’s Work Check out those roots! Kernza™: Perennial Intermediate Wheatgrass

35. Engineering Holistic Biomimicry Life Cycle Assessment Cradle to Cradle Design DfE (Design for Environment) The Precautionary Principle

37. Merging Formal and Material Sustainability Movement too much about the material culture The Need to put Economics back in its Place The Challenge of putting Sapienback in the Picture Giving the Formal Culture its Due

38. An Ecological First Principle Prosperity on a living planet requires limits, broadly construed. Aldo Leopold’s definition of ethics The grudging recognition that we “can’t have it all” Eden’s message: “You may have all of this, but not that” Biophysical principles The CSA autumn bounty……of root vegetables and squash!

39. With Three Axioms No Harm Knowingly destroying life- systems or limiting the diversity and co-evolution of life is a moral and social wrong on a living planet.

40. http://www.whole-systems.org/extinctions.html

41. No Hubris Areas of certainty are small relative to the large field of ignorance. We should behave as if our ignorance will always exceed our knowledge. It will.

43. No Hurry All life depends on sunlight and the complex and integrated chemical and thermodynamic processes it powers (Net Primary Production). NPP is constrained by many factors and cannot be substantially improved, increased or sped up over time without the addition of inputs from outside the system.Since we can’t substantially speed up these natural processes, Our only option is to slow ourselves down.

45. A Paradigm Without a Name Sustainability? Deep Ecology? Resourcefulism? Stoicism? Escapism? Survivalism? Locavorism?

46. How About “Perennialism?” Resource: “To rise again” Deep roots that hold the “soil” together In one place for the long haul Slow accumulation of fertility Welcomes diversity Self-renewing Resilient Slow and steady Prosperous within well-defined limits

47. Imagine a Perennial CultureBoth Material and Formal Agriculture Economics Education Technology Transportation Art, Music Culture

48. Why This Transformation is So Difficult • Flashy Brains • Genesis • Prometheus • The Enlightenment • Manifest Destiny • Geological Inheritance • Crediting the Brains (the Pumps) rather than the Inheritance (the Well) • The Evolutionary Disposition to Live to Excess http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/u/up_the_creek_without_a_paddle.asp

49. A Necessary Transformation • A New Founding • Revolutionary Thinking…and Action • At the Outer/Inner Most Boundaries • The Ecosphere • The Human Mind • A True Test and Testament of a Well-Developed Neo-Cortex • There’s Still Time • Transformational Thinking is in Our Heritage • It’s already underway

50. In Wildness is the Preservation of the World! • Thoreau-Muir-Leopold-Rowe-Jackson • Nature Alive! • The source of our prosperity • Resilient, Complex, Creative • Ecosystems Science and Engineering • Creating A New Material and Formal Culture • Humanity’s Greatest Challenge