Process

In the concluding statement of Process you say:  “If there is hope for humankind…the way must be shown by those who have demonstrated a capacity for a knowledgeable partnership with Nature in the making of things, yet whose making is softened by a wiser intuition that keeps them from making too much, too fast, and at too great a cost.”

What did you mean Professor?

I think that we are on the ‘verge of the edge.’  We’re at one of von Bertalanffy’s bifurcation points.  We’re at Robert Johnson’s crossroads.  We have an opportunity to recognize the errors and weaknesses of the trail we’ve blazed since embarking in 1793 on the Industrial Revolution.  We have an opportunity to redirect our talent for manipulating Nature toward sustainable enterprises and that if we do not, society, as Western cultures have come to expect it, could very quickly revert to something for which we are ill prepared.

What sort of a “partnership with Nature” do you propose?

Let’s think about the world ‘partnership.’  The American Heritage dictionary offers the definition:  “A relationship between individuals or groups that is characterized by mutual cooperation and responsibility, as for the achievement of a specified goal.”  The idea apparently derives from the late 13^th century when the concept of a partner or joint heir found expression relative to partitioning property.  While partitioning derives from the Latin partire meaning to divide and from pars meaning a part, the point is that a partnership implies a sharing of responsibility for the parts of the whole.  As anyone who has been in a relationship knows, a partnership requires give and take – each party benefits from the cooperation, sharing, devotion, and attention of the other – we look out for each other, we help each other, we love each other.

Now think about our relationship with the world around us.  It is the source of all our wealth and material satisfaction.  We extract, consume, fabricate, and contaminate.  We take, take, take, but what do we give back?  This is not a partnership – this is, as many recognize, symptomatic of cancer – growth at the detriment of the host.

That seems pretty extreme Professor.  The Earth is a passive participant in this partnership – it’s not so much that it gives and we take, it’s like Thomas Mann’s character Felix Krull observed ‘…we came out of this Earth, we didn’t come into it…’ We’re a part of it so how can we help but consume and fulfill our needs?  What are we supposed to give back?

The idea isn’t to give back to the planet.  You’re right, we consist of what has come from the Earth and all that we are will return to it when we die.  Since we can’t give anything back that wasn’t already here, the idea is really about not preventing others now and in the future from having the opportunity to experience this world as we and prior generations have.  We should fulfill our needs to the best of our knowledge and ability, without preventing current and future living things from doing the same.