« Pando Populus: Challenging Industrial Assumptions with Ecological Alternatives »

I’m conference-weary… and wary. But I’m not about to miss Pando Populus, June 4-7. Maybe I’ll see you there. 

First of all there’s the name—Pando Populus! I said, “What?” But when I read about it, I thought, “Very clever! What a wonderful ecological symbol for how our species needs to live!” It was chosen for this conference because it is the oldest (80,000 yrs) and largest (100 acres) living organism on the planet. It appears to be a vast grove of individual aspen trees above ground. But underground it’s a vast, integrated system of life. Get the symbolism? Whereas industrial civilization puts us all into 7 billion separate units, in an ecological way of arranging society we are interconnected with all of Nature like Pando Populus. We’ll rethink how to live from an ecological perspective. And that really excites me!

Next, there’s the press release. It quotes John Cobb, a favorite of mine, saying:

“Over 700 leading experts and original thinkers from more than twenty countries are coming together for the largest transdisciplinary conference on ecological civilization ever held on behalf of the planet,” announced the American philosopher and environmentalist John B Cobb, Jr., co-founder of Pando Populus and the intellectual architect of the inaugural conference.

These “700 leading experts and original thinkers” will be leading 82 tracks clustered into 12 Segments arranged by themes of an interconnecting ecological way of thinking. That overwhelmed me! How the devil do I choose one track when I want to be in 10? I read. I read some more. And then I registered for the track on “Ecological Economics” led by Joshua Farley, University of Vermont where he’s with the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics.

Other reasons why I’m attending?

• A OneEarth ocean —The more I develop in my understanding of OneEarth thinking and living, the more it energizes me! And this conference will be like jumping into the ocean of the OneEarth paradigm.
• It’s a working conference. —Expectation is that in every track all participants will move further along in the implications of living an ecologically based worldview. 
• Process thought of Alfred North Whitehead. —Whitehead (d. 1947) believed that we can understand how to live and decide only by seeing everything in ecological relationship with everything else. Process thinking undercuts assumptions of industrialized civilization which focuses on taking things apart to understand them. Process thought believes the opposite: understanding comes only by perceiving ecological interconnectedness.
• The mingling or people and experiences. —Part of OneEarth living is to mingle with others devoted to the quest for it, i.e., to be interrelated, interdependent with one another. Just click here and look at the team of planners, for example. The mingling at Pando Populous promises to be fertile, rich, and challenging. Will egos be able to appeal to their greater identities and the capacities of our deeper Self?
• OneEarth Project team attending together. —When our team looked at this conference, we all said, “We have to go to this!” As we move ahead to produce a film and write books, our desire increases to be in “the mingle” of people devoted to the New Story in which we get that Earth is our context for all our decisions—business, education, faith, households, parenting—everything!

Visit the website. Give it an hour and you’ll learn a lot about the life-giving promise ecological living holds for us. And, if possible, register.