A Divine Tattoo Warns Us against Cain's Multi Earth Worldview

This blog has reinterpreted the millennia-old Cain-Abel myth because, like John Steinbeck in East of Eden, I see it as a compelling myth opposing Multi Earth powers and as a guide for One Earthers to strongly encounter and resist our contemporary situation.

That guidance emphasizes that our resistance to Multi Earthism can best happen without vengeance. Look at the myth again. Cain went from feeling superior to Abel to feeling a victim, fearing that he could be murdered himself. But Yahweh intervened to prevent the notion that One Earthers should rise up against Multi Earthers in revenge. Cain was given a mark, a divine tattoo, if you will. The divine mark on Cain, and therefore the Multi Earths story, is not like the mark on a tree designated to be cut down. The divine mark is not intended to make the Multi Earth story an easier mark for One Earthers to destroy.

The divine tatoo is intended to show us what not to follow. The better we learn the Multi Earth worldview and its mutant traits, the better we know what to look for. When we see the marks of the Multi Earth economy, then, no matter how they may be trying to lure us, we see the tatoo. It warns us, “Stay away if you deeply care for people, planet, and species.” With that kind of consciousness, we are more likely to invoke our greater capacities and choose Abel’s One Earth ways.

Cain’s ways are, after all, not the only way to live. Nor is east of Eden the only place. Choosing Abel’s worldview will empower us to bring a contemporary One Earth version of his offering which Yahweh, the Creator, found pleasing. We CAN offer such to the world, and without vengeance toward Multi Earthers. The divine tattoo tells us to spare the energy that goes into vengeance and use it to strengthen One Earth living.

Steinbeck Makes Us Aware of Our Multi Earth Ways

Just thinking about his book title, East of Eden, it strikes me that Steinbeck grasped the contrast between the worldview that is Eden and the one that is not. The one that is outside of Eden. Each worldview has stories to tell and Steinbeck took on the task of telling a story of life when we live in the worldview of non-Eden — or, in the parlance of this blog, when we live in the world as Multi Earthers. He recognized that we, like Cain, live in non-Eden. That may not surprise us given that most of have learned the Eden story as something ancient anyway. But this blog takes a different view. On up the road I’ll say how, I believe, we can live in Eden today.

As is true for us all in general, my life lives out of a complex of stories I’ve identified with. Some I’m conscious of, some I’m not. The stories I’m least conscious of likely impact me all the more for my lack of awareness of them. For example, being born in the U.S., I had been shaped by the Multi Earth story for many years before becoming conscious of it. That story continues to shape Multi Earth living so successfully because many Multi Earthers remain unconscious of the plot being played out through their lifestyle choices. But Steinbeck was deeply aware of it and recognized that the story of Cain told briefly the macro-story we are living. His novel expresses the depth of meaning he saw in both the biblical story and the contemporary expression of it in the U.S.

What comments can you add to how John Steinbeck shows Multi Earth ways that ain’t pretty? But also how he pushes and prods the edges of human capacities to believe we could live a completely different, life-giving paradigm?

Enlisting John Steinbeck in the Cause of the One Earth Project

As promised in the previous blog entry, we’re now heading into a bend in the road toward a greater understanding of why Multi Earth living mesmerizes us and holds onto us even when our best rational judgment says, “Stop now. Cast aside Multi Earth ways and leap into One Earth’s commonsense!” It’s time to meet up with myth — especially myth’s great ability to describe the truth and power of the paradigm in which we live. To help us see how myth works, I bring John Steinbeck into this blog.

When novelist Steinbeck concluded East of Eden in 1952, he considered it his magnum opus, his greatest work. Within a month it was a bestseller. By 1955, it had been adapted for a movie starring James Dean. The story has had staying power in popular culture. ABC produced a miniseries in 1981, and an all new movie produced by Universal Studies will bring the story anew to audiences in 2012.

From the first time that I heard of Steinbeck’s book, I loved the title. Because I was steeped in biblical stories from the moment I left the womb, I recognized that the title came from the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. The story follows immediately upon the story of Eden and the eviction of Eve and Adam from the garden. But why, I wondered, did Steinbeck choose it? I’ve subsequently learned that Steinbeck drew his inspiration from this biblical story and felt deeply challenged by it. Growing up in Salinas, California, and the rich agricultural fields of the Salinas Valley, Cain, the farmer, resonated with him.

East of Eden unfolds mostly in the Salinas Valley, dealing with themes of jealousy, love, depravity, capacities for self-destruction and greatness, and most of all, guilt and freedom. All have parallels in the Cain and Abel scenario. While he was writing, Steinbeck tried a number of titles for his work, but none satisfied him. Then, when he again read Genesis 4:16, which says, “Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden,” he was delighted at how well the last three words nailed the description of life in his book. He had his title.

Though Steinbeck never called the paradigm he described in East of Eden the Multi Earth paradigm, and never used One Earth to name the paradigm that he hoped we humans would choose, his story describes precisely such a choice.