The Earth Story and the Civilization Story

Here is excerpt #3 from the forthcoming book and media project on one-Earth living, i.e., what is the economic model that fits within the resources of our one-planet home and how we can practice that now. Please offer your critiques to these excerpts.

There are two large stories, not one, underway in our lives. The one we hear most about is the story of human civilization; the unfolding story of world events, life in our community, and how we and our immediate circle of relationships participate in this story. This story so occupies what we call “news” that the second large story seems only for specialists who study it. It is the story of the Earth, our planetary home. This story, studied and told by life scientists, geologists, anthropologists, and paleontologists, is really the much larger, older, and dynamic of the two stories. It is, in fact, the larger context in which the human story happens. But for the majority of us, it is a secondary story—like a specialty shop for the few rather than a supermarket for the many.

Or so it was!  But no longer.

Today the Earth story is getting in our faces. It’s not just the meteorologists telling us about extreme weather. Nor the scientists telling us about new stars or new surprise discoveries of fossils or buried artifacts that fill gaps in the story. It is also insurance companies defining limits on which natural disasters they will cover as changes in climate are greatly increasing the number of disasters. It is the U.S. military planning for how to respond to conflicts arising from migrations caused by the exhaustion of mineral and oil resources, or by land that has been farmed for centuries turning to desert, or by low lands and shorelines becoming submerged by rising waters. It is people needing to change careers because their fishing business that has extended over several generations is no longer providing a living due to the collapse of marine species.

The Earth is speaking with increasing volume and frequency. Many of us are hearing her now; many are not. Still deaf. Or hearing, they rush to secure their privileges, power, and assets, not yet believing that Earth’s story holds the remaining trump cards. Or in a different metaphor some use, Earth bats last.

After reading this Section, look anew at the “news.” Which story is being talked about? We humans have been shaped to think that the story of human history is the only one, or at least the only one that really matters. The ego-centrism of that way of thinking contains within it the seed of its own destruction. That seed sprouted some time ago and is now bearing fruit. This Section says plainly why that way of thinking has been wrong all along. The two-story way of thinking is not only rooted in the truth of the Cosmos, it also gives us the story that we can live by if we can bring ourselves to choose it. Many already have. But as of this moment, the human civilization story continues its irrational pursuit of endless “progress” and unlimited growth. In this it behaves like cancer cells which grow and grow, outflanking the immune system, until they kill their host.  Is there still time to intervene? Is there still time, if we choose the Earth story to live by, for Earth’s immune system to gobble up the cancer cells and still offer humans and all species inhabitable Earth space? These are the questions we are living. The answers are not now known.