Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General on his speech at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, April 28, 2020 challenged world leaders to use the coronavirus pandemic to “rebuild our world for the better” by also working together to tackle other global threats such as climate change. The outbreak that has resulted in at least 200,000 deaths and almost 3 million infections globally caused widespread economic hardship as countries impose lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus.
“It has exposed the fragility of our societies and economies to shocks,” the United Nations chief said, adding that “the only answer is brave, visionary and collaborative leadership. He continued: “Let us use the pandemic recovery to provide a foundation for a safe, healthy, inclusive and more resilient world for all people”.
FDAI intends to contribute to the discussions on what should the new economy look like. FDAI lifts from the chapters/pages of the book titled Full Humanity Development: A Discourse on Ends and Means written by its Executive Director, Rex T. Linao, PhD.
This is 4th of the series, featuring Chapter 8 of the Full Humanity Development book. The picture was taken in 2011 from atop of a moving lantsa to Dinagat Islands.
THE father of modern science, Francis Bacon, introduced a scientific method that views nature as a female to be tortured through mechanical inventions. He was quoted by Kaninski (1998) as saying that nature must be:
“stretched out on a rock’” and “bound into service”. Scientists were to act as “searchers and spies of nature” in order to discover her “plots and secrets”. She would be “dissected by the mechanical arts and the hand of man,” and “forced out of her natural state and squeezed and molded,” so that “human knowledge and power meet as one.” New forms of animal life were to be created and existing ones manipulated by experiment. Animals were maintained for vivisection and medical research. “We will try all poisons and other medicines upon them … by art likewise we make them greater or taller than their kind is, and contrariwise dwarf them and stay their growth; we make them more fruitful and bearing than their kind is, and contrariwise, barren and not generative (Kaninski, 1998, JANUARY).
Following the exhortation of Bacon, human beings have wielded an instrumental approach to nature (Linao, 1995. pp. 9 10). Fortunately or unfortunately for them, they become successful in their quest for mastery over nature. And as they feel mastery over it, they now feel apart from the natural world. They could no longer accept themselves as mere parts of nature because the advancement that they have experienced has left them a vague feeling that they are omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. They feel that the overall trend of their experiences is that they are taking charge, and that they almost have all the necessary implements and strategies to control the earth. Their feeling of accelerating mastery of their world makes them more arrogant, which further leads to attitudes that are very much harmful to Earth.
They no longer experience themselves to be part of nature but an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. They think to be the masters of everything and that they could continue to develop themselves at the expense of other organisms. They view the world as worthless, no value at all apart from its service to humanity.
The deafening roars of the implements invented to aid human beings in exploiting fastly the Earth is almost everywhere. From one area, they would soon transfer to another area; for they think that they are living on a virtually illimitable plane. This thinking of them has contributed much to the fast depletion of the Earth’s resources because they think that there is always somewhere beyond the known limits of human habitation, and over a very large part of the time that human beings have been on Earth, there has always been like a frontier so that they could just exploit everything at a time the resources that could be found in the place where they currently live. After all, somewhere out there; there are lots more.
But is exploiting the Earth without let-up a right attitude? If the genetic make-up alone of human beings is to be the basis in answering the question; the answer is already an astounding “no”. Human beings are not separate from nature because they are genetically programmed to a habitat of clean air and varied landscapes. Ricklefs wrote:
The environments of all species comprise many patterns. One is exposure to physical and chemical factors in the environment. Another is exposure to other species predators, parasites, prey and other species with which an individual interacts. A third pattern is exposure to individuals of the same species through sexual behavior, family ties and social interaction. All these patterns of the environment mold the adaptations of the organism (Ricklefs, 1975, p. 43).
Further, analyzing the functions of the natural environment in the society, ecologists have seen two: “source” of a range of services and resources and “sink” of the society’s pollution and waste (World Bank, 2000). Linked to the “source” and “sink” functions; four specific main functions that the environment provides are identified (see Box below).
Obviously, all of the above-enumerated ecological functions are important for maintaining life and for the attainment of full humanity of each human being. In a more religious tone, it is said that to live, humans must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When they do such knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, and reverently, it is a sacrament. When they do it ignorantly, greedily and destructively, it is a desecration. In such a desecration, they condemn themselves to spiritual and moral loneliness and others to want (1). Apparently, humans choose to desecrate nature than reverence it. In so doing, they cause the destruction of the world and their very selves. The History of the Creation and Destruction of the World is relevant in this regard (see Box below). Evident in the History of the Creation and Destruction of the World is the fact that human beings have, indeed, waged a reckless war against nature that they have disarmed. They have been exhausting in decades what it has taken nature millions of years to construct. The forests are dying. The desert is encroaching everywhere. The air is being contaminated. Waters are turning to sewers. The climate is warming. The ozone layer is depleting. It’s not difficult to discern that human beings’ total war on nature is ending on its complete self-annihilation in the coming years.
But as ecological question is rapidly becoming problem number one, human beings do not exactly lack the knowledge to avert the approaching catastrophe. What they lack is a willingness to change their behavior; their notion of a unique position on Earth that makes them think that earth is nothing but to serve their ends. Indeed, traditional notion puts humanity to be standing in a universe whose furthest star and nearest object were all arranged symmetrically around them, enthroned at the feet of the universal father. But step-by-step, this fantasy of a unique and privileged position in the cosmos has already been destroyed:
Copernicus demoted the Earth from standing at the motionless center of the heavens to merely traveling along one undistinguished orbital path among many. Other astronomers followed by removing the solar system itself to an obscure place toward the edge of an average galaxy. What was left of the exalted human status was undermined further by Darwin, who ruined the pleasant fiction that Homo sapiens as a biological species was separate unto itself, disdainfully unrelated to the “lesser” brutes sharing the Earth. Ecology has demonstrated that even present-day individuals and even highly advanced civilizations are not separable from the natural world.
Cybernetic ecology completes the dethronement of the human ego. The last step in this regress is the admission that even humanity’s own mind is no conferrer of unique status. The rational consciousness is only one of a long list of other consciousness and mentalities, some of them in bloody tissues and genes, some in other organisms, some in the environment. Human thought, feeling, and mental achievements are products of a natural evolution and development as surely as are birds’ nests or bees’ wings. The human mind is only a more focused and intense form of the universal process of nature. There is no place left to hide: the conscious animal must accept that it is at home on Earth, and that Earth, in some profound way, is at home in it (Oates, 1989, pp. 209 210).
But the dethronement of human status on Earth does not exactly result for them becoming humble earthlings. On the contrary, they have unleashed their animalistic attitude; just as the unconscious animals live in the survival of the fittest principle, they too, the conscious animal, play the same game. And the trouble with this is the fact that for all creatures that have visited the Earth, human beings are the most destructive thus far. Hence, the ecological crises that are largely attributable to human activities.
Human beings have to realize that the only Earth in existence is a world of finite resources, and only in it; they depend for their very survival. They have to realize that they are just parts of a fragile interdependent network of life. If the Earth dies, they too must die.
With this realization, they have to be realistic that the way they live now cannot go on forever. They must change or face extinction. And change, they can. For as Wendell Berry said, rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy (2).
The change that human beings should undergo has to be along this line: from a material and physical to a non-material and spiritual conception of the world, a change that would develop habits that are in accordance with the rhythms of nature and society. In effect, the following worldviews should become prevalent: a conception that the Earth is living, close and finite, and inter-connected entity. Linao (1995) outlines the ecological worldviews (see Box below).
Owing to the “new” worldviews presented in the Box; the following operations necessarily follow: 1) Human beings behave as parts of nature; 2) Everything is a process in circular time; and 3) Openness to many unknown realities.
Human beings behave as parts of nature. The arrogance towards nature and the concept that human beings are forces destined to dominate nature have proven to be very devastating. It is not only because nature’s resources are finite but also because human beings are largely parts of nature and therefore, they must be very conscious to nature’s rhythms and not fight against them (3).
Human beings should consider the essential need for them to cooperate with nature and not fight against it for whatever they employ during the battle; they would always find themselves in the losing end.
Everything is a process in circular time. The modern world knows time as linear arrow of machinelike dynamism as opposed to the older concept of the “wheel of life”. The two contradictory concepts both bring good as well as bad. The first says that human beings are all capable of changing everything to meet their material needs and the concept, therefore, betrays nature. The second says that life just turns round and round, unchangeable. The concept, therefore, betrays human potential to make a sound living.
Human beings should merge the two by adopting that everything is a process in a circular time. This implies that they have the capacity to set some things to a process; yet they cannot really change some things without hampering the environment. By this, human beings can be more conscious of the rhythms of nature as they participate responsibly in setting some things to a process.
Openness to many unknown realities. As nature knows better than human beings, the latter must not merely rely on empirical data, on their logic in grasping realities. This is especially so because the science used to look for such data has been reductionist and the side of the brain operating to decide what is acceptable is the left (brain) alone. It should always be considered by human beings that “absence of proof is not a proof of its absence”. Hence, attaining knowledge is a process, not a destination; an integration, not accumulation.
When the above-mentioned conceptions of the world have been well integrated in the heads, hearts and hands of human beings; they would all become responsible stewards of ecological integrity. It is only when such happens that a sustainable society is possible. A responsible development work, therefore, should have at its objectives the maintenance of the integrity of creation one that is only possible if in each development stakeholder; responsible stewardship is developed. Results of the IDRC study presented in Chapter 3 supports this agenda when the study found out that interviewees offer trenchant criticisms of the modern economic paradigm. Some suggest that any new paradigm(s) must be environmental in the broadest sense. Accordingly, Dr. Oomen’s work also supports the same agenda when he referred to the mainstream development paradigm as unsustainable because its untenable postulate of unlimited wants or consumerism violently interferes with the ecosystem/environment.
Figure below presents the different outcomes of different professed “ends” of development. If the end is only economic growth, it only leads to economic development; which is usually attained by destroying other aspects of human life. If the ends are only economic, political, and cultural growths, it only leads to social development. It is only when Spiritual Growth and Ecological Integrity are considered that Full Humanity Development is attained.
