At 06:46 AM 5/3/06 -0400, Marilyn Harris wrote:
>You know, we can learn what is best for us to eat by observing what wild 
>animals eat...since we evolved along with other animals and life on this 
>planet under the same changing geological conditions over millions of 
>years. You talk like we are some sot of separate and superior entity.

This topic is touched upon by two books I recently re-read, and found to be 
less dated than I expected them to be.  The first was Jeremy Rifkin's 
classic work of ecological warning "Biosphere Politics" (1991)   Rifkin 
traces the development of our psychological disassociation from the 
physical world in every aspect of human life, from the dark ages up to the 
present day.  His core theme is about how we humans - and he means mostly 
the globally-dominant "western" ones - have systematically distanced 
ourselves from everything that reminds us of our own organic nature due to 
our fear of death.  Because of this deep-rooted fear, we have strived for 
centuries to create an environment in which we feel a compensatory sense of 
control over our surroundings.

Part of this sense of control is undeniably bound up in separating 
ourselves consciously from animals and other elements of the physical 
world, and the concept of a post-existential heaven ruled by a manlike 
diety - who favors us above all other creatures - plays directly into its 
hands.  This neurotic trait is a form of denial which is evident in almost 
everything we do - from our destruction of commons and wilderness areas, to 
the way we eat and speak about animals and food, to our concepts of 
anthropomorphic deities.  In Rifkin's view, G-d is a socially-enforced 
fiction which enables and justifies our delusional and ultimately 
self-destructive enslavement of the Earth.

But one should not throw out the cosmic baby with the human 
bathwater.  There are other concepts of diety which are not so 
neurotic.  The other book I've been re-reading includes one of my favorite 
definitions - that of Bucky Fuller, who coined the phrase "G-d is a verb" 
and speaks at length on the topic in his own classic work of warning 
"Critical Path" (1981):

"There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and 
noninterfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are 
eternal. Principles never contradict principles. . . . The synergetic 
integral of the totality of principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in 
pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, 
because as humans — in pure principle — we do not and never will know all 
the principles." - R. Buckminster Fuller

In Bucky's definition, there is no need for deific anthropomorphism, 
species-centric egotism, ritual, religion, or persecution based on anyone's 
favorite fictions.  There is only our ever-expanding but never-complete 
knowledge of the divine in an abstract sense, as manifest in the 100% 
perfectly synergistic functions of the Universe.

It takes a person with a strong sense of reality to abandon our species' 
historical need to project our ego onto a big man in the sky.  Concepts of 
diety have been a primary cause of human-to-human violence, psychological 
dissassociation, and ecological apathy - or literal antipathy - since the 
dawn of western civilization.  Fuller shows how to think about such things 
without giving up our sense of cosmic awe, or - even more dangerous - 
thinking of ourselves too highly.

For his part, Rifkin explains why it is so difficult to persuade some 
people of this fact.

- S.


----------------------------------------
Getting Primitive
A Natural Inquiry
http://www.gettingprimitive.com