Introduction
The ultimate privilege of existence is to be alive and conscious. Leading a full life as a human being requires the fusion of three imperatives:-
- to blossom personally,
- to live in harmony with others,
- to exercise prudent stewardship of the Earth for posterity.
The personal blossoming is a natural impulse and needs little introduction. The ‘living in harmony with others’ is rather more contentious including, as it does, competitors from both human and non-human life-forms. But it is the third imperative which is least considered since its only advocate is spiritual, informed via the human conscience.
The following reflection concentrates on this aspect, particularly in the light of the current crises engaging global attention.
“The eternal ethic”
The Earth’s Wealth
The virtue of the concept of money is that it facilitates the quantification of so-called goods in such a way that one can rate them to a greater or to a lesser extent in the regard that humanity gives to them. By harnessing the concept of proportionality, human beings can exchange alternative goods to their mutual satisfaction.
The actual valuations may vary considerably with time and depend on the circumstances and the attitudes of those conducting an everyday monetary exchange; i.e. the valuations are arbitrary – they have no foundaton in natural reality.
There was a time when money was related to a particular commodity – GOLD.
This gave a semblance of real worth but this, again, was an arbitrary convention adopted by humanity; meaningless to non-human life-forms.
In the current climate, both literally and metaphorically, carbon emission rating has the virtue of being a meaningul, quantifiable parameter in the wellbeing of all life forms on Earth. Trading in carbon emissions could prove a far better foundation for human transactions, especially if it is on an equitable per capita basis that could also encompass and allow for the sustainable requirements of an evolving natural world.
A start has been made on the transition from the current monetary fiction to one based on carbon emissions. It is complex in implementation and it may be that shortcomings appear which make it less than ideal. For instance, if fossil fuels continue to be used for energy generation, justified by the successful adoption of carbon capture and storage, the extent to which humanity consumes them may continue unabated or even accelerate, assuming the Earth’s temperature envelope can be stabilisied near current levels.
It is arguable that ancient fossil fuels may be exhausted in the matter of a few millennia and that this would be inequitable in regard to future generations of all life forms. The rationale here is that during a particular phase of Earth’s existence the Sun’s energy was converted to fossil fuels. In effect these became tantamount to an immense deposit in the Natural Bank. It is reckoned by leading scientists that some of this investment, the oil, will be exhausted within a few generations of humanity’s current lifestyles. Gas and coal are also finite and vulnerable within a millennia or so.
The total borrowing for current expenditure via these ancient deposits is said to be three times as much as the current revenue received from the Sun’s rays, and the borrowing rate is increasing.
Perhaps the foundation for the natural currency could indeed be the Sun’s energy, which provides a relatively stable annual revenue. That suggests that the imperative for humanity is to live and evolve within this limit shared fairly and taking account of non-humanity. The transition to such a system may be just as complex as would a transition to carbon emission quotas. Scientists may at least be able to come up with a figure for how much energy remains embedded in fossil fuels and how much annual revenue arrives via the sun.
The Human Component
Such commodities as energy are not the whole of the Earth’s wealth, simply one dimension of it. In evolutionary terms the Earth is worth far more than Mercury, Venus, (or Mars, etc..) on which the Sun’s rays also fall. There is value in the form of DNA and the whole inventory of genomes. Is this quantifiable? Should the life-forms living today be accorded worth in relation to the complexity and sophistication of their genetic make-up with humanity coming out on top? Should our payment for consumption be based on our intake of DNA? Questions for our distant successors, if any. Then there’s the whole enigma of rating humanity’s “intellectual property”.
(This particular rant is free, by the way).
It could be argued that perpetuating the evolutionary process is the greatest imperative of existence and the exhaustion of lifeless fossil fuels is simply a necessary phase; that the real story in life is survival of the fittest; that humanity has proved to be the most enterprising to date so its genome trumps all others. It deserves the rewards. Why share any wealth with inferior species? As to its intellectual property, maybe the invention of the concept of money has been its greatest achievment to date.
So, back to ‘Square One’, except to say that humanity is nothing if separated from its bio-diverse environment. Otherwise try living alone on the Moon, or Mars, without Earth’s sustenance.
So, though there may be inequality among species, humanity is dependent on other life-forms with which it is integrated. It cannot reasonably own them. Its attitude has to be one of prudent stewardship, conducted mindful of the ‘precautionary principle’.
Even a capitalist would have to adopt such an ethos. A socialist might well allow non-human life-forms a fair share of sunshine on its co-operative farms and national parks. A prudent ecologist would leave huge areas of the Earth as inaccessible to humanity and impervious to human influence.
Eternal Values
At some point in time the Sun will run out of energy. It will expand and consume the whole of the planetary system within its envelope, becoming a ‘red giant’. No doubt life on Earth will have expired long before that. It is comforting to suppose that an intervention by some supernatural being will have anticipated this risk and made provision. This cannot be depended on. It is ‘wishful thinking’ - a matter for prayer.
Other ‘outer space’ interventions, eg huge meteorite collisions with Earth, may well have ended life as we see it long before. Thus humanity’s existence, as we know it, is not eternal. It may well end before that of other Earthly life-forms.
There is an integrity to creation such that life forms are interconnected and interdependent, but no single life-form, so far as we know, is crucial to life. Certainly life on Earth could continue without humanity’s existence.
Whether humanity should ever care about life on Earth after its own extinction is a nice point. My view is that it should, if only so that there remains the possibility of new life forms emerging which, likewise, go on to develop consciousness, curiosity and imagination. They may then discover the large archive of knowledge effectively bequeathed by humanity. In that case, if life amounts to anything more than ‘the here and the now’, human life will not have been without eternal significance.
That way of looking at life and its evolution is altruistic. Suppose we take a more human self-interest approach whilst recognising that life on Earth is still evolving.
Since procreation, mutation, propagation and interdependency appear to be intrinsic to life on Earth, which is an evolving process, then humanity has a natural interest in caring for the well-being of all life on Earth of which it is an integral part. This is tantamount to an over-riding obligation of stewardship.
This attitude is reinforced in humanity, in contrast to other life forms, for several reasons:-
a) it has a rapidly expanding consciousness of self and of its relationship to the rest of existence;
b) it has the capacity to make the Earth virtually uninhabitable for life as we know it, were it so minded. In fact it is arguable that it is already doing this, inadvertently, via climate change and extinctions of other life-forms (possibly via unwitting genetic engineering too)
c) its own raison-d’etre relies on its natural urge to perpetuate its own species
d) it has a growing understanding of some of the threats to life on Earth, both within Earth, within the solar system and from so-called ‘outer space’.
e) it has curiosity, imagination and inventiveness to the point at which it can attempt to counter potential threats to the Earth, or at least to defer them, e.g. by deflecting an incoming meteorite that is heading along a collision course with Earth (or the Moon whose gravity pull can affect the Earth’s behaviour)
f) its archive of accumulated understanding of existence needs to be preserved and available to future generations for at least as long as there are conscious, sentient species surviving on Earth. Otherwise what is the point in eternal terms of human curiosity and discovery?
g) Finally, there’s the other humanitarian, conscientious principle of ‘those who make the mess should clear it up’.
AMEN!
Ethilogue
The most apparent immediate threat to Earth is that of Climate Change (according to most informed scientific opinion). The damage that could be wrought by an all-out nuclear war is also of major concern. The gradual extinction of other life forms and, potentially, the inadvertent negative consequences of genetic engineering may also raise alarms, as would the continued exponential growth in the population of humanity, especially if the existing mindset of ever-increasing material growth globally persists.
Let us assume that humanity does embrace the ethic of eternal stewardship and does not precipitate is own premature extinction through perverse behaviour. It would still be faced with outer space threats to life on Earth. How could such be delayed, if not avoided? It seems that we may arrive at yet another about turn – a moral justification for the use of nuclear-armed rockets to deflect an incoming meteorite. Maybe?. Currently, that’s fanciful. Future star-gazers may prophesy but scientists would need credible evidence before reaching for the nuclear button.
May humanity cross that bridge when it comes to it. By then we will all be ‘global citizens’. National military arsenals will be an aberration from the distant past.
It all begins with Step One whereby all nations emulate Japan. Having suffered the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan opted via Article 9 of its constitution never to fight a war again. So far, it hasn’t.
Dennis Mitchell (Sep 2009)
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