In response to Siona's awesome post

In response and appreciation to “A few words on dawkins and harris”  a wonderful posting by Siona http://siona.zaadz.com/blog/2007/2/a_few_words_on_dawkins_and_harris

I am very interested in reading more of Hedges work, it has a very clear relevance.  I believe there can also be a trap in Hedges  and others’ work focusing on the ills of organized religion.  Though much of it certainly seems to be consistent of my stay in and study of right and orthodox wings of Christianity, I believe the identification of the fear’s source can go a little deeper than situational fears that have grown out of “authorities” abusing their power over others.

I believe the deeper fear is when an individual, seeing that the corporate authority they believed would make the right decisions for them has proven itself not to have their best interests in mind, confronts the volume of uncertainties they must content with.  If you are faced, even if just for the moment, with the very frightening notion that you will need to create your own opportunities for making a living, the center no longer holds.  Add a failing government and you have the added moments of clarity that the man behind the curtain can not adequately govern others – it is left to you to govern yourself.  The amount of cognitive work to be self governing and self sufficient in a society whose educational system offers little to no resources to those who can look into this fear for even a few moments.

Those of us blessed through some series of events to have access to and understand the works of Jung, Wilber, Gandhi, MLK, etc. have some of the tools necessary to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” as the reformer Martin Luther once framed it.  We can look into the fear and look around us and begin to articulate a cosmology where fear is a part of an impetus to grabbing hold of our own personal responsibility in order to play a harmonious role in the systems we are a part of.

The fear of facing one’s personal responsibility can be even more simply seen in American consumerism.  Take for instance the many household products that include chlorine as one of their chief ingredients or agents used in processing.  When people in our family began to understand the effects of organochlorines we started sharing what we learned with other family members and friends.  The reaction was so similar to that which I encountered in my former fellow Christians when I spoke to them about some small challenge to the Bible.  If you question one product or trusted brand, you have to questions them all.  If you question the validity of one verse, you have to consider them all.  The operative word there being “you” – the individual has to do this – not your pastor, or the company, or the TV or you family – you. Ahhhhhhhhh!

Again, a similar fear emerges – how can I who knows nothing about chemistry begin to understand and make choices about what products to use.  I mean I don’t want to be responsible for plundering the earth; I don’t want to face the cancerous growths on sea turtle because I needed fluffy white toilet paper, how can I begin to face this. 

With fear and trembling, I suppose.  

To live with that fear and to find confidence in my own abilities to answer that fear and organize my cosmology in response to it is the truest feeling road to salvation I have yet found.  To play some roll in another doing this, well that is something more rewarding than being saved.

The demonization of corporations, religions, governments or isms fall in line with the very familiar pit we have lived in for so long.  That archetypal pit is:  The world is evil, it is the afterlife where we will realize our true state or reward.  Because the world is evil then of course we must renounce it.  And isn’t this convenient because by renouncing the world I am no longer responsible for living in it except where there are moments to prove I am worthy of the grace I have received.  This is a pit of failed hope where our sin has darkened the very fibers of our lives, and our best hope is to make it through the sludge we are a part of in order to wear the white robes. 

Similarly, we progressives are beginning to realize there is no end to plastics or chlorines.  They are here and while we might be able to phase them out before they kill everything downstream from us, we will still somehow need to learn to integrate what we have made to date.  By making profitable more sustainable practices we will find a way to live more harmoniously with the other systems on the planet.  By making profitable the reasons and ways to clean up the mess that has already been made, we will find our way out of some of the illness we have caused to these systems.

If for some miracle we can look into this fear and see our role, then action must follow, and I am sure I don’t have to tell you folks how hard that is.  You are here, you are facing this fear in every aspect of your life.  From household cleaners, dry cleaning, pools, cars, products, hair products, toilet paper, etc.  Some of these we are kicking ass with, some of them we are embarrassed at the lack of progress over.

Of course the greatest fear is always the one we are facing at the moment.  So the greatest courage must be the act of placing ourselves into that empty space in front of us in a way that eliminates the boundary of self and others.

In that light, let’s look back at the problem of fear that Hedges and others illuminate, and at the same time let’s look at the consumer faith issue I called out earlier.  In some ways the best we can do in our interaction with these cosmologies and their communities is to empower them with courage and content that will help them use the relatively safe footing they feel they have.  For the right wing Christian, there are plenty of Biblical illustrations of Jesus being “in the world” or “Christ in Culture”.  Within the framework of seeing the Bible as the authoritative source for how to live your life, there are plenty of passages to point a believer towards taking more responsibility for their life and choices. 

For consumers the same thing exists.  There are plenty of moments in our short history as consumers where we can see the power of the marketplace.  When people said, they wanted something different and they wanted it at fairer prices or wanted it to be made without others having suffered.  We can look to the rapid growth of the organic markets in Europe and the US to see the power of our individual choices as consumers.

Where does this lead us back to a base discussion of energy and time and resources.  Who has them and what is possible for each of us in the road towards this sort of fear facing and the corrective actions that may come?  Does the woman who works at a textile mill in China who comes home only to work domestically until she falls into bed?  Or even the information technology worker who puts in 16-20 hours a day “ramifying the Earths new central nervous system”?  The frightening thing is that we all have this responsibility but some of us do not live conditions where this sort of responsibility is easily noticed, let alone embraced amidst the hardships of getting food on the table or dodging the bullets.

So of course we see that by facing one fear, we must ultimately face them all.  Those who will survive this fear and who our hope lives in are those who can stand in this tempest of responsibilities and somehow place some small piece of the puzzle in its place, and then find meaning and purpose in doing it again and again.  There is no nobility in this, there is no ego, it is our proper place – there is only the feeling of having found our microcosm or home and the deep appreciation for this good fortune.

I look to a very old metaphor shared by 3 of the world’s wisdom traditions.  The metaphor of the Garden of Eden.  Not to discover our “fallen and sinful nature”, but to see a beautiful job description – humans as gardeners.  Like any good gardener we have the wonderful responsibilities of balancing deep appreciation and respect for what is and the dire and glorious ability to take part in the ongoing evolution of the garden we are keeping.