Whole Earth Discipline

I just read the most amazing book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand. Truly one of the most eye-opening things I’ve read in a while. He gleefully points out that our partisan loyalties of various kinds make us quite blind to what’s really going on around us. The earth and society continue to evolve at a breath taking pace, and our conceptualizations don’t quite keep up. Fascinating is his analysis of how the movement of the poor from the countryside to the city is actually an amazing piece of economic and environmental progress, freeing people to new levels of prosperity and freedom, while simultaneously removing much of the load on the countryside. A number of yesterday’s problems are becoming non-problems, with the earth’s population growth stalling and getting to a point of falling vastly sooner than anyone had expected, and the forrest growing back much faster than it’s being cut down. Meanwhile technology keeps shifting, with immense progress and promise in harnessing the ability of life to swap genes back and forth, creating new opportunities to feed the poor. While we face giant problems in the decades to come, there are also amazing opportunities out there, for anyone willing to seize them. The key challenge is to see beyond our nose – go beyond our prejudices of what a conservative, a liberal, an American city dweller, or whatever, should see and think, to see what’s really out there. Being honest and open, and thinking globally is critical right now. Even while our own society seems mired in doldrums, the planet keeps changing. Tapping into that change is what will get us out of this calm spot. Read this book and think!

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