Voici la réfléxion la plus récent du groupe de théologie contextuelle québecoise.
Dans nos deux textes précédents sur la crise (Qui nous fera traverser le désert ?, avril 2009; Voir venir un monde nouveau, février 2010. Cf. http://gtcq.blogspot.com/), nous avons cherché à discerner par quels chemins nous pourrions non seulement sortir de celle-ci, mais y approfondir notre espérance. Avec le désir de susciter questionnement et partage, nous terminons cette série de textes en proposant une réflexion sur la force mobilisatrice de l’espérance. L’espérance peut être spontanément associée à l’attente, comme en contradiction avec une mobilisation active et engagée. Nous croyons plutôt qu’elle est nécessaire à cet engagement : sans elle, pourquoi continuer, surtout lorsque les résultats attendus ne sont pas au rendez-vous ou se font rares ? Encore faut-il l’interpréter. Dans la perspective chrétienne, elle est une recherche de cohérence entre notre agir présent et ce qui est promis par Dieu pour notre avenir commun. Le monde nouveau vient sans cesse vers nous ; il se révèle et s’actualise à travers nos engagements (cf. précédents textes). Comment lier existentiellement l’accueil de cette vie nouvelle et la responsabilité de la faire fructifier ? Comment rattacher espérance et mobilisation dans un contexte de crise et de multiples remises en question ?
Thursday 20 May 2010
Wednesday 19 May 2010
Ecological Economy
This is a term that is currently making the rounds and that is the fruit of a considerable history. You will remember that, for quite some time now, the term “sustainable development” has been much in vogue among governments and industry. It is a term coined by the Brundtland Commission back in the 1980s in order to respond to the need for more sensitivity to increasing environmental degradation by industry. The problem with the term is that is contains a contradiction. “Development” is inextricably bound up with an economy of growth and we have learned to our dismay that growth is, by its very nature, unsustainable on a limited planet. The development pursued in policies of “sustainable development” has shown itself to be unsustainable.
There is a further problem with the term “development” that was already well known at the time of the Brundtland Commission. The opposite of “developed” (referring to industrialized countries) was, and often still is in my minds, “underdeveloped,” or “less-developed.” However, as Gustavo Gutierrez already pointed out in the early 1970s, the countries of the so-called “Third World ” were and are not so much “less-developed” or “underdeveloped” as they are oppressed by economic forces that make an equitable distribution of wealth practically impossible. There was and is, from the perspective of oppression, a call to redirect our thinking about economy as such. Some of the reflections reproduced in this blog reflect that effort. “Economy,” as it turns out, is the way we manage our “home,” that is to say the Planet Earth, so that the needs of all its creatures might be satisfied in such a way that the Planet and life on the planet remains healthy. Granted, this is a fairly recent insight and one that has certainly not gained ascendency in the world at large, even though support is growing. Also during these same years, since the 70s, there has been a growing concern about the “environment,” as it was first termed. The problem with the term “environment” is that it is entirely human-centred. The water, air, land are seen as something that “surrounds” humans and that we needed to manage so that it serves our needs. More recently the term “ecology” has gained respect among thinkers and the general public.. “Ecology” is a term that points much more directly to the Planet Earth as such and to the complex ways in which the various elements that constitute it work to maintain a healthy interdependence. So we come to an “ecological economy.” The term has a very large frame of reference: the Planet Earth. It is particularly concerned with those 60 or so kilometres between the depths of the ocean and the stratosphere, where the majority of life forms find their habitat. As an economy it looks to the ways in which these life forms interact in such a way as to maintain a healthy balance. It also recognizes that the human species has, over the centuries, carved out such an enormous place for itself that the management of the health of that ecological balance lies more and more in human hands. In this respect “ecological economy” challenges our received theories about who we are as human beings and also our relationship with other creatures and the Planet Earth itself. It leads us to recognize that we have a responsibility to assure that the health of the Planet, upon which depends our own health as a species, is cared for.
Tuesday 4 May 2010
Strategies for Surviving Societal Breakdown
A month ago I presented a reflection on this blog entitled “Societal Breakdown.” It left open the huge question of what to do. I propose now to address this question in slightly more detail. Thomas Homer Dixon, in The Upside of Down, Knopf Canada, 2007, outlines several areas of preparedness for major change: population, energy, food, the environment, finances.
There is no doubt that, at this point, the growth in population itself poses a distinct threat to the equilibrium of the planet. There are varieties of approaches possible here and they are hotly debated. As someone who has worked in international cooperation, I would simply underline the fact, indicated in many studies, that population growth tends to level out as people are given the security that their basic needs for living with decency are met. Even more it is at that precise level (at about $13,000 per person) that the greatest level of happiness in society is attained. Below that, people tend to scramble to survive. It cannot be forgotten that almost half the population of the world lives on $2 a day or less. When income surpasses that equilibrium figure, strangely enough, the happiness dimension in life tends to diminish as more energy is devoted to trying to maintain or increase their level of contentment through “having more.” The best thing that could happen for the planet’s population would be for everyone to be able to find themselves at that level of equilibrium in their part of the world that allows them to find their basic needs satisfied and without enormous disequilibrium between the rich and the poor in any society.
Every civilisation, as noted in the earlier reflection, is based on energy exchange. Energy is absolutely required for a society to exist. The sources of energy have varied over the millennia. Sometimes it was just human labour; other times it was water (and agriculture that produced food), more recently it has been oil and gas. We know that the oil-based world is coming to an end. Increasingly oil will become difficult to provide at a reasonable cost. The nuclear option is out. The proliferation of nuclear reactors as an energy source is too expensive, terribly dangerous to the population, highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks and we still don’t know what to do with the depleted uranium waste.
Alternative energy grids need to be developed based on hydraulic sources, the sun, wind and geo-thermal sources. As Rifkin says, every building on the planet needs to be turned into a power station linked to a continental grid. In this way the population will have an adequate and sustainable source of energy to continue functioning. The problem of course is that this will require an enormous outlay in money and construction in order to transform the whole base for energy sources.
We cannot continue globalizing our food sources. As oil becomes less available the transportation costs will be prohibitive. We need to find ways to eat what is produced regionally, at least as the large base of our diet. This shouldn’t be impossible. Our grandparents certainly knew how to do that and with some of the newer advances in preserving food it should not be a major difficulty—if we are willing to alter our diets.
In this same logic we have to do away with the automobile and trucking industry as we know it. There has to be a major shift to motors that are electric or hydrogen driven. Moreover public transport has to become the major means of moving people.
We are learning more and more to recycle and to compost. However there is still a long way to go toward the reduction of waste. In Montreal practically all plastic, glass, paper and metal is recycled through a city-wide program. There is a plan to introduce industrial composting and compost pick-up by the city. We need to get rid of the manic overuse of packaging of everything we buy.
However, recycling is only the tip of the iceberg. Manufacturing, the airlines, the military and many other major sectors of the economy need to radically reduce their output of pollutants.
Finally the gap between the rich and the poor has become a crime that is destroying our civilization. The wealth and power of a few major corporate leaders and the transnationals they head up are becoming the unnamed government of the world. The idea that the capital they gather from their shareholders is to be used uniquely and solely to advance the interests of those shareholders and the corporation itself has to be definitively abandoned in favour of real social responsibility and that will entail decentralization and strict governmental regulation as outlined by Joseph Stiglitz in this recent book, Freefall, Norton, 2010.
Each of these needs to be addressed if we are to be prepared for an eventual breakdown. The European Union seems to be that area of the world where these concerns are being taken the most seriously and where concrete action is already underway and, in some countries, quite advanced. We can learn from them and with them.
Obviously, as mentioned in the earlier reflection, there has to be a strong, shared, grounded set of values that can take us through. From a purely secular point of view Jeremy Rifkin attempts to address this question in the latter part of his recent book, The Empathic Civilization, Tarcher-Penguin, 2009. In what I consider a deeper way, Thomas Berry addresses the same question in The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club, 1989 and again in The Great Work, Harmony-Bell Tower, 2000. The development of this “planetary consciousness” and of a sense of empathy with all its (human and other) creatures is fundamental to motivating the enormous effort that an effective response will require. If we take up the challenge, the possibilities for creativity are enormous.
There is no doubt that, at this point, the growth in population itself poses a distinct threat to the equilibrium of the planet. There are varieties of approaches possible here and they are hotly debated. As someone who has worked in international cooperation, I would simply underline the fact, indicated in many studies, that population growth tends to level out as people are given the security that their basic needs for living with decency are met. Even more it is at that precise level (at about $13,000 per person) that the greatest level of happiness in society is attained. Below that, people tend to scramble to survive. It cannot be forgotten that almost half the population of the world lives on $2 a day or less. When income surpasses that equilibrium figure, strangely enough, the happiness dimension in life tends to diminish as more energy is devoted to trying to maintain or increase their level of contentment through “having more.” The best thing that could happen for the planet’s population would be for everyone to be able to find themselves at that level of equilibrium in their part of the world that allows them to find their basic needs satisfied and without enormous disequilibrium between the rich and the poor in any society.
Every civilisation, as noted in the earlier reflection, is based on energy exchange. Energy is absolutely required for a society to exist. The sources of energy have varied over the millennia. Sometimes it was just human labour; other times it was water (and agriculture that produced food), more recently it has been oil and gas. We know that the oil-based world is coming to an end. Increasingly oil will become difficult to provide at a reasonable cost. The nuclear option is out. The proliferation of nuclear reactors as an energy source is too expensive, terribly dangerous to the population, highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks and we still don’t know what to do with the depleted uranium waste.
Alternative energy grids need to be developed based on hydraulic sources, the sun, wind and geo-thermal sources. As Rifkin says, every building on the planet needs to be turned into a power station linked to a continental grid. In this way the population will have an adequate and sustainable source of energy to continue functioning. The problem of course is that this will require an enormous outlay in money and construction in order to transform the whole base for energy sources.
We cannot continue globalizing our food sources. As oil becomes less available the transportation costs will be prohibitive. We need to find ways to eat what is produced regionally, at least as the large base of our diet. This shouldn’t be impossible. Our grandparents certainly knew how to do that and with some of the newer advances in preserving food it should not be a major difficulty—if we are willing to alter our diets.
In this same logic we have to do away with the automobile and trucking industry as we know it. There has to be a major shift to motors that are electric or hydrogen driven. Moreover public transport has to become the major means of moving people.
We are learning more and more to recycle and to compost. However there is still a long way to go toward the reduction of waste. In Montreal practically all plastic, glass, paper and metal is recycled through a city-wide program. There is a plan to introduce industrial composting and compost pick-up by the city. We need to get rid of the manic overuse of packaging of everything we buy.
However, recycling is only the tip of the iceberg. Manufacturing, the airlines, the military and many other major sectors of the economy need to radically reduce their output of pollutants.
Finally the gap between the rich and the poor has become a crime that is destroying our civilization. The wealth and power of a few major corporate leaders and the transnationals they head up are becoming the unnamed government of the world. The idea that the capital they gather from their shareholders is to be used uniquely and solely to advance the interests of those shareholders and the corporation itself has to be definitively abandoned in favour of real social responsibility and that will entail decentralization and strict governmental regulation as outlined by Joseph Stiglitz in this recent book, Freefall, Norton, 2010.
Each of these needs to be addressed if we are to be prepared for an eventual breakdown. The European Union seems to be that area of the world where these concerns are being taken the most seriously and where concrete action is already underway and, in some countries, quite advanced. We can learn from them and with them.
Obviously, as mentioned in the earlier reflection, there has to be a strong, shared, grounded set of values that can take us through. From a purely secular point of view Jeremy Rifkin attempts to address this question in the latter part of his recent book, The Empathic Civilization, Tarcher-Penguin, 2009. In what I consider a deeper way, Thomas Berry addresses the same question in The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club, 1989 and again in The Great Work, Harmony-Bell Tower, 2000. The development of this “planetary consciousness” and of a sense of empathy with all its (human and other) creatures is fundamental to motivating the enormous effort that an effective response will require. If we take up the challenge, the possibilities for creativity are enormous.
Monday 3 May 2010
Manifeste de Québec
Ce texte vient de tomber entre mes mains. Je voudrais le partager avec vous..
Manifeste de Québec
Pour un monde sans préjugé ni amalgame
Citoyens de Québec de toutes origines, de toutes générations, de toutes opinions, croyants de religions différentes, agnostiques ou athées, nous nous inquiétons de voir banalisée la résurgence périodique de raccourcis hâtifs conduisant à l’assimilation des termes musulman, arabe, et terroriste.
Nous voudrions d’abord clarifier ces trois notions.
Nous ne reconnaissons pas l’Islam, religion ouverte, tolérante, accueillante et généreuse, dans la parole et dans les actes de ceux qu’on nomme couramment « islamistes » ni dans le discours de certains de ceux qui les combattent. Toutes les églises ont leurs intégristes et connaissent ou ont connu des personnes peu scrupuleuses exploitant à des fins politiques la foi candide des peuples. Les juifs séfarades qu’on retrouve dans les communautés ladino autour de la Méditerranée ont été chassés d’Espagne par l’inquisition catholique, alors qu’ils y vivaient en paix pendant la longue occupation musulmane qui l’avait précédée. Le libéralisme est à ce point admis par l’Islam que les exégètes ne s’entendent pas à définir précisément le « musulman pratiquant ».
Manifeste de Québec
Pour un monde sans préjugé ni amalgame
Citoyens de Québec de toutes origines, de toutes générations, de toutes opinions, croyants de religions différentes, agnostiques ou athées, nous nous inquiétons de voir banalisée la résurgence périodique de raccourcis hâtifs conduisant à l’assimilation des termes musulman, arabe, et terroriste.
Nous voudrions d’abord clarifier ces trois notions.
Nous ne reconnaissons pas l’Islam, religion ouverte, tolérante, accueillante et généreuse, dans la parole et dans les actes de ceux qu’on nomme couramment « islamistes » ni dans le discours de certains de ceux qui les combattent. Toutes les églises ont leurs intégristes et connaissent ou ont connu des personnes peu scrupuleuses exploitant à des fins politiques la foi candide des peuples. Les juifs séfarades qu’on retrouve dans les communautés ladino autour de la Méditerranée ont été chassés d’Espagne par l’inquisition catholique, alors qu’ils y vivaient en paix pendant la longue occupation musulmane qui l’avait précédée. Le libéralisme est à ce point admis par l’Islam que les exégètes ne s’entendent pas à définir précisément le « musulman pratiquant ».
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