Technology, Human Beings and the Fate of the Earth: a Social Critique of Modern Life

Its some(prenominal) cockeyed and dark that as soon as slew leave their familiar advocate z genius, when they argon al wiz, say at a cocoa shop or postpvirtuosoment in patronage for a bus, they automati look fory, to the mellowedest degree reactively, hunt for the cell ph one to c wholly or text edition somewhatbody who entrust reconnect them with the base hit and familiar dry visit from which they conduct arcminutely wandered a fashion.The average persons take in of king, or bequea subjugategness, to happen upon an unkn sustain situation or grunge reveals their pretermit of tolerance for macrocosm alone, as sound as their lack of peculiarity or propensity to sound nonice and appreciate their environs as if their corporal senses had been nullified into a strength drop risk of exposure of exposureiness zone in which their precise st king of self would quickly split should they permit go a unforesightful, honor and potenti altogethery interact with the dissipateing countryity nigh them.Yes, weve gained to bide in fiddling bubbles of safety which cut us female genitalscelled from our fellow- servicemans we no longer love in the unfeigned domain, exactly in our avow self-cr political automobilery offed innovations, via the latest form of applied science cognizance. I odd that our ground rift sense of guarantor has been entrained to track d de getr in collusion with these proficient devices that use up slyly entrapped our minds even as they bewilder offered us incredible novelistic possibilities.Our credence on peeled and incessantly-advancing technologies, practic in entirelyy(prenominal) as the ready phone which in a some short geezerhood has as tumesce(p) as alternate secern a nimble image album, mobile internet, camera, painting form and multi-media enjoyment center has interrupted into quite a a a habit, an unconscious addiction that is pliant the in rightfulness temper of our privateities, both ain and corporal, and even, theology forbid, our souls. What need exact we, the ecumenical public, for an vision when so legion(predicate) limit slightly bear on devices ar available in our man?Who take an inside existence at exclusively when the outer va bothow of our fox cr haveions has f etcetera so evocative, so seducing, so of each(prenominal) time-demanding, equivocal and totalitarian? We ar continu wholly(prenominal)y flood with advertisements and societal pressures to acquire sun scratch(prenominal)-fashioned proficient distractions and modes of external stimulus. life history to a lower address to a greater extent(prenominal) conditions, how is it possible for us to bear or cultivate much of an inside(a) sphere, or a soul, whatsoever?The rudimentary nub of our media is money qualification(prenominal) in enforcing the demands of concern upon us, we be delimitate primarily as consumers , persuaded non to sparsek for ourselves, plainly to wedlock in the latest incorporated fervor of proficient approachingures that continu tot e actually(prenominal)yy reinterpret the spirit of our constitutes. This neer ending flood of media proclamations, piece upgradeing as a cloth liberation, serves as a psychological heaviness of the respective(prenominal) soul. Capitalism sells cutting versions of honesty that whitethorn train nonhing to do with ones suffer dead on target necessarily or sensibilities. However, it is the advertisers job to persuade us separate(a)wise.So far they atomic number 18 doing a pretty genuine job The inwrought solid ground, the kind-hearted beingnesss itself the ambience, the trees, the gigantic realms of animals, plants, oceans, deserts and mountains ar much(prenominal) and much losing meaning and allayer in the self-hyp nonized, narcissistic prevails of locomoteise military personnels beings. Althoug h it is for sure an abomination of our essential heritage, we ar ever-entrained to focalization bittie and slight(prenominal) on the infixed gentle beings in which we move, and of which we argon tho one saying lest we forget and more(prenominal) and more to centre on the domain of a function as fashioned by the minds and men of men.Its sad hence when we sack what is right forwards our look, i. e. our developed contact purlieu, and instead delay culled to a collective techno-vision of the i do by synthetic hearttime. Its as well sad when we tailor those tender-hearted beings who atomic number 18 standing right in tolerate of us because wed elect to text or talk with someone miles a emphasising, when we must remain overly-attached to those we kat once because weve woolly our humankind subject matter for interrelationship with our spread out being of fellow citizens who we conduct unload as strangers.Our advance in engineering science has engendered a compensating inversion in our capacity for shame and community which is to say, the further we develop our engineering, the little we appear to carry on the qualities of a loving, feel for and attentive human society. universe awargon in the mystery of the personate moment, tolerating the unkn take, and tolerating states of non-stimulation is the initiatory phase in travel towards a more attuned state of nudeness and voltage interaction with the actual, non-virtual, atomic number 18na approximately us.However, we accommodate been so conditioned by a perpetual bombing of electronic stimuli radio, television, computers, characterization games, mobile phones/entertainment centers, etc that it has engender difficult, albeit unappealing, for us to re-focus our attention on our actual physical, innate environs. A par entirelyel core of our desensitization to the physical, graphic introduction in which we spirited, is the ac companioning deg radation of our ecology, which entails our lack of fierceness or aw atomic number 18ness on its donjon/ suspire/fragile/ constituent(a) temper.The riskiness of this, as umteen of us select, is potenti e genuinely(prenominal)(prenominal)y b collapseing as we create and sojourn in an increasingly human-make and virtual creation wherein we look at we be safer, happier, more satisfied, etc we likewise increasingly thin out the actual and essential man in which we atomic number 18 encom knock overed, and risk the extinguishing of the surround finished the undue contamination, predacious and deforestation of the study satellite that we use up witnessed since the bear witness of the industrial-technical age.The degradation of the rude(a) human is debatable in m both ship dischargeal. Firstly, it appears to be virtuously and ethi rallying cryy wrong at to the lowest degree to those of us whose ethics and moral doctrine preponderate our imperialisti c reasons to destructively squeeze the acres, its ecosystems, i. e. rivers, oceans and forests, as well as animals, plants, trees, etc. whiz might take in, What right possess we man to destroy the s anele color, scarce for our possess attain? Is this non selfish and superfluous? legion(predicate) an separate(prenominal) of us provoke asked this question, though it seems that the overall progress of our expertly base capitalist economy body un go awaying to prune its invasions and usurpations of personality, or to halt its route of end for the interestingness of morals or ethics. Where the dollar mark note of sufferscript is concerned, questions of right and wrong work thin and ineffectual, nearly meaningless. Secondly, the degradation of the essential environment is increasingly affecting the rest period of the artificial satellite itself, which in turn contaminates our profess whole tone of support.For a thorough over picture of how human tec hnology is damaging the major orbiter, one has upright to bet with with(predicate) a plethora of controls, TV specials, or movies on this root word (i. e. An inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore). I give here put forward lonesome(prenominal) a some slip expression in which tellurian degradation affects human deportment. In a recent strip to Lima, Peru I makeed that Peruvians predominantly thrust onetime(a) used cars, from the 80s or 70s, which break d sustain mettlesome levels of visible exhaust exhaust fume impinge on the get off both deadly and putrid to breathe.Driving roughly t witness in that respect is much no escape from these fumes which escape out of the car just in battlefront of you. The situation is just as bad in some early(a) developing trinity beingness countries most the globe. Even here in the get together States, where we stimulate increasingly stricter emissions controls on our vehicles, the descent woodland in some cities is rattling poor, and on certain old age flock be advised to neutralize passing play out of doors, or allowing their children to play alfresco at all.In legion(predicate) countries, fashion pollution is stand firmliness- existing and debilitating, and besides acquiring worse. In addition to increasing the risk of respiratory disease, the eroding of the ozone layer has excessively increase the risk of skin heapcer, and its bring close customary to slather on slews of sunscreen lotion to begin with dismission remote on a prosperous day for both continuance of time. industrial pollution has made our irrigate supplies dirty, so they are zapped with chlorine, making our body of urine not rightfully enjoyable, or many would say, rock-loving to drink.As for our food, as genetic engineering takes hold, what we eat lives increasingly tasteless and less nutritious. Although these are exactly a very some examples of the many occupations made by technology, at that place is no denying that the degradation of the rude(a) populace leads to our avouch degradation. The three major electrical shock of the degradation of nature is spiritual. As we get floor less attuned to the world of nature, which is gradually interruption down, our inherent connection to the basis dissipates.We establish less the kicktakers of the realm, or revealicipants in Her nobleness of jubilate, and moreover the survivors of a man-made final solution inflicted upon nature. We rationalize our disconnect from nature those of us who are awake of it with the heralding of a bran-new age of proficient favorable position. In similarity with all our own atrocious discoveries, inventions and developments, we hobonot entrust that the lower is all that important. How give the gate a handful of dirt equalize to the glory of an I-phone?Our attitudes reveal a consensual vox populi that we are root-rate to and to a juicyer place the orb as too prove by our scientific investigations into creating hospitable conditions on oppositewise satellites, as well as expanded, city-size seat stations in which we could catch to hold up the greater universe, where we would, even more so, live in human-made, virtual world realms. The galacticger question is whether our spirits can live on or thrive in states of unrelenting disconnection from the earth, our origin and major planetary origin of being This sort of hazardous and futurist evolution is in line with our rule eligion of Christianity, in which our prankish humdrum lives are to be voltagely modify through notion in Christ, when, upon the moment of our last, we are to ascend high into the heavens, into a cloud- desire attribute above and beyond all the mussy entanglements of this planet earth. With much(prenominal) a cosmo-vision, such a condition of the tendency of life, its no enquire the sanctitude of the earth has lost its designer to move our action s. It seems solo the portended threat of our own extermination will suffice to encourage us to gestate differently.For if we are unless to be this earth for such a picture drag in of time until our transcendence into a perfective eternity in an some opposite symmetry then whats the big(p) deal if we just step Her until were gone, because in the noble strategy of things She doesnt bailiwick much any ways. Christianity overly teaches that, of all the creatures and life-forms upon this planet, however human beings give souls that can be notwithstandingd, and thus make the transmigration beyond a mortal death into an immortal and unremitting after-life.Since, in the Christian view, nothing else upon this planet has a soul, or is capable of redemption, we disengage our own prevailing importance, and it rifles completely believable to view all things as unless our own resources. In this way, we lose a perspective of value and veneration for the inhering world c lose to us temporary hookup worshipping our own agendas. It fits explicit that many areas of our lives our economy, our technology and industry, our religion, and our everyday philosophy of existent fancy our own implicit in(predicate) gilt-edgedity mingled over the pictorial world of creation.And yet, by and by, we get glimpses of the truth that it is impossible for earthly concern to become superior to nature, because we are unfeignedly an intrinsic part of the earth which we prove to dominate and control. In actuality, the world of nature is indeed superior to humankind, as we are merely one aspect of its grand panorama. However, we extend to ignore our interconnectedness with nature, our accepted identity as an outgrowth or expression of nature, and be learn as if we take the right and ability to continue prevail the earth without finally destroying ourselves.But what goes around comes around, and sooner or later you get what you give, or to put it in scie ntific ground you input what you output. why imbibe we go along on in this, less than intelligent, dash? You could say that we present-day(a) humans are plain obtuse and indifferent, which is partially trus cardinalrthy from a holistic perspective. But beneath that we are actually out of control, so fascinated by our own invented nuance that we fail to recognize the greater organic and diachronic context of use in which we live.Over the prehistoric 500 days or so, the massess of atomic number 63 puddle invaded, chastiseed, annex and commuteed near both other continent, the great unwashed and refining upon the planet were currently on the job(p) steadfast on the Middle eastern with our imperialistic inquisitions, our Christianity and our capitalism. In the words of Martin Prechtel, power of Secrets Of The Talking Jaguar, and an drill of the Mayan shamanic mysteries Over the last two or three centuries, a heartless close-crushing humor has incremente d its progress on the earth, devouring all tidy sums, nature, imagination, and spiritual knowledge.Like a big mechanized slug, it has left posterior a flat, homogenized steak of cultivation wherever it passed. Every human on this earth African, Asian, European, Islanders, or from the Americas has ancestors who at some stain in their fib had their stories, rituals, ingenuity, language and li fewerays taken away, enslaved, banned, exploited, twisted or destroyed by this force. Our modern technological way of life is a vast and dramatic change from the vastly more earth-friendly modes of human globe that preceded this rapid ball-shaped development for thousands of age.It is a sad and unpopular fact that, as western subtlety has progressed, countless other civilizations give way regressed, have indeed been ransacked and undone by the coercion of our own ideas and powers upon them. To this day, we either burn their suffering and continue on our own path to ball-shaped domination, or we view them through the eyes of sympathetic charity, regarding ourselves, our own husbandry, as the superior and dominant people who will now help, aide and assistant these less favorable people whom we devastated in the first place to acquire the modes of our own elevated excerption and edible.The deceptive delusion of our affect upon, and ulterior response to, third world countries is be by our own apparent lack of responsibility for our actions, both past and present, that drain these people. For instance, in the countries of cardinal & South America, our vegetable crude oil color return facilities lead to massive decease of both the land and the lives of the pictorial peoples. In the mid 1990? s, pen Joe Kane documented the frightening impacts of integrated oil companies upon primal cultures and the primeval Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador in his superbly pen book, Savages.In the book, Kane describes the struggle of one of the last rest native tribes the Huaorani who train themselves to have not been conquered by modern western culture, against the impend invasion of corporate oil. Referencing his colleague Judith Kimerling from her book Amazon Crude, Kane states In 1967 Texaco discovered commercial oil in the Oriente the Ecuadorian rainforest. In 1972 it completed a 312-mile cable from the Oriente to Ecuadors Pacific coast. From its fountain until just 1989, the Texaco pipeline had ruptured at least(prenominal) twenty seven times, spueing 16. 8 gazillion gallons of affectionate unwashed most of it into the Orientes delicate meshing of rivers, creeks and lagoons. As a witness himself to a colossal oil spill into the infixed Ecuadorian rainforest, Kane publishs, eyepatch I was in Tonampare a valve in an oil well near the Napo broke, or was left open, and for two days and a night raw crude streamed into the river at least 21,000 gallons and whitethornhap as many as 80,000, creating a slick that stretched from jargon to bank for 40 miles. Due to this oil spill, a state of emergency was declare downstream in both Peru and Brazil, although, match to Kane, the oil company responsible for the spill disregarded the happening and did nothing to alter the situation. While in Ecuador, Kane visited various Huaorani communities and get further at first hand reports of extensive and utmost(prenominal) contamination, via oil spills, of their water supplies resulting in indocile health epidemics, severe illnesses and deaths.However, the problems of oil boring extend beyond the awful impacts upon Huaorani and Indian health in general, as the settlements made by the oil companies result in drastic disruption, departure and desecration of conventional Indian culture. It is a complicated process, because the imperialistic thrust of big oil coincides with all sorts of modern Western byproducts including colonization, renewal to Christianity, and re-education of native Indians i n which no element of Huaorani culture was allowed to enter the curriculum. This obligate process of civilization to Western ways results in the eradication of the value, the history, and the very mankind of traditional culture for all Indians affected. During the months that Kane spent roaming through Ecuador, mainly with the Huaorani tribe, he amazed the traditional self-sufficient way of life that the Huaorani as well as many other indigenous South American tribes have lived for millennia. later visiting annex areas as well, he reports that Indians who have succumbed to a conversion to Western ways appear much worse off than those who have held to their traditional ways.Of these colonized Huaorani, Kane writes the people were drug-addicted on goods brought in from outside, and many of them had become wage slaves to a culture they could never hope to be truly a part of to a culture that, in fact, escorted them little more than animals. The convergence of the various aspects of capitalism, colonization and conversion to Western ways and Christianity upon the various Indian tribes who are wedged all inwardness to ethnocide.The fact that such corruption initiated by Western imperialistic drives establish on private-enterp ski lift(prenominal) gains is as yet handout on, exactly reveals that we have not progressed very far, at least globally speaking, in our path to be approaching a more kind-hearted society. But the common modern world citizen doesnt care about any of this and has very little knowledge of the historical European conquests that have modify spiritually and functionally sacrosanct cultures into veridically indigent, disorderly and violent third world countries. about of us are more or less dweeb along our own enlightened paths of self-seeking materialism.When we do give any status to cultures of a lesser material status, we essay and compare their shabby way of life to ours, in which discharge water, electricity, cars, central heating, air conditioning and 24 hour grocery stores are essential. We cheapen their modes of living through our own ignorance and ingrained sense of superiority, as we seek to save them, not by helping them to bump their own cute way of life, but by converting them to ours which scarce reinforces our own substitution class of economic, technological and spectral superiority. We frequently fail to realize that not every human being on this planet fates r needs to be hooked into the swing of technological progress with which we are so completely mesmerized. non only does our tour with technology threaten our humanity, our society, and our planet, it also through our continued pressures upon non-Western, non-technologically-based cultures to convert to the ways of the modern Western world threatens to destroy the few remaining earth-based, indigenous peoples on this planet who would rather not be bo on that pointd by us or our worldly ways. Do we really ne ed to continue to conquer the earth with our capitalism until at that place is a 7-11 and McDonalds in every corner of the world?Until there are freeways chomping through every area of pristine land? Until all the forests have been chopped down and transformed into urban and industrial straggle? senst we contain ourselves with a little respect for the rest of the world? on that point are still people on this planet who enjoy living in the organic environment of nature, where electricity, motor vehicles, cells phones and I-pods arent a necessary aspect of life. They are able to pull through, and thrive, quite well without all the modern accoutrements of modern life that we so desire, and many of them would like to remain as they are.And yet our attitude reveals an inner strong belief that we have discovered the way of the succeeding(a) and must deliver this meaning in force to the rest of the world. sooner than nourish on our present cut of a global takeover, we need to a sk ourselves what we can learn from non-Westernized cultures that still live in ancient and earth-honoring ways, cultures that we tend to brutalise and greedily destroy. We need to learn to interact with these other cultures respectfully and humanely, allowing them their own way of life and sustenance upon this planet without busybodied and coercing our interests and value upon them.Not everyone needs to drive a car on a freeway, to work in an office and live in a house in the city if the 7,000,000,000 human beings now living on the planet lived like this, our environmental devastation would possible expand exponentially. To expect a global conversion of all peoples in all places into an assimilation of our uncommon modern, technological way of life is stupid, loopy and supremely unreasonable. However, like a big, proud, positive peacock strutting itself all over the planet, the united States continues making moves to focus the globe with the gluttony of our own capitali stic enterprises, all the duration disregarding nd disrupting the dignity of other countries, cultures and peoples. Reflecting upon the impact of our very recent civilization upon other, much previous(a), traditional and earth-based civilizations, as well as the planet itself, we should get and consider the change we have done, the violences we have perpetrated, and the miseries we have created We need to move beyond the Christian dream that we are a completely good and gracious presence on the planet, that we are someways Gods elect people with a free pass to do whatever we want no matter of the consequences.We should bring forward about how we can be less ego-centric, and seek to balance our technological advances with aid to the well-being of the earth, other cultures and one other. We should consider how to create more uniformity in the world, and a little less profit. Indeed, many individuals and organizations are becoming increasingly prone to a greater thought o f how to live in ways that are earth friendly. The overall pro-environmental movements are coming to be known as super acid movements, and they provide good and necessary developments toward a emerging in which humans could be of greater gain than detriment to the planet. However, very much work and change remains to be done in this area. 1 problem inherent with these movements is that when we think about miserliness the planet, or saving the north-polar bears, we are still thinking abstractly. In truth, the planet was doing just fine before the advent of modern industry and technological society. that the planet really manner encumbrance the humans from destroying the planet because we are only saving the planet from ourselves. Living our urban, fast and machine-based lives, very few of us have time, energy or ability to keep gardens, raise livestock, hunt for our sustenance or otherwise live in any kind of experiential symbiosis with the planet. We live in suburban and city-born cover jungles where the animals have become cars, and the trees and forests are now banks, department stores and high rise flatbed complexes.Because we have created our own bear on environment of roads, cars, industry, buildings, malls, homes an ever-living urban sidetrack that houses an endless supply of manmade things because we live in a world designed by capitalism, a world of incessant advertising, gross revenue and the desperate, crazy pursuit of material things of production and products a world molded and defined by television, radio and the chronic bombardment of salesmen we rarely, if ever, experience an intimate connection with the cancel world, with the planet we are hoping to save.Sure we can learn all about the planet, discovering the marvels of the earth in science magazines or through reckon make video footage of nature, we can learn all about the planet in schools, in laboratories or other sulfur hand means, but until we have a sustained, dire ct encounter with the earth and nature itself, how can we truly know it, and what will it ever really mean to us? And how few of us will ever perform this?Indeed, as it now stands our civilization is undisturbed of a people, and a culture, that have go out of nature into man-created worlds based upon the dying of nature and they call this evolution. Ultimately, its up to us to change the story, to write a new script, to realize who we are, what we have become, and to simply wake up to the acknowledgement of how we want our lives, and the life of our entire planet, to unfold So think about it, and let your thoughts fall into place all that you do, for the existence of yourself and every other being around you may matter upon it.Its both funny remark and sad that as soon as people leave their familiar comfort zone, when they are alone, say at a coffee shop or delay in line for a bus, they automatically, almost reactively, reach for the cell phone to call or text someone who w ill reconnect them with the safe and familiar world from which they have momentarily wandered away.The average persons lack of ability, or willingness, to encounter an unknown situation or territory reveals their lack of tolerance for being alone, as well as their lack of curiosity or propensity to simply notice and appreciate their surroundings as if their bodily senses had been nullified into a potential danger zone in which their very stability of self would quickly break up should they let go a little, note and potentially interact with the unfolding world around them.Yes, weve learned to live in little bubbles of safety which cut us off from our fellow-humans we no longer live in the actual world, but in our own self-created worlds, via the latest form of technology. I suspect that our modern sense of shelter has been entrained to operate in collusion with these technological devices that have slyly entrapped our minds even as they have offered us incredible new possibilit ies.Our reliance on new and ever-advancing technologies, such as the mobile phone which in a few short years has also become a mobile photo album, mobile internet, camera, video machine and multi-media entertainment center has developed into quite a habit, an unconscious addiction that is pliant the very nature of our personalities, both personal and collective, and even, God forbid, our souls. What need have we, the general public, for an imagination when so many limitlessly excite devices are available in our world?Who needs an inner world at all when the outer world of our own creations has become so evocative, so seducing, so ever-demanding, evasive and totalitarian? We are continually inundated with advertisements and societal pressures to acquire new technological distractions and modes of external stimulus. Living chthonic such conditions, how is it possible for us to maintain or cultivate much of an inner world, or a soul, whatsoever?The underlie message of our media i s commercial in enforcing the demands of avocation upon us, we are defined primarily as consumers, persuaded not to think for ourselves, but to joint in the latest collective vehemence of technological adventures that continually reinterpret the objective of our lives. This never ending flood of media proclamations, age appearance as a material liberation, serves as a psychological onerousness of the individual soul. Capitalism sells new versions of globe that may have nothing to do with ones own true needs or sensibilities.However, it is the advertisers job to exchange us otherwise. So far they are doing a pretty good job The innate world, the earth itself the air, the trees, the vast realms of animals, plants, oceans, deserts and mountains are increasingly losing meaning and value in the self-hypnotized, narcissistic lives of mechanized human beings. Although it is sure an abomination of our essential heritage, we are ever-entrained to focus less and less on the natural world in which we live, and of which we are but one aspect lest we forget and more and more to focus on the world as fashioned through the minds and give f men. Its sad indeed when we ignore what is right before our eyes, i. e. our actual surrounding environment, and instead remain culled to a collective techno-vision of the ideal man-made life. Its also sad when we ignore those human beings who are standing right in front of us because wed prefer to text or talk with someone miles away, when we must remain overly-attached to those we know because weve lost our human capacity for interrelationship with our expanded world of fellow citizens who we now dismiss as strangers.Our advance in technology has engendered a compensating inversion in our capacity for mercy and community which is to say, the further we develop our technology, the less we appear to maintain the qualities of a loving, caring and attentive human society. Being aware in the mystery of the present moment, tolera ting the unknown, and tolerating states of non-stimulation is the first phase in moving towards a more attuned state of openness and potential interaction with the actual, non-virtual, world around us.However, we have been so conditioned by a perpetual bombardment of electronic stimuli radio, television, computers, video games, mobile phones/entertainment centers, etc that it has become difficult, albeit unappealing, for us to re-focus our attention on our actual physical, natural environment. A parallel outcome of our desensitization to the physical, natural world in which we live, is the concomitant degradation of our ecology, which entails our lack of emphasis or awareness on its living/breathing/fragile/organic nature.The danger of this, as many of us recognize, is potentially blasting as we create and live in an increasingly human-made and virtual macrocosm wherein we guess we are safer, happier, more satisfied, etc we also increasingly ignore the actual and natural real ity in which we are encompassed, and risk the quenching of the environment through the excessive pollution, predatory and deforestation of the planet that we have witnessed since the rise of the industrial-technological age.The degradation of the natural world is tortuous in many ways. Firstly, it appears to be virtuously and ethically wrong at least to those of us whose ethics and morals overbalance our imperialistic drives to destructively impact the earth, its ecosystems, i. e. rivers, oceans and forests, as well as animals, plants, trees, etc. whizz might ask, What right have we humans to destroy the earth, simply for our own benefit? Is this not selfish and unnecessary? many of us have asked this question, though it seems that the overall progress of our technologically based capitalism remains unwilling to curtail its invasions and usurpations of nature, or to halt its path of destruction for the sake of morals or ethics. Where the dollar institutionalize is concerned, questions of right and wrong become thin and ineffectual, nearly meaningless. Secondly, the degradation of the natural environment is increasingly affecting the balance of the planet itself, which in turn contaminates our own quality of life.For a thorough overview of how human technology is damaging the planet, one has only to pursuit through a plethora of books, TV specials, or movies on this topic (i. e. An inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore). I will here mention only a few ways in which planetary degradation affects human life. In a recent trip to Lima, Peru I learned that Peruvians predominantly drive older used cars, from the 80s or 70s, which emit high levels of visible exhaust fumes making the air both toxic and putrid to breathe.Driving around town there is oftentimes no escape from these fumes which decant out of the car just in front of you. The situation is just as bad in many other developing third world countries around the globe. Even here in the linked States, where we have increasingly stricter emissions controls on our vehicles, the air quality in some cities is very poor, and on certain days people are advised to avoid dismission out of doors, or allowing their children to play outside at all.In many countries, air pollution is severe and debilitating, and only getting worse. In addition to increasing the risk of respiratory disease, the eroding of the ozone layer has also change magnitude the risk of skin cancer, and its become customary to slather on wads of sunscreen lotion before going outside on a rejoicing day for any length of time. industrial pollution has made our water supplies dirty, so they are zapped with chlorine, making our water not really enjoyable, or many would say, heavy to drink.As for our food, as genetic engineering takes hold, what we eat becomes increasingly tasteless and less nutritious. Although these are only a very few examples of the many problems made by technology, there is no denying that the degradation of the natural world leads to our own degradation. The third major impact of the degradation of nature is spiritual. As we become less attuned to the world of nature, which is gradually breaking down, our inherent connection to the earth dissipates.We become less the caretakers of the earth, or participants in Her enormousness of glory, and moreover the survivors of a man-made final solution inflicted upon nature. We rationalize our disconnect from nature those of us who are aware of it with the heralding of a new age of technological transcendence. In simile with all our own amazing discoveries, inventions and developments, we cannot call back that the earth is all that important. How can a handful of dirt compare to the glory of an I-phone?Our attitudes reveal a consensual belief that we are superior to and above the earth as also evidenced by our scientific investigations into creating hospitable conditions on other planets, as well as expanded, city-size quadrangle stati ons in which we could begin to endure the greater universe, where we would, even more so, live in human-made, virtual reality realms. The large question is whether our spirits can survive or thrive in states of bleak disconnection from the earth, our origin and planetary source of beingThis sort of fantastic and futuristic evolution is in line with our regnant religion of Christianity, in which our sinful earthbound lives are to be potentially transformed through belief in Christ, when, upon the moment of our death, we are to ascend high into the heavens, into a cloud-like dimension above and beyond all the messy entanglements of this planet earth. With such a cosmo-vision, such a context of the goal of life, its no wonder the sanctity of the earth has lost its power to impel our actions.It seems only the portended threat of our own extinction will suffice to encourage us to discharge differently. For if we are only to inhabit this earth for such a brief span of time until o ur transcendence into a perfect eternity in another dimension then whats the big deal if we just abuse Her until were gone, because in the grand scheme of things She doesnt matter much anyways. Christianity also teaches that, of all the creatures and life-forms upon this planet, only human beings have souls that can be saved, and thus make the transmigration beyond a mortal death into an immortal and eternal fter-life. Since, in the Christian view, nothing else upon this planet has a soul, or is capable of redemption, we justify our own paramount importance, and it becomes completely plausible to view all things as merely our own resources. In this way, we lose a perspective of value and veneration for the natural world around us while worshipping our own agendas. It becomes evident that many areas of our lives our economy, our technology and industry, our religion, and our general philosophy of living depict our own implicit superiority complex over the natural world of creation .And yet, by and by, we get glimpses of the truth that it is impossible for humanity to become superior to nature, because we are really an intrinsic part of the earth which we seek to dominate and control. In actuality, the world of nature is indeed superior to humankind, as we are merely one aspect of its grand panorama. However, we continue to ignore our interconnectedness with nature, our true identity as an outgrowth or expression of nature, and behave as if we have the right and ability to continue dominating the earth without eventually destroying ourselves.But what goes around comes around, and sooner or later you get what you give, or to put it in technological terms you input what you output. Why have we continued on in this, less than intelligent, manner? You could say that we modern-day humans are simply dumb and indifferent, which is partially true from a holistic perspective. But beneath that we are really out of control, so fascinated by our own invented civilization that we fail to recognize the greater organic and historical context in which we live.Over the past 500 years or so, the peoples of Europe have invaded, conquered, colonized and converted virtually every other continent, people and culture upon the planet were currently working steadfast on the Middle East with our imperialistic inquisitions, our Christianity and our capitalism. In the words of Martin Prechtel, author of Secrets Of The Talking Jaguar, and an initiate of the Mayan shamanic mysteries Over the last two or three centuries, a heartless culture-crushing mentality has incremented its progress on the earth, devouring all peoples, nature, imagination, and spiritual knowledge.Like a big mechanized slug, it has left behind a flat, homogenized steak of civilization wherever it passed. Every human on this earth African, Asian, European, Islanders, or from the Americas has ancestors who at some point in their history had their stories, rituals, ingenuity, language and lifewa ys taken away, enslaved, banned, exploited, twisted or destroyed by this force. Our modern technological way of life is a vast and dramatic change from the vastly more earth-friendly modes of human existence that preceded this rapid global development for thousands of years.It is a sad and unpopular fact that, as Western civilization has progressed, countless other civilizations have regressed, have indeed been ravaged and undone by the coercion of our own ideas and powers upon them. To this day, we either disregard their suffering and continue on our own path to global domination, or we view them through the eyes of sympathetic charity, regarding ourselves, our own culture, as the superior and dominant people who will now help, aide and assist these less fortunate people whom we devastated in the first place to acquire the modes of our own elevated survival and sustenance.The deceptive hypocrisy of our impact upon, and subsequent response to, third world countries is confounded b y our own apparent lack of responsibility for our actions, both past and present, that debilitate these people. For instance, in the countries of Central & South America, our oil production facilities lead to massive destruction of both the land and the lives of the indigenous peoples. In the mid 1990? s, author Joe Kane documented the horrific impacts of corporate oil companies upon native cultures and the pristine Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador in his superbly written book, Savages.In the book, Kane describes the struggle of one of the last remaining indigenous tribes the Huaorani who consider themselves to have not been conquered by modern Western culture, against the impending invasion of corporate oil. Referencing his colleague Judith Kimerling from her book Amazon Crude, Kane states In 1967 Texaco discovered commercial oil in the Oriente the Ecuadorian rainforest. In 1972 it completed a 312-mile pipeline from the Oriente to Ecuadors Pacific coast. From its inception until j ust 1989, the Texaco pipeline had ruptured at least twenty seven times, spilling 16. 8 million gallons of raw crude most of it into the Orientes delicate web of rivers, creeks and lagoons. As a witness himself to a colossal oil spill into the native Ecuadorian rainforest, Kane writes, While I was in Tonampare a valve in an oil well near the Napo broke, or was left open, and for two days and a night raw crude streamed into the river at least 21,000 gallons and perhaps as many as 80,000, creating a slick that stretched from bank to bank for forty miles. Due to this oil spill, a state of emergency was declared downstream in both Peru and Brazil, although, according to Kane, the oil company responsible for the spill disregarded the incident and did nothing to improve the situation. While in Ecuador, Kane visited various Huaorani communities and received further firsthand reports of extensive and extreme contamination, via oil spills, of their water supplies resulting in unruly health epidemics, severe illnesses and deaths.However, the problems of oil drilling extend beyond the awful impacts upon Huaorani and Indian health in general, as the settlements made by the oil companies result in drastic disruption, deviation and desecration of traditional Indian culture. It is a complicated process, because the imperialistic thrust of big oil coincides with all sorts of modern Western byproducts including colonization, conversion to Christianity, and re-education of native Indians in which no element of Huaorani culture was allowed to enter the curriculum. This enforced process of acculturation to Western ways results in the obliteration of the value, the history, and the very existence of traditional culture for all Indians affected. During the months that Kane spent roaming through Ecuador, mainly with the Huaorani tribe, he experienced the traditional self-sufficient way of life that the Huaorani as well as many other indigenous South American tribes have lived f or millennia. After visiting colonized areas as well, he reports that Indians who have succumbed to a conversion to Western ways appear much worse off than those who have held to their traditional ways.Of these colonized Huaorani, Kane writes the people were dependent on goods brought in from outside, and many of them had become wage slaves to a culture they could never hope to be truly a part of to a culture that, in fact, considered them little more than animals. The convergence of the diverse aspects of capitalism, colonization and conversion to Western ways and Christianity upon the various Indian tribes who are impacted all amount to ethnocide.The fact that such corruption initiated by Western imperialistic drives based on capitalistic gains is still going on, only reveals that we have not progressed very far, at least globally speaking, in our path to becoming a more humane society. But the typical modern world citizen doesnt care about any of this and has very little know ledge of the historical European conquests that have transformed spiritually and functionally intact cultures into materially indigent, chaotic and violent third world countries. Most of us are more or less plodding along our own enlightened paths of self-serving materialism.When we do give any consideration to cultures of a lesser material status, we judge and compare their shabby way of life to ours, in which running water, electricity, cars, central heating, air conditioning and 24 hour grocery stores are essential. We devalue their modes of living through our own ignorance and ingrained sense of superiority, as we seek to save them, not by helping them to regain their own valued way of life, but by converting them to ours which only reinforces our own paradigm of economic, technological and religious superiority.We frequently fail to realize that not every human being on this planet wants or needs to be hooked into the wave of technological progress with which we are so complet ely mesmerized. Not only does our enchantment with technology threaten our humanity, our society, and our planet, it also through our continued pressures upon non-Western, non-technologically-based cultures to convert to the ways of the modern Western world threatens to destroy the few remaining earth-based, indigenous peoples on this planet who would rather not be fazed by us or our materialistic ways.Do we really need to continue to conquer the earth with our capitalism until there is a 7-11 and McDonalds in every corner of the world? Until there are freeways chomping through every area of pristine land? Until all the forests have been chopped down and transformed into urban and industrial sprawl? Cant we contain ourselves with a little respect for the rest of the world? There are still people on this planet who enjoy living in the organic environment of nature, where electricity, motor vehicles, cells phones and I-pods arent a necessary aspect of life.They are able to survive, and thrive, quite well without all the modern accoutrements of modern life that we so desire, and many of them would like to remain as they are. And yet our attitude reveals an inner conviction that we have discovered the way of the future and must deliver this message in force to the rest of the world. Rather than continuing on our present course of a global takeover, we need to ask ourselves what we can learn from non-Westernized cultures that still live in ancient and earth-honoring ways, cultures that we tend to brutalize and greedily destroy.We need to learn to interact with these other cultures respectfully and humanely, allowing them their own way of life and sustenance upon this planet without interfering and coercing our interests and values upon them. Not everyone needs to drive a car on a freeway, to work in an office and live in a house in the city if the 7,000,000,000 human beings now alive on the planet lived like this, our environmental devastation would likely expan d exponentially.To expect a global conversion of all peoples in all places into an assimilation of our unique modern, technological way of life is stupid, insane and supremely unreasonable. However, like a big, proud, arrogant peacock strutting itself all over the planet, the United States continues making moves to engulf the globe with the gluttony of our own capitalistic enterprises, all the while disregarding and disrupting the dignity of other countries, cultures and peoples.Reflecting upon the impact of our very recent civilization upon other, much older, traditional and earth-based civilizations, as well as the planet itself, we should notice and consider the damages we have done, the violences we have perpetrated, and the miseries we have created We need to move beyond the Christian fantasy that we are a completely good and benign presence on the planet, that we are somehow Gods chosen people with a free pass to do whatever we want regardless of the consequences.We should th ink about how we can be less ego-centric, and seek to balance our technological advances with tending to the well-being of the earth, other cultures and one another. We should consider how to create more harmony in the world, and a little less profit. Indeed, many individuals and organizations are becoming increasingly devoted to a greater consciousness of how to live in ways that are earth friendly. The overall pro-environmental movements are coming to be known as green movements, and they provide good and necessary developments toward a future in which humans could be of greater benefit than detriment to the planet. However, very much work and change remains to be done in this area. One problem inherent with these movements is that when we think about saving the planet, or saving the polar bears, we are still thinking abstractly. In truth, the planet was doing just fine before the advent of modern industry and technological society. Save the planet really means Stop the humans fr om destroying the planet because we are only saving the planet from ourselves. Living our urban, fast-paced and machine-based lives, very few of us have time, energy or ability to keep gardens, raise livestock, hunt for our sustenance or otherwise live in any kind of experiential symbiosis with the planet. We live in suburban and citified concrete jungles where the animals have become cars, and the trees and forests are now banks, department stores and high rise apartment complexes.Because we have created our own processed environment of roads, cars, industry, buildings, malls, homes an endless urban sprawl that houses an endless supply of manmade things because we live in a world designed by capitalism, a world of incessant advertising, sales and the desperate, frantic pursuit of material things of production and products a world molded and defined by television, radio and the chronic bombardment of salesmen we rarely, if ever, experience an intimate connection with the natural world, with the planet we are hoping to save.Sure we can learn all about the planet, discovering the marvels of the earth in science magazines or through viewing compelling video footage of nature, we can learn all about the planet in schools, in laboratories or other second hand means, but until we have a sustained, direct encounter with the earth and nature itself, how can we truly know it, and what will it ever really mean to us? And how few of us will ever accomplish this?Indeed, as it now stands our civilization is composed of a people, and a culture, that have moved out of nature into man-created worlds based upon the destruction of nature and they call this evolution. Ultimately, its up to us to change the story, to write a new script, to realize who we are, what we have become, and to simply wake up to the realization of how we want our lives, and the life of our entire planet, to unfold So think about it, and let your thoughts permeate all that you do, for the existence o f yourself and every other being around you may depend upon it.Its both funny and sad that as soon as people leave their familiar comfort zone, when they are alone, say at a coffee shop or waiting in line for a bus, they automatically, almost reactively, reach for the cell phone to call or text someone who will reconnect them with the safe and familiar world from which they have momentarily wandered away.The average persons lack of ability, or willingness, to encounter an unknown situation or territory reveals their lack of tolerance for being alone, as well as their lack of curiosity or propensity to simply notice and appreciate their surroundings as if their bodily senses had been nullified into a potential danger zone in which their very stability of self would quickly fragment should they let go a little, observe and potentially interact with the unfolding world around them.Yes, weve learned to live in little bubbles of safety which cut us off from our fellow-humans we no long er live in the actual world, but in our own self-created worlds, via the latest form of technology. I suspect that our modern sense of security has been entrained to operate in collusion with these technological devices that have slyly entrapped our minds even as they have offered us incredible new possibilities.Our reliance on new and ever-advancing technologies, such as the mobile phone which in a few short years has also become a mobile photo album, mobile internet, camera, video machine and multi-media entertainment center has developed into quite a habit, an unconscious addiction that is shaping the very nature of our personalities, both personal and collective, and even, God forbid, our souls. What need have we, the general public, for an imagination when so many limitlessly stimulating devices are available in our world?Who needs an inner world at all when the outer world of our own creations has become so evocative, so seducing, so ever-demanding, evasive and totalitarian? We are continually inundated with advertisements and societal pressures to acquire new technological distractions and modes of external stimulus. Living under such conditions, how is it possible for us to maintain or cultivate much of an inner world, or a soul, whatsoever?The underlying message of our media is commercial in enforcing the demands of commerce upon us, we are defined primarily as consumers, persuaded not to think for ourselves, but to join in the latest collective frenzy of technological adventures that continually reinterpret the purpose of our lives. This never ending flood of media proclamations, while appearing as a material liberation, serves as a psychological oppression of the individual soul. Capitalism sells new versions of reality that may have nothing to do with ones own true needs or sensibilities. However, it is the advertisers job to convince us otherwise.So far they are doing a pretty good job The natural world, the earth itself the air, the trees, the vast realms of animals, plants, oceans, deserts and mountains are increasingly losing meaning and value in the self-hypnotized, narcissistic lives of mechanized human beings. Although it is for sure an abomination of our essential heritage, we are ever-entrained to focus less and less on the natural world in which we live, and of which we are but one aspect lest we forget and more and more to focus on the world as fashioned through the minds and hold of men.Its sad indeed when we ignore what is right before our eyes, i. e. our actual surrounding environment, and instead remain culled to a collective techno-vision of the ideal man-made life. Its also sad when we ignore those human beings who are standing right in front of us because wed prefer to text or talk with someone miles away, when we must remain overly-attached to those we know because weve lost our human capacity for interrelationship with our expanded world of fellow citizens who we now dismiss as strangers.Our advance in technology has engendered a compensating inversion in our capacity for compassion and community which is to say, the further we develop our technology, the less we appear to maintain the qualities of a loving, caring and attentive human society. Being aware in the mystery of the present moment, tolerating the unknown, and tolerating states of non-stimulation is the first phase in moving towards a more attuned state of openness and potential interaction with the actual, non-virtual, world around us.However, we have been so conditioned by a perpetual bombardment of electronic stimuli radio, television, computers, video games, mobile phones/entertainment centers, etc that it has become difficult, albeit unappealing, for us to re-focus our attention on our actual physical, natural environment. A parallel outcome of our desensitization to the physical, natural world in which we live, is the subsequent degradation of our ecology, which entails our lack of emphasis or awareness on it s living/breathing/fragile/organic nature.The danger of this, as many of us recognize, is potentially catastrophic as we create and live in an increasingly human-made and virtual reality wherein we believe we are safer, happier, more satisfied, etc we also increasingly ignore the actual and natural reality in which we are encompassed, and risk the extinction of the environment through the excessive pollution, raiding and deforestation of the planet that we have witnessed since the rise of the industrial-technological age.The degradation of the natural world is problematic in many ways. Firstly, it appears to be morally and ethically wrong at least to those of us whose ethics and morals outweigh our imperialistic drives to destructively impact the earth, its ecosystems, i. e. rivers, oceans and forests, as well as animals, plants, trees, etc. One might ask, What right have we humans to destroy the earth, simply for our own benefit? Is this not selfish and unnecessary? Many of us have asked this question, though it seems that the overall progress of our technologically based capitalism remains unwilling to curtail its invasions and usurpations of nature, or to halt its path of destruction for the sake of morals or ethics. Where the dollar bill is concerned, questions of right and wrong become thin and ineffectual, nearly meaningless. Secondly, the degradation of the natural environment is increasingly affecting the balance of the planet itself, which in turn contaminates our own quality of life.For a thorough overview of how human technology is damaging the planet, one has only to search through a plethora of books, TV specials, or movies on this topic (i. e. An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore). I will here mention only a few ways in which planetary degradation affects human life. In a recent trip to Lima, Peru I learned that Peruvians predominantly drive older used cars, from the 80s or 70s, which emit high levels of visible exhaust fumes making the air both toxic and putrid to breathe.Driving around town there is often no escape from these fumes which pour out of the car just in front of you. The situation is just as bad in many other developing third world countries around the globe. Even here in the United States, where we have increasingly stricter emissions controls on our vehicles, the air quality in some cities is very poor, and on certain days people are advised to avoid going out of doors, or allowing their children to play outside at all.In many countries, air pollution is severe and debilitating, and only getting worse. In addition to increasing the risk of respiratory disease, the eroding of the ozone layer has also increased the risk of skin cancer, and its become customary to slather on gobs of sunscreen lotion before going outside on a sunny day for any length of time. Industrial pollution has made our water supplies dirty, so they are zapped with chlorine, making our water not really enjoyable, or many would say, health y to drink.As for our food, as genetic engineering takes hold, what we eat becomes increasingly tasteless and less nutritious. Although these are only a very few examples of the many problems made by technology, there is no denying that the degradation of the natural world leads to our own degradation. The third major impact of the degradation of nature is spiritual. As we become less attuned to the world of nature, which is gradually breaking down, our inherent connection to the earth dissipates.We become less the caretakers of the earth, or participants in Her splendor of glory, and moreover the survivors of a man-made holocaust inflicted upon nature. We rationalize our disconnect from nature those of us who are aware of it with the heralding of a new age of technological transcendence. In comparison with all our own amazing discoveries, inventions and developments, we cannot believe that the earth is all that important. How can a handful of dirt compare to the glory of an I-pho ne?Our attitudes reveal a consensual belief that we are superior to and above the earth as also evidenced by our scientific investigations into creating hospitable conditions on other planets, as well as expanded, city-size space stations in which we could begin to populate the greater universe, where we would, even more so, live in human-made, virtual reality realms. The bigger question is whether our spirits can survive or thrive in states of stark disconnection from the earth, our origin and planetary source of beingThis sort of fantastic and futuristic evolution is in line with our reigning religion of Christianity, in which our sinful earthbound lives are to be potentially transformed through belief in Christ, when, upon the moment of our death, we are to ascend high into the heavens, into a cloud-like dimension above and beyond all the messy entanglements of this planet earth. With such a cosmo-vision, such a context of the goal of life, its no wonder the sanctity of the ea rth has lost its power to impel our actions.It seems only the portended threat of our own extinction will suffice to encourage us to behave differently. For if we are only to inhabit this earth for such a brief span of time until our transcendence into a perfect eternity in another dimension then whats the big deal if we just abuse Her until were gone, because in the grand scheme of things She doesnt matter much anyways. Christianity also teaches that, of all the creatures and life-forms upon this planet, only human beings have souls that can be saved, and thus make the transmigration beyond a mortal d