A Table Contrasting Multi Earth and One Earth Worldviews (Part 2)

Sometimes it just helps to see contrasts put into a table. So here’s a table contrasting how religion and the sacred function in both the Multi Earth Worldview and the One Earth Worldview. It adds to the overall contrast posted earlier as Part 1.

For readers who shy away from words like “God,” “religion,” and “sacred,” you will likely still recognize the significance of these contrasts and have your own preferred language to talk about them as you engage in practices expressing one or the other worldview. Please join in and tell me other contrasts that you’d add to this table. You know the saying, “There’s always room for one more at the table.”

Multi Earth Worldview                                                One Earth Worldview

God is believed in, usually as the God or deities of a religious tradition, is restricted to the private sphere; is invoked to address personal needs and bless human endeavors	God is the experience of The One – beyond and behind all religious traditions – inherent in and beyond the evolutionary processes of Earth and Cosmos and seeks co-creativity from all life
Gods of civilization receive daily devotion and are the deities of functional religion	Gods of civilization are relativized to the cosmic God of continuing Creation
Sacred and secular have separate realms; sacred reduced to religious sphere and absent as a living Spirit or Mystery from economics, politics, business, and elsewhere	A deep sense of the sacred so infuses everything, everywhere that even the term “secular” loses meaning; no realm is separate from sacred presence
Religious power of nationalism and economics goes unrecognized and functions uncontained when sacred is confined to realm of religion	Religious power of nationalism and economics is recognized and contained within the greater sacred wonders
The primary revelation of the sacred comes through sacred texts, temples, and priesthoods or teachers	The primary revelation of the sacred comes through the natural world, the interactive, evolutionary processes of continuing Creation
Having more than enough materially is considered a sign of divine blessing; giving back to the community in some ways an act of generosity and, perhaps, spiritual practice	Having more than enough materially is seen as a violation of the creational order, taking what rightfully belongs to others or the entire community of life

Jerry Mander on What Happens When We Live in the Absence of the Sacred

Another important voice, one that I encountered earlier than any I have mentioned so far, spoke to me through a book that my son, Lane, wisely passed along to me. He sensed that I’d find it helpful. Interestingly, he was ahead of me in knowing how much I’d like it. His gift was another example of how a book or article came to my attention during this process of remixing economics and religion. The frequency of such occurrences punctures any delusion that might creep into me suggesting that I alone am writing this. Instead, these repeated occurrences have increased in me the feeling of solidarity with the growing crowd who want to live One Earth ways as much as I do.

It was the title of the book Lane gave me that especially grabbed me — In the Absence of the Sacred. It spoke to what I’d been wondering about: “How does having a sense of the sacred make a difference?” I’d long sensed that it did. I even suspected that the essence is lost when we live in the absence of “the sacred.” But I had little ability to put my intuition into words. 

Eagerly I read what the author, Jerry Mander, said. His subtitle, The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, telegraphs how he contrasts the worldview of what he calls the technological peoples with the worldview of Indigenous peoples. Essentially these two contrasting paradigms parallel the Multi Earth and One Earth worldviews.

Mander spells out the role of the sacred in the Indigenous peoples’ worldview (One Earthers) and then shows how much technological peoples (Multi Earthers) lost as we increasingly pruned the sacred out of our worldview. Though economics among Indigenous peoples is infused with the sacred, among technological peoples, economics lost religion. The resulting irony is how within the technological worldview, economics has become its religious cornerstone — an irony I am eager to talk about next in this blog.

Which of These Three Audiences Are You In?

Here are three audiences that I’m guessing are most interested in this blog. Which of the three are you in? (multiple answers welcome) OR, if you see yourself in a different audience entirely, … ahhh, then you simply must tell us (comment below) what audience that is!

1.The first audience is people who suspect, believe, or are open to considering that our ecological and economic crises today are also deeply spiritual. They want to engage our need to live on one planet with a worldview that is more powerful than the reigning one. Therefore, they are open to the spiritual and mythological and welcome learning about a compelling, modern worldview that connects with ancient wisdom in an appealing remix of what the Enlightenment separated into secular and sacred. The Cultural Creatives, studied by Paul Ray and Sheila Anderson and comprising 25% of the U.S. population, would be one group who fit this description. 

2. The second audience will be found in institutions and congregations of multiple faiths and traditions who are already pushing in the direction of this blog and my book or could be enticed by it. Because of the 32 years I led such organizations, I am conversant with the context and can target this audience rather readily. Examples:

• The Network for Spiritual Progressives
• Chaplaincy Institute for the Arts and Interfaith Ministries
• Faith and Money Network
• Simple Living Works
• Progressive Christianity

3. The third audience lies scattered in the business, academic, and economics professions. Our One Earth Project team knows people in this audience. They have have expressed interest in connecting with us around this book. Social entrepreneurs, heterodox economists, psychologists, green investors, and corporate attorneys are representative of people I am in relationship with who have an interest in the themes of this book. Most of these people are also active with nonprofit organizations which could become potential advocates of this book.  Examples:

• Center for Advancement of Steady State Economics
• Fast Company Magazine readers
• Wiseologie Media Group
• Industrial Strength Television
• The New Economics Institute
• Solidarity Economy Network

Please, please leave a comment telling us which audience you are in.

The Inherent Spirituality of a One-Earth Story and Economy

The following is from the “Preface” of an upcoming book on an economy focused in the wellbeing of our planet and all her inhabiting species.

Each religious tradition, through various spokespersons, speaks of living faithfully within Earth’s majestic, evolving story. Similarly, each religious tradition has voices critiquing economic behaviors and systems that exceed what Creation’s orders can handle. The story of Earth and the cosmos of Creation impact us in all those ways that we cluster in such words as “spiritual,” “sacred,” and “holy.” That impact evokes in us awe, wonder, reverence, worship, caring, love, and great inquisitiveness. Our curiosity is expressed in both everyday observations and in refined scientific inquiry.

This inherent spirituality in the story of the Earth and cosmos is expressed also in the economy of creation. That economy is neither capitalism nor socialism. It is an economy for the common good. Primitive peoples copied this economy. The traditional practices of Indigenous peoples worldwide continue to co-create with nature those economic practices that express a one-Earth abundance. The Hebrew Scriptures, evolving Indigenous practices of their early peoples, express this economy in their practices of Sabbath day, Sabbath year, and Jubilee year. Christians invoked the same kind of caring economy, seeking the koinonia or solidarity that distinguished their practices as followers of The Way from the practices of Rome’s empire economics. (See our pamphlet, Sabbath Economics In Brief.) Economics, until recently in the human story, was spiritual practice. It was not so much a matter of behaving ethically in economic transactions as it was of actually practicing the way of the Spirit.

Throughout these chapters, a similar kind of holistic economics integrates Spirit with economic structures, systems, and practices. Because of my familiarity with the Hebrew and Christian traditions, I refer most to them, but never with exclusive intent. Nicolas of Cusa, a Christian theologian of the 15th century, expressed such non-exclusive holism or universal connection with this simple sentence: “Divinity is the enfolding and unfolding of everything that is.” No one tradition can corner the market on divinity. It is everywhere; inherent in the Earth, the cosmos, and a one-Earth based economy. The current ecological-economic moment is too big for any one theology or spirituality to assume superiority. All are needed. We may have our preferences, even confessional convictions, but all are needed to function at their most converted levels of consciousness. In addition to all the religious traditions are the many who define their spirituality outside of those traditions, or define themselves without any spirituality at all. I hope that much in these pages is worthy of contributing to the conversation that is underway and which needs to increase among us all.