What Is Earth Literacy?
by
McGregor
Smith
Education
gives students great power to manipulate and control the natural
world. But it does not give them an ethic for wisely using that
power.
Earth
Literacy is an environmental movement in which life on earth is
seen to be at a turning point. The turning point is a crisis
in our perception of reality. To respond to that crisis,
we are beginning to rethink the way we live our workaday lives.
The shift to Earth literate living requires a radical change in
perception – as radical as the change our ancestors made from
seeing themselves as a part of a flat, earth-centered, unchanging
universe. To live at such a moment of change is a
gift and an honor.
Earth
Literacy grew out of a “communion” agreement made when individuals
from three farm-based learning centers, two colleges and a university,
met to build relationships that would enrich the Earth in the
bioregions where they lived. The term “communion” was chosen
because it described the binding force of the universe in Thomas
Berry’s new cosmology.
Earth
Literacy is a budding curriculum aimed at freedom. Albert
Einstein said that we are prisoners of a delusion. Delusion
causes us to endanger our species and our planet. When we
entered the modern scientific age, all of reality changed except
the way we think about it. Our old way of thinking is our
prison. We think we are separate. We do not calculate
nature’s losses as our losses. We imagine we are in control
of the natural world. We try to manipulate and fix nature
as we would a machine. That is why Earth’s capacity to sustain
and regenerate life is diminishing. For humans to continue
on Earth, Einstein said we will have to master a new manner of
thinking. If we don’t, humankind will drift into “ultimate
catastrophe.” Earth Literacy’s budding curriculum is about awakening
from that delusion.
The
literacy crisis is most severe in prestigious universities and
colleges. The best educated people are most imprisoned by
the delusion Einstein described. Education gives students
great power to manipulate and control the natural world.
But it does not give them an ethic for wisely using that power.
Earth Literacy expands the meaning of literacy. It measures
our ability to participate constructively in Earth’s evolutionary
process. It teaches us to become conscious members of the
wonderful society of all living and non-living beings.1
Evolution
has readied us for this moment in life’s story. The truth
we need is inside us. It is a truth that must be felt, not
merely analyzed. The root word for education, educe, means
to draw out. Education’s task is to draw out our affinity
for life. It is to “open our souls to love this glorious,
luxurious, animated planet.” The bad news is that industrial-utilitarian
education is too bewildered (wilderness-severed) to draw out the
truth that is in us. The good news is that our own nature
will help us awaken to that truth, if we let it.2
Quantum
physics, self-organizing systems and chaos theory are teaching
new ways of thinking about reality. The new ways are like
the first chart books and maps used by early explorers.
The maps point in new directions. They describe landmarks never
seen before. They challenge us to reshape our fundamental
world view. They help us understand our bewilderment.3
The
human story is one climax in a 14-billion-year journey.
We are participating in the creation of an ecological age.
Whether humans continue to exist in that age will depend on new
relationships: relationships between humans and the natural world,
between humans and the cultural world, and between humans and
the violent world. We must recognize the role sacred violence
has played in creating and maintaining our world.4,5
You
are the being in whom earth is awakening and becoming conscious,
aware and self reflective. You are the universe thinking
about itself. Your consciousness, the human consciousness,
is switching Earth from automatic to manual control. On
automatic control, Earth’s finely balanced creative processes
kept life sustainable. The most profound questions we face
is can humans achieve the wisdom and maturity needed to do on
manual what Earth did on automatic for billions of years.
As one tiny, fragile person, your life is significant. You
are irreplaceable and irrepeatable.6
1No Limits to Learning:
Bridging the Human Gap James W. Botkin et al, Pergamon Press.
2Earth In Mind, David
W. Orr, Island Press.
3Leadership & the
New Science, Margaret J. Wheatley, Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
4The Dream of the Earth,
Thomas Berry, Sierra Club Books; The Universe Story, Thomas Berry
and Brian Swimme, New Story Productions.
5Violence Unveiled: Humanity
at the Crossroads, Gil Bailie, The Crossroad Publishing Company.
6”Fate of the Earth” audio
tape, Miriam Therese MacGillis, Global Perspectives, (800)221-8897.
