Robert Muller: [GMW #2807] Global Ethics In An Earth Charter Is Essential - The Separation Of Humans From Earth Is An Error

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

[GMW #2807] Global Ethics In An Earth Charter Is Essential - The Separation Of Humans From Earth Is An Error

[GMW #2807] Global Ethics In An Earth Charter Is Essential - The Separation Of Humans From Earth Is An Error

Idea Dream -Robert Muller's Ideas 3001 to 3500

~ Idea 3202 ~

I read in the plane from Costa Rica to Los Angeles a speach I delivered in 1978 at a meeting of the Audubon Society and Sierra Club on 'A Knot In Time. - We Are Traversing an Extraordinary Moment of Evolution', a Real Knot In Time, a Singular Hinge Between All the Past and All the Future of our Planet.

Among other things I said:

The number, complexity and significance of scientific, technological, economic, social and ecological interdependencies on planet Earth are so great that the subject would warrant being a new discipline, a science of interdependencies or total Earth science. Separate notions such as technology, economics, social science, ecology, political science are losing much of their distinctness. The separation of man from the Earth is also an error. Humans are part and product of the Earth and her evolution. A comprehensive scientific and ethical approach is needed which will help maximize the physical, mental, affective and spiritual fulfillment of humans, present and future, within inherited conditions and the further evolution of our planet henceforth dominated by the human race. We are still far from such a concept of planetary science and ethics but several major elements have been pressing in this direction of late.

Well, a quarter of a century later not very much has changed: we have now the beginning of a planetary science called biosphere science, the sphere of life, but not yet of a total Earth science including the biosphere, and we are still far away from a global ethics. The first serious step is the Earth Charter drafted by the Earth Council and being circulated in 2000 to all governments (see its text in Annex of Volume VI).

Robert's The Miracle, Joy and Art of Living,
Volume II Chapter 11 Of Gratitude

Suppose humanity lost its eyesight or its hearing, speaking, thinking or loving capacity? Would it not be a catastrophe? Shouldn't we therefore be grateful for being endowed with these stupendous senses and capacities? Is "stupendous" too strong? Well, think how you would feel, if you lost a single one of them!