This Rainy Morning’s Ponder
The heat wave finally broke and, in typical Chicago fashion, the humidity coalesced into rainfall. Such is the environment I drive through this morning. My car could use washing. It's covered by particulate matter from airline exhaust (the parking lot at work is situated at the edge of O'Hare Airport). As I ponder this, my mind is brought back to last Saturday's viewing of Al Gore's movie - again.
Another thought interferes - another recurring theme here. How disconnected society is from spirituality. In a brief time, geologically, mankind has gone from stealing burning sticks after lightning sparks wildfires to nanotechnology and microchips. Quite impressive. Our spiritual maturity remains stunted, however. As evidenced by our President's latest photo-op surrounded by test tube babies, the ensuing First Veto (coming halfway through a second term presidency) reminds me how backward we still are in our spiritual beliefs. On many levels we hold to same myths, first formulated during our fire-gathering days, of inhuman deities and divine wrath, initially created to keep the fear of the unknown at bay. Through all our development as a species, we still believe in the boogeyman.
There's more at work here. I'm reminded of an article I found some years back entitled Economics Without Ethics: the Crisis of Spirituality, by Bishan Singh. Many salient points to be found there. My favorite quote is this:
…Spirituality is the enemy of the capital-centered economy. Where materialism has advanced, spirituality has declined. And where spirituality is high the capital-centered economy has had difficulty gaining a foothold.
By working to convert all values into monetary values, economists make money the be-all and end-all of human enterprises and endeavor. Materialism becomes the living culture, money-making the religion, money the god, banks the temples, and economists the oracles.
Any God before this god, any Religion before this religion, any Culture before this culture, and any Spirit before this spirit is the enemy. Spirituality is anathema to materialism…
Mr. Singh is spot on in his analysis. The dissimilitude of our development as a sentient species bears witness. We stress childbirth over population controls even as we strip the planet of resources. We speak about the sanctity of life while military proliferation grows exponentially. Our very history is a catalogue of warfare. We elevate greed over charity, wealth above compassion. While paying lip service to age-old values of decency, we train our future business people to manipulate the government for financial gain. Corporations have more power than the people who make them work. In fact, we give much of our liberty to advance corporate welfare, at eh expense of human welfare.
It's sad, really. Perhaps a few people will survive our folly. Then maybe they'll have the benefit of gleaning wisdom from what is rapidly becoming the World's Most Documented Extinction.