The Feast of Saint Francis, 2013

"Six Days of Creation" by Hildegard von Bingen

There are many reasons to honor Saint Francis of Assisi.  When explaining to journalists why he chose the name “Francis,” the newly elected Bishop of Rome said it was because he was a man of poverty, a man of peace, and a man who loved and protected creation.  Pope Francis added, “These days, we do not have a very good relationship with creation, do we?” 

The relevance of Saint Francis today is, in part, the way in which he understood the relationship between God and creation.  Although Christianity has frequently been interpreted as preoccupied with “getting to heaven” and therefore as, at best, indifferent to and, at worst, exploitative of the earth and its creatures, this point of view doesn’t comport very well with the biblical witness that shaped Francis’ life. 

Here, we do well to pay attention to the foundational premise upon which the whole biblical narrative is based: God wills and will have a faithful relationship with the earth.[1]  God will be faithful to his promise to bring the whole creation to its fulfillment.  The creation story in Genesis presents an image of God as deeply related to, and concerned with, the well being of the world.

It is important to be clear that what we have in the creation story is not a scientific history of how the world was made.  This is the error of biblical literalists.  Neither is it simply a myth, like other Near Eastern myths, describing the ordered structure of the cosmos.  This is the error of biblical rationalists. 

The creation story is neither science, nor mythology.  It is doxology, a hymn of praise, a proclamation of the creative Word of God that invites the response of the creation in freedom, trust, and gratitude.  Its purpose is not to tell us how the world was made, as if it were preoccupied with method or technique.  Its purpose is not to tell us how the world is, as if it were a fixed, closed system.  Its purpose is to give poetic expression to the relationship between the Creator and the creation; to proclaim the enduring, life-giving quality of that relationship in the face of all that is chaotic, death dealing, and unpredictable in our experience. 

The creation story is an affirmation of God’s faithfulness and graciousness, an affirmation that this graciousness is revealed precisely in the goodness and blessedness of the earth; not in some escape from the earth.  And it is a reminder that this creation is a unity: profoundly diverse, yet also one it its harmonious dynamism and complex relationships. 

While the creation story includes the images of creating and making, the dominant metaphor is that of speaking.  “God said” is the characteristic image for the relationship between God and creation:  it implies a dialogical relationship, speaking and responding.  The creation story itself, as a hymn-poem, is a response of the worshipping community to God’s creative Word, a response of praise and thanksgiving. 

In this regard, the creation story is much more akin to the Psalms than to a scientific or mythic description.   The Psalms speak of God’s graciousness manifest in creation, and the grateful response of all the members of the earth community.  “Praise him, sun and moon; praise him all you shining stars!  Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!  Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.  He established them forever; he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.”  (Psalm 149:3-6, cf. Psalms 65, 66.)

This psalm expresses the grateful response of all the earth, not only its creatures, but the mountains and deeps, the fire and hail, all manner of trees; the entire earth community hymns God’s praise in what Derrick Jensen has described as “a language older than words.”[2]  St. Francis understood this language.  Nikos Kazantzakis tells the story of St. Francis
standing in front of an almond tree in
mid-winter.  Francis called to the tree, “Speak to me of God.”  Suddenly, the tree burst into bloom, covered with beautiful blossoms.  It is the response of the creature to the creative Word of God that brings life out of death.  It is a language we have forgotten, and desperately need to remember.

This metaphor of the relationship between God and creation as dialogical, as word and response, gives a very different texture to our usual way of thinking about divine power.  God, who speaks and invites our response, is intimately near: close enough to be heard.  But this same God is also distant, leaving space for our response.  The biblical image of God is one of closeness, but not an authoritarian or smothering control.  It is one of distance, but just enough to allow for our freedom. 

Thus, the creative Word of God is not “must be,” but rather, “let be.”  “Let there be light.”  It is not a word of command, but of permission.  Our Jewish brothers and sisters have retained a much better sense of this dialogical relationship.  God speaks a word to his people, but by way of invitation, such that we may respond with praise, or cajoling, or rage, or silence.   There is, then, a tension between God’s promise and our response, between God’s desire to bring the whole creation to its fulfillment, and our willingness to share that desire and the responsibility it entails. 

St. Francis, conversant as he was in this language that is older than words, extended the dialogical relationship between the human creature and God to include a dialogical relationship between the human creature and the rest of creation.  Sun, moon, stars, earth, wind, and water – even death – were his brothers and sisters, members of an intimate family.  He spoke lovingly of them, and to them, all.

He did so because, like the Psalmist, he perceived the graciousness of creation as a sign that “God’s steadfast love endures forever.”  (Psalm 136)  Like the authors of the creation story, he believed that God’s creation, in all its parts and as a whole, was “good” – indeed, “very good.”   This characterization as “good” has more of an aesthetic than a moral quality, and might better be translated as “lovely, pleasing, or beautiful.”  God blesses the creation and so pronounces the world itself as the vehicle of divine blessing.  We need go nowhere else to receive this blessing.  It is always, already, available.

There are many stories of St. Francis speaking with animals: with birds, fish, and, of course, the famous wolf of Gubbio:  striking a deal between the wolf and the villagers so that they could live in harmony.  He once admonished a rabbit that he freed from a trap to be more careful next time!  Mostly, he preached the good news of God’s generosity in providing them with everything they need, urging them to hymn God’s praise in their own language.   His speaking to them also implied a deep listening. 

This is a clue, I think, to the way in which St. Francis serves for us as an icon of what it means to be created in the image of God.  To be so created is to participate in the ongoing dialogue of the whole earth community with God, and with each other.  To realize our humanity in the image of God is to enter into this life giving dialogue, not speaking a word of command, but a word of permission, of “let there be.”  Like Francis, we need to see our humanity as coming to fulfillment ultimately and only as a part of a much larger and inclusive earth community.

The dominion of the human in relationship to other creatures, then, must model the dominion of God over all things.  In the words of Walter Brueggemann, “The image of God in the human person is a mandate of power and responsibility.  But it is power exercised as God exercises power.  The image images the creative use of power which invites, evokes, and permits.  There is nothing here of coercive or tyrannical power, either for God or for humankind . . . Thus the task of ‘dominion’ does not have to do with exploitation and abuse.  It has to do with securing the well-being of every other creature and bringing the promise of each to full fruition.”[3]

Saint Francis is an icon of divine power as servanthood, after the example of Jesus.  This is what is so difficult for the powerful and wise of this world to grasp.  It is the exercise of power as domination, as control, as oppression that creates such a difficult yoke, such heavy burdens, for the poor, the victims of violence, and the earth itself. 

The Cross is the sign of God’s power, God’s outpouring in self-giving love that evokes a new creation.  This new creation is not a repudiation of the initial creation, but a bringing it to its fulfillment: for God’s steadfast love endures forever.  God has spoken the creative Word.  This Word has been made flesh in Jesus, reverberating through the language older than words spoken by Saint Francis and all of the members of the earth community.  God is still speaking.  How will we respond?

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1982), p. 24.  My reading of the creation story is entirely indebted to Brueggemann’s exegesis.

[2] Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004).

[3] Brueggemann, p. 32.

The World Explained in 20 Minutes

This is an amazing consciousness raising resource explaining how our economy works.  Watch it with your children.

The Great Divide: Reflections on "The Great Work"

We cannot rely on the institutions that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible.  The only route left is to disconnect as thoroughly as possible from the consumer society and engage in acts of civil disobedience and obstruction.  The more we sever ourselves from the addictions of fossil fuel and the consumer society, the more we begin to create a new paradigm for community . . .

We must stop being afraid.  We have to turn our backs for good on the Democrats, no matter what ghoulish candidate Republicans offer up for president.  All the public disputes between candidates in the election cycle are a carnival act.  On the issues that matter, there is no disagreement among the Republicans and Democrats.  We have to defy all formal systems of power.  We have to create monastic enclaves where we can retain and nurture the values being rapidly destroyed by the wider corporate culture and build the mechanisms of self-sufficiency that will allow us to survive.[1] – Chris Hedges

The older tension in human affairs between conservative and liberal based on social orientation is being replaced with the tension between developers and ecologists based on orientation toward the natural world.  This new tension is becoming the primary tension in human affairs.

So too the political tension between empires and the colonies is being replaced by an economic tension between village peoples of the world with their organic modes of agriculture and the transnational corporations with their industrial agriculture.

This new alignment should not be taken as if the ecology movement were a New Left movement or a new liberalism.  For the ecology movement has moved the entire basis of the division into a new context.  It is no longer a division based on political party or social class or ethnic group.  It is a division based on the human as one of the components within the larger community of the planet Earth.[2]

 – Thomas Berry

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            We are slowly awakening to the realization of our profound alienation from the basic sources of life.  Since the dawn of urban civilization and the agricultural base that made it possible some 10,000 years ago, and with astonishing acceleration since the rise of industrial civilization a mere 200 years ago, humans have been altering the life systems of the planet.  In the past, the scale of human intervention was such that any resulting harms were limited in scope.  That is no longer true, and it hasn’t been true for some time.

            Globalization, dominated by transnational corporations, now rapidly threatens the possibility of life that has flourished on this planet for some 3.4 billion years.  At the very least, the extractive economy at the heart of globalization is severely stressing the life systems and diminishing the quality of life on the planet.  Humans have altered the chemical composition of land, sea, and air, creating levels of toxicity that cannot be absorbed and altering Earth’s climate.  We are exhausting nonrenewable resources, such as fossil fuel, as well as renewable resources such as topsoil and fisheries.  We are living in the midst of the “Great Dying,” the largest extinction of species experienced since life began.

            We have entered into what cultural historian Thomas Berry names “the terminal phase of the Cenozoic Era.”[3]  Our generation is experiencing a transition to a new geological age on the order of the last major glaciation, what James Knustler characterizes as “the long emergency.”  North Americans are witnessing the first signs of the shift:  severe weather events, drought, wildfires, crop failure, collapse of fisheries, and wars to secure access to diminishing fossil fuel reserves.  Other parts of the world already are experiencing food riots, malnutrition, hunger, and lack of access to clean water. 

            The Great Recession of 2008 is the harbinger of a new normal in economic life.  The prospect of endless economic growth is dead.  We are finally bumping up against the reality of a finite planet that can only bear so much exploitation.  The “American Way of Life” was never sustainable in North America, much less for the rest of the world.  It was a function of the soon-to-end “Petroleum Interlude” and, even if it were not, we don’t have two extra planets to spare so that the rest of the human population can enjoy the American lifestyle.

            The consequences of our alienation from nature are almost unimaginable, precisely because they are planetary in scale, but they are increasingly hard to avoid.  For a long time, we were able to benefit “here” from our exploitation of people and places “over there.”  Now, we are running out of places “over there,” and the level of devastation unleashed by the extractive economy can no longer be contained within the areas of immediate degradation.  We are learning the hard way that Earth really is a single, diverse, complex, interrelated, self-reflective organism. 

Through the human Earth creature, the universe has evolved conscious awareness.  We are now responsible for the direction of the ongoing evolutionary trajectory of the planet.  Whether or not it continues to be creative of increasingly diverse, complex, conscious life remains to be seen.   What will we choose?

+++++

            It is with respect to this question that a new divide opens up in our political life.  The answer turns on whether or not we accept that humans must conform to the patterns of renewal intrinsic to the life systems of the planet.  Will we continue the anthropocentric trajectory of civilization culminating in the domination of Earth by transnational corporations, or will we return to a geocentric or even cosmos-centric culture recovering a sense of human presence to Earth in mutually life-giving ways? 

            This is the deeper question that neither of the two major political parties governing the Pax Americana is prepared to acknowledge.  This is because the parties are actually proxies for the transnational corporations benefitting (at least, for the very short term in geological time) from avoidance of the question.  In all fairness, however, the whole thrust of Western culture in its economic, political, intellectual, and religious institutions serves to justify the ascendency of the human over nature, if not the corporation over the planet, as the very epitome of “progress.”  Allowing this question even to come to awareness threatens an intolerable degree of cognitive dissonance.

            Thomas Berry describes our dilemma well.

            Here we find that we are dealing with a profound reversal in our perspective on ourselves and on the universe about us.  This is not a change simply in some specific aspect of our ethical conduct.  Nor is it merely a modification of our existing cultural context.  What is demanded of us now is to change attitudes that are so deeply bound into our basic cultural patterns that they seem to us an imperative of the very nature of our being, a dictate of our genetic coding as a species . . .

            The norm for radically restructuring our cultural coding forces us back to the more fundamental species coding, which ties us into the larger complex of Earth codings.  In this larger context we find the imperative to make the basic changes now required of us.  We cannot obliterate the continuities of history, nor can we move into the future without guidance from existing cultural forms.  Yet, somehow we must reach even further back, to where our human genetic coding connects us with the other species codings of the larger Earth community.  Only then can we overcome the limitations of the anthropocentrism that binds us.[4]

            This is not a matter of some specific aspect of ethical conduct: whether or not to allow abortion under certain circumstances.  This is not a modification of our existing cultural context:  extending the institution of marriage to include same-sex couples.  The corporate culture can comprehend such changes within its overall project of global domination.  This is why Chris Hedges can dismiss electoral politics in the United States as a diverting entertainment.  That is how it is meant to function.

What cannot, must not, be comprehended by the corporate culture is the idea that humans were made for the Earth, and not Earth for humans.  On this point, Barack Obama and John Roberts can readily agree.  It is no longer a division based on political party or social class or ethnic group.  It is a division based on the human as one of the components within the larger community of the planet Earth.

+++++

            From where, then, is our help to come?  It will come, I think, from the “monastic enclaves” to which Chris Hedges refers.  And those enclaves are emerging from a process of conversion:  a profound psychic reorientation of the human to her place within the cosmos as Earth creature.

            The human transition to a new geological age will require a new psyche and a new culture.  This will, no doubt, be a painful and difficult evolution.  It will be a process of trial and error.  Already, however, the cognitive dissonance has become great enough to precipitate a break with the established order.  We can no longer accept the status quo in the face of our suffering Earth.  The breaking of our heart opens the possibility of a new way of being human. 

           

            Along with the fear and even despair that accompanies recognition of the dire consequences of our alienation from nature, there arises a deep longing for reconnection.  The awakening of this desire initiates a kind of conversion if our desire for wholeness is stronger than our fear of change.  The truth is that we desperately want to be at home in the world again – the real world, not the fantasy world of corporate culture in which anywhere can be exploited because we are rooted nowhere. 

            Our rootlessness is making us sick, and some of us know it.  It is cutting us off from the vital energies and consolations that come from knowing who we are and where we are.  Authentic creativity and care derive from a sense of place.  We can return home again.   We were made for Earth.

            As physical resources become less available, psychic energy must support the human project in a special manner.  This situation brings us to a new reliance on powers within the universe and also to experience of the deeper self.  The universe must be experienced as the Great Self.  Each is fulfilled in the other:  the Great Self is fulfilled in the individual self, the individual self is fulfilled in the Great Self.  Alienation is overcome as soon as we experience this surge of energy from the source that has brought the universe through the centuries.  New fields of energy become available to support the human venture.  These new energies find expression and support in celebration.  For in the end the universe can only be explained in terms of celebration.  It is all an exuberant expression of existence itself.[5]

            The energy to address the ecological crisis must come from our celebration of a new mystique of the universe.  We must come to appreciate that all elements of the universe are alive with a capacity for self-organization, individual spontaneity, and profound communion.  Our fulfillment as human beings is intimately related to the well being of the whole Earth community, and vice-versa.

            This appreciation, however, is not abstract or theoretical.  It is a lived experience that requires careful attention to our relationship to specific places and the patterns of relationship that sustain life in those places over time.  Even the “Earth community” is an abstraction.  I am not at home in the “world,” except insofar as I am at home in this valley, this watershed, perhaps, at most, this bioregion. 

            This is why Hedges’ allusion to “monastic enclaves” is so apt.  Many monastics take a vow of stability, promising to remain in a particular place for the rest of their lives.  It is understood that holiness – wholeness – requires rootedness and the wisdom derived from knowledge of how to live well in accord with the requirements of a particular place.  These requirements will be quite different depending upon the place.  

One cannot live well anywhere.  One can only live well here.  Despite the utility of standardization, the allure of cosmopolitanism, and the rewards accruing to social and occupational mobility, life can not be sustained without the wisdom acquired through a long apprenticeship of learning the limits, requirements, and possibilities inherent in a given place.

            A new national or international program imposed from above will not resolve the ecological crisis.  That is the hubris that got us into the crisis in the first place.  The ecological crisis will be resolved as people “drop out” of the global consumer culture and rediscover their home.  Sustainability will emerge as new “monastic enclaves” create local economies, local cultures, and local energy sources congruent with the local ecology.  Health, too, is local.

            At the same time, however, these local cultures of ecological renewal will of necessity need to be cultures of resistance vis-à-vis the dominant corporate culture.  It is no longer a division based on political party or social class or ethnic group.  It is a division based on the human as one of the components within the larger community of the planet Earth.  The dominant corporate culture will continue to colonize and exploit everywhere, and so will seek to crush any attempts to become at home somewhere. 

            In the end, the only thing that will save us is falling in love.  If you love your home, your family, your community, you will make all manner of sacrifices to save it.  You will cultivate the spiritual disciplines and the moral virtues necessary to sustain you in the struggle to preserve what is worth loving.  The invitation of the ecological crisis is to widen the circle of love to include the whole Earth community, and to exercise the creativity and attention required to discover loves’ unique requirements in the place where we live. 

            And then, do whatever love demands.

      

           

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[1] Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (Brooklyn:  Nation Books, 2012), pp. 266-267.

[2] Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way Into The Future (New York:  Three Rivers Press, 1999), p. 107.

[3] Berry, p. 4.

[4] Berry, pp. 105-106.

[5] Berry, p. 170.

Community Is Abundance

I must confess that I am very suspicious about the way the language of "abundance" gets thrown around these days, as if the point of human life were to have a lot of stuff or that material wealth is in any way correlated with divine blessing (it isn't).

Parker Palmer has helped me to reframe my understanding of "abundance."  In Let Your Life Speak he writes,

Authentic abundance does not lie in secured stockpiles of food or cash or influence or affection but in belonging to a community where we can give those goods to others who need them - and receive them from others when we are in need . . . abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and, in return, is sustained by the whole.  Community doesn't just create abundance - community is abundance.  If we could learn that equation from the world of nature, the human world might be transformed. (p. 108)

There can be no abundance apart from community, from the shared endeavor of sustaining the common wealth for the common good.  This is the political dimension of the spiritual truth that we gain our life by giving ourselves away in love for the sake of others.  It has implications for everything from tax policy to public health to our response to global climate change.

Of course, the correlate to "abundance" is "enough."  It is our failure to recognize when we have enough, and thus our obligation to redistribute what we have for the sake of those who do not have enough, that is destroying community.  This isn't "class warfare."  It is the teaching and practice of Jesus.

Derrick Jensen: Civilization and Enlightenment

Derrick Jensen is one of the most provocative philosophers and activists working today. I'm rereading his two volume work, Endgame. This will give you a taste of what he is up to. He is a voice literally crying in what is left of the wilderness. We need to listen.

After Apocalypse

The New York Times today reports - this is news? - that the oil industry is heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers:

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform set off the worst oil spill at sea in American history, it was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Registering there allowed the rig’s owner to significantly reduce its American taxes.  

The owner, Transocean, moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, maneuvers that also helped it avoid taxes.

At the same time, BP was reaping sizable tax benefits from leasing the rig. According to a letter sent in June to the Senate Finance Committee, the company used a tax break for the oil industry to write off 70 percent of the rent for Deepwater Horizon — a deduction of more than $225,000 a day since the lease began.

With federal officials now considering a new tax on petroleum production to pay for the cleanup, the industry is fighting the measure, warning that it will lead to job losses and higher gasoline prices, as well as an increased dependence on foreign oil.

But an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.

According to the most recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, released in 2005, capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general and lower than virtually any other industry.

And for many small and midsize oil companies, the tax on capital investments is so low that it is more than eliminated by various credits. These companies’ returns on those investments are often higher after taxes than before.

What the article doesn't reveal is why these subsidies continue in the face of the manifest greed and ecological suicide it represents.  In his book, Endgame, Volume I: The Problem of Civilization, Derrick Jensen tells us why.

The United States economy is dependent on oil from the Middle East, South America, and around the world.  American lives are dependent on it: the agricultural infrastructure - from gasoline to pesticides - rests on the foundation of oil and natural gas.  It's not too much to say that we eat refined and transformed oil. (p. 104)

This is a problem for many reasons, not the least of which is that oil is a nonrenewable resource that is becoming rapidly depleted.  Hence, the attempts to extract it with high-risk methods from difficult-to-reach sources - such as deep sea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Discovery of oil and gas peaked in the 1960s, and the situation has deteriorated enough that by now the world consumes more than three times as much oil each year as is discovered.  Do you think the oil industry is aware of oil field depletion?  Of course. Its their business.  Why do you think no new supertankers have been built for twenty years?  A report written for oil industry insiders and priced at $32,000 per copy concludes that world oil production and supply peaked in 2000, and will decline to half by 2025.  The report predicts large and permanent increases in oil prices for the very near future. (p. 111)

The government subsidizes the oil industry directly through tax policies and indirectly through its military presence in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, in part to keep down the cost of our insatiable thirst for it; or, at least, to keep the costs hidden from view.

Our entire economic system is based on these subsidies, from agriculture to manufacturing to energy.  Especially energy.  That's why oil is so cheap right now.  Just including the cost of the Persian Gulf military presence - for which we taxpayers foot the bill - would at least double the price of oil.  The thing that scares me even more than monetary subsidies, however, are the hidden subsidies that can never be accounted for.  Can you put a price tag on global warming?  Can you put a price on a pristine lake or river?  The so-called economic view of our planet and life is anti-life. (pp. 112-113)

Eventually, quite possibly within my lifetime, the oil is going to run out.  Even before then it will become so prohibitive in cost as to be inaccessible.  So why does the government continue to subsidize the oil industry?  Because its scarred shitless about what the end of oil means for our way of life and will do anything in its power - no matter the cost to human beings or to the planet upon which all life depends - to keep it flowing for as long as possible.

Our government is subsidizing oil in a self-defeating attempt to buy time; self-defeating, because its pro-growth economic policies only promote oil consumption and hasten the eventual collapse of the fossil fuel economy.  I don't know if our leaders - like the rest of us - are in denial about this looming crash or clinging to a technological panacea or both.  So, we tootle along with business as usual while the planet burns and the clock is ticking.

Industrial civilization is not sustainable. Our energy consumption is overshooting the carrying-capacity of the planet and creating a toxic stew in its wake.  We are in a no-win race to see which comes first: the collapse of industrial civilization or the collapse of the ecosytems it is destroying, which is another way of saying the same thing.  Jensen argues that the only question for us is the extent to which we can mitigate the violence and degradation that this collapse will entail, and begin to plant the seeds of a sustainable culture.

Jensen challenges us to squarely face the consequences of our choices.  He is worth quoting at length:

We all face choices.  We can have ice caps and polar bears, or we can have automobiles.  We can have dams or we can have salmon.  We can have irrigated wine from Mendocino and Sonoma counties, or we can have the Russian and Eel Rivers.  We can have oil from beneath the oceans, or we can have whales.  We can have cardboard boxes or we can have living forests.  We can have computers and cancer clusters from the manufacture of those computers, or we can have neither.  We can have electricity and a world devastated by mining, or we can have neither (and don't give me any nonsense about solar: you'll need copper for wiring, silicon for pohotvaltaics, metals and plastics for appliances, which need to be manufactured and then transported to your home, and so on.  Even solar electrical energy can never be sustainable because electricity and all its accoutrements require an industrial infrastructure.)  We an have fruits, vegetables, and coffee brought to the U.S. from Latin America, or we can have at least somewhat intact human and nonhuman communities throughout that region . . . We can have civilization - too often called the highest form of social organization - that spreads (I would say metastasizes) to all parts of the globe, or we can have a multiplicity of autonomous cultures each uniquely adapted to the land from which it springs.  We can have cities and all they imply, or we can have a livable planet.  We can have "progress" and history, or we can have sustainability.  We can have civilization, or we can have at least the possibility of a way of life not based on the violent theft of resources. 

We can't have it all.  The belief that we can is one of the things that has driven us to this awful place . . . To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation. And it is to have paid absolutely no attention to the past six thousand years. (pp. 148-149)

This is quite an indictment.  It raises all kinds of questions that we would rather avoid.  But we can't.  It is time for us to begin to imagine what kind of life is possible, what kind of cultural is desirable, after apocalypse.  Beginning from a very different set of assumptions, Alasdair MacIntyre came to a similar - now, seemingly prophetic - conclusion in his After Virtue:

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us  . . . This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.  And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament.  We are not waiting for Godot, but for another - doubtless very different - St. Benedict. (p. 263)

It is not the intellectual and moral life, but life itself, with which we must be concerned.  And we cannot wait for this new and improved St. Benedict.  It is up to us.