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Social ecology relates social injustice to ecological injustice. Since the human race is part of the environment, social injustice goes hand in hand with ecological injustice. The most numerous members of the human race are the poor. Their relationship with the necessities for survival is distorted by the exploitation of their labor force. Poverty is viewed in the lack of an infrastructure for subsistence and a dignified life; ecological poverty can be perceived through our polluted water supply, poisoned air, unhealthy living quarters, polluting transportation systems, and violent social relationships. Ecological justice involves social justice.
Do you agree that an ecologico-social democracy that accepts not only human beings as its components but every part of nature, especially living species sounds appropriate at this point?
We urgently need to develop an attitude of respect, of compassion and fellowship with the whole of creation!! We must globalize cultural values such as solidarity, collective compassion for victims, respect for cultures, sharing, effective integration with nature and mercy for the offended including our beautiful earth. Nature may even be identified as an oppressed minority whose rights civilization has violated. Ultimately, the abused, the downtrodden, or the oppressed revolt against the oppressor. An exploited environment could ultimately jeopardize human civilization just as exploitation caused the disintegration of ancient societies. Our abused ecosystem has already submitted its demands and ultimate time limits about our stay on this planet.
Our environment and health-care issues are interconnected. In a hospital setting we are often cleaning up some of the filth we have caused through the plundering of our environment. Health issues can be founded on environmental issues. We are already aware of illnesses potentially linked to our environment. Respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases and heat stress are amongst the illnesses linked to the environment. Lifestyle choices and in particular the choice to use pesticides relates to environmental issues and subsequently health concerns. The choice to care for our environment heavily impacts the affect our environment will have on our health .
If we continue our present pattern we will wound nature beyond repair. An 'eco' ethic directs a path selected as the good and protective shepherd of nature.
SELFISH URGES - ASKESIS
Let's consider the ego through a Christian perspetive.
Sebastian Moore's argument follows:
Rules for Finding the True Cross
1. There is only one true cross, the cross of Jesus, the crucifixion pattern that is the structure of humanity's sin, the essential drama of Godlessness. This first rule establishes what that pattern is. What the ultimate truth about crucifixion is: namely that the cross is inflicted by me on my self. The real cross is being inflicted by the ego on the self.
2. A fresh encounter with the cross is almost certain to feel as though I, in my habitual ego- consciousness, am the victim. Someone else, or something else, or just life, is crucifying me. This is what a sub-Christian spirituality describes as 'crosses.'
3. I need therefore to ask the Holy Spirit to help me to see that it is really the other way round: that I as ego am the crucifier and my real self or my real life, the crucified.
4. This learning is necessarily associated with the Spirit. For it is impossible without 'the breaking of the egg,' the mysterious process of being brought more into touch with ourselves.
5. I must be on the look-out for and learn to name the forces that encourage me to make the ego the crucified: public opinion, the enemy which keeps me inimical, pride, or fear.
6. The moment of getting under the heavy cross is painful, because the cross is heavy wih my accumulated egoism: and precisely for this reason, once I am under it, the weight has gone out of it. 'My yoke is easy, my burden light.'
7. On, or under, the real cross, I not only have my burden lightened, I experience the joy and the power of my identity in the Spirit.
8. What St. Paul calls, 'crucifying the flesh' means putting the ego (the flesh on the cross where it has held the self, and thus coming into the freedom of the self in the Spirit. It is only in the Spirit that I can do this (see #4). Hence the beautifully accurate words 'mortify us by Thy grace'--the name of a Bach cantata.
9. The same 'inversion' has to happen over our anger. Just as we always first experience the ego as crucified by the self, so we first interpret our anger as anger of the ego at 'life' (the self). We have to learn that on the contrary, anger is of the self at being repressed, distorted, forced into silly games by the ego.
10. In spite of some unavoidable verbal similarities, there is absolutely nothing stoical in the Christian askesis of the cross. The stoic understanding of this askesis is what you get when you stop at #2. The joylessness of so much preaching about taking up one's cross is due to not seeing the joke--that the sufferer is the executioner. This can be extremely liberating.
11. The process envisioned by the above rules is an ethical participation in the Paschal Mystery.
Sebastian Moore - Houston 7.23.75
...save our glorious earth...
