AN
EARTHWEEK ESSAY BY
TOM CHARLESWORTH
***
Earth
Sabbath
Quite
a few years ago I attended a Cultural History course in which the
teacher imparted to us what she called Axiom 1 in the study of
history: “That which is necessary for survival has a tendency to
become sacred.”
A
brief and rather sweeping look at a few major historical watersheds
would seem to give some credence to this idea:
The
main activities of hunter-gatherer societies centered around foraging
and hunting. Animistic rituals invoked the spirit world to allow
favorable outcomes, protection from harm, and sometimes commemorated
exploits of the hunt. Hunting and gathering, or foraging culture was
the way of life for all humans for roughly 99% of our existence,
until the development of farming culture around 10,000 years ago.
With
the dawn of agricultural civilization, activities shifted to the
planting and harvesting of food. Religious beliefs and rituals often
focused on the cycles of nature and fertility, and became more
formalized over time.
The
Industrial Age, beginning in the 1700’s, but really picking up
“steam” in the 19th
century, brought with it more complex layers of social organization
incorporating a more scientific view of the world. While most of the
major world religions are pre-industrial, over time, religious
precepts began to imbue faith with reason and and increased focus on
accepting and filling one’s role within society and the appropriate
modes of behavior and morality expected within it.
Historical
ages are not discrete entities, but have evolved naturally, each
overlaying what preceded with new layers of concepts and behavior.
At the same time, the beliefs and values of prior eras often remain
present, and continue to exert a strong influence on the present.
The
10 Commandments, for instance, are pre-industrial, but are central to
the beliefs of modern day Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
“Thou
shalt keep holy the Lord’s day,” the fourth commandment, provides
the inspiration for this article. The earliest mentions in history
of a day of rest are found in Zoroastrianism and among the ancient
Babylonians. A day of rest can also be found in Buddhism, among
some native american tribes, and in other cultures and religions in
addition to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
In
our day, the idea of keeping holy the Sabbath, is mostly centered
around going to church on Sunday, the synagogue on Saturday, or
mosque on Friday. But the observance in earlier times was far more
pervasive, and remains so among many orthodox sects. Orthodox Jews,
Seventh Day Adventists and some other Christian sects as well,
believe that God ceased His labors in the creation, and rested upon
the Sabbath, and so humans as well should set aside the occupations
of their daily lives, and devote this time to healthful rest,
worship, and holy deeds. An orthodox Jew, for instance, refrains
from performing any “melachah” on the Sabbath. The word melachah
is translated as work, but it really refers to the kind of work that
is creative, or that exercises control or dominion over your
environment. Some consider this to include activities like driving,
or even using electricity.
What
was necessary for survival at the dawn of the agricultural age was
different than what had preceded it. The same was true as
industrialism spread across our planet. For the past several
decades, it has become clear to many of us, that what is necessary
for survival is once again different than what has come before, and
we will have to become very different people than we are today.
According
to economist Herman Daly, we now live in a natural
resource-constrained world, not a capital-constrained world. He
points out that in yesterday’s world capital was most often the
limiting factor in economic growth, whereas today it is natural
resources. In his book, “Beyond Growth,” he asks us to consider
the following:
“What
limits the annual fish catch — fishing boats (capital) or remaining
fish in the sea (natural resources)? Clearly the latter.
“What
limits barrels of crude oil extracted — drilling rigs and pumps
(capital), or remaining accessible deposits of petroleum — or
capacity of the atmosphere to absorb the CO2 from burning petroleum
(both natural resources)?
“What
limits production of cut timber — number of chain saws and lumber
mills, or standing forests and their rate of growth?
“What
limits irrigated agriculture — pumps and sprinklers, or aquifer
recharge rates and river flow volumes?”
To
illustrate the complexity of issues that can arise in a
resource-constrained world, consider the fact that more than half of
the fish Americans eat now comes from fish farms. Salmon is touted
as a heart healthy source of protein because of its high levels of
omega-3 fats. In order to keep their omega-3 levels up, farmed
salmon had traditionally been fed large quantities of small oily wild
fish, such as anchovies, herring, and sardines, but these have become
so overfished that their numbers have declined drastically. Instead
of small wild fish high in omega-3s, farmed salmon are now being fed
byproducts of hog and poultry processing, soybeans, canola oil, corn
and other grains, most of which are genetically engineered for the
animal feed industry. All of these have none of the beneficial
omega-3 fats, but are loaded with low quality omega-6 fats.
At
the same time that the evidence of the resource constraints we are
facing is becoming increasingly obvious, many of us today find
ourselves working longer hours, more weekends, and commuting more
hours to and from work than ever. It doesn’t stop there, often our
leisure time is spent in activities as energy intensive as our work
time, and more businesses than ever are operational to some extent 7
days a week, 24 hours a day.
Much
of this has been enabled by the revolution in information technology
which has always held the promise of doing more with less.
Information technology is after all, only a tool, and thus far the
principal achievement we’ve utilized it for is to increase the
speed of transactions, the consumption of resources, and the pace of
our lives. As Gandhi once pointed out, “There is more to life than
increasing its speed.”
In
a brief essay titled “In Praise of Idleness,” Bertrand Russell
once wrote:
“Suppose
that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in
the manufacture of pins – they make as many pins as the world
needs, working eight hours a day.
“ Someone
then makes an invention by which the same number of men can make
twice as many pins as before.
“ But
the world does not need twice as many pins – pins are already so
cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price.
“ In
a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacture of the pins
would take to working four hours instead of eight each day, and
everything else would go on as before.
“ But
in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing.
“The
men still work eight hours, there are thus too many pins, some
employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in
making pins are thrown out of work.
“There
is, in the end, just as much leisure as in the other plan, but half
the men are totally idle while half are still overworked – in this
way it is ensured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all
round instead of being a universal source of happiness.
“Can
anything more insane be imagined?”
In
2002, I attended the second World Summit on Sustainable Development
in Johannesburg, South Africa. While there, I learned of the concept
of stewardship of the environment being embraced by many religious
groups. The thought occurred to me that if we observed a day of rest
as fully as a member of an orthodox sect, this could, theoretically
at least, represent as much as a 1/7th
reduction in our use of energy and consumption of resources.
Perhaps even more importantly, observance of an Earth Day, or Earth
Sabbath if you will, on a weekly basis rather than just annually,
could provide a continual reminder of the new challenges we face and
the new values we will need in order to address them, while at the
same time reinforcing our sense of faith, reverence for nature, and
for one another.
Eventually,
I discovered a United Nations Environment Programme publication,
“Only One Earth,” had already proposed the idea of an
“Environmental Sabbath/Earth Rest Day,” in June, 1990.
What
would it take in today’s world to truly observe a day of rest? I
don’t have a complete answer to that, but think we would each need
to find our own personal way of observing it. The problem is we’ve
become so attached to the activities of the industrial world that
everything we do, work, recreation, vacationing, even worship all
seem to involve burning energy and resources. We act as if we’ve
had the ability to use resources in this way forever, and yet most of
the technological advances that have allowed us to do so have
occurred within the past one hundred fifty years or so. My
grandfather, born in 1896, could remember when electric lights were
first installed in his neighborhood as a child.
Looking
back at our hunter-gatherer origins for just a moment, it is
generally thought that these groups willingly accepted modern
culture whenever they could. But in fact, this was rarely the
case. It was usually through the aggression of nearby agricultural or
industrial societies that their way of life was changed.
While
there is evidence that early hunter-gatherer groups may have caused
many species extinctions, for the most part, their way of life was
far more sustainable than ours is today. Prevailing economic thought
tells us that humans are naturally competitive and acquisitive,
always wanting more and more. Yet, hunter-gatherers have lived
without these attributes for many tens of thousands of years.
It is our culture that makes us want to accumulate more and more, not
our human nature.
None
of this is to say that we should all become hunter-gatherers again.
Rather, how do we prevent ourselves from becoming hunter gatherers
again in a world with far fewer resources. Nor is it to say that we
should all observe the Sabbath as strictly as an orthodox religious
sect. While preserving our natural habitat, and restoring ecological
balance in our world is paramount, sustainability is also about
preserving the advancements that humanity has achieved for ourselves
and future generations.
There
are quite a few things we’ve accomplished in the past few hundred
years that I doubt any of us would want to do without: electricity,
central heating, modern transportation and healthcare, just to name a
few.
Perhaps
an extreme example of what humans can accomplish are the open pit and
underground diamond mines just 100 miles or so south of the Arctic
Circle in Canada’s Northwest Territories which operate 24 hours a
day, 365 days a year, mining kimberlite pipes that extend to depths
of 1400 to 1900 feet beneath the frozen surface. If we can work that
continuously under such harsh conditions, or set foot on the moon,
surely we ought to be able use our abilities for research, planning
and design to adapt to climate change and avert its worst effects?
Up
to now our industrial and information age economic systems have been
based on growth. The recession of 2008, and the Great Depression of
the 1930s demonstrate that our systems do not adapt well to economic
downturns. It’s tempting to think that we’ll be able to address
the issues presented by climate change through technological
innovation and increasing efficiency alone, but there’s a problem
with that assumption. According to Jevons’ Paradox (named for 19th
century English economist William Stanley Jevons) as technological
efficiency increases, so does consumption. Following the basic
premise of supply and demand, as efficiency increases, prices come
down, and consumption goes up. In Bertrand Russell’s example of
the manufacuturing of pins cited earlier, people aren’t willing to
buy more of an item than they need. In contrast, however, they’re
perfectly willing to drive more if the price of gas goes down, or to
buy a new phone, tablet, or computer every few years. How many of us
took selfies when we had to buy film and have it developed? Now that
we have cell phone subscriptions that include data storage, we record
more and more of our experiences that we may never have time to
revisit again. It seems to elude us that storing ever increasing
amounts of data in air-conditioned data warehouses also comes at a
price in terms of dollars and in terms of resource consumption.
Technology
can help us do more with less, but it can also blur the distinction
between what is possible and what is needed. I believe that
automation coupled with renewable energy has tremendous potential to
help us adapt to the challenges we face, but it has to be managed
better. We need to become more mindful of what is necessary and what
isn’t with respect to resource utilization.
I
don’t know if an Earth Sabbath is an idea that would ever catch on
in our contemporary world. At
the same time, a day of rest for the sake of regeneration, both for
our environment and for ourselves is probably more relevant than it
has ever been.
In my conception of it at least, observance (whether it be on a
specific day of the week, or an equivalent number hours during the
week) wouldn’t have to represent self-deprivation, but rather the
inclusion of relaxation and recuperation into our weekly routines.
This could mean not only spiritual and religious practice such as
prayer or meditation, but also time with family and friends, going
for long walks, exercise, yoga, reading a book, or maybe writing
one.
It
seems odd that simple ideas such as this, even when they come from
traditions shared by many cultures can be perplexingly difficult to
put into practice. At least in my own case, I think it comes from a
kind of disorientation where the necessity of averting an approaching
crisis suggests one path, but my immediate circumstances compel me to
take another.
Any
way you look at it, confronting the challenge of climate change i
s
both an economic dilemma and a spiritual one.
In
the Book of Genesis it says “On the seventh day, God rested.”
Maybe we should too.