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Most Americans cannot imagine getting by with less, but that could be a more relaxed way of life, while using less energy and resources.
Most Americans cannot imagine getting by with less, or that it could be an easier and more relaxed way of life while using less of our diminishing supply of resources. Our descendants will thank us if we do that. But it won’t be easy, given the many changes in our ways of life that it will involve, and will benefit the environment too without the harm it would have done to our descendants without it, and also the more relaxed ways of life that we can live in the times ahead, rather than causing the collapse that we are moving toward now. The world is much too beautiful to risk that, as we are doing now.
This is the subject that is being written about ever more frequently now, especially as the climate changes have become ever more damaging, with higher summer temperatures and winds, colder winter temperatures, and more extremes of all of them, and will become steadily more difficult to overcome, as has already become the case.

Sujets

Social Science

Sociologie, société et politique

Sustainability

World view

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Publié par	Archway Publishing
Date de parution	14 mars 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781665739719
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Other Works:
Public Parks on Private Land in England and W ales
Muddling Toward Fruga lity
The Future Is Not What It Used t o Be
The Gift of Peaceful G enes
For Everything a Se ason
A Modest Project to Save the World

The Gift of Peaceful Genes

Warren Johnson

Copyright © 2023 Warren Johnson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3970-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3971-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023904049

Archway Publishing rev. date: 3/14/2023
CONTENTS
Preface The Parable of the Boats
Chapter 1 The Original Gift
Chapter 2 The Two Falls from the Garden
Chapter 3 The Appearance of Limits
Chapter 4 Nature, Faith, and Evolution
Chapter 5 Reason, Evolution, and Faith
Chapter 6 Evolutionists vs Darwin
Chapter 7 The Comedy of Survival
Chapter 8 Marriage, Family, and Community
Chapter 9 The Dangers: Income Differences and Climate Change
Chapter 10 The Sustainable Revolution
Chapter 11 Suburban Sustainability
Chapter 12 The Kid’s Question
Acknowledgements
About the Author

PREFACE The Parable of the Boats
M any years ago I came across this parable that stayed with me even though its author’s name did not. It spoke of the quest for the good and the noble as people rowing boats upstream against the current of human selfishness. Progress was slow and required continuous effort, and periodically individuals would falter and be swept downstream toward degradation and violence, but overall, the boats moved slowly upstream. Then in recent times a group of rowers turned their boats around, and rowing easily downstream, convinced others that their rapid progress was proof of the rightness of their ways. Now most boats have been turned around, and so strong is the current of human self-interests that we have moved far downstream, so far that we are beginning to feel the anxiety of being far from anything that can be thought of as the good life. We also hear what ominously sounds like a cataract ahead, and instinctively fear it.
Most Americans are now concerned about where this nation is heading, but even the thought of doing something about it is so intimidating when in a real sense the economy is functioning as our religion now, if that word is understood in its original Latin, of religare , meaning to “bind together.” This is something that all societies must have if they are to hold together and function; otherwise, there would be chaos. Our society is now being bound together primarily by the economy, and thus can be referred to as the Market Faith. It is holding us together very effectively with the natural inclinations to pursue our own interests, but that also means that competitiveness is replacing the cooperation that took the original human advance forward, and with growth the source of everything that is good in this society, of freedoms, incomes, and profits. But that is also making politics more hostile as people struggle for their own interests, while marriage, family, and community become more difficult when there is less that is holding them together and can be trusted. The dominance of growth also bars consideration of how the economy could be allowed to slow down gracefully toward the sustainable ways of life that will have long term value for our descendants, but for us too as the Market Faith shapes ever more of our lives in stressful and unsatisfying ways, and now even destructive ways. With climate changes.
This is not to deny that our society has created unprecedented levels of wealth and betterment in response to the promise of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as stated in the Declaration of Independence , but with ever less said about responsibilities to others, nature, and the common good. It is more than a coincidence that Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was also published in 1776, since these are the two great documents of the Enlightenment, the philosophical movement that reflects the ideals of freedom, reason, and science that would take this society forward so rapidly. The people themselves would decide what was right for them, rather than kings, nobles, churches and landed gentry. We were helped in this with the abundance of land and resources we had, but everywhere it would be the power in the fossil fuels that would take the Industrial Revolution forward in historically unprecedented ways. The religions of the earlier eras were powerless to resist these forces, especially after the religious wars in Europe had discredited religion as an ordering force, and left it as a personal matter that was barred from politics. The differences disturbed even those who were among the first to experience the new ways of life in the Industrial Revolution. In 1802 Wordsworth lamented that “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; little we see in nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.” Even Marx said much the same thing from a slightly different perspective in 1848, when he wrote that the quest for profit “has put an end to all feudal, idyllic relations. It has left remaining only the egotistical calculations.” In 1880, Dostoevsky wrote that if the belief in immortality is destroyed, “nothing then would be immoral, everything then would be permissible,” and every living force maintaining life would dry up.
But the Enlightenment ways could not be stopped as wealth spread worldwide with colonial activities and then the global economy, and with ever less concerns about where such an economy was taking us. The ways that had worked well for so long were increasingly seen as leading in undesirable directions, especially as ever more people were pressing for their own interests, let alone what we were doing to this beautiful earth as consumption and population continued to increase. With that came the sense that the demands of the Market Faith had to be accepted wherever they were taking us, even if it meant a faster paced and more impersonal and competitive way of life that inevitably weakened families, communities, and the faiths that formerly held societies together.
One thing is certain in this: it will never be possible to meet the needs of a society that depends on growth and the quest for more regardless of how wealthy and powerful it has become. It is such a society that has already begun to feel more like the struggle for survival in nature than the peaceful cooperation that cultural evolution relied on to transcend the limits of natural evolution. The proven way is to find satisfactions more as our ancestors did, with the selflessness asked for by most of the great faiths, and come with Jesus’ Great Commandment, to love others as ourselves, the commandment that all the other commandments are based on. That is the way that promises a long future for our species on this beautiful planet, rather than the flash in the historical pan that was made possible with the fossil fuels that power the economy. The movement from that to sustainable ways of life could be smooth or halting, but the long human advance confirms that such a transition is possible, since it is the way that we lived in much of our past.
The case this book makes is yes, especially as it becomes ever more difficult to cope with our lives as the Market Faith shapes us in ever more dangerous and unpleasant way, and leads toward some form of overshoot and collapse. This is the task of Chapters 10 to 12, and will be more appreciated as it becomes clearer how much more satisfying life will be without the excesses of the Market Faith.

CHAPTER 1 The Original Gift
I n this era when humans are such a dominant force on earth, there is a tendency to idealize nature, which is healthy in many ways. But this should not be taken to the point of forgetting that there is still much truth in the harsh words of Darwin’s “natural selection” and Tennyson’s “nature red in tooth and claw.” The human advance came with the long evolutionary process that was required to transcend these aggressive instincts, but the 98.5 percent of our genes that are the same as our closest primate relative, the chimpanzees, should help us to keep in mind how much we have in common with them, and how easily we could revert to their violent ways; as we are being encouraged to do if we listen to the media or are to be successful in our economically based way of life.
Cultural evolution is what made the difference. It is the path that our distant ancestors found that enabled them to move beyond what was possible with natural evolution. Even if there were many reversions to violence in the process, the achievements of our forebears should not be disparaged; they made us human in the positive sense of the word, of working together rather than fighting for dominance. This proces