From Michael_O._Patterson@hud.govWed May  1 22:58:28 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 96 06:56:30 EST
From: Michael_O._Patterson@hud.gov
To: eaf-l@eaf.com, solync@cei.net
Subject: Re[2]: DEEPLY TROUBLED
Resent-Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 08:22:07 -0400 (EDT)
Resent-From: eaf-l@eaf.com

On Sat, 27 Apr 1996, carol cross wrote:

> EcoAgroForesters,
> 
> I received this message today.  I admit it saddened me.  What does it mean?
> How should I respond?  Since EarthHumans are an integral part of the world
> ecosystem or GAIA, how can the ecosystem be preserved without humans being
> preserved?  o0r perhaps there are only certain humans that should be
> preserved.  Can I have some feedback on this?  I am deeply troubled.
> 
> Sharing and caring,
> 
> Dr. Carol
> 
It's very simple.  This person has a poverty of paradigms.  Linda
   Runyon's "A Survival Acre", for example, details 50 wild plants so
   prolific and nutritious that present lawn space would more than
   adequately feed the population.  The whole point of Internet is
   spreading new, good ideas.  If we got stuck in old paradigms, as
   this fellow apparently is, we might as well surrender right now.

   Alfred North Whitehead said once that if it weren't for ideas,
   humans would still be grooming each other in trees.

   "EarthHumans" and "EarthHome" come across as jargon, no matter how
   much meaning whoever originated those terms attaches to them.

   The whole point is thinking "win-win", of finding ways to balance
   humans and ecosystem.  Fr. Thomas Berry has said that, as rivers
   are the veins, forests the lungs, of the planet, humans are the
   brains.  It's true that the brain seems to have serious psychoses,
   right now, but we have to climb out of that, and go somewhere else.

   Mere ecosystem preservation without thinking of the whole, of the
   context, is Newtonian, an illusion, a cruel lie, because you can't
   separate out and protect anything.  It's all interconnected.