Peter Carter Speaks on Earth Masters and the State of the World

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Empire or Earth Community?

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller

Humanity is, as Scientific American put it this year, at the crossroads - facing the momentous choice between the worst or the best of all possible futures.

The worst is in the news every day. But with efficiency and clean limitless energy sources from the forces of the Earth we can easily imagine a brilliant peaceable future for all of humanity. It is all a question of how we work with the Earth. And that now determines the future of all generations to come after us.

So the first Earth Masters new design of education is something for us all to take a good look at and take hope in. In particular if we are losing confidence in the' American way of life'.

As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.

-The Earth Charter (2000)

It seems the more sustainability is talked about the less is the progress made towards it. The model for developing an ecological community culture and economy is being started on Vancouver Island.

Like all great advances it stems from an obvious idea - obvious, that is, once it has been pointed out. This obvious idea in this case is that to live sustainably we have to learn to live sustainably - that's because, as we have known for at least twenty years, as a society we do not live sustainably.

Our consumer culture and our perverse economics are consuming the earth's ecosystems and polluting the entire biosphere far beyond the capacity of nature's systems to continue sustaining advanced life for long.

It makes sense to learn to live sustainability from the greatest expert at the greatest center for sustainable living. The expert is Nature and the center is the Earth. Luckily the center, as Black Elk taught, is everywhere. And naturally it is only obvious to those who are ready. When the student is ready the teacher will appear.

Let's face it - most of us left school regretting how so much of our most precious time had been wasted. Education helps us to be mindless heartless consumers. Education excludes nature and disconnects us from nature. Little wonder our culture thoughtlessly trashes the planet.

In Future Shock, Alvin Toffler wrote of education invented to produce docile factory workers. Second Wave society, he wrote, is composed of nuclear family, factory-type education system and the corporation industrial complex. It is based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction.

More recently, Toffler wrote: 'It would be a mistake to assume that the present-day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. But much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it ever more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals.'

Sir Nicolas Stern is the chief government scientist for the UK. Last month his Stern Report jolted the comfortably wealthy world out of its climate change denial. The possibility of avoiding a global catastrophe is "already almost out of reach".

Nearly three-quarters of British Columbians believe life as we know it will end in another two or three generations unless drastic and immediate action is taken to curb global warming. (November Vancouver Sun poll)

It's not just climate change. The many people who care are sick of a way of life that is best described as rape and pillage.

I remember David C Korten visiting Nanaimo to explain community economics. I met up with him recently lecturing in Toronto. He says that we are witnessing the last convulsive days of empires. Empire or Earth Community? That is the choice before us. It is a choice defined by an epic struggle with deep roots in the human psyche. To the forces of empire, the world is an inherently hostile and competitive place filled with human and natural enemies that must be controlled or destroyed by physical force. To the forces of community, the world is inherently nurturing, compassionate, and overflowing with creative abundance and opportunity (David Korten).

The new education of Earth Masters is a development of Earth community; development being a process in which something passes by degrees to a more advanced or mature stage. So much of what is called development by our culture is just the opposite.

It is this creative abundance that manifests when people learn by working together on and from the Earth. The word soul is from the same root as soil.

Earth Masters is about working in partnership with the living soil. It is soul development.

Amongst a growing number of people there is a sense that some thing re- evolutionary is needed. In his new book Mike Nickerson (7th Generation Institute) challenges the reader- Have we the will to set our sights on a mature social order- one where we responsibly apply what we know about the Earth and about human needs?

But the UN Earth Summit was fourteen years ago and our world has gotten less sustainable.

Green capitalism exists but doesn't make a dint in the all consuming consumer culture. Shop till you drop has taken on global proportions and as a result species and ecosystems are falling by the wayside. There is behind all the frantic borrowing and spending a yearning for a better life that no amount of material consuming satisfies. Our high material standard of life is far from a happy one. The leaders of all churches are appealing for people to care for Creation. But, while man cannot live on fast food alone, going to church on Sunday does not fill the spiritual hunger.

Father Thomas Berry is now in his nineties. He saw that all of our revered institutions are faulty. They all have to radically change by referencing their activities to the big context of life - to the Earth. One of his last books was The Great Work. That's the work of Earth Masters.

History is governed by those overarching movements that give shape and meaning to life by relating the human venture to the larger destinies of the universe. Creating such a movement might be called the Great Work of a people. . . . (Thomas Berry). I met Thomas some years ago to hear him talk to a small group on Point Grey beach. He would be glad to hear of an Earth Masters starting up.

The training ground for The Great Work is the kind of education that is being developed by Earth Masters.

Can our institutions change to give us hope for the future? - A member of a sustainability discussion group asked in Toronto. She was met with silence.

Derek Jensen author of End Game asks his audiences for a show of hands on who believes our North American way of life is sustainable. He seldom finds a raised hand.

Some how we need to redefine everything- development, politics, religion, economics, education, work and play.

Well it's happening. Thomas Kuhn wrote in the early 60s Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change. Earth Master grads.

So this is the time for an education in Earth Masters. It is not a hierarchy. It is a learning community. It is whole body-mind learning. The learning comes naturally. The Earth is the reference and the context of learning. It teaches holistic awareness and systems thinking without the student having to know about big words or complicated ideas. It is an education that any one and everyone can take. It redefines everything, most of all, knowledge and wealth.

Mike Nickerson says that the new economy will result in people creating the wealth that they will need in their retirement without the need for pensions or investment funds. The wealth they created will be available for them in the community.

This article includes some quotes taken from some great authors. Yet Earth Masters does not rely on the written word. Real education occurs at the nexus of hand and head. The feel of a chisel on wood, the smell of wood flakes, and the beauty in the function of a hand made hand tool.

Blinded by progress we forget that there are a great many things that can never be improved on. The Stradivarius violin and the Haida ocean going canoes defy improvement by computer designed reproductions. There is no substitute for many ancient designs and activities that have been proven in the test of time. The technology of the future is a mix and match of the best primitive-tech and best hi-tech. The blend will be chosen on the basis of efficiency of function fulfillment and aesthetics.

For this is the moment when we are being called by the deep forces of creation to awaken to a new consciousness of our own possibilities and to embrace the responsibilities that go with our collective presence on the living jewel of life called Earth. We have the need and the means to create a true Earth community. The choice is ours. The time is now. We’re the one’s we’ve been waiting for (David Korten).

Peter Carter is a family physician with a special interest in ecology, peace, spirituality and sustainable development issues, especially as they relate to children's health and the future.

He can be reached at: petercarter46( AT )sympatico.ca

"We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."

~ Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) http://www.ipcc.ch

"The whole global warming thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability."

~ Jerry Falwell, American fundamentalist Baptist pastor