Western View of the World Must Change

EARTHKEEPING NEWS
A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY

Volume Seven, Number One
November/December 1997

Western View of the World Must Change to Stop Global Warming

The climate change issue is a case study of how nature, people and globalization are interconnected, involving not only the deterioration of nature, but also the increasing rift between rich and poor nations. For the first time it is a certainty that human influence is causing global warming. There isn't any one set of solutions. There isn't any field that cannot make a contribution to this agenda. We know a lot about what we need to do, and we know how to share this knowledge. The question I ask is: will we do what we know we should do? Will we change our ways? As St. Paul said, "I know the good, but I don't do it." It is a problem of the Will.

Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly." Can First World Christianity imagine a notion of the abundant life not based on the high consumer economy that underlies climate change? Should we feel apocalyptic? No. But we need to change the way we view the world.

Western culture sees itself as the sole subject, at the center, with the world spread out and available for its benefit. At the close of the 20th century this arrogant view has resulted in the triumph of consumerism. Nature is only "natural resources." Other human beings, especially poor ones, are merely "human resources." The arrogant eye is acquisitive. It sees everything in reference to itself. It simplifies the world to control it, denying the complexity and the mystery of what it cannot understand. All of us in the white affluent West share this gaze, especially when it is turned on nature. The arrogant eye which objectifies the Other for its own benefit views women and nature in the same way ö the male gaze, the anthropocentric gaze and the colonial gaze are similar. The Western elite have adopted this gaze.

Subject-object dualism is, I believe, the basic model that underlies our being, our thinking and our doing. Subject-object dualism is so deep in Western white culture, it is scarcely visible. It is just the "Way Things Are."

One way to recognize its foundational character is to substitute a different model of being, thinking and doing, the subject-subject model. In this model, all other beings ö human beings, mountains, rivers, animals, and plants ö are subjects. They are different kinds of subjects, each with its own reason for being. This model suggests we are all subjects relating to other subjects, each with its own value quite apart from its usefulness to human beings.

Christianity should wage a major critique of the subject-object model that underlies the arrogant gaze of Western culture, because the heart of Christian spirituality lies in the subject-subject model. The simplest definition of Christian spirituality is contained in the Great Commandments (you shall love God with all your heart, soul and mind; and your neighbor as yourself).We are to love God and neighbor as subjects, for who they are, and not as means to an end.

The loving eye acknowledges the complexity, mystery and difference in the world. It recognizes boundaries between the Self and the Other. There is nothing sentimental or weak minded about the loving eye. Rather it is the realistic, tough, no-nonsense God's eye that acknowledges what is difficult for us to admit ö that reality is made up of others.

But most contemporary Western Christians place two restrictions on their tradition's subject-subject model. The first is forgetfulness of Jesus' radicalizing of the model, which pertains particularly to the poor, the outcast and the oppressed.

The second restriction of most Christians is exclusion of the natural world. While God and other people are subjects, nature is not. My suggestion is that we relate to other creatures in the ecosystem as ends, not means. We read in Genesis that God looked at creation and said "It is good; it is very good." God said this seven times, whereas subduing nature and having dominion over it is mentioned just once. The message of Genesis is not domination, but appreciation.

Shifting from the arrogant eye to the loving eye is the basis for a shift from consumerism to the Life Abundant, a new sense of what this life is. This shift is one of the most important things we must do, not only to control global warming, but for all of us to have an abundant life.