EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Eleven, Number Three March/April 2002 The Challenges of the Twenty-first Century NEW ONE-DAY COURSE SETS CONTEXT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION In mid-February, 24 colleagues and friends of Realistic Living, Inc. converged on Bonham, Texas to experience and evaluate a one-day course, The Challenges of the Twenty-first Century, created by Gene and Joyce Marshall. Robert McAfee and Elizabeth Dyson of NACCE were invited guests. The creators of this course assume that the ecological crisis has become the central emergency within which all social justice challenges cohere. The specific content, organized in four 30-minute talks, each followed by a 45-minute facilitated discussion, spells out the reasons for this assumption. Each group process encourages participants to express in honest, open dialogue their understandings, concerns, questions, and decisions regarding the future. Secondarily, this course is about world-wide poverty; global economic tyranny; the dissolution of democracy through big money control; misinformation through advertising, public relations propaganda and political spin; the oppression of women; the oppression of racial and cultural groups; and terrorism — as both a policing challenge and a signal that critical planet-wide conditions need to be corrected. Though these secondary issues are not the central focus, each presenter, when teaching this course to specific groups, may lift up one or more of these issues for additional context and elaboration. In other words, flexibility and creativity are recommended for adapting this course to specific groups, places, and times. Session one, Master Pictures of the Ecological Era, pictures the world in which we live in a holistic manner. The first presentation invites the group to consider the story of the emergence and on-going transformation of planet earth. Session two, The Ecological Crisis, Facts and Prospects, explores some of the key arenas, facts, and prospects that make our situation a crisis, and the need to create a new mode of society to meet it. Session three, Core Blocks to Progressive Change, focuses on the rise of the giant corporations, how popular democracies are being undermined, how truth itself is being oppressed, and whence comes our hope. Session four, Strategies for Planetary Transformation, explores a scenario for getting from our present state of affairs to a viable future, what each of us might do, why we are overwhelmed by these challenges, and why we should bother to play our part. The topics of this course have been put together in the sequence outlined above in order to assist people: to overcome their belief that it is too difficult for them to think through for themselves fresh overviews of the world in which they live. to work through their reluctance to give up comforting misinformation and to experience the tragic, yet glorious truth of our actual challenges. to work through their doubts that anything significant can be done about challenges of this magnitude. to embrace the glory of being overwhelmed by tasks that are clearly too big for us and for which we all are woefully unprepared. In order to fulfill these aims, a highly respectful teaching style needs to be used in conducting this course. This is not intended to be a political spin or a brainwash. The facts and perspectives provided may seem overwhelming, but they are intended to be provocative gifts of possibility rather than oppressive, debate-ending arguments for a solidified ideology. This course intends to increase flexibility of thought rather than harden thought into a new dogmatism. From course notes by Gene Marshall Realistic Living Inc. Rt. 3, Box 104-A5, Bonham TX 75418 903/583-8252 jgmarshall@cableone.net Home     Table of Contents