seeking oneearth progress

“Seeking OneEarth Progress”a presentation by Lee Van Ham

at the “Pastor’s Forum,” hosted by Tony Wolfe, pastor

Westminster Church

San Diego, CA

April 27, 2014

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Sunday, April 27, 2014

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Print copy—$11.66 ebook—$3.99

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Presentation Purpose: To deepen conversations and make stronger choices on the major challenge our species has yet faced, namely, sustaining the inhabitability of

Earth in the 21st century, using my book ...

This is a presentation of the OneEarth Project2


http://www.theoneearthproject.com

http://www.theoneearthproject.com

The Book Wades into the Crisis in order ...

• To know the content of the MultiEarth worldview that has driven the human civilization project.

• To feel our devotion to and the allure of the MultiEarth worldview and its mythology which keeps us so enchanted.

• To identify the consciousness attracting us to MultiEarth Progress even though it defies Nature’s carefully developed, abundant ecosystems that skillfully spawn and sustain life within balance.

• To break out of the MultiEarth illusion that holds us so we can work on solutions in a new paradigm.

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Research & First-Hand Experience

“Blinded by Progress is an eye-opening look at our current economic and social system that is both heart-centered and intellectually accurate. It’s one-of-a-kind perspective, based on deep research as well as first-hand experience, takes the reader quickly to the very foundation of what is wrong with our current world situation in order to fix it.”

Nikki Lyn Pugh Published author and journalist

2011 USD Women Peacemaker Project Selected Peace Writer

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Book Subtitle:

Breaking Out of the Illusion That Holds Us

• The illusion encourages...

• ... a civilization bigger than Creation

• ... immaturity of consciousness focused on ego-centered identity and achievements

• ... spirituality of The Market and Growth

• The illusion lacks...

• ... the will to shape a civilization which fits our one beautifully evolved planet

• ... maturity of consciousness which would help us take our place within Creation

• ... spirituality that is Earth and Spirit centered5


MultiEarth Progress is linear, always looking to advance, ascend, and grow. But as it moves onward

and upward, it requires many planets—an illusionary trap in its worldview.

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“System thinker Lee Van Ham has brought decades of reflecting about the dynamics of our predicament and gifted us with this book. ... Blinded by Progress is our wake up manual, our guide to deprogramming ourselves from the limitations of MultiEarth vision.”

Chuck CollinsSenior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies

Author of several books on wealth inequalityand the transition to a new economy.

We Need to Deprogram Ourselves from the MultiEarth Worldview

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MultiEarth vs. OneEarth Antagonism Spans 12 Millennia

• Homo sapiens have been on Earth for 200,000 years, living OneEarth practices until the end of the last Ice Age.

• Holocene Epoch began 10,000 BCE as climate stabilized. Settled agriculture, specialization of skills, and cities evolved, then accelerated by 5000 BCE; even more so with intro of money in 8th century BCE; industrialization (18th century CE) brought Anthropocene Epoch.

• In this context, MultiEarth Progress continues “to improve life” in the Civilization Project. BUT!, “civilizing” Nature/Creation has proved to be antagonistic to Eden.

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Section One Unpacks the MultiEarth Complex

which is comprised of ...

1. Oversized ecological footprints—what size is yours?

2. A worldview bigger than our planetary home, but filled with improvements.

3. A mythology that describes its sacred origins and offers continuing support via a pantheon of gods.

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MultiEarth vs. OneEarth Antagonism in Cain-Abel Myth & all the Bible

• East of Eden, John Steinbeck’s novel, portrays the crises present in the Civilization Project.

• Genesis is an anthology of OneEarth stories protesting the MultiEarth complex.

• The bible portrays a dialogue between spirituality that is Earth-centered and that which centers in monarchy, law, and other inventions of the civilization project.

• Jesus is a OneEarther; “Christ” is the divine consciousness that breaks out of illusion and moves OneEarth practice from impossible to inevitable—a true possibility for humanity.

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Section Two Describes Five BIG MultiEarth Practices

that Hold Us in Illusion

1. Giving primary religious devotion to economics

2. Creating economic frankensteins

3. Shrinking the treasure of humanness

4. Disguising corporatocracy as democracy

5. Neglecting population and species imbalance

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#1-Giving Primary Religious Devotion to Economics

• Discovering the theology of The Market, ... I have come to wonder whether the real clash of religions (or even of civilizations) may be going on unnoticed. I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as religion. —Harvey Cox, Professor of Divinity at Harvard (retired)

• [It is] apparent that the Market is becoming the first truly world religion, binding all corners of the globe more and more tightly into a worldview and set of values whose religious role we overlook only because we insist on seeing them as ‘secular.’—David Loy, authorized teacher in Sanbo Kyodan Zen Buddhism

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#2-Creating Economic Frankensteins

• The men who run the global corporations are the first in history with the organization, technology, money, and ideology to make a credible try at managing the world as an integrated economic unit.... What they are demanding in essence is the right to transcend the nation-state and, in the process, transform it.—Richard Barnett & Ronald Muller, authors of Global Reach: The Power of the MultiNational Corporation

• Question: Are “corporate persons” emotionally healthy and mature?

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#3-Shrinking the Treasure of Humanness

• While corporations accrue attributes morphing them into “corporate persons,” people are losing attributes belonging to mature humans.

• MultiEarth shrinks (dehumanizes) us to be ...

• consumers instead of stewards and providers

• technical units instead of employees or human resources

• forgetters of all but the official story instead of remembers of truth

• Our vulnerability to MultiEarth practices does not lie in our humanness, but in the restriction of it.

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#4-Disguising Corporatocracy as Democracy

• U.S. exceptionalism! Superpowers claiming to be democracies are not morally superior to other superpowers.

• Middle class! Corporatocracies primarily redistribute upward; only secondarily foster a middle class.

• Prosperity! Democracies cannot effect endless prosperity by collaborating with corporate controlled “free” markets.

• Constitutional democracy! Elections and legislatures serve corporations instead of constitutional democracy.

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Illusions that Corporatocracy promotes belief in:


From Our Folly of “Me,” Moving to “We”

“Lee has written a book that is a hair-on-fire call to action to free ourselves from our folly of looking at Me and moving us to We ... Pronto.”

Will Marre Founder, The American Dream Project

Author: How to Change the World and Be Home for Dinner; andYour Dreams on Fire

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Explosion of a Single SpeciesHas Created Great Imbalances

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#5-Neglecting Population and Species Imbalance

• “One species is rendering the planet unsuitable for the lives of hundreds of thousands of species, very possibly including itself.” —Milton Saier, biologist, UCSD (Saier estimates extinction rate of known species at 8,000/yr.)

• Which Question? (1) How many humans can Earth sustain? (2) How many humans and other species can inhabit Earth in a life-sustaining balance? David Pimental, Cornell University answers 2 billion; Ecological Footprint Network says 5 billion.

• “Biological diversity” introduced to science as essential by Thomas Lovejoy, 1980: “Each species is a unique set of solutions to a specific set of biological problems, equivalent not to a book but to a series of volumes.”

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“‘El mundo que queremos es uno donde quepan muchos mundos’—‘We want a world where many worlds can coexist.’ These words spoken by the Maya Indigenous people in

resistance add color and meaning to the important and timely message of this book.... This book is a must read for people and

communities committed to collectively raise consciousness. It is a guide in creating concrete steps toward being

responsible citizens of one earth.”

Marco TavantiInt’l Sustainable Development,

DePaul University

Linking Indigenous People in Resistance to Our Being Responsible Citizens of OneEarth

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Courage to break out of illusion!

Earth is now the primary whistleblower.

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OneEarth Progress moves in rhythm with Nature’s circling, spiraling patterns that evolve consciousness

and abundance.21


We Might Have Taken Many Paths That Would Have Led to a Better World Than the One We Inhabit

“Blinded by Progress is a work of keen observation, a great deal of scholarship and an abiding care for living beings. There were many paths that we might have taken in the past that would have led to a better world than the one we inhabit. Lee Van Ham’s writing delineates a path going forward that does not repeat the illusions of progress. I hope it opens many eyes.”

Paul HawkenEntrepreneur, environmentalist

Author of books: Natural Capitalism; The Ecology of Commerce; Blessed Unrest

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“Blinded by Progress ... is a clear and powerful message that the author does not dilute with checklists of minor feel-good actions we can take on our own. Instead, Van Ham dares to call us ALL to nothing less than a radical change of consciousness, breaking through illusions of our dominant MultiEarth economy in order to embrace the alternative OneEarthism. And contrary to what many claim, there ARE real alternatives.”

Barry Shelley Political economist; Global Agriculture and

Climate Change Advisor, Oxfam America

We Must Not Dilute the Message with Minor Feel-Good Actions

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Read!

Act! Reflect!

• Calculate your ecological footprint; then bring it into conversations seeking to fit with Earth’s abundance

• Practice identifying MultiEarth and OneEarth ways of thinking and living.

• Resacralize what MultiEarth commodifies; practice seeing the sacred in all things which is to see wholeness. 24

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Lee Van Ham

Breaking Out of the Illusion that Holds Us

Blinded by Progress


The key word for John Steinbeck in hisEast of Eden

is the last word in Blinded by Progress:“Timshel”

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seeking oneearth progress

Economy & Finance