Yesterday I attended a religious service that focused on acknowledging our human dependence on and embeddedness in the natural environment, and the necessity to take better care of our environment and earth. A few days earlier I read about an indigenous African culture that believes that the West is as endangered as any other culture precisely because of our acts of environmental destruction as well as our disregard of spiritual values. Here is a statement that distills these perspectives, “the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources is merely a symptom of an overall sickness of the human spirit. Any solutions to the environment/development crisis must, therefore, be rooted in an approach which fosters spiritual balance and harmony within the individual, between individuals, and with the environment as a whole.” (Earth Charter from Bahá’í International Community)
In this blog I will skirt the spiritual component, or its lack, in the potential disaster suggested above. That topic belongs to another blog. There is another dimension I want to explore. I thought about the meaning of the American dream and our future. Doing some research, I learned that some think the idea of the American dream evolved from our frontier past when there seemed always to be more, beckoning, unexplored land, promising a better life. In time, the concept evolved to encapsulate the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence, democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality. Wikipedia notes that it captures the “ethos of the United States.” I’m proud of these big ideas, democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality. And proud that they are part of our national ethos. There is much for us to live up to in these ideas. But there is one problematic idea tucked into our collective dream. The vision of opportunity meaning material betterment for oneself and then for one’s children is now, frankly, problematic. How does this square with managing our environment sustainably?
I don’t have any answers. What I propose is that we re-interpret our dream. I believe that it needs to be repurposed for the twenty-first century. How can it express a national ethos we are proud of that also embodies the necessary care and sustainable management of our natural environment? As an optimist, I offer that if we engage with those big ideas embodied in the American dream, we will have a better chance of finding our way forward and perhaps moving toward that spiritual balance and harmony.