Why do we Need a Cosmic Ecology?
It has become clear that humanity’s impact on the planet has become so great that scientists have called the present time The Anthropocene. This has prompted many people to a heightened concern often stated as ‘saving the planet’. Much of this new knowledge of recent decades arises from the growth of the discipline of ecology in all its various forms.
Contemporary ecology has caught up with indigenous wisdom in seeing humanity as part of the web of life. However, our continuing mental and emotional split from nature causes behaviour that does not correspond to the interdependent unity of man and nature. Hundreds of years of behaviour based on the exploitation of planetary resources is now giving us feedback in the form of global warming, species extinction, habitat destruction and geo-
Although restorative progress is being made through growing acceptance and application of terrestrial ecology, there is still an assumption that we know and understand how humanity needs to a good steward on the earth. But this is only a partial understanding.
There are factors outside the range of current dominant assumptions regarding humanity’s place in the scheme of things. These dominant assumptions hold us to limited forms of knowledge both of the universe and ourselves. We are also split from the Cosmos. However, once our horizons are enlarged, we can be discover that there are in existence cosmologies and psychologies that place humanity in a larger context than simply terrestrial ecology. Historically and culturally these have been cast in forms and language which no longer sit comfortably with the vastly increased scientific discoveries of the last 50 years. And the current assumptions and methodology of science itself are unable to recognise the validity of other ways of knowing beyond dogmatic reductionist science.
Cosmic Ecology is an emerging discipline that seeks a third way that reconciles these two seemingly incompatible worldviews and reaches out to a greater vision.
To enter into this exploration we have to examine our own assumptions and we will need to hold some of them more lightly or we will find a new worldview unintelligible and confusing. A different kind of scepticism is needed from the conventional versions, one that is an open to explore rather than reject, open to creative insight as well as logical analysis.
“We are, in fact, only parts of a system older and much bigger than we are. To comprehend that system, we must stretch our horizons in both space and time, thereby unshackling our restricted and distorted vision.”
George Seielstad
in Cosmic Ecology: The View from the Outside In.