For love of the power of Mother Earth

EcoArts Festival unfolds this coming week at the American Memorial Park. Features are the Battle of the Bands, a film festival, literary contests, sculpture of recyclable materials, a Cook-a-Rainbow competition, and others. At the tail end of the summer before the schools open, a festive weekend focused on ecology-consciousness awaits Saipan families and islanders.

There may not be tons of yuan, yen, or won to be made in the CNMI to raise the per capita income of its residents to a healthy First World level (yet), but the lifestyle supported by an environment that remains the envy of many is a secret best kept away from marauding investment capital floating around the world in search of a fast buck. Sustainable development has become a politically correct policy since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring alerted the world to the invisible effect of commercially injected chemicals into the water cycle and the food chain. Protection and conservation of our natural resources can no longer just be the preoccupation of the altruistic and charitable, brought up during barbecue chats among colleagues and kin, or raised as a fashionable cause to rally people around other political agendas. Globally, the issue of the environment and its implication on human culture has become a struggle for survival of body and soul.

At any given Sunday, a Christian church somewhere in the world sings an 1860 English hymn of praise and gratitude that goes: For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth, over and around us lies. In many world religions, including those in the Pacific, Native Americans, and the East, the natural processes have all been respected as subject and object of spiritual satiety. However, in the Western ideology of separating nature from supernature, the intent to focus on the transcendent denigrated the integrity of the immanent. Thus, Augustine, writing in the aftermath of the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths, would harp on the original sin as the all-purpose explanation of the depraved human condition. In our time, Dominican Matthew Fox would herald a return to the original blessing and instruct the Christian faithful in Creation Spirituality out of the abundant gifts of nature.

The notion of scientific revolution as a paradigm shift leads one to see how discarding the static universe hypothesized by Descartes and Newton for a dynamically alive, fluid, and interconnected whole system allows science to discover anew the “enchanted” world that was part of human consciousness since the dawn of history.

American monk and cultural historian Thomas Berry calls us to heal the earth and, with Sierra Club, have propagated a philosophy that looks at the issues of hunger, poverty and justice from the environmental perspective. Berry would call us to return not only to the “wild” as in wilderness, but to recover the “wildness” of mystery, magic, mysticism that has been lost in our attempt to tailor existence according to our ego-centered and ethnocentric, though rational and pragmatic designs. Peter Russell’s landmark Global Brain bewails the fact that humanity seems to have become a cancerous bundle of nerve cells indifferently destroying the whole organic planetary existence of a global village.

Being an Earthkeeper has thus become a mandate and an imperative for many, defining human economics beyond the domain of accountants into the cloisters and classrooms of profound secular spirits. The effort to preserve rainforests, savannas, primary forest stands, wetlands, reefs and other ecological formations attempts to harmonize the claims of cultures and the reality of nature. Organizing along bioregional concerns has become a “green culture” preoccupation.

The EcoArts Festival is a community event, and of necessity, a tourist attraction as well. But for those who discern the deeper undercurrents of contemporary social movements, it is also a revolutionary tactic to awaken the local consciousness of the critical need to honor and observe the sustaining power of the earth and natural forces. The emphasis on visual experience, tactile encounter, aromatic assault, literary impingement in sound and concepts, all contribute to our emerging image of the global village at the local level. Says Global Brain Russell: “The image a society has of itself can play a crucial role in the shaping of its future. A positive vision is like the light at the end of the tunnel, which, even though dimly glimpsed, encourages us to step in that direction.”

It has become politically correct to be ecologically conscious in all our social affairs. The conservatives tend to naturally conserve and preserve, and the liberals tend to intentionally protect, so this is one arena where political parties and otherwise ideologically contending groups can effortlessly cooperate. Or at least, intend to cooperate. Where they differ is on the how. Conservatives tend to rely on the private sector to promote natural conservation on the basis of economic self-interest. This is most crucial for places like the CNMI where the natural capital is the basis of its sustained economy. Liberals tend to legislate their programs, appropriate public funds to implement them, and establish a structure to ensure that those programs are sustained in the long haul. So, on matters of the environment, political parties differ more on the means rather than the intent of mission.

Non-government organizations and private voluntary organizations embody both the conserving and liberal thrusts. Unfortunately, the life expectancy of altruism is short; charity impulse may be sustained when attached to a religious group but can also weaken quickly by the vicissitudes of whim and caprice. The real revolutionary is a deeply spirited person who understands that the umbilical cord connects one’s survival to the health of Mother Nature. It is no accident that revolutionary America would include as part of its national symbol system, the hymn, “America, the Beautiful.”

Silent Spring Carson wrote: “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for its destruction.”

To be ecology-conscious is to be politically correct, economically smart, and culturally authentic, without losing one’s ideological conservative/liberal label. Participate in the EcoArts Festival this week. Rediscover your innate love of the power of Mother Earth. The sanity and survival you save may just be your own.

(Strictly a personal view. Vergara writes a weekly column for the Saipan Tribune.)