August 2017 Book Club

   August 9, 2017
   August 9, 2017
   John Michael Greer
   203 Comments

   This  week's post  is part  of a  monthly series  of open-discussion  posts
   focusing  on books  I've  written. Our  theme for  the  present is  Mystery
   Teachings from the Living Earth, and  this week we're discussing "The First
   Law:  The  Law of  Wholeness"  (pp.  18-26). I'd  like  to  ask readers  to
   keep  their  questions  and  comments  focused  on  that  chapter  and  the
   ideas  it contains;  we'll have  another Ask  Me Anything  post later  this
   month,  and of  course a  substantive monthly  post and  another Stormwatch
   links-and-discussion post in due time.

   Here's the First Law, as it appears in the book:

   Everything that exists is part of a  whole system and depends on the health
   of the  whole system for  its own existence. It  thrives only if  the whole
   system thrives, and it cannot harm the whole system without harming itself.

   For the sake of clarity, here's an outline of the discussion:

   1 -  Like all  living creatures,  we habitually  think of  our environments
   solely as a background for our own actions and reactions. That's useful but
   incomplete. There's another way to see  any environment - as a whole system
   in which every living and nonliving thing is a part, dependent on the whole
   for its survival.

   2 - This is as  true for human beings as it is for  all other things. If we
   pretend that the environment only exists for  our benefit, as a grab bag of
   resources and a dumping ground for  wastes, we earn ourselves a bumper crop
   of nasty consequences. Thus we don't have the exclusive power to create our
   own  reality -  rather, we  co-create  it with  all other  beings, and  our
   intentions are less important in this process than our actual behavior.

   3 - What  benefits the whole system ultimately benefits  everything that is
   part of the system. What harms the whole system ultimately harms everything
   that is part of the system. The delusion that we can pursue our own benefit
   at the expense of  the whole systems of which we are part  is the source of
   most human  suffering. Assessing  our choices  to take  the needs  of whole
   systems into  account, and balancing  those against our personal  needs, is
   much wiser.

   Questions? Comments?  Discussions? Have  at it-subject,  of course,  to the
   usual rules.

                                 ***********

   In  other news,  I'm  delighted to  report  that the  first  volume of  the
   collected Archdruid  Report essays,  covering the years  2006 and  2007, is
   available for  preorder and will  be published next month.  Details? You'll
   find them here.