SPACE
A Crucial Distinction
A linguist could go into greater detail analyzing the term 'The World' (based on the Nation State model) and contrast it against the term 'Planet Earth'; in order to deconstruct the very different ways these two phrases color our perception of the non-local space we inhabit. But this distinction between 'Planet Earth' and 'The World', and the different meaning each term conjures up in our mind, is more than just a linguistic fine point...The extent to which we're able to realize this distinction may even determine our fate.
Like Castles in the Sky
Besides the dangers of modern warfare, many climate experts now tell us that in about 10 years or less, we'll reach a tipping point concerning global warming, and from then on our future can no longer be guaranteed. Yet there's no sense of urgency on the part of our governments to deal with this grave threat. Instead, we continue to give primacy to the conceptual abstractions we think we live 'in' - Nation States - as though they exist in some extra-spatial limbo and are as independent of planet Earth as make believe Castles in the Sky.
This eerily extra-spatial nature of Nation States is implicit in the assumption that they can... and will, somehow survive any future breakdown of our Earth's life-supporting processes of temperature self-regulation and climate cycles. We're like the cartoon character who sits up in a tree and begins to saw away at the branch which bears him, totally oblivious to his precarious position and imminent fall. Only there's no humor in our situation. It's as insane as any other delusional state that puts lives in jeopardy on a grand scale.
An Increasingly Dangerous Delusion
We're becoming increasingly vulnerable to highly sophisticated psycho-social technologies of control and persuasion that can now sway vast multitudes of our kind to kill each other in the hundreds of thousands, and on the slimmest of pretexts (even if those pretexts later turn out to be total fabrications, we seem to fall for these very same lies over and over again). Perpetuating this increasingly outmoded and exploitative conceptual framework means we'll continue to allow ourselves to be so manipulated, and to needlessly die and kill in vast numbers in wars in order to satisfy the greed of a powerful few. To believe that we still have a vested interest in, and owe allegiance to tyrants, murderers, or a trans-national global elite whose wars are carefully crafted in the service of empire, is hardly in our own best interests - or in the interest of our further evolution.
(On the 'religion' of war) "whole societies may be swept up into a kind of 'altered state' marked by emotional intensity and a fixation on totems representative of the collectivity: sacred images, implements, or, in our own time, yellow ribbons and flags."
Barbara Ehrenreich
Blood Rites
If we continue to perpetuate the delusion that we live separately 'in' Nation States rather than as an evolving species together 'on' our Earth, within the Cosmos; we'll continue to be manipulated by these global and regional geo/political dramas and power plays - while at the same time peripheralizing the life-threatening planetary crises which really demand our attention. Our current sense of 'The World' places outside its frame of reference the truth of our biospheric dependence and collective planetary presence. Whether or not someone has even a minimal environmental awareness and concern for the continued sustainability of our Earth, is still regarded as of less importance than what political party they belong to, or where they fit in on the left-right spectrum of political opinion. Being a green, expressing any concern or emotional connection to our home planet, or even giving utterance to the fact that we are dependant on the continuing well-being of our Earth is peripheral to our current non-local spatial myth of Nation States.
We are one with the entire living Earth and with the Cosmos."
Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor
The Great Cosmic Mother
Obscuring Awareness of our Planetary Existence
We might feel superior to 'ignorant' men and women of the past whose non-local spatial myth involved an Upper World of emotionally fickle gods who demanded they make blood sacrifices in order to receive a good harvest, or to avert storms and pestilence. But we'd do well to ask ourselves, "How much human blood have we spilled over the Earth as a consequence of our current non-local spatial myth..?" It's far greater than the number of victims of human sacrifice in the past whose lives were taken to appease vengeful gods... These modern victims can be counted not in tens of thousands….or even hundreds of thousands… but in millions.