After not seeing any movies all spring, my husband and I have been to four movies in as many weeks. What a treat! Tucked within the barrage of predominately action, adventure and horror previews is a trailer for Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” sequel. While he would eschew the comparison, I thought of former Vice President Gore’s perseverance when I read this week’s Haftarah from Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah warned and prophesized that riches and power have no real value. He reminded the people that God, “brought you into a land of plentiful fields, to eat its fruit and goodness; but when you entered, you defiled My land, and made my heritage abhorrent….” (Jeremiah 2:7)
You know where I am going with this. I could say nonjudgmentally and with compassion that it is right to make money through whatever means you have the opportunity to do so. At the same time, I could compassionately say it is also right to resist your local government agency’s inclination to sell public land to a developer. But this reminds me of philosopher Ken Wilber’s discussion about “idiot compassion.” This sounds harsh I know and it certainly is right and important to listen to both sides of a disagreement. In Jeremiah’s time the opposing positions were God’s ways vs. idolatry. In our time the positions are enabling (through ordinances, legislation and executive order) individuals to make money at the expense of our natural resources vs. an economy driven by environmental sustainability. It is not compassionate, and therefore not right, to dump toxic particulates into our drinking water.
The people did not listen to Jeremiah. Both Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple were destroyed. Our Torah offers paths to redemption we might be mindful of today. The law of Bal Tashhit, when taking a city in times of war you may eat from, but not destroy, trees. This Jewish law illustrates that the world has social utility. The world feeds, clothes and shelters us. The world does not exist for private gain, the world is held in common for all of us. “The pious will not suffer the loss of a single seed in the world, whereas the wicked rejoice at the destruction of the world,” (Sefer Ha-hinnukh, The Book of Education.)
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch commenting on Leviticus 25:34 writes: “Precisely because it [the city with its open spaces] has been given to them for all the generations, no generation is permitted to change it as it sees fit. The present generation is not the sole ruler over it, but the future generations are equal in their rights, and each is required to bequeath it to future generations in the same state in which they received it.”
We are slaves to “top-down” influences as neuropsychiatrist as Dan Siegel explains, “that is to say we have a sensation but the response is set up by earlier experience and embedded beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad. These top-down influences have had huge survival value in our evolutionary history in that they enable the brain to make rapid assessments and carry out efficient information processing to then initiate behaviors that enable the organism to survive.” Siegel refers here to foraging for food and evading predators. The times we experience today are culturally driven and contemporary culture dictates top-down that we buy into the consumer culture and not to worry that very few are really benefiting from the wanton destruction to our environment.
Last night we had 5-7 inches of rain in many of Lake County’s suburban towns. People were stranded inside and outside their homes and it continued to rain all day today. Ask your insurance agent if their pricing has factored in climate science findings. They do, and this industry is all about risk assessment and capital accumulation. Capital accumulation and honoring the environment are not mutually exclusive.
Einstein wrote, “A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness…. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Let me leave you with a chant from Rabbi Shefa Gold that will remind you, “As we delight in the garden of this moment, let us attune to the Source of its vitality and beauty.”
V’nahar yotzei mei’Eden, l’hashkot et hagan.
A river comes forth from Eden to water the garden. (Genesis 2:10)
