Page 42 - ECOlogic Book

about them. What we learned is how things behave in isolation, which is a
very rare occurrence in the natural world.

In our new story, we start with the whole and notice how the parts emerge
from that. Our world is being turned upside-down. We’re moving from part-
to whole thinking to whole–to-part thinking, and this is taking place in every
institution. We do have a new story, as a primary revelation in our time.
It’s a story in which all matter is in a continuing process of emergence; in
which matter has a spiritual (consciousness) dimension; and one in which

objective and subjective are two sides of the same experience.

This new story is, as Thomas Berry says, our second naiveté. In it, we see

how we have taken, in Goodwin’s words, “. . . this long journey, separating
things and trying to understand them; we come back where we started, to
the notion of primal unity, and the sacred and mysterious quality of this
process we are all engaged in . . . it leads us in the direction of reconciliation
and reunification of the arts and sciences. Science, as we have known it,”
he says, “will no longer do; it’s been too heartless. Yet it is science itself
that has brought us to this point where we have knowledge enough to know
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how little we know and so can learn by other ways of knowing.”

All well and good, you say. But this is all theoretical stuff. How do these
ideas impact my daily life? Despite the devastating Reason/Bush
environmental rollbacks, I see a number of signs that as a culture, we are
moving toward a “lifestyle of qualities,” as well as a science of qualities.
Certainly at the top of the list is the inspiriting photo of earth from space,
the first time in human consciousness that we had an accurate visual

representation of the earth as a whole entity. Another sign is to note the
changes in the way we relate to animals. Animal rights activists were
considered the lunatic fringe not very long ago. Now they represent a
growing body of concern. At least as important are changes in the way we
relate to ecosystems. Whoever heard of an environmental impact study or
statement forty years ago? Green Marketing, or what I call ECOnomics, is
another sign. 77 percent of Americans now say that a company’s
environmental reputation affects what they buy. Socially responsible

42 Ibid.

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