Sustainable Communities For All

I went for a drive one morning as the fog burned off, searching for signs of Spring. I drove along the South Thompson River near Kamloops. The snow is melting faster along the valley bottom where the southern Sun touches down. I saw several Ravens, Eagles, Crows, and Swans. The Cows were calving and the Mountain Sheep were sunning on the cliffs of the Benchlands.

Thomas Berry in his book ‘The Dream of the Earth’ from 1988 discusses:
“The most difficult transition to make is from an anthropocentric (human chauvinism) to a biocentric norm of progress. If there is to be any true progress, then the entire life community must progress. Any progress of the human at the expense of the larger life community must ultimately lead to a diminishment of human life itself. A degraded habitat will produce degraded humans. An enhanced habitat supports an elevated mode of the human. This is evident not only in the economic order, but also throughout the entire range of human affairs. The splendor of the earth is in the variety of its land and its seas, its life forms and its atmospheric phenomena; these constitute in color and sound and movement that great symphonic context which has inspired our sense of the divine, given us our emotional and imaginative powers, and evoked from us those entrancing insights that have governed our more sublime moments.” Pg 165

"The solution is simply for us as humans to join the earth community as participating members to foster the progress and prosperity of the bioregional communities to which we belong. A bioregion is an identifiable geographical area of interacting life systems that is relatively self- sustaining in the ever-renewing processes of nature. The full diversity of life functions is carried out, not as individuals or as species, or even as organic beings, but as a community that includes the physical as well as the organic components of the region. Such a bioregion is a self-propagating, self-nurturing, self-educating, self-governing, self-healing, and self-fulfilling community. Each of the component life systems must integrate its own functioning within this community to survive in any effective manner." pg 166

Can you see the herd of Sheep above on the hillside and Cows below?

Thomas Berry states,

“Of primary importance in North America is identifying the various bioregions. To do that requires sensitivity akin to that of the shamanic personality of tribal peoples. While bioregions have certain geographic boundaries, they also have certain mythic and historical modes of self-identification. This identification depends on ourselves as we participate in this process, which only now we begin to understand and appreciate.” pg 170

The local Bighorn Sheep come from herds reintroduced from California. They cross the road to get down to the river. As well, their old calving ravines along the hillside are now groomed into a Golf Course and Lifestyle Resort.

Global human chauvinism continues to be politically overlooked

at this crucial time as our economy is in crisis.

What more can we do to not allow this to perpetuate

for the sake of the current economy?

If we can raise the social consciousness towards equality of gender or race of human beings such as in the past 50 years, how can we raise the social consciousness for equality all species and bioregions as we struggle to overcome economic instability?

Can we afford not to?