Who Speaks for Earth?

Previously, I mentioned that I think the essence of Scientific Paganism is the idea that the scientist and the Pagan practitioner can be allies, rather than getting bogged down in the animosity and mutual disdain that is often seen in exchanges between certain fundamentalist religious sects and argumentative members of the scientific community. In the two essays I’ve examined so far, Neo-Pagan philosopher Oberon Zell has argued that the Planet Earth should be recognized as a unified living organism and that, as part of that organism, the human race must necessarily change its relationship with the environment in order to preserve our own existence as well as the health and well-being of the living planet. His appreciation for the effect NASA photos of the Earth have had on raising awareness of the planet as a unified whole has been echoed by celebrity scientist Carl Sagan. However, I’m glad to say that Sagan and Zell agree on much more fundamental principles.

In the thirteenth and final episode of Cosmos, entitled “Who Speaks for Earth?” and originally broadcast on December 21, 1980, Carl Sagan ruminates on humanity’s chances of avoiding self-inflicted extinction:

From an extraterrestrial perspective, our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure in the most important task that it faces: preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet. But if we’re willing to live with the growing likelihood of nuclear war, shouldn’t we also be willing to explore vigorously every possible means to prevent nuclear war? Shouldn’t we consider in every nation major changes in the traditional ways of doing things—a fundamental restructuring of economic, political, social, and religious institutions?

We’ve reached a point where there can be no more special interests or special cases. Nuclear arms threaten every person on the earth. Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labeled impractical or contrary to human nature—as if nuclear war were practical or as if there were only one human nature.

But fundamental changes can clearly be made. We’re surrounded by them. In the last two centuries, abject slavery, which was with us for thousands of years, has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring worldwide revolution. Women, systematically mistreated for millennia, are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied them. And some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations. The old appeals to racial, sexual, and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.

A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet.

This clearly shows that Gaean Spirituality and scientific rationalism can find common ground. And unlike most religious traditions, Scientific Paganism actively seeks it.