What if the words ‘dominion over’ had never been written into the dominant religious text of today’s world? We could have avoided global warming by living in harmony with nature.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. [Genesis 1:26-28]
It’s nonsense to believe that the comforts offered by technology would have been limited by living in harmony. Indeed, had that verse been written as prescribing a life of harmony with nature, we would have been more efficient in ways the modern person cannot possibly imagine. For example, we would not be destroying the rain forests that potentially contain the cures for many of our modern diseases. We may never know the full capabilities of plants and animals that humans have made extinct.
However, to single out either the Church or the Corporation as sole cause of this disaster is naïve. The point is, they’re both instances of the same pattern: when large groups of people get together, there is a tendency for the scum to drift to the top. How else could 2% of our population control 98% of the wealth?
Why?
It gets back to the same issue: there is an ingrained value on “dominion over” rather than “harmony with.”
And don’t tell me it’s hopelessly a part of human nature. This cop-out excuse is part of the hypnosis wrought by the greedy to maintain the status quo.
Humans have something that sets them apart from animals, called a brain. Humans can reason through the consequences of their attitudes, and arrive at ways of thinking and believing that benefit both present and future generations.
