Exploring Earthiness: The Reality and Perception of Being Human Today

If we see ourselves as Earth rather than Earth as existing for us our perspective is transformed. A variety of religious philosophical cultural and political self-perceptions that dominate our sense of human identity are deeply challenged by this shift in perspective. John Lockes doctrine of Earth as human property has been central to current presuppositions about our selves: justified on the grounds of our possessing unique divinely bestowed rational abilities. But today the effects of that doctrine on Earths resource base and on its other-than-human creatures directly challenge such assumptions. At the same time contemporary scientific findings about the evolution of earthly life demonstrate that while we belong to Earth and nowhere else Earth does not belong to us. Exploring this role reversal raises fundamental questions about current theological philosophical scientific and economic presuppositions that underpin the business as usual viewpoint and human-centered aims of contemporary policies and lifestyles. It takes us beyond hierarchical Christian and philosophical doctrines toward a deeper Earth-focused and peace-based understanding of what it means to be human today. Exploring Earthiness is an inspiring call for a fundamental change in how we relate with the ecology and spirit of our planet. At its core Anne Primavesi asks us to shift from the dying yet pervasive worldview that nature belongs to humanity and move toward a sense of ourselves as people who come from the soil air and water of our home: Earth. A sustainable future for human and more-than-human communities requires nothing less. --Tim Leduc author of Climate Culture Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North With relentless clarity Anne Primavesi bares the historical cultural and religious roots of our ecological crisis. . . . Increasing injustice as well as climatic and other dangerous global change reveal the inescapable need to scrutinize and transform our human self-understanding and to disabuse us from the fatal misconception of owning the earth. With critical acuteness . . . she encourages us to convert this insight into alternative sustainable life and thought styles. --Sigurd Bergmann Founder European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment The earth is one a living entity. Our survival as a species depends on earths well-being yet today the devastating global impact of human consumption threatens all life on earth. In this brilliant analysis Anne Primavesi exposes the mental categories that undergird and justify the Western anthropocentric worldview arguing persuasively for the need to embrace rather than transcend our earthliness. This is a critically needed book to change minds. --Dan Spencer Associate Professor of Environmental Studies University of Montana Anne Primavesi has written an important thoughtful and timely book. . . . Our context as thinking creatures does not give us justification for thinking ourselves apart from the planet but rather [it] urges us to think about how our thoughts emerge from the planetary community and return to affect that community. Primavesi helps us think about our earthiness as bodies among other bodies on an evolving living planet. --Whitney Bauman Assistant Professor of Religion and Science Florida International University Another gem! Anne Primavesis gift is her ability to show us how and where our thinking about our relationship with earth went wrong. In this new book she helps us see that the earth is not our property to use and exploit. She reminds us we are earthlings whose destiny is intimately connected to the health of a living earth. --Carol P. Christ author of She Who Changes and Green Party Candidate Greece Anne Primavesi is presently a Fellow of the Westar Institute and Jesus Seminar Willamette University Salem Oregon and has authored Sacred Gaia (2000); Gaias Gift (2003); Making God L