Survival and the Art of Fearless Compassion

The following article began as a comment to the Space Renaissance Initiative discussion site, pursuing the question of whether our survival on Earth and in space will depend on compassion.

When pursuing the problem of environmental sustainability in 1987 from a spiritual perspective, believing that there would be a better world, but wanting to know how in the hell it would happen, I soon found that the ecological and scientific thinkers in the field had connected social equity, or the poverty and starvation problem, with that of environmental sustainability. They believed that there would not be a better world without basic fairness, because people in poverty, starving, watching their children die, have no reason to care about the Earth. Children who survive malnutrition all too often reach adulthood with damaged intellects and no hope.

I came to find that the environmental holy grail is an ecologically sustainable society living a globally equitable lifestyle.

We now need 1.4 Earth’s to maintain the current demand on the planet and the figure is steadily rising. This is not just unsustainable, a line that was crossed in the 1980s, but it is eating into the primary capital of Earth’s life-support systems that underpin human global civilization. Ecology underpins the economy; ignore the needs of ecology and evolution and risk collapse. This is not just population growth: it is also lifestyle demand.

Considering geopolitical dynamics, such as India and China’s resource demands to build up their economic and military strengths, including space abilities, I could find no answer on Earth alone. The pieces of a solution were there, but scattered all over the place with no way to join them, pieces driven apart by demands for ever more resources.

When I considered basic evolution (survival, expansion and diversity), I began to wonder if the emergence of human consciousness in Nature was part of a natural flow of evolution wired into natural law, like planets forming and life emerging, i wondered if consciousness was waiting to be revealed when conditions were right. In this context, when I considered the Solar System as a whole, all the pieces of the puzzle fell neatly into place and I could see that we were four decades late at getting started.

I could also see from space research that there was concern about security in space. With this the compassion pieces of the puzzle came into play. Rather than massive militaries in the celestial realm, if we could generate good-will on Earth, then we could maximise security in space: a simple feed-back loop of cause and effect, of action and reaction.

In this context I suggest that a vision for space may need to include the health and creative opportunities of all Earth’s children.

We can only buy a survival insurance policy by securing a sustainable presence beyond Earth, which I call the Liberty Line, from where humanity will not be in danger of falling back to Earth and losing the race.

With a view to the security problem in space caused by conflict and or terrorism, I wondered if we could maximise good-will on Earth so as to minimise security risks in space, by frog-marching poverty and starvation into history.

I could see that the end of poverty can be delivered with a view to the wealth generated beyond the Liberty Line, where the resources of space become essentially freely available, providing we don’t blow this bounty through irresponsible monopolistic behaviour. This bounty would be realised early on by working toward the Liberty Line and when there is no doubt that we will secure it and go well beyond.

Poverty will not be eliminated by wishing it away, but only by a clear plan that builds on the Liberty Line and the inclusive civilization that we can create in the Solar System, including Earth.

The key idea out of these deliberations, is that compassion is essential for our survival on Earth and in space, compassion that is matched with our collective creative intelligence to solve the problem.

Achieving compassion at this level is the sum of individual choice, the ultimate expression of democratic freedom, where honesty and care meld and are admirably described in the universal story of the Good Samaritan, which describes the art of fearless compassion.

Fearless compassion is beyond the geopolitics that generates the problems. Our survival solution would then appear to be beyond all political ideologies.

The art of fearless compassion is the essential quality aspired to by the genuinely spiritual person, the individual who steps universally beyond all religious ideology.

If these observations prove to be correct, then our way to survival on Earth and beyond lies in a vision that includes, space activism, environmentalism, human rights and spirituality. These could be the four essential cornerstones of the future that we need to build a civilization that thrives across the Solar System and among the stars.

The end of conflict may have been born in 1945, when the leading nations were forced to pull back from war on the main arena of battle with nuclear weapons, as the leading powers were obliged to become considerate of each others interests under Mutually Assured Destruction and installed early warning phones for direct talks. We could now be on borrowed time, because as nuclear madness spreads the chances of an accident increase.

Look over the Earth’s history and the emergence of compassion as a movement can be seen growing through the millennia, as when the Icelandic Vikings avoided civil war in 1000AD through peaceful resolution, as when the Hospitaller knights survived politically through building hospitals and as with the revolution led by Gandhi in India.

Our survival is already at risk as our ecological sustainability on this planet increasingly shrinks. Now the impact of burning fossil fuel is driving global warming, climate change, alterations in plant biology and ocean acidification. Humanity is not just on borrowed time, but is on a loudly ticking countdown to survival.

Our only way out is to rally our collective creative imaginations and quickly lift our game to secure the Liberty Line, by inviting individuals globally to participate, where the art of fearless compassion may now hold the key to our survival and be the only way that we open the gates to the celestial realm and deliver a paradise on Earth.