How to achieve environmental progress in a Post-Truth society... and did I just tap into something deeper?

I was listening to a recent conversation between Ezra Klein and James Talarico, a candidate for the US Senate from Texas who is a Democrat with a strong Christian faith that forms the backbone of his politics. Talarico has gained significant support and won races in Texas in districts that voted for Republican candidates in almost all other races. He described his politics on the podcast as a, “politics of love” and his religious faith as a trust that love will ultimately win over hate.

It was fascinating to hear him describe how his position on social issues comes from the scripture and hear how his call to morality, based in his religious beliefs, is resonating with voters in Texas to support a social and economic progressive movement.

After listening, I found myself reflecting on how moved I was by his call to morality, what often felt like a sermon. I don’t remember him saying a single statistic or once referencing economics to make his case for equal opportunity and affordability. I don’t remember him ever referencing an academic study or anything related to science on any of the topics discussed.

And yet I was moved. I was inspired. I was ready to take action.

No science. No Facts.

Ethics. Morality. Spirituality. Religion.

Across the environmental movement, there is a growing frustration that science and facts are no longer pertinent. There is so much disinformation that it’s impossible to discern truth from fiction, or at least it’s easy to choose the “science” or “facts” that support a specific agenda or one’s personal beliefs, whatever those might be. There’s this sense that no matter how robustly we prove the negative effects of climate change and nature loss and how many ways we try to convey that science and those facts to the general public, it is falling on deaf ears.

And yet still, and this is my anecdotal experience working in environmental philanthropy, we focus the vast majority of our energy and our financial resources funding science and trying to change people’s behavior by communicating scientific findings. If we do nothing to address climate change, your town will be this much hotter and experience this much more flooding and this many more wildfires and therefore you should care about climate change!

Now, to be clear, there are many actors that are still making decisions informed by the science and this is a very good thing. These are mainly larger institutions, from insurers, to financial institutions, to corporates and governments (whether they admit it or not). And we should absolutely be funding science and the tools needed to make concrete, quantitative cases for public and private sector leaders to make decisions that affect the environment informed by science.

But if we are talking about the general public and inspiring the general public to elect candidates that will take action on climate and nature, maybe it’s time to shift at least some of our energy and financial resources towards a different approach.

Morality, the environment and… religion(?)

What if the environmental movement spent a bit less of our energy on making a strong scientific case and more on reawakening morality across our society? What if we spoke to the heart rather than the mind? In a “post-truth” society, is morality the only approach that we can lean on to build a big, broad, diverse environmental movement?

Increasingly, I think so. But this starts with the question of what is morality?

How does one define what is morally right and what is morally wrong?

Well it turns out there are a lot of different opinions out there about the foundation of morality. From philosophers to religious figures, there are so many people that have made contributions describing or proscribing how to live a moral life and so many interpretations of those teachings. I was going to try to include a summary of what it means to be morally right, but quickly that becomes the same academic exercise, the same logic based scientific analysis that does not seem to be moving people in today’s society.

Even when we step out of science and into moral philosophy, I, and folks like me, tend to stay in our heads, when the answer isn’t in our heads, it’s in our hearts.

And now I’m finding myself, live as I write this, dropping into an exploration of my own spirituality and my relationship with religion.

I was raised without much of any exposure to religion. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had spiritual experiences that some might describe as “out of body”, but I think for me could be better described as “out of mind and into something larger than myself”. Essentially, my sense of self dissolving and feeling a deeper connection with something beyond the “self”.

The last few years I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to religious and spiritual practices that draw “me” out of my “self” and into a some sort of collective wisdom beyond my “self”. And, at the same time, I find myself increasingly wary of religious teachings that are more of the written form, with rules on morality that are based on someone else’s brain deciding what is right and wrong and then other people’s interpretations of that original rule.

Religion for me isn’t a proscription for how to live life, it is a practice of connecting to a source of wisdom that is beyond my self and beyond my logic loving mind.

Maybe, I’m finding that what moves me the most in this life isn’t scripture, it isn’t science, it’s what I feel is true to me in my heart when I let my mind go and I tap into a source of wisdom and guidance that is there if I turn off my brain and I listen.

What does this mean for the environmental movement?

When I started writing this piece about an hour ago, I had the intention of laying out all of the different ways that the environmental movement should lean into inspiring compassion, gratitude, interdependence. Focusing on speaking to an individuals moral compass instead of barraging them with facts to get them to care about their common human and about the Earth that has made them human. I was going to highlight a bunch of organizations that are doing this work and different ways that the environmental movement could touch hearts instead of convincing brains.

But getting out of my head and into my heart as I write this morning, as I type these words, the Spirit, God, Universe, whatever that might be, has guided me down a different path.

If the original writers or documenters (written or oral) of religious texts and spiritual guides were connected to God, or Spirit, or the Universe, then what they wrote or captured originally was likely pure in its morality. But if those who stepped into the chain of interpretation or sermon at any point between that original source and us today were not fully connected to their hearts and the deeper source, if there was other forms of greed or desire for power present in them, then their interpretation may have begun to go astray. And even today, if we are not fully in our hearts and tapped into that deeper wisdom, than maybe what we think is morally right, is not.

Maybe this is why humans have done terrible things in the name of religion or on behalf of a higher power? But I don’t think that by any means should lead us to the conclusion that the religion is bad, I think it just means that whoever was in a seat of power within that religion has they themselves lost, not the mental, but the embodied connection with the deeper source of wisdom.

And the beauty of it all is that we are the only ones that know whether we are fully in our hearts or whether we are still in our heads. We are the only ones who can judge ourselves. We are the only ones that should judge ourselves. And we are the only ones that can forgive ourselves.

So now I find myself, simply with myself.

Maybe I’m supposed to use science and facts to make the environmental movement fly. Or maybe I’m supposed to tap into ethics and morality to inspire the next evolution of the environmental movement. Or maybe I’m supposed to be a part of the next wave of religious awakening to spark mass action on nature and climate.

Or maybe I’m not supposed to do anything? Maybe I just need to listen.

Maybe I just need to drop into my heart, tap into awe, wonder and love and the deeper wisdom that I have faith will guide me to live a moral life. And maybe, just maybe, inspire others to do less thinking and more feeling. Less blind faith in texts, trusting in the eyes, ears and the brain to guide our life, and more dropping into our hearts and tapping into the deeper wisdom that lies beyond the “self”, beyond the brain and listen.

If we all just listen, what a wonderful world, it could be.

- Eric

P.S. I shared what you’ve just read above with a few friends before publishing and I want to add one more thought based on their reflections.

For me, what I wrote does not imply that we should disregard science and empiricism.

Science and empiricism represent reality.

Ignoring, or escaping from reality, may relieve us from or enable us to avoid some pain today, but at the likely cost of much more pain tomorrow.

Wisdom without reality is just as dangerous as reality without wisdom.

I think this is the beginning of my journey towards understanding and embodying the balance between religion/spirituality/morality and science/empiricism/logic.

Or perhaps, not the balance between religion/spirituality and science, but the confluence of the two…