Hello dear class,

That read was a lot of fun. I'm deep inside it in several ways. Let me see if I can get my head around a few things.

Is oil the monster or just the vehicle of the monster greed inside human nature? There is no doubt that the fossil fuel industry is a terrible monster, corrupting, destructive, nefarious, and ubiquitous in our societies. I can see that the oil industry today may be a manifestation of the underworld myth, the fire, the destruction, the corruptive power.

When I think about oil and fossil fuels and what they have done to us and the rest of the planet, I like to imagine a world that uses its resources responsibly, a post-oil world. This is the thrust of my work every day, imagining a better world and a new myth.

Craig quotes David Orr at the beginning of the essay and I'd like to share one of my favorites from his 1992 book Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. This book is an education for sustainable development favorite.

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”

Interestingly, this book was published in 1992, which was also the year of the Rio Earth Summit, the official kick-off of the global sustainable development movement, and, from a mythic perspective, perhaps a moment of vital global awakening to the oil monster and other monsters.

Not coincidentally, Craig has written about John D. Rockefeller, and of course, his great-grandson, Steven Rockefeller was the principal architect of the Earth Charter, one of the most well-articulated visions of a sustainable future grounded in ethics, universal responsibility, respect, care, compassion, and interconnection. Sounds like there's a mythic quality to that connection to, although I'll let some of the more knowledgable of you fill in that blank.

To return to the article and relate it to the Orr quote above and the Earth Charter, I note the mention of the redeemer as a recurring myth. Are we not the redeemer? I am the redeemer. I think you all are too. Perhaps not in the dogmatic propagation of a new false myth, but in the verbreitung of a new myth by those of us with moral courage, the peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers, with the will to tell the story of unity, love, care, compassion, respect, and awe at the beauty of our Earth Community, all its members past, present, and future, and of our mother Earth, our living home in the cosmos.

Ok, that's enough for now, although there are a lot of thoughts and feelings kicking around inside me. Looking forward to your reactions, my fellow redeemers (wink).