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<\/a>Towering over downtown Cincinnati, brown haze in the distance, glass and concrete as far as one could see, I peered from my luxurious hotel suite. I was at an Ethics conference, contemplating the ethics of my society.<\/span><\/span> This wasn\u2019t the best place to be doing this, or trying to write an essay on the wonderful novel Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit<\/span>, previously blogged about here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n(I was in the Omni Netherland Hilton, the taller building here in the center) But how does one seriously think of such things while looking out the 9th floor of a Hilton hotel room that is larger than most of my friends\u2019 apartments? How do I contemplate waste <\/span>having just flown halfway across the country and eaten a $30 breakfast? It all seems a bit juvenile, or worse, hypocritical.<\/p>\n Central to the story of Ishmael<\/span> is that we live imprisoned in a myth of human exceptionalism and domination. The story of creation ends with us<\/span> \u2013 and if we don\u2019t change this understanding, then we\u2019ll<\/span> ensure that creation does end (with us). Our path is so destructive that our extermination is the natural, logical outcome\u2026. It is only a matter of time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I brought this up with a couple fellow ethics-buffs. One agreed, we\u2019re going down hill and things must change. But he spoke with no urgency. He had accepted the truth of our mistake, but seemed resigned to let others try to fix it. Another one, slightly older, insisted he\u2019d be dead before anything really terrible happens (he\u2019s a bit eccentric anyhow). For my own part I still struggle with the extent of my culture that I have taken in, the life plans I have for myself, and the growing knowledge of the damage to the world that I will cause. It is impossible to quantify such things, but if we accept that:<\/p>\n
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The central problem of our society is wanton consumption. Beyond racism, religious intolerance, anti-intellectualism, violence, and all the rest is consumption. All these are bad, but no one of these could single-handedly wipe out entire ecosystems one after another and eventually threaten the future of our very existence.<\/p>\n