Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Make Myopic: Religion and Ethics in Cross-Disciplinary Ecological Dialogue

A Guardedly Hopeful Prognosis There is a distinct possibility that our human species, the first life form on this planet to achieve thought, may be terminally ill. We may be fatally flawed, destined for only a short tenure in this privileged little corner of our universe. But, summoning resolve, I will begin on a strained but modestly hopeful note. Then, and only then, will I make the painful plunge into an analysis of the human inter- national, multi-disciplinary myopia that may be our undoing, just as it has already contributed to the undoing of myriad species on this gifted planet. But first, the determined reach for hope. In our day the three primal violences have been uncovered. Sexism, its cousin heterosexism, and that other form of violence, called militarism, have been diagnosed. They haven’t been cured, but they have been spotted and seismic plates are crashing in church and state as we address them. Panic abounds quite understandably, as we dare to rearrange the stubbornly tenured bases and biases of intelligent life on earth. Male and female were we made, with many variations on those dyadic themes. The problem was we tried to run the world monadically; we perversely opted for a male-run world on the macho model, and it hasn’t worked. It has been waggishly and wisely said that if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Brothers and Sisters, it would not have failed. Complementarity is at our core. From the chromosomes on up we find difference, not sameness, at the center of our being