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| Baby Blue Eyes and Fiddleneck: San Joaquin River Gorge Special Management Area |
Due to recent rains, green grass, hauntingly fresh, has sprouted again in the San Joaquin River Gorge, heralding the first flowers of spring: popcorn, fiddleneck, lupine and shooting stars. Soon the slopes will be covered by spot rugs of goldfields and baby blue eyes, owl’s clover and poppies. Once belonging to Native Americans, this land is currently public land, a remnant of the commons of America. Native American pounding stones can be found in many places within the San Joaquin River Gorge Special Management Area, but the freshness of late winter and early spring obscures the tragedy of genocide. That very freshness makes the possibility that the land will be buried under hundreds of feet of water seem remote.
We haven’t learned much from history. First the land was stolen from Native Americans. If a dam is built at Temperance Flat, the land will be stolen from the American public, a tragedy in which “common” public land and resources become the property of one industry at the expense of the community as a whole.
Recently, after I described the issue to a friend, she stated flatly, “That’s nothing new." She could not have been more correct, unfortunately. From a spiritual perspective, the pillaging of common resources by those in power is a vice associated with a sphere on the Tree of Life known as Chesed. From the perspective of the Tree, which is a composite symbol of the types of energies that have evolved within the manifested cosmos, the vice has existed since the beginning of time (as we humans know it). The vices associated with the spheres of polarity are the unbalanced aspects of the energies of each sphere or state of being that manifest in the world. Since humans contain the energies of the spheres represented by the Tree, each of us can manifest the virtues of each sphere as well as the vices related to unbalanced energy.
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| The Tree of Life |
The spheres on the Tree of Life represent types of manifested energy, each of which has been personified throughout history as different Gods and hierarchies of Angels. In addition to their magnificent spiritual virtues, each sphere on the Tree of Life also contains vices because energy manifests according to the laws of polarity. Love is the opposite of hate. Heat is the opposite of cold. Where there is a virtue, there is a vice, except where total unity abides. The vices of the sphere of Jupiter relate to power: Tyranny, gluttony, hypocrisy, and bigotry, as opposed to its virtue, obedience to the law of love, an obedience that can manifest as spiritual magnificence, abundance and harmony.
The American Dream in both of its positive and negative aspects stems from the archetypal energies of Gedulah, the fourth sephirah, or state of being, on the Tree. At the heart of the American Dream is the belief that each individual is potentially a magnificent being who is capable of creating abundance and harmony and of determining his or her own fate. It follows that the individual who sincerely works hard and plays by the rules should prosper as long as barriers to this potential for prosperity are kept to a minimum. A person who succeeds through intelligence, good fortune and a strong work ethic deserves what he or she receives.
But the Dream has a dark side. Currently 80 people, the majority of whom are Americans, own the same amount of wealth as the world’s 3.6 billion poorest people, according to an analysis released from Oxfam. Four years earlier, 388 billionaires together held as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent of the world. Wealth is becoming concentrated in the hands of the few at an alarming rate. Those who control the wealth continue to accumulate as much wealth as they can, despite the terrible conditions experienced by innumerable people throughout the world. Not coincidentally, the influence of money in politics is also undermining any semblance of democracy. Because democracy is for sale, the “tragedy of the commons” is becoming far too common.
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| Baby Blue Eyes, Popcorn, and Fiddleneck: San Joaquin River Gorge Special Management Area |
An economic theory by Garrett Hardin, the “tragedy of the commons” posits that individuals acting independently and rationally according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource. The term, taken from the title of an article written by Hardin in 1968, is in turn based upon an essay by a Victorian economist on the effects of unregulated grazing on common land.
In 1833 the English economist William Forster Lloyd published a pamphlet which included an example of herders sharing a common parcel of land on which they were entitled to graze their cows. In English villages, shepherds had also sometimes grazed their sheep in common areas, and sheep ate more grass than cows. For each additional sheep, a herder would receive benefits while the group shared damage to the commons. If all herders made this economic decision, rational for themselves as individuals but detrimental to the group, the commons could be depleted or destroyed.
Recently the "commons" has come to mean any shared resource, such as rivers, oceans, fish stocks, atmosphere, or even the office refrigerator. The concept is often cited in connection with the need for reasonable and sustainable growth.
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| Squaw Leap: The San Joaquin River Gorge Special Management Area |
A dam at Temperance Flat will turn a majestic river ecosystem into a storage container for the top few percent in the San Joaquin Valley, the vast majority of the water going to one industry for private gain--much of the water irrigating unsustainable crops, such as almonds, in a semi-arid region. There are currently over 1,400 named dams and 1,300 named reservoirs in the state of California, dozens of which already exist on the San Joaquin River. Each dam and reservoir has destroyed river habitat, but together they have not ended the water shortage for the farmers of California.
The vices of the American Dream are the vices of Gedulah. Many people believe in limiting the barriers to prosperity. In other words, each individual should have the right to prosper in an unregulated or deregulated market, no matter the consequences to other individuals or society or the world as a whole, a belief resulting in a cultural fascination with the gangster and more recently in the near economic collapse of Western societies--including the United States. Of the vices, examples in America are glaringly obvious. Bigotry has led to slavery and genocide. Greed, another name for gluttony, is readily seen in the depletion of resources such as old-growth forests and wetlands across the continent, as well as indirectly in the inescapable pollution of air and water. Despite a professed belief in democracy, the tyranny of the bottom line dominates corporate life and numerous social relationships, and in competition for material success, hypocrisy--in other words deceit, fraudulence, insincerity--is undeniably pervasive, in the classroom as well as the boardroom, in the church as well as the town hall.
Belief in the American Dream is the main basis of loyalty for many of the citizens of the United States, and the positive elements of the ethos is drilled into the consciousness of the average American from birth to such a degree that the unbalanced aspects of the ethos are rarely examined. Instead, many unthinkingly accept that the American Dream, a facet of the archetype of Gedulah, means that organizing and building to create prosperity for someone, somewhere is always a form of beneficial progress. Consequently, dams and water works are still viewed by many as one of many great advancements of civilization. However, at the heart of the archetype of Gedulah is balance, which includes establishing sustainable communities that maintain harmony with nature. The destruction of an irreplaceable river ecosystem for the private benefit of the few is not a true manifestation of the virtue, which is obedience to harmonizing love, including love and respect for all creation.
A belief in prosperity at any cost continues to result in environmental destruction and economic disaster. Something has gone terribly wrong with our interpretation of the American Dream and our use of the energy of the archetype of Jupiter, the upbuilding, law-giving, merciful king of Gedulah. It’s almost in this country as if the vices of the archetype for many have become its virtues. The true virtue of “The Glory” is the internal magnificence, abundance and harmony of the human spirit, which does not necessarily result in material success, control, dominance, or power that is so often the manifestation of its vices. As a society we need to re-examination the American Dream in terms of the Tree of Life if we are going to revere the glory of creation and reestablish a balance with nature--in order to protect the "commons" and survive as a species.
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