27) WilderIsm Redux

I have had some further thoughts on Wilderism. 

I like the “wilder” in the name not only because it is my last name (not important really), but because it invokes its origin, coming from the English for someone living in the woods, a wilder.  I wanted to associate the religion with Gaia, nature.

But “1) sustainable ecstasy” and “2) reduction of karma” don’t in and of themselves explicitly mention Gaia, how to get along with nature.

So I tried to add a third tenet to Wilderism, “3) think about Gaia”.  It would be great if our decisions took into account the effect on Gaia.

But I had to abandon this tenet because it would have the result of people creating judgements about “right” acts and “wrong” acts.  It would be easy to categorize people and to claim that they were “good” or “evil” depending on whether they chose paper or plastic, for instance.

And this would lead to pogroms and inquisitions and the right to hurt and kill some people because they didn’t adhere to whatever was deemed Gaia-friendly at the time.  Most religions have this problem and I sincerely want to avoid that---those kinds of judgements.

So tenet number 3 is out.

Then I realized that respect for Gaia could be folded into the 1st and 2nd tenets without a 3rd tenet.

Let’s examine “sustainable” in the 1st tenet.  It means that achieving ecstasy must be done in such a way that it can be achieved over and over again.  But “sustainable” implies a time-frame.  So what is it?  A minute, an hour, a day, a year, a lifetime, or a geological epoch?  I have been thinking on the order of days, getting high must not preclude doing it again in a few days.  But if we include Gaia in the decision, then it would have to involve evolution---the evolution of nature over timespans of centuries at a minimum.  This should satisfy our need to not hurt the planet.

And secondly, trying not to create karma.  Normally one thinks of karma as our interaction with another person.  But it could easily be extended into not creating karma with Gaia.  Minimizing our carbon-footprint would be a good way to reduce our karma with Gaia.  There are myriad ways to protect our planet.

So tenet 3 is not needed.  Simple is better.