Scientologists tend to be very environmentally aware (me for example: Earth Day and Me Being Smug ). A basic idea of Scientology is that none survive alone, life is a cooperative activity. A basic concept of Scientology is the Dynamics, which are urges to survival that we all have. Very briefly these urges are self, family, groups, mankind, life forms, physical universe, spiritual universe, infinity (or God). For a person to be living at his or her optimum that person must be operating ethically on all Dynamics.
"Looking out for number 1" is not a survival concept because it only takes into account self - what about all those other areas of life? People who operate only on a couple of dynamics are usually destructive to the Dynamics they are not operating on. For example, let's say an industrialist is out to make a lot of money for himself, his family and his stockholders. He may do things that are destructive to mankind, life forms and the physical universe, such as dumping toxic waste into a river to save the cost of processing it into something that is not toxic. This could kill people (mankind), fish, animals, and plants (life forms) and severely pollute the river, river banks, the sea and the sea shore (physical universe).
This fits in with the idea of Earth Day, because Earth Day is all about the life form and physical universe dynamics. These are areas of life that tend to get ignored in the day to day craziness of existence.
In Scientology, we have, "Safeguard and Improve Your Environment," which is a precept of The Way To Happiness, a non-religious, common sense moral code that Scientologists follow. You can read more here: Earth Day Colorado 08.
I've also included a public service announcement video on the subject.
Click here to view other Public Service Announcements
2 comments:
Hi,
It is quite a nice thing to be say we need to protect the earth, and another to actually take steps to follow through.
I was interested if you could tell me what actions the Church actually takes to ensure the protection of the environment. Not small community groups that occassionally pick up garbage in a park, not even major ecological actions taken to stop the destruction of our environment, but rather simple yet effective efforts that prevent the environment from reaching critical mass (something that many ecologists and authors such as Derrick Jensen, Farley Mowat, and others such as Greenpeace have noted could very well occur in the next 50 years or less) resulting in a collapse of society as we know it.
Out of curiosity,
Do most churches use
-LED lightbulbs that conserve energy?
-Provide food at church events that is from local distributors, organic, and native?
-Run their church buildings on such renewable sources of energy as solar, wind, or biomass? (solar and wind power now being easily adapted individually to businnesss and homes world wide)
-Use recycled paper for all printing needs?
-Always recycle electronics at proper facilities to avoid e-waste?
-Promote hybrid cars and energy efficent products for use of parishoners?
-Use materials in building that conserve energy, and use recycled materials in buildings?
-Always have recycling bins for waste disposal, as oppossed to trash cans that end up in the dump
These are all incredibley simple ways to help the earth, not even touching in the fields of activism and actions in defense of specific aspects of the environment, but rather these are simple means to live in a healthier more ecologically sensitive fashion with our limited resources.
Or like most other businesses, churches, venues, etc. in our society does the church instead
-Use typical energy sucking neon lights and low watt bulbs that you need a multitude of.
-Use food that is cheap and comes from mega corporations that travel the food across the world (using gas) inject it with growth hormones (using unhealthy chemicals), use food that is unorganic and grown with insecticide which is bad to eat and harmful to the environment) the list of problems with such foods goes on,
-Get energy from local sources, some more harmful than others (coal, nuclear, hydro,)
-Use thick, high gloss paper that is flashier, crisper, and more attractive (is especially good in advertising materials)
-Chunk computers in the dumpster, where pvc's, lead, mercury, and other chemicals seep into the ground
-Promote large, expensive, and luxurious cars as a means of showing ones own success.
-Use low quality materials that are cheap and plentiful
- Simply have trash cans, as recycling costs too much to be worth the effort.
Such are the options of one who believes in most mainstream values, such as cost efficency and mass quantity that unfortunately have led to the degredation of our planets health.
I was wondering what qualities from above more closely are in line with church activities.
PSA's are nice, but unless there is action to back them up, they don't amount to much more than posturing.
Best.
This is my response to CD's very long question.
To answer your question about what individual churches do about the things you list, I know my local church recycles, but I don't know what they do about the other things you mention. If you are really interested I suggest you go to your local Church and ask them. The things you list are very cool and it is possible that people involved in the day-to-day running of the Church and those who are spending so much of their time defending it against vicious rumors and vitriolic attacks by groups such as Anonymous, have not had the time to do the research necessary. There's only so much one can do in a day. What I'd suggest is that after finding out from your local church what they do and don't do on your list, you write up a proposal to Church of Scientology International on how they might implement the items that are not being done. After that perhaps you could do the same for your local Christian Churches, Jewish Synagogues and Muslim Mosques. That would be a big step toward improving the environment.
You sound as if you are very active environmentally. That's great. What sort of environmental things do you do? How many of the things in your list of environmentally helpful things have you implemented? Do you drive a "green" car? How many community clean ups have you been involved with? How many videos have you made to promote environmental awareness?
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