Inconvenient Truths

Spetember 2006

I recently saw Al Gore's movie 'An Inconvenient Truth.' It is one of the most important films ever. He explains clearly that human behavior is causing global warming, which if not arrested will result in a rise in sea levels of twenty feet or more and hundreds of millions of refugees around the world trying to escape the oceans.

He also very clearly says that we can halt global waming. If we all were conscious of it and understood the consequences of our collective actions, together we could change the projected outcome of the greatest threat to human life (which only somewhat ironically is caused by humans).

But people don't seem interested. They are more concerned with making sure they have nice cars and humongous homes, prestigious jobs and fancy clothes. In other words, they are more afraid to be subjected to a lifestyle they may not find comfortable or emotionally self-aggrandizing than they are of the consequences of their actions. The fear of not having enough money, or that our country would - heaven forbid - not lead the world in key economic indicators, is more acute than having one's home be under the ocean.

Humans are essentially blinded by their limited perception of the world. They do not see our ultimate oneness with everything. They do not see how we are all literally connected, on the level of physics and on the global level Gore discusses. They see separation.

Love is oneness, and fear is the perception of separation. Fear causes all war, attack, hate, anger, and everything else that is not love. That's an inconvenient truth, too. Because if one believes it's true, then one has to acknowledge that all his or her comfortable hates, angers, religous beliefs, and phobias are really fear based and primitive.

In the movie, Gore quotes Mark Twain:

“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

If people continue to believe in angry judgmental gods, which is fear based because no one wants to go to hell, then our world will continue to experience collective terror (isn't the war on terror just about trying to kill and terrorize some other people?).

But people don't understand all this, anymore than they understand the climate crisis; I mean really understand the climate crisis. Once we do all understand these inconvenient truths, then we can have a new world, and the old divisive way of thinking will evaporate as if it were never there. And then we won't have global warming or war. If you don't believe that can be true, then it can't.