The Most Important Book You’ve Never Read

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but my guess is that none of you regular readers of my blog have ever read William R. Catton Jr.’s book Overshoot. I read it for the first time this year (and plan to read it again). I wish I had read it forty years ago; it is, truly, a book of great significance. 

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change was first published in 1980 and is still in print. (I read the Kindle version of the 1982 paperback.) Eco-theologian Michael Dowd, whom I have referred to repeatedly, says Overshoot is the most important book he has ever read.

All of the first part, “The Unfathomed Predicament of Mankind” can be read on Amazon.com’s webpage (see here). There the author asserts, “Today mankind is locked into stealing ravenously from the future. That is what this book is about.”

Catton (1926~2015) goes on to state that “contemporary well-being is achieved at the expense of our descendants.” He then says,

A major aim of this book is to show that commonly proposed “solutions” for problems confronting mankind are actually going to aggravate those problems (p. 3).

At the end of the first chapter, the author declares, “This is not a book to be read either casually or passively.” Indeed, it is not.**

Catton explains the circumstance and consequence of what he calls “new ecological understandings.” This is summarized in Table 2 (on p. 71) in Overshoot (pasted here), and I encourage you to read it carefully. 

Having watched several videos by Dowd and having read the illuminating books by Ophuls and Catton, I have, reluctantly, adopted the first position, that of realism.

The second of the five “labels” is perhaps the only one that needs some explanation, although the position it designates is widely held. The term “cargoism” is based on the “cargo cults” in the Pacific island societies, especially the pre-literate Melanesian peoples.

Whatever was needed was “miraculously” brought in on European cargo ships. In a similar manner, many contemporary people have “faith in science and technology as infallible solvers of any conceivable problem” (pp. 185-6). Thus, such faith in sure-to-come technological solutions is called cargoism.

Perhaps the most common position for socially aware people is the third one. They realize there is an environmental problem and so they seek to do something (or many things) to address the problem. But such actions don’t solve the deep, underlying predicament; it is merely cosmeticism.

Some people, though, just completely disregard the “circumstance” and the “consequence” as described by author Catton, and this widespread position is called cynicism.

Many other people, and perhaps this is the largest group, don’t just merely disregard but actually deny both circumstance and consequence. This is the position of ostrichism.

So, here are the questions I leave with you. Which of these five terms best describes your present position? If you don’t hold to the first position (realism), are you satisfied with your current stance and would you recommend it to others? Why or why not?

Of course, many of you may think all this is too painful to think about—and I certainly understand why you may feel that way. But refusing to think about the issues is, in effect, “ostrichism.”

As for me, I want to continue advocating realism, believing that that is the best position for promoting both a social conscience and mental health for oneself as well as the optimal future for humankind.

_____

** Three times in the first chapter, Catton makes reference to Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (1977) by William Ophuls, whom I introduced in my March 1 blog post. 

See here for helpful biographical information about Catton. 

What Matters?

The 95^th Academy Awards ceremony was held this past Sunday night, and perhaps many of you watched at least some of it. I saw hardly any of it, but early Monday morning I was eager to see what/who received the Oscars. 

Of the ten movies nominated for an Oscar, I have seen only The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Tár, and Women Talking. It is interesting to consider what matters, or matters most, to the characters in each of these movies.

On the (fictional) Irish island of Inisherin, Pádraic thought that friendship matters. But his (former) friend Colm thought that legacy matters more than friendship with his “dull” friend Pádraic. This is an interesting question: is leaving a legacy rather than maintaining a friendship what matters most?

Lydia Tár thought primarily that power matters. Brilliantly played by Australian actress Cate Blanchett, the talented but rather unlikeable Tár is a brilliant classical music conductor. Her focus, though, is on gaining, maintaining, and exerting power. Is having power what matters most?

The Mennonite women in Women Talking conclude that the combination of safety, faith, and thinking is what matters most. This is a powerful movie about strong women who had been betrayed by the deplorably deviant men of their community who apparently thought that sex matters most.

What matters is a major part of the quirky film Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAAO), which won the best picture Oscar as well as six others, including the best actress award for Michelle Yeoh, the impressive Malaysian Chinese actress.

EEAAO pits the idea that everything matters against the claim that nothing matters. Evelyn, the mother played by Yeoh, realizes everything matters, especially reconciliation with her daughter. The daughter Joy, though, mutters near the end of the lengthy movie, Nothing matters.

Even though chosen as the best picture of the year, I found EEAAO hard to watch. Based on the view that there are multiple universes which exist simultaneously, it moved too fast from one universe to another. It was also filled with silliness, much of which I found unenjoyable.

Nevertheless, EEAAO was filled with thought-provoking content as well, including consideration of what matters. In the second article linked to below is this assertion:

In a split-second decision at the end of the movie, Evelyn beckons Joy to stay with her instead of pushing the world toward destruction. Evelyn tells us … that even if this world will eventually end with failure and nothingness, it is worthwhile to spend every fleeting moment doing laundry, filing taxes and working toward small steps of reconciliation.

In the third link below, posted in March 2022, the author explains that EEAAO "doesn't reject nihilism as a philosophy. Rather, it promotes a more optimistic, humanist nihilism. Instead of ‘nothing matters, so why bother?’ it says ‘Nothing matters, unless you decide that it does.’"

We can, in fact, decide that the life we have now is precious and it is something that truly matters.

In The Shack (remember that bestselling 2007 book?) Wm. Paul Young wrote, “If anything matters then everything matters.” In commenting later on that statement, he wrote, 

Either nothing matters and we’re all caught in this bind of despair, or everything matters and life has value and meaning, and what we do with our lives is important.

But, if all (or most) life will possibly be annihilated, maybe even in this century, does anything really matter? Perhaps that “nihilistic” idea was lurking in Joy’s mind in EEAAO, and it seems to be common among many present-day twentysomethings and older teens.

Regardless of how long we or the world as we know it may last, however, if we live now in a relationship of harmony with God, with other people, and with the world of nature, that is something splendid and it does indeed matter, and matters immensely.

_____

Here are links to some thoughtful articles about EEAAO:

** In 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' a multiverse of absurdity meets intergenerational healing (3/11)

** ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ and the Paradox of Achieving ‘Nothing’ (3/12)

** The Ending Of Everything Everywhere All At Once Explained (3/2022)

The Amazing Gregory Boyle, S.J.

For seventeen semesters from the autumn of 2006, I had the privilege of teaching one course a semester at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, a Jesuit school founded in 1910. It was a rewarding experience for me, and I grew in appreciation for the Jesuits, whose Order was formed in 1534.

I regret that I did not know about Father Gregory Boyle back then in order to introduce him to my students. He has now been a Jesuit for 50+ years and has had a remarkable ministry in Los Angeles for 35+ years. Let me share with you some highlights about this amazing man. 

Gregory Joseph Boyle was born in Los Angeles in 1954. Upon graduating from a Jesuit high school, he joined the Society of Jesus (S.J., the Jesuits). Following his graduation from Gonzaga University, he then earned master’s degrees from three other Jesuit schools.

After being ordained as a priest in 1984, Boyle lived/served for a year in Bolivia. He then returned to LA, where he was appointed pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, then the poorest Catholic parish in LA and with the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.

In 1988, Boyle began what grew into Homeboy Industries, which, according to their website “is the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world.” They go on to say,

For over 30 years, we have stood as a beacon of hope in Los Angeles to provide training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community.

Fr. Boyle has written three major books that I highly recommend. His first book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (2010) became a “New York Times Bestseller.” It is a delight to read—as is his second book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship (2017).*

The third of Boyle’s Power trilogy doesn’t have such a catchy title, but it is an equally engaging book. It is The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness (2021). Like the two predecessors, this book is also a delightful blend of theological reflections and conversations with “homies.”

Consider these key quotes from Boyle’s books:

** “Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.” (Tattoos)

** “Compassion isn't just about feeling the pain of others; it's about bringing them in toward yourself. If we love what God loves, then, in compassion, margins get erased. 'Be compassionate as God is compassionate,' means the dismantling of barriers that exclude.” (Tattoos)

** “God, of course, is unchanging and immutable. But our sense of who God is changes as we grow and experience God, and God is constantly nudging us toward that evolution.” (Barking)

** Kinship asks us to move from blame to understanding.” (Barking)

** “It is our lifelong task … to refine our view of God. We won’t be able to speak the whole language until we know the wholeness of God” (The Whole Language, p. 12)

And then there is this quote (which is directly related to my Feb. 16 blog post): 

This is one of more than 50 Boyle quotes found at
Top 50 Gregory Boyle Quotes

I am deeply grateful to Fr. Boyle for what I have learned from him about compassion, kinship, and tenderness. But most of all I am grateful for how he has expanded my understanding of God.

The first chapter of my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018) is “God is Greater than We Think, or Even Can Think.” Reading Fr. Boyle’s books has increased my awareness of the greatness of God and God’s unconditional love (grace).

That unconditional love is personified in the life and work of Father Gregory Boyle, an amazing man, indeed.

_____

* In reading Barking, I learned that G-Dog, a nicely done documentary of Fr. Boyle, was produced in 2012, and last month June and I really enjoyed watching it (on Amazon Prime; it is also available on other streaming services.)

Apologies to the Grandchildren

As many of you know, I have seven grandchildren. The oldest celebrated her 38^th birthday in January, so I have been a grandfather for 38 years now. In 2022, two of my granddaughters became mothers, so now I also have two precious great-grandchildren, the first born a year ago last month.

I have been thinking about my grandchildren in a new way because of reading two books written to or for grandchildren. Those books are closely related to my January 28 blog post.

Larry R. Rasmussen’s book The Planet You Inherit was published last year. Its subtitle is Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty’s a Sure Thing. I had the privilege of writing a review of that book for The Englewood Review of Books, and you can read that review here.

Rasmussen (b. 1939) is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, emeritus, at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Among his published books are Earth Community, Earth Ethics (1996) and Earth Honoring Faith (2013).

It is no surprise that the letters written to Eduardo and Martin Rasmussen Villegas (b. 2015 and 2018), his two grandchildren, are primarily related to his many years of ecotheological teaching and writing.

While the letters clearly express the writer’s love for his two young grandsons, it will likely be 2035 and beyond before they will be able to comprehend the meaning and significance of those letters.

Maybe, though, the writer’s intention was to say important things to us adults who read those letters now, as well as to Eduardo and Martin, who will be reading them much later.

One of Rasmussen’s most important letters is titled “Responsible by Degrees,” written in August 2020. There he broached the possibility of “widespread civilizational collapse”—and asserts that “we know we must put an end to a growing, extractive economy running on ecological deficits.”

Rasmussen, though, has hopeful views about humanity’s ability to confront the current and coming ecological crisis effectively, and those views need to be pondered thoughtfully.

Still, this challenging book written for the author’s young grandsons needs to be balanced with careful consideration of more realistic views about what is most likely to occur in Eduardo’s and Martin’s lifetime.

William Ophuls’s Apologies to the Grandchildren is a 2018 book of essays, the first one bearing the same title as the book, which does give a more realistic and less hopeful view of the current ecological crisis.

(I first learned of Ophuls, born in 1934 and with a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1973, from the video by Michael Dowd that I introduced in my January 28^th blog post linked to above).

Ophuls begins his essay with stark words: ”Civilization is, by its very nature, a long-running Ponzi scheme. It lives by robbing nature and borrowing from the future, exploiting its hinterland until there is nothing left to exploit, after which it implodes.”

He continues by saying that civilization “generates a temporary and fictitious surplus that it uses to enrich and empower the few and to dispossess and dominate the many. Industrial civilization is the apotheosis and quintessence of this fatal course.”

He goes on to write these blunt words to the grandchildren, “A fortunate minority gains luxuries and freedoms galore, but only by slaughtering, poisoning, and exhausting creation. So we bequeath you a ruined planet that dooms you to a hardscrabble existence, or perhaps none at all” (p. 1)

What Can We Say/Do? While I would like to embrace Rasmussen’s hopeful view, I have become convinced by Ophuls and by Dowd—as well as by William Catton, whom I plan to introduce in later blog posts—that my grandchildren and their children will experience a world of increasing gloom.

Perhaps there is still time for necessary changes to be made, but that is doubtful—and there is little evidence to indicate that such changes will likely be made. Perhaps, sadly, little can realistically be done other than to offer deep apologies to the grandchildren.

Yet, surely, we can work toward pushing the impending collapse farther into the future and encourage the grandchildren to find ways to flourish now in the present, regardless of what looms in a future that, unfortunately, may not be as uncertain as Rasmussen thinks. 

Why are Teenage Girls “Not Okay”?

Soon after posting my February 16 blog article in which I referred to Diana Butler Bass, I read Bass’s latest newsletter on her Substack blog called The Cottage (which has 32,000 subscribers!) It was partly about teenage girls, which hit home with me. 

Image from Bass's newsletter

Natalie, my youngest granddaughter, turned 13 that very day. I first mentioned her in the blog post I made on February 19, 2010, three days after her birth, and I will probably refer to that article again in an upcoming blog post.

Naomi, Natalie’s sister, is celebrating her 19^th birthday today, so the youngest two of my five granddaughters are both teenagers. They have been, and are, a great delight to June and me. 

“The Girls Are Not Okay” is the title of Bass’s newsletter (click here to read it). Bass was not writing about all girls, and I am deeply grateful that she was not writing about girls such as my granddaughters, who both seem to be well-adjusted young women. But sadly, many girls are “not okay.”

Bass’s article begins by referring to the new study of USAmerica’s teens released by the Center for Disease Control’s Youth Rick Behavior Survey (YRBS), and she reports the findings were “stark and frightening.” She writes that “the crisis is particularly urgent among teenage girls.”*

The YRBS report states that according to the data, “teen girls are confronting the highest levels of sexual violence, sadness, and hopelessness they have ever reported to YRBS.” (A summary of the YRBS report can be found here.)

Interestingly, Bass seeks to link the malaise of teenage girls to an aspect of contemporary society that would not at first glance be considered a cause of that dis-ease.

“White Christian Nationalism” is part of the problem, according to Bass. She refers to “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” a study released by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on February 8 (see here).

That study indicates that White Christian Nationalists, by and large, “believe women must submit to men” and that “society is diminished when women have more opportunities to work outside of the home.” These ideas reflect a belief in “complementarianism,” a widely held view by evangelical Christians.

Bass (who celebrated her 64^th birthday last Sunday) states, “There is little doubt among historians that second wave feminism of the 1970s improved the lives of women and girls in terms of education, health, work, finances, and overall equality.”

She mentions the significance of the 1974 book All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation, authored by Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty. As Bass says, that book “caused a sensation in evangelical churches and theological circles.”

June and I, along with many other progressive evangelicals, read that book with much appreciation during the mid-1970s. But a decade later, conservative evangelical opposition had grown to the extent that an organization to oppose the emphasis on gender equality was formed.

That organization called The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was founded in 1987.** That group was the result of anti-equality backlash, and it forwarded the position of “complementarianism.”

While, of course, there are several other important reasons why so many teenage girls are not okay today, I think that Bass is right in declaring that “evangelical theology” with its emphasis on complementarianism for a generation now “bears a significant part of the blame.”

As Bass gladly notes, formerly prominent Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leader Russell Moore ten days ago now posted “a somewhat repentant editorial against complementarianism” (see here).

Unfortunately, though, the SBC continues to support male supremacy. Just two days ago Religious News Service reported that “Southern Baptists oust Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church for naming a female pastor.” That’s a bad sign for teenage girls in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

 
Strong egalitarian homes with nurturing parents is one of the most important keys to rearing teenage girls who are okay. I am truly grateful that my teenage granddaughters have such a home—and have also been strongly supported by their egalitarian American and Japanese grandmothers.

_____

* Not long after reading Bass’s newsletter, I read “American teens are unwell because American society is unwell,” a Feb. 15 opinion piece on The Washington Post website. It was directly related to the same YRBS report. And then on the morning of Feb. 17, the WaPo posted “The crisis in American girlhood,” another opinion piece regarding the same report.

** In “Fed Up With Fundamentalism’s View of Women,” the eighth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), I wrote about the founding and influence of this organization among “fundamentalists” (see pp. 240~2). 

Considering Circles

Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks by public theologian Diana Butler Bass is an impressive book that I finished reading a few months ago.* The last chapter is “Circles of Gratitude,” and I have been thinking, off and on, about circles ever since. 

Western society emphasizes pyramids more than circles. Bass (b. 1959) makes this point as she reflects on how she was reprimanded for arranging a classroom in a circle. She then realized, “Circles can be upsetting.” She goes on to say,

For many generations, the structure of Western culture imprinted on our imaginations was that of rows, lines, and pyramids. We were taught that everything was ordered from top to bottom, in vertical structures of family, social institutions, and politics by role, gender, and race (p. 174).

Other societies/traditions are different. For example, in Zen Buddhism what is called the enso circle (pictured above) is considered paradigmatic (see here). At the beginning of “Circles of Gratitude,” Bass cites Tanahashi Kazuaki (b. 1933), a noted Japanese Zen teacher:

The circle is a reminder that each moment is not just the present, but is inclusive of our gratitude to the past and our responsibility to the future.

Also, as explained on this website, “The circle has always been an important symbol to the Native American. It represents the sun, the moon, the cycles of the seasons, and the cycle of life to death to rebirth.”

There has, of course, been some recognition of the importance of circles in both traditional and contemporary Western culture. Most of us are familiar with the story of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table. The round table of that 12th-century tale was a symbol of the equality of the knights.  

Although I’m not sure what it signifies, I was surprised to learn that Apple Park, which was completed about five years ago as the headquarters of Apple Inc., is “a perfect circle.”  

So perhaps there has been some recognition in most cultures that circles can represent ideals such as completeness, harmony, and balance. But, still, in much of the Western world, the hierarchical pyramid is often the dominant diagram of relationships.

Perhaps much of the dysfunction, dissatisfaction, and divisiveness in the U.S. currently is rooted in the pervasiveness of over/under relationships. Maybe a paradigm shift to seeing others in a relationship circle would help solve such problems.

Circles can be either inclusive or exclusive. Recently I was reading through my diary/journal for 1982, considering what I was doing/thinking forty years ago. In June of that year, I spoke at the annual Alumni Reunion of my high school. My talk was titled “How big a circle can you draw?”

Of course, I based part of that talk on Edwin Markham’s well-known, four-line poem “Outwitted”:

He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in! **

The following image graphically depicts the difference between the circle of inclusion from not only the circle of exclusion but also from what often occurs not only in segregation but also in integration.

Sociologists have long talked about “in-groups” and “out-groups.” In-groups are homogeneous and tend to exclude those who differ. That is clearly depicted in the exclusion circle. Out-groups might form a segregated circle excluded from the in-group—and if forced to integrate they might still be separated although within the in-group circle.

The inclusion circle, though, is the ideal, although it presents various challenges. But at some point, we all need to learn that, deep down, there is no “them”; there is only “us.”

Can you, can I, draw a circle large enough to include all of us? May it be so.

_____ 

* Since Bass’s book was published in 1989, I was surprised, but happy, to see in last Sunday’s Kansas City Star that it was one of the bestselling non-fiction books in Kansas City last week.

** My blog post for Oct. 15, 2015, was titled “Becoming Inclusive,” and it began with a reference to Markham and his poem. Here is the link, if you would like to look at that post (again).

 

Attacking/Advancing Black History

This month, as is February every year, is widely recognized as Black History Month. But this year, Black history is being both attacked and advanced more than in most preceding years. 

Black History Month was conceived by historian Carter G. Woodson. The son of enslaved parents, Woodson (1875~1950) was the second Black person to earn a Ph.D. (in 1912) from Harvard University, the first being W.E.B. Du Bois.

Woodson established what became Black History Month in 1926, choosing February because of President Lincoln’s birthday on Feb. 12 and Frederick Douglass’s birthday on Feb. 14. (The day and even the year of Douglass’s birth is not known for sure, but his death date of Feb. 20, 1895, is certain.)

Black History Month has been observed annually in the U.S. since 1976. While there have always been detractors, perhaps the study of Black history is questioned/attacked more this year than ever before.

The teaching of Black history is being attacked especially by numerous (almost entirely Republican) politicians. Foremost among those are Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is now the frontrunner as the GOP nominee for next year’s presidential election.

A law passed in 1994 requires the teaching of Florida’s Black history in K-12 schools. But DeSantis has mounted an attack on what he calls the “woke mob,” claiming that certain instruction of Black history is the equivalent of political indoctrination.

“Florida’s struggle to teach Black history has become a battle over who controls the past” is a fairly long article by Mary Ellen Klas, a White woman who is a “bureau chief” for the Miami Herald newspaper.

I recommend the reading of Klas’s article, which was posted February 8 on the Miami Herald’s website (see here). Her closing words are from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

DeSantis is by no means the only prominent politician who is trying to control the past and the future by objecting to the teaching of Black history in the present.

In her GOP rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday evening (Feb. 7), Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that “our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race.”

That charge was in keeping with her January 10 “Executive Order to Prohibit Indoctrination and Critical Race Theory in Schools,” in which she claimed that CRT “emphasizes skin color as a person’s primary characteristic, thereby resurrecting segregationist values . . . .”

Southern governors shamefully distort facts to attack the teaching of Black history in their states—and in the nation as a whole.

Black history is being strongly asserted by “The 1619 Project,” a “long-form journalism endeavor” developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine.

The first publication of that endeavor was in August 2019, commemorating the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia.

Its aim was “to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of U.S. history."

Hannah-Jones (b. 1976) was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for her lead essay in “The 1619 Project.” She was also chosen as first on a list of “The Most Influential African Americans 2020” (see here).

A six-part TV docuseries produced by Hulu debuted on January 26. Hannah-Jones is the host of that series that explores Black history as related to the themes that are the titles of the six TV episodes: democracy, race, music, capitalism, fear, and justice.

There has been criticism of Hannah-Jones’s work, some of it by historians and legitimate. Indeed, there are deficiencies in presenting history in sweeping generalizations and folksy anecdotes. But for the general public, there are advantages to presenting history in such a way.

Most of the criticism, though, has been by right-wing politicians and others who will not acknowledge the reality of systematic racism and also by those who want to preserve white supremacy in the country.

Black History Month is important as a time for challenging the unwarranted prevalence of white supremacy and for advancing acceptance of the reality of systematic racism that has been highly detrimental for so many Blacks in the United States, a reality that dates back to 1619.