Excerpt #98 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
What remains for individuals to decide is whether to honor that which sustains life’s relationships with one another and our environment (and thereby life itself) and prosper or to ignore and abuse these relationships and suffer needlessly.
This is the emerging thinking of humanity.
It is the product of our collective survival instincts, i.e., our effort to understand our reality and that by which it is sustained.
This is a dynamic and evolving process that mirrors life itself.
WE HAVE ONLY OURSELVES, EACH OTHER AND THE ENVIRONMENT.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense, I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission. – Einstein
Sustainability is the understanding that we must leave this planet as we found it, or improve it, so generations that follow will have the same opportunities we have enjoyed.
And ideally, those generations should never repeat the atrocities we’ve caused and suffered.
This is an awesome challenge given that we add approximately 80 million people a year to our planet.
That is an addition of approximately 1,538,000 people each week to feed, clothe, house, educate, employ, transport, govern, protect, and keep healthy.