Word: visioning
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Dalai Lama's Greatest Trial I was deeply moved by Pico Iyer's "A Monk's Struggle" [March 31]. Despite the Dalai Lama's half-century of exile and the erosion of Tibetan culture due to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Buddhist leader maintains his lucid and compassionate vision. In the face of Chinese oppression, the fact that he sees the advantages of China's modernizing influence and envisions an autonomous Tibet within Chinese borders is a testament to his infinite wisdom. If our next President and other world leaders could emulate the Dalai Lama's compassionate politics...
...Obama addressed the Wright problem before it assumed crisis proportions. In doing so, he displayed a clarity and depth of vision that I have not witnessed in any other politician. His speech was courageous and honest. Above all it showed remarkable faith in our nation's ability to see in shades of gray, rather than black and white. If this is an indication of how he would handle the presidency, I say hallelujah and amen. Farhat Biviji, Cherry Hill, New Jersey...
...centerpiece of this doomsday vision is the idea that civilization—which he defines as “a way of life characterized by the growth of cities”—is inherently unsustainable because it requires an ever-expanding input of resources and involves the wholesale destruction of nature. All social, technological, and political efforts to alleviate environmental problems are futile; instead, we should prepare ourselves for the fallout by learning about nature, so as to live peacefully without the squalid human world, using only “what the land gives willingly...
This worldview is attractive, particularly to environmentalists, because it integrates human experience into a more peaceful and attractive whole. But it is faulty precisely because it relies on this vision of the unchanging benevolence of dear Mother Nature, the idea that there was once a better state we can go back to, and that the march and downfall of civilization will one day contrive to take us back there...
...this Gaian vision is worse than a fanciful environmentalist dream; it is also a way to lay blame in the lap of others. Unsurprisingly, Jensen’s favorite bête noire is “the corporations.” In his world, corporations aren’t just hapless profit-making machines linked up to an established social structure; they stand in for Satan’s armies committed to evil for evil’s sake. He talks convincingly of the futility of acting through government, but ruins the point with an unremitting focus on the extremes...