John Shuttleworth, Founder of Mother Earth News, Interview Part II

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Look at it! It's beautiful! And it has a life of its own. With or without man, the earth ... is born ... it lives ... and it dies. Once it cools as it spins there in space and once the spark of life flickers into being on its surface, hundreds of thousands of species rise and fall on its face. Continents appear and disappear. Volcanoes erupt. Forests creep across the land. The sun pours energy on this lovely blue and green pearl floating in the incredible black void of nothing. Cool rains sweep over its oceans and islands. The Earth is gently wrapped with a constantly renewed cloak of plants and animals and its fragile beauty is showcased by an ever-changing, swirling veil of opaque, transparent, and translucent atmosphere. Could any planet be more delightful?.

And now, amidst the incredibly complex but self-regulating operation of this perfect gem, we see man arising. Alone of all the plants and all the animals on the earth's surface, he can collectively look at himself. And he does ... and in that first instant of self examination, his brain — of which he is so proud — deceives him.

"I am something special," man tells himself. "I will prove it by conquering nature." But as one of his number is later to observe, "Nature is always passive. It, therefore, can never be defeated. It can only be destroyed."

And as the destruction goes on, man's brain deceives him again and again. With imaginary lines that divide the planet's lands and waters into territories, nations, and states. With concepts of "right," "wrong," "wealth," "yours," "mine," "money." Always, above all else, "money."

And it is easy to see, as we compress time from our vantage point in space, that the earth is born ... it lives ... and it dies. It's easy to see, as someone has said, that "in the long run, we're all dead." Viewed from that privileged perspective, then, it's impossible not to predict the planet's — and all its passengers' — ultimate fate.

PLOWBOY: Well OK. Anyone can make a prediction like that.

SHUTTLEWORTH: Of course. That's the point. Most of us start at the wrong end of the funnel. We try to forecast the results of the fifth race at Belmont. Or pinpoint in advance the upturn of the economy. Or project the coming year's demand for wheat.

We look around our one little, isolated, padded cell down on the funny farm and — on the basis of fragmented and myth-ridden experience — try to predict the toss of coins.

Now that's the wrong way of going about the problem. You can't, with any certainty, start from the very specific and interpolate the general. You can only work the other way around. Examine the big picture first. Discover the important forces in action and trace their movements through time and space. Follow them until they intercept each other and watch what happens. And all the while, refine your vision so you'll be able to see the effects that these major forces have on the second level of reality ... and what the ripples there do to the next layer of existence ... and so on right on down to finally, and last of all that fifth race at Belmont

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