details = The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering our Place in Nature
By David Suzuki and Amanda McConnell
Allen and Unwin, 1997
250 pp., $24.95 (pb)
Review by Dot Tumney
Any other author's name under this title would have ensured this book stayed in the occult/navel gazing distractions storage facility. However, having a long-standing affection for Dr Suzuki, I cringed a bit but started reading.
The Sacred Balance is a delightfully lyrical explanation of the necessity for re-defining The Bottom Line and rewriting the Appropriate Question.
The author's state: "This book has attempted to show that we have a hierarchy of at least three tiers of non-negotiable needs. The first is the group of factors that meet our biological requirements — clean air, clean water, clean soil and food, energy and biodiversity. Unless these fundamental requirements are fulfilled, people will not be able to look beyond satisfying them immediately at any cost.
"A second tier of requirements is the needs coming from our social nature. In order to lead full, rich lives, we need love above all else, and the best way to satisfy that need is to provide for the stability of families and communities. In order to develop one's full potential, we must be assured of meaningful employment, justice and security, for without them, we become crippled and incomplete.
"And finally, as spiritual beings, we have to know there are forces in the cosmos, beyond human understanding and control, that we are indissolubly part of the totality of life on Earth, caught up in an endless process of creation. Only by meeting all of these levels of needs can society provide full satisfaction and opportunity to its members and achieve true sustainability."
The description of these necessities fills the bulk of this 250-page book. The last section of good news stories and happy possibilities is anecdotal rather than programmatic.
The Sacred Balance is step one, the initial consciousness-raising trigger, the assertion that hope is possible and change reasonable; that it's not just a matter of fiddling with the rules of the game or the player profiles, but re-configuring the playing arenas.
Suzuki takes us to the point of deciding that it is OK to want to play something else, and suggests a few ideas about what the new game will be.
Dispossessing the current stadium owners is, however, likely to be hard work. Here a bit more could have been included. Economic rationalists get a swipe for having impoverished spiritual qualities, but the cause and effect relation between a capitalist economic system and insane consumer behaviour is only fuzzily identified. "How much is enough?" and "What is an economy for?" are good questions but poor punch lines.
As an antidote to despair, Suzuki quotes Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has". He urges people to join and get active in groups and organisations.
Quite right too! Buy the book, send $100 to the Suzuki Foundation and phone up Resistance or the Democratic Socialist Party to join in the day-to-day process of arranging to put humanity and habitat before profit.