Jack Adam Weber – At this stage in history, many of us are fed up with “humanity.” Yet, we find goodness in people all day long, love one another, and manage to act kindly. So, we are made of light and dark. Unfortunately, however, our collective darkness has shrouded much a bright future for humanity. But with a little help from our friends, each of us, at any moment and for the moment, can act brightly and kindly — with excellence.

Outspoken climate science researcher and professor emeritus of conservation biology, Guy McPherson, is the one who planted in my head this notion of pursuing excellence at this crucial time in history. He speaks of exhibiting good manners, especially in the face of turmoil. This essay explores what I think is needed to pursue a life of excellence and what it might entail relative to our ailing biosphere and our own species on the edge of extinction (as communicated in this article from The Atlantic magazine.)

In a nutshell, pursuing excellence is to live with integrity. But integrity is a loaded word. It’s loaded with goodness, because it means the dark side of our nature has been examined, worked with, made conscious, and modified to make it less lethal and destructive. It’s been integrated into our wholeness. So integrity involves integration, of our dark nature into our light and love. Especially important to integrity is working with our core hurts and wounds, which when unexamined, go on to hurt others, including innocent life on Earth. So, emotional honesty (feeling our true feelings) and intellectual honesty (getting the facts straight, or as straight as we can without emotional bias and with the effort of critical thinking) are crucial for integrity. Without integrity — without working on ourselves — we can’t really treat the world as well as we imagine we can. Continue reading →