Plan B
There are no formulas for success in this world. What works one day won't the next. In this time of great change, those who think things will stay the same are planning for a future that is not going to be there. Those unable to wake up to the new reality will be stuck-on-stupid, like zombies stumbling around with their eyes closed. Our Plan A's are not working; it's time to start considering alternatives.
I'm sorry for feeling that in order to do an honest job I need to write about some very serious subjects, but this is how I see things at present:
Environmental feedback effects are bringing on catastrophically rapid climactic changes. Barring the miraculous, nothing will stop this radical change. And it's not decades or years down the line, it's now. Even if somehow people all over the world were able to work together enough to stop all combustion processes such as burning gasoline, oil, coal (and even biofuels), permafrost melting and fermentation (emitting co2 and methane) - along with melting and consequent release of undersea methane frozen till now in ice - will make the climate shocks to date look tame in comparison.
I do, however, believe in the miraculous. First of all, all life is miraculous. For instance, though we humans have learned how to use phenomena such as electricity, we really don't understand it. Each moment and every day is a miracle, whether you personally are too arrogant to realize it. Along with the quantum increase in problems - such as pollution, biodiversity loss, high-tech warfare, human-caused weather changes, overpopulation - the progress of science is also mushrooming.
A silver lining to the planetary emergency is that inclusiveness of rich and poor in this crisis is forcing to the forefront (of a media previously controlled by money) the naked truth of how technological progress has been held back by the financial concerns of the defenders of the status quo. A prime example, with little known Pittsburgh history, is the life of the inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla worked in Pittsburgh. There is a street named after him in Hazelwood. Were it not for the economically driven dumming down of our educational system, every citizen grade school age and older in the world would know of Tesla as well as we know of Einstein, Edison, JP Morgan, Westinghouse, and Marconi. He helped Westinghouse, Edison, Marconi, and Morgan make a lot of their money, and then his work was destroyed when his further inventions threatened their profits. Planned obsolescence, which should have been made illegal a long time ago, has also held back progress due to the status quo. For an intro to how the long term health of our society has been damaged by short-term money-making, take a look at this short video-clip called
The Light Bulb Conspiracy - The Untold Story of Planned Obsolescence
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wYuggmRLjgQ
Mushrooming technological progress in the field of communications is clearing the way for harmonious human change on a previously impossible scale. Since everyone knows we're all in trouble, and with our newfound capacity to throw massive amounts of information at the speed of light (electronically), we can use the same flexibility of mind which gave our species top status to transform our technology to life-nurturing rather than the current dog-eat-dog model, which is based on the assumption of scarcity. What's holding up feeding the world and restoring the planet's ecosystem to health is economics, not technology.
If we get off our addictive mindset (which says we have no choice but to do things this way - driving in our cars alone rather than carpooling and bicycling and walking; making money doing destructive things such as selling junk "food", manufacturing weapons, fighting over oil and other natural resources) - we can stop committing suicide via Earth ecosystem destruction. If we: stop competing and work together with Nature to let Earth be reforested; change to electric vehicles fueled by green energy (including the "free energy" Tesla was working on); massively convert our industrial agriculture (which tortures life for short-term profit) to pro-life local agriculture (which produces by nurturing the whole web of life rather than naming certain species as enemies and going to war on them) - then we have a shot at remaining on the planet's list of keeper species. It requires a more ethical consciousness.
Jim McCue
412-421-6496
http://hazelwoodhomepage.org
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
I'm sorry for feeling that in order to do an honest job I need to write about some very serious subjects, but this is how I see things at present:
Environmental feedback effects are bringing on catastrophically rapid climactic changes. Barring the miraculous, nothing will stop this radical change. And it's not decades or years down the line, it's now. Even if somehow people all over the world were able to work together enough to stop all combustion processes such as burning gasoline, oil, coal (and even biofuels), permafrost melting and fermentation (emitting co2 and methane) - along with melting and consequent release of undersea methane frozen till now in ice - will make the climate shocks to date look tame in comparison.
I do, however, believe in the miraculous. First of all, all life is miraculous. For instance, though we humans have learned how to use phenomena such as electricity, we really don't understand it. Each moment and every day is a miracle, whether you personally are too arrogant to realize it. Along with the quantum increase in problems - such as pollution, biodiversity loss, high-tech warfare, human-caused weather changes, overpopulation - the progress of science is also mushrooming.
A silver lining to the planetary emergency is that inclusiveness of rich and poor in this crisis is forcing to the forefront (of a media previously controlled by money) the naked truth of how technological progress has been held back by the financial concerns of the defenders of the status quo. A prime example, with little known Pittsburgh history, is the life of the inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla worked in Pittsburgh. There is a street named after him in Hazelwood. Were it not for the economically driven dumming down of our educational system, every citizen grade school age and older in the world would know of Tesla as well as we know of Einstein, Edison, JP Morgan, Westinghouse, and Marconi. He helped Westinghouse, Edison, Marconi, and Morgan make a lot of their money, and then his work was destroyed when his further inventions threatened their profits. Planned obsolescence, which should have been made illegal a long time ago, has also held back progress due to the status quo. For an intro to how the long term health of our society has been damaged by short-term money-making, take a look at this short video-clip called
The Light Bulb Conspiracy - The Untold Story of Planned Obsolescence
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wYuggmRLjgQ
Mushrooming technological progress in the field of communications is clearing the way for harmonious human change on a previously impossible scale. Since everyone knows we're all in trouble, and with our newfound capacity to throw massive amounts of information at the speed of light (electronically), we can use the same flexibility of mind which gave our species top status to transform our technology to life-nurturing rather than the current dog-eat-dog model, which is based on the assumption of scarcity. What's holding up feeding the world and restoring the planet's ecosystem to health is economics, not technology.
If we get off our addictive mindset (which says we have no choice but to do things this way - driving in our cars alone rather than carpooling and bicycling and walking; making money doing destructive things such as selling junk "food", manufacturing weapons, fighting over oil and other natural resources) - we can stop committing suicide via Earth ecosystem destruction. If we: stop competing and work together with Nature to let Earth be reforested; change to electric vehicles fueled by green energy (including the "free energy" Tesla was working on); massively convert our industrial agriculture (which tortures life for short-term profit) to pro-life local agriculture (which produces by nurturing the whole web of life rather than naming certain species as enemies and going to war on them) - then we have a shot at remaining on the planet's list of keeper species. It requires a more ethical consciousness.
Jim McCue
412-421-6496
http://hazelwoodhomepage.org
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 1:33 PM
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