Potential
Being awake, we recognize huge changes are going on on Earth. The basic response should be love rather than fear. There are reasons for what is happening - reasons that can be called scientific or spiritual depending on your orientation. To me Science is just another name for God, as are the words Love, Truth, Beauty, Compassion, and other positive linguistic attempts to describe what is unfathomable. We can understand only progressively, never presuming to get the whole picture. Life is an endless awakening as to how big and alive and beautiful the Universe is.
Those so-called "successful" people (who have managed to compile much money and possessions by focusing only on their own immediate good) set themselves up for stupendous difficulties by not realizing the big picture is going to impact them too. Ignorance allows people (who may be wonderfully loving providers within their own contexts) to be blithely brutal in relationship with other people and life in general.
It is insane to allow fear to close one's mind and heart to what's going on in the wider world - not a good long-term strategy. A case in point - the news that the Arctic is melting. Some simply stick their heads in the sand like scared ostriches. Reacting in fear, they close their eyes even harder, making themselves terribly vulnerable. Picture an ostrich with its head in the sand - obviously it's not protecting itself. Others accept the data, but compartmentalize it in their brains so that it doesn't interfere with their plans to continue on the path they're already set on. So we have energy industry people looking to take advantage of the newly opened waterways in the Arctic to drill for oil. Duh! This does not compute! How many people will need to suffer before we face that it's not possible to keep burning things (coal, oil, natural gas) and still have a planet fit for economic activity?
It's time to question every decision we make. Being awake doesn't mean you buy into the nightmare that the Earth's ecosystem is INEVITABLY collapsing, with a continuation at ever larger scales of the waves of suffering we're seeing now in the world with climate change and all the other aspects of the whole system total crisis we're in. But being truly awake also means you don't allow yourself to be intoxicated with the euphoria of unreasonable optimism. We're in a world of trouble, and the only way to rationally deal with it is to look around at what's going on and talk about it. The scientific claims of climate change are not some Communist plot to establish a new world order to enslave us all. It's wishful thinking and nothing more to think we can just keep on doing what we're doing; we've got to change whether we like it or not.
Humans are hardwired to reproduce, but the sex instinct has got to be tamed. All the willpower in the world is not going to give your particular child a safe and comfortable future while billions are struggling just to stay alive. We've got to quit breeding like rabbits. You can't believe that every human has the right to a decent life and at the same time think it's okay that we're taking down the forests of the planet to make junk mail and toilet paper. The two don't compute.
We have to almost completely stop burning anything - coal, oil, natural gas, even biomass. Science application has to be freed from the grip of economic forces which hinder progress. There are safe non-combustion energy technology advances which have been viciously hindered in order to support our addiction to fossil fuels, and they don't include nuclear fission.
We need to be all on board to massively ramp up the greening of our economy, while we still have an economy. No more waste biomass to the landfill. No more mowing lawns. No more junk mail. No more shipping garlic from China. No more slaves in Bangladesh. No more throwing in the garbage materials that somebody else could use. No more buying stuff you don't need in the first place. No more fake food transported huge distances in plastic and metal containers to be thrown away as useless after one use. No more making money on war. No more addiction abetted by the medical industry by loose prescription of narcotics which are sold on the street. No more planned obsolescence. No more using patents and perverting the legal system to keep good technologies out of the marketplace (technologies that would be disruptive of the status quo). No more lying us into wars for resources. No more subsidies for the coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear industries.
For all those who do not yet realize that the environmental mess we're in is right here right now (not sometime in the future), I say I'm sorry to disturb you but you don't know what's going on in the world. The problems we Americans have been having are minor compared to what's coming. Positive feedback effects (such as with decreasing reflective cooling as the Arctic ice melts) are making it inevitable that we either all work together all over the world to transform our technology or we're going to go through a catastrophe to a degree our species has rarely seen (such as what is referred to in the Bible as the Flood).
All life is miraculous. If we raise our hearts to work for all life (rather than for just our own present loved ones) we'll continue to have a reason to get up in the morning - and the assurance that something good (though we know not what) will come of our efforts. We each have a part in the co-creation of a heaven on Earth.
Those so-called "successful" people (who have managed to compile much money and possessions by focusing only on their own immediate good) set themselves up for stupendous difficulties by not realizing the big picture is going to impact them too. Ignorance allows people (who may be wonderfully loving providers within their own contexts) to be blithely brutal in relationship with other people and life in general.
It is insane to allow fear to close one's mind and heart to what's going on in the wider world - not a good long-term strategy. A case in point - the news that the Arctic is melting. Some simply stick their heads in the sand like scared ostriches. Reacting in fear, they close their eyes even harder, making themselves terribly vulnerable. Picture an ostrich with its head in the sand - obviously it's not protecting itself. Others accept the data, but compartmentalize it in their brains so that it doesn't interfere with their plans to continue on the path they're already set on. So we have energy industry people looking to take advantage of the newly opened waterways in the Arctic to drill for oil. Duh! This does not compute! How many people will need to suffer before we face that it's not possible to keep burning things (coal, oil, natural gas) and still have a planet fit for economic activity?
It's time to question every decision we make. Being awake doesn't mean you buy into the nightmare that the Earth's ecosystem is INEVITABLY collapsing, with a continuation at ever larger scales of the waves of suffering we're seeing now in the world with climate change and all the other aspects of the whole system total crisis we're in. But being truly awake also means you don't allow yourself to be intoxicated with the euphoria of unreasonable optimism. We're in a world of trouble, and the only way to rationally deal with it is to look around at what's going on and talk about it. The scientific claims of climate change are not some Communist plot to establish a new world order to enslave us all. It's wishful thinking and nothing more to think we can just keep on doing what we're doing; we've got to change whether we like it or not.
Humans are hardwired to reproduce, but the sex instinct has got to be tamed. All the willpower in the world is not going to give your particular child a safe and comfortable future while billions are struggling just to stay alive. We've got to quit breeding like rabbits. You can't believe that every human has the right to a decent life and at the same time think it's okay that we're taking down the forests of the planet to make junk mail and toilet paper. The two don't compute.
We have to almost completely stop burning anything - coal, oil, natural gas, even biomass. Science application has to be freed from the grip of economic forces which hinder progress. There are safe non-combustion energy technology advances which have been viciously hindered in order to support our addiction to fossil fuels, and they don't include nuclear fission.
We need to be all on board to massively ramp up the greening of our economy, while we still have an economy. No more waste biomass to the landfill. No more mowing lawns. No more junk mail. No more shipping garlic from China. No more slaves in Bangladesh. No more throwing in the garbage materials that somebody else could use. No more buying stuff you don't need in the first place. No more fake food transported huge distances in plastic and metal containers to be thrown away as useless after one use. No more making money on war. No more addiction abetted by the medical industry by loose prescription of narcotics which are sold on the street. No more planned obsolescence. No more using patents and perverting the legal system to keep good technologies out of the marketplace (technologies that would be disruptive of the status quo). No more lying us into wars for resources. No more subsidies for the coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear industries.
For all those who do not yet realize that the environmental mess we're in is right here right now (not sometime in the future), I say I'm sorry to disturb you but you don't know what's going on in the world. The problems we Americans have been having are minor compared to what's coming. Positive feedback effects (such as with decreasing reflective cooling as the Arctic ice melts) are making it inevitable that we either all work together all over the world to transform our technology or we're going to go through a catastrophe to a degree our species has rarely seen (such as what is referred to in the Bible as the Flood).
All life is miraculous. If we raise our hearts to work for all life (rather than for just our own present loved ones) we'll continue to have a reason to get up in the morning - and the assurance that something good (though we know not what) will come of our efforts. We each have a part in the co-creation of a heaven on Earth.
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 5:55 PM
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