Future seeds
Future seeds
This most interesting moment in Earth history is full of promise and danger. Our responses to the challenges will interact to co-create the future. That we have the power, acting together, to do almost anything we can imagine gives hope but also great responsibility. If the human species is not to go down in the history of the Universe as anything better than a relatively minute, sad chapter, we must wake up and transform our society. There is SO much unsustainable in our current civilization that many thoughtful people are predicting its imminent collapse.
While there is plenty of data and logic that says that we humans ourselves should be included on the endangered species list, whether or not we fall to the extinction event Earth is experiencing right now depends on how we react to these historic changes. If we remain blind to the big picture of what's going on in the world, this does not bode well for us as a whole. All life on Earth is going through a degree of change so large that none of us can really get a grasp of what it all means.
But it IS possible to take confident action even without knowing what effects our actions have. We are going through a paradigm shift, on the other side of which is a lot saner, more harmonious, and loving world. Though it has always seemed that violence was a necessary part of nature, we are learning now ways of, for instance, feeding ourselves with less suffering caused to other species. There is no inherent necessity, for instance, to eat meat. All human nutrients are available via either eating plants or fermentation processes. Consider this: All food originally comes from inert soil - ground up rocks. Plants and microbes work together to feed animals. Why eat animals when you can eat either plants directly or microbial foods - such as yogurt, cheese, bread, kefir, sour cream - and/or supplements formulated with vitamins and other nutrients from fermentation processes.
I'm convinced the great environmental changes going on now are Nature's way (or God's way if you will) of telling us to stop fighting (either each other or the other life forms on Earth). The massive amounts of organic waste going to landfills (via municipal garbage collection) and streams (via overwhelmed sewage treatment operations) are causing atmospheric and microbiological problems, aside from wasting valuable soil-building resources. Spending on weapons and conflicts neglect the alternative of making friends with the enemies. The same what I call "enemyship rather than friendship" relations with the non-human species of our ecosystem ends up backfiring. The honeybees and other insect pollinators (including flies) are in decline, and so are the birds. Think about it. If we kill off all the bugs, what are the birds going to eat?
We humans are going to have to forge a new relationship with the rest of the living world. We are NOT going to be the masters. The extreme genetic flexibility of the smaller, faster life forms - such as microbes, some of which can reproduce and so mutate within minutes (as contrasted to humans, which have to reach adulthood to reproduce), makes microbes the final rebuttal to our vain assumptions about our species being the most powerful.
Recognizing the new friendship with nature attitude that must come, some of us in Hazelwood are working together to regenerate the tattered web of life. We want to grow food here, process it here in healthy ways, distribute it here, and return our organic waste to the soil to start the process anew next year - just like it was in the old days before our technology became enslaved to the profit motive (making things that don't make sense solely to make money). We have the Hazelwood Urban Farms micro-farm and more neighborhood gardens of all types. We have young people learning the plant business with Floriated Interpretations. We have the Hazelwood Summer Marketplace selling local healthier produce and prepared foods. We are working on an organics recycling operation to divert some organic waste from going to landfill where it produces greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. We have Hazelwood YMCA Community Garden reaching out to the neighborhood to play it's part in this great agricultural transformation some of us know is needed. We have Center of Life gearing up gardening, environmental and nutritional awareness, and food industry training programming.
And, the nicest thing for me - many different types of people are working together. Aware of the great problems of our time, some of us are choosing to make it feel like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood around here. I love this place.
Jim McCue
412-421-6496 http://bioeverything.blogspot.com
This most interesting moment in Earth history is full of promise and danger. Our responses to the challenges will interact to co-create the future. That we have the power, acting together, to do almost anything we can imagine gives hope but also great responsibility. If the human species is not to go down in the history of the Universe as anything better than a relatively minute, sad chapter, we must wake up and transform our society. There is SO much unsustainable in our current civilization that many thoughtful people are predicting its imminent collapse.
While there is plenty of data and logic that says that we humans ourselves should be included on the endangered species list, whether or not we fall to the extinction event Earth is experiencing right now depends on how we react to these historic changes. If we remain blind to the big picture of what's going on in the world, this does not bode well for us as a whole. All life on Earth is going through a degree of change so large that none of us can really get a grasp of what it all means.
But it IS possible to take confident action even without knowing what effects our actions have. We are going through a paradigm shift, on the other side of which is a lot saner, more harmonious, and loving world. Though it has always seemed that violence was a necessary part of nature, we are learning now ways of, for instance, feeding ourselves with less suffering caused to other species. There is no inherent necessity, for instance, to eat meat. All human nutrients are available via either eating plants or fermentation processes. Consider this: All food originally comes from inert soil - ground up rocks. Plants and microbes work together to feed animals. Why eat animals when you can eat either plants directly or microbial foods - such as yogurt, cheese, bread, kefir, sour cream - and/or supplements formulated with vitamins and other nutrients from fermentation processes.
I'm convinced the great environmental changes going on now are Nature's way (or God's way if you will) of telling us to stop fighting (either each other or the other life forms on Earth). The massive amounts of organic waste going to landfills (via municipal garbage collection) and streams (via overwhelmed sewage treatment operations) are causing atmospheric and microbiological problems, aside from wasting valuable soil-building resources. Spending on weapons and conflicts neglect the alternative of making friends with the enemies. The same what I call "enemyship rather than friendship" relations with the non-human species of our ecosystem ends up backfiring. The honeybees and other insect pollinators (including flies) are in decline, and so are the birds. Think about it. If we kill off all the bugs, what are the birds going to eat?
We humans are going to have to forge a new relationship with the rest of the living world. We are NOT going to be the masters. The extreme genetic flexibility of the smaller, faster life forms - such as microbes, some of which can reproduce and so mutate within minutes (as contrasted to humans, which have to reach adulthood to reproduce), makes microbes the final rebuttal to our vain assumptions about our species being the most powerful.
Recognizing the new friendship with nature attitude that must come, some of us in Hazelwood are working together to regenerate the tattered web of life. We want to grow food here, process it here in healthy ways, distribute it here, and return our organic waste to the soil to start the process anew next year - just like it was in the old days before our technology became enslaved to the profit motive (making things that don't make sense solely to make money). We have the Hazelwood Urban Farms micro-farm and more neighborhood gardens of all types. We have young people learning the plant business with Floriated Interpretations. We have the Hazelwood Summer Marketplace selling local healthier produce and prepared foods. We are working on an organics recycling operation to divert some organic waste from going to landfill where it produces greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. We have Hazelwood YMCA Community Garden reaching out to the neighborhood to play it's part in this great agricultural transformation some of us know is needed. We have Center of Life gearing up gardening, environmental and nutritional awareness, and food industry training programming.
And, the nicest thing for me - many different types of people are working together. Aware of the great problems of our time, some of us are choosing to make it feel like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood around here. I love this place.
Jim McCue
412-421-6496 http://bioeverything.blogspot.com
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 2:48 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home