Control

Bill gives a great comment to start. My SL definition doesn’t give an answer to how to get there. True – it’s more of a vision statement. One huge assumption of my definition is that we will actually choose this kind of future. And why might we do that? As one of my favorite writers Cultural critic and author (i.e. Ishmael) Daniel Quinn states, “One day, sooner or later, [our current way of living] is going to collapse, and the penthouse is going to come down along with all the rest.” I recommend you look him up online and read his books. Like many modern environmental prophets (include David Orr and many others), we have a chorus of voices warning us of what will come if we fail to heed the warnings. Rachel Carson began the modern period of this trend – change or else! Negative enforcement works for a while but the singular message from our ‘Mother Culture’ consistently overrides the chorus. We persist in clinging to the lie that everything is OK. I decided long ago that there had to be a more positive way to make the choices we need to make as a species despite the hyper-consumerist message we accept as ‘the only way.’

Initially, I did naively think that by teaching a different message and writing a more positive text with a positive future and following Daniel Quinn’s idea of Ishmael’s advert “Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world” that somehow we could break through the chaotic noise that traps us all in the hyper-consumerism worldview. I still think we need more pupils wanting to save the world, but we also need more disclosure that shows us the nasty system that traps us. Apparently, I cannot simply give a positive outcome for SL because the consumer lifestyle continues to seem so appealing. After all, we live technologically comfortable lives that the medieval Kings of olde would envy. So, I also have to resort to showing the negative to emphasize why the problems exist. What I will show, however, is what is not usually seen. When asked, my students could name myriad environmental problems even before I produced them in class – knowing the many problems that exist is not the problem we face. It is the reasons they exist beyond what mainstream media and education tells us that is important.

For instance, the magic money system. Imagine (I recommend trying it) playing the board game Monopoly. One person is the banker (they own ALL the bank, not just mange it – it is their money) and every other player starts with just $100 (being generous here). See how many rounds of the board you can do before the game ends. That’s ridiculous you say, but that is the current global economic system. It is insane and most of us are trapped in a system of debt, while those not yet at the consumer feeding trough (the less developed world) anxiously want to be there since they see our lifestyle as fantastic compared to their own – mainstream media sells a good consumer myth. There are two economies, the little one we work within and then the money pump that quickly siphons our money up to an elite economy where the uber-rich invest and make more money, gaining even more control and power along the way. It is the game of Monopoly that we started out with in this paragraph. Is there a solution – Yes. But it isn’t within the current system. Strict social and environmental laws are only stop-gaps and most usually get mired in bureaucracy and competing worldviews. Globally most people are unwittingly complicit in bringing about a Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984 future because they see no real alternatives being given to them. Whether you vote left or right, both sides are playing the same game that you are not privy to – OMG I’m becoming a conspiracist – anything not part of the mainstream is designated conspiracy to discredit it – critical discernment needed to sort chaff from wheat though! Asking and expecting the ‘hierarchy’ to make the changes we really want is how ‘they’ (don’t you love ‘they’ – but ‘they’ do exist – more later) control us. We have the power – YES, we really do, but we have to tear our eyes away from mainstream media that keeps us mindless and become MINDFUL of what is happening. Wow – this is becoming an essay not a blog. Stay tuned and I’ll get to showing us a path to health, happiness, and prosperity – the latter needing some defining first.