I was clearing out boxes of books I had brought back home from my academic office after I retired and came across ‘The Mis-measure of Man’ by Stephen Jay Gould. In this book Gould lays out the rationale and justification for how scientists used ‘good’ science to ‘prove’ that intellect could be determined for the various races of humanity and gender differences. This essentially used Biological Determinism, much like the social scientists used Darwinism, to prove one races superiority over another race, thus justifying all manner of crimes and horrors. To demonstrate the ludicrousness of this. Imagine that in an IQ test you had a score of 151 justifying you to join MENSA. Now imagine that because of this you now went out and starting raping, killing, and generally creating mayhem with anyone who wasn’t a MENSA member. And not only that the governments of the westernized world actually enacted laws that encouraged you to do so. Much of what happened was done out of fear and a complete disregard for anything but the euro-worldview self-interest. While there was an ‘enlightenment’ (about the 18th century) that promoted reason, the overall euro-worldview was, and is still, the dominant way of thinking today. What the Europeans did when they ‘colonized’ (since the Renaissance of the 14th century) the world was instill its worldview, held as the pinnacle of achievement, on the rest of the world whether they liked it or not. Even the ancient Chinese empires succumbed to the euro-worldview. Since North American culture arose out of the euro-worldview, it has evolved somewhat, but is still based on what people like Columbus brought across the Atlantic all those centuries ago. It wasn’t the soldiers that conquered the New World, but the farmers who transformed this New World to their ideal of what civilization ought to look like. (more on this in another blog.) Before any of you think I ignore the large Chinese empire that was highly evolved as a typical type of euro-worldview, the Chinese practiced isolationism for most of their long history (China had plenty of resources and an arrogant attitude to outsiders), thereby leaving the bulk of colonization after the Renaissance to the Europeans (and hence their brand of euro-worldview). (more on this in another blog)
There is a term ‘Westernized-Mania’ (westernized lifestyle not cowboy westerns) that seems to describe how the euro-worldview has now manifested itself throughout the world. The 90mph for 90 hours week for $90,000 a year. Rush, rush, rush, gotta make the money so the stress will kill me before I can retire kind of mentality. It is an ingrained set of beliefs that keep people in this relentless rut of despair and negativity. Within this set of beliefs, we are co-conspirators in the continued trampling of the planet and everyone on it – YES, we give permission for everything that happens on this planet by the corporations and the belief that acquisition of money is the most important thing to measure for well-being. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but until we decide to make a change and live that change as best as we can, then we are contributing to the problem and not the solution. If you are serious about trying to live sustainably, then you need to examine the beliefs that drive your daily living.
You do not end a belief by not believing it, you end it by not living it. No longer believing something that for a long time has been a fixed belief, changes nothing. Once that belief program is set in place, it is no mere mental belief; it is an established way of living your life and expressing yourself. To end a belief that negatively affects your life you are required to stop living that outmoded belief. It works best by replacing the old belief with another, more supportive one, and living it. Note that living it is the key ingredient. This requires continual conscious attention. (Believe that you will gain your spiritual freedom by consciously . . . choosing Love!} Michael J. Roads
I often hear how difficult it to live a different belief, and yes, that is true, especially when the whole infrastructure is designed to make it ridiculously hard to do the ‘right’ things for the environment. Many people are just plain lazy and yet complain endlessly about the world going to hell in a hand basket. They need to listen to themselves and make a decision to actually do something. Many others try to do the ‘right’ thing for the environment and find the current systems infrastructure is working against them.
In 2010, Colin Beavan published No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process. Colin lived in New York city and make a concerted and determined effort with his family within the big city to live a zero impact lifestyle. Needless to say, it took an immense effort and was not always successful. In a rural setting it can work a bit more easily and there are ‘intentional communities’ all over the world attempting to do just this. But in a city or town, the infrastructure needs transforming and we are the only ones who will push for that transformation. People like Rob Hopkins in the UK among many other inspired others are pushing to make their small towns and cities operate on a different infrastructure with localized energy and food for starters. The localization movement is one of the ways to break the infrastructure down to a more manageable size. It is a beginning, and we do have to start somewhere, but it also means looking at the inherent beliefs that we use to drive the infrasturture. Globalization was an idea that blossomed since 1981, but in its wake it left a trail of destruction of small business owners all across the westernized world, and now increasingly in the developing world as ‘big box’ stores pop up everywhere with the ‘buy-more’ hyper-consumer mentality. An interesting video is ‘The High Cost of Low Prices’ that does a fair job of explaining what I call the ‘Wall Mart effect.’
Big box store moves into town with localized incentives and promises of jobs. Then low priced goods, that people didn’t know they wanted, flood the local economy. Box store forces local businesses out of business, and then with no competition, raises their prices and them moves the store to just outside the communitys tax jurisdiction to avoid paying back to the local community. The money made by the store then whistles back to a head office elsewhere that shelters its profits in overseas banks so the country gets no tax base either. The rich investors/owners then engage the ‘elite economy siphon’ to pump money from the local economy u to the elite economy where it gets invested in stocks and shares and other lucrative investments that do nothing for the local economy.
As I have said before, we make decisions through our purchasing power as sovereign consumers. If we are to change the infrastructure, WE have to begin that process, because big money has no interest or reason to do it for us.
At this time, the USA in particular is in a vicious anti-environmental governmental swing of the pendulum. Many, many people want to see change for a kinder, more gentle way of living. Most would like to see it done reformationally so they are not too inconvenienced in their lifestyles. Many would like to just transform the system and put up with the inconveniences while the new system ‘calibrates’ itself organically. And then there is a third group that just want to complain and expect some magical transformation to happen without any change in their thinking at all. Finally, there is a very much smaller group (the 0.1-1.0%) that is both monetarily wealthy and powerful that would like to see a new feudalism come into the world. Why do we stay in the rut, even when we know it is not what we want? To be Continued………
0 Comments