“It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.” Buckminster Fuller.
One of my friends asked why I spend so much time on personal change instead of technology for sustainability. Simple: If we don’t change ourselves and our mindsets, it doesn’t matter what technology we develop, we will still continue to destroy the planet through greed instead of living with it in harmony. Until we recognize and free ourselves from the enslavement to a destructive mindset, neither we nor the planet will thrive. It will just be a spiraling decline for all life on the planet until humanity is no longer an issue. Then life without humanity will begin to blossom again. But we do not have to go through the decline, we can change now and thrive now – we just have to make that choice individually and as a collective to begin the process of transformation.
We have reached a phase of human development in which we have to become something that cannot destroy itself. We can no longer live completely in ego – our consciousness has to evolve. We do it or we fail. We literally have to stop this habit we have of placing everything into the future. We must begin to start acting now. Plant that garden. Work with your neighbors to plant gardens. Keep working with the neighbors who want to collaborate to improve the neighborhood in things besides maintaining the home prices. Do lots of little things that show care and concern for people around you and the planet we rely on. Small things add up to bigger things. Begin that change in yourself now. Doing nothing, or procrastinating until a better time arrives, means accepting separateness, division, hate, self-centeredness, and continued violence that perpetuates the problems in to the less than wonderful future. Making choices now encourages Love, kindness, peace, unity, reduced anger, reduced guilt, reduced vanity, and more compassion for other people and life in general.
Making these sustainable living choices is not like flipping a light switch where everything immediately gets better, but it is an immediate bettering of everything, once we do. In chapter 7 (Happiness and Well-Being) of my Sustainable Living textbook: “Since the 1950s, surveys have consistently found what people say they really need as the mix of ingredients for psychological wealth. This mix, in order of preference, is: life satisfaction, happiness, spirituality and meaning in life, positive attitudes and emotions, loving social relationships, engaging activities and satisfying work, values and life goals to achieve them, physical and mental health, and material sufficiency to meet needs. Note which need is the last one on the list. Loss of any one of these needs will decrease the overall quality of life. Satisfaction in all of these categories will give you a life you love even if you only have a moderate amount of money. Most people intuitively know and agree with the idea that overall health, relationships, and spirituality are crucial components for quality in their lives.”
That quality we all really desire comes from “Any action that an individual takes to truly free themselves [that] is an action that seeks the liberation of all of humanity. The quest for freedom is grounded in TRUTH, motivated by LOVE resulting in a spirit of UNITY. The quest for freedom only for oneself or one’s tribe is actually a quest for CONTROL, grounded in DECEPTION, motivated by FEAR resulting in a spirit of DIVISION” daocoaching.com.
We must stop seeking approval from something higher or any authority to become who we truly want to be. “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are” Joseph Campbell. We love to hang to our baggage and pain – we embrace it as our identity. The difference from being to having – one is living in the here and Now and the other is projecting into the future. Living in the Now means to believe in ourselves. We have been so conditioned to find fault in ourselves and everyone else, we are now blind to the brilliance we can al exhibit when we are allowed to display our true selves. Forgive yourself and forgive others. They are merely doing the best that they can under the same influences you have experienced. Some have it better and some have it worse than you. Some are spiritually awake and many still need to awaken – but it is happening a lot now. “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the Violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it” Mark Twain.
Stop being victims to the undesirable circumstances that we find ourselves within. Start making decisions to change those circumstances to ones we like instead of ones we suffer under. Start small if you must but be a beacon for others who still have to believe that change can come from many individual actions. As I emphasized in an earlier post (The Psychology of Sustainability – Part 5: A New World Through the Power of Choice {July 2020}),we are but only a drop in the ocean, but as I have quoted from David Mitchell (Could Atlas), What is an ocean but a multitude of drops!
From Tolkien’s, LOTR.:
Sam: “…folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.”
Frodo: “What are we holding onto, Sam?”
Sam: “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.
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