“The Problem isn’t a lack of money, food, water or land. The problem is that you’re given control of these things to a group of greedy psychopaths who care more about maintaining their own power than helping mankind” Bill Hicks: The Mind Unleashed.
I was reading one of the many local retail publications we get in our junk mail every week about how a couple of local developers have invested in sustainability, development, and conservation of wooded areas and wetlands around this part of the Front Range of Colorado. Except for a few rivers that arise out of the Rocky Mountains, and trees that grow along the riparian zones of these rivers, the natural ecology of this area is short grass prairie. So, I find it amusing when developers coop the word ‘sustainability’ to include well landscaped golf courses, large houses (5000 square feet/465 square meters), luxury Condo’s with well-tended landscaping (including large grass areas), surrounding lakes (reservoirs) and wetlands (seepage areas from the reservoirs) so everyone can enjoy the many aquatic birds and larger wildlife that would not normally live in this area. Of course, this is all geared towards the more affluent members of American society each with an ecological footprint that would require 7-10 planets if everyone had this luxury (see prior post Overview of Wants and Needs versus the Ecological Footprint {August 2018}).
If you live in a country with a westernized lifestyle (especially in developed countries), then the simple reality is that everything is going to change, and I see it happening quickly, to a more moderate lifestyle with a much lower ecological footprint. What I envisage is an increase in all factors contributing to better ‘Quality of Life (QOL)’ and less preoccupation with ‘Standard of Living (SOL).’ The latter being a source of the consumer mindset. It won’t be the undeveloped countries gaining a western lifestyle, but developed countries reducing their extreme consumption as undeveloped countries finally have access to resources denied to them in the flawed consumer capitalist system. I doubt the elites and controlling Cabals will be eager to support the coming changes, but once the ecological and resource shocks start to set in, the need to become serious about what sustainable really means will guide our futures.
I’m also sure that the Cabals will try to sell these changes as the destruction of everything we once held dear, using Fear to control the masses. But that is them trying to hold onto power. Once we realize that we had the power all along, change will happen quickly. If we can turn the tide within ourselves from fear to freedom, then the world will change. A simple choice between Fear and Love. What we currently choose is Hate, Fear, Anger, Condemnation, Judgment and dictating conformity of what we should be to fit in. Love, compassion, and tolerance is just a choice away. Love for self, for each other, for the world – It really is just a simple choice. – choose Love (more specifics in next post).
We often talk about neighborliness and being nice as part of a good community, yet, all too often, buried beneath that façade of pleasantries is a harsh and judgmental attitude levied on anyone should they stray into non-conformity. Change terrifies many people who struggle to hang on to some notion of normalcy, despite the fact that change is the only constant there is in our lives. Until the 1920s, I think change was slow and incremental in human societies’, but in the last 100 years technology has forced such rapid transitions in how we live that to try and remain unchanged means to live outside society. Cultural norms might struggle to remain, but even there, change is occurring. Even the Amish who disdain modern technology are forced to rely on friends (usually Mennonites) to manage technology on their behalf when they must occasionally rely upon technology even as they live an ordered pre-industrial existence.
It’s so much easier to live unconventionally today, but since the 1960s, fear of the ‘great non-conformity’ (see earlier post Why we stay in the rut 2 – A Reality Check {May 2018}) drove the split between those wanting change and those wanting to keep pursuing the consumer lifestyle. The past fifteen years has seen a major interest in self-empowerment as people everywhere struggle to keep going in the consumer mindset. QOL factors are now more sought after and it is no longer just a fad, but a major goal of many, especially many of the millennial’s generation that have eschewed consumerism in search of something else. I think they are showing us older ones that life is much more than just ‘being successful’ in a career. Again, it is the QOL factors that are coming to the fore and it has little to do with ‘what you have’ as to ‘who you are.’ It’s about being happy, and as I have stated many times, true happiness is not connected to end goals or achievements – it is a state of being, not something to be attained – it’s the start of self-integrity.
While I know many millennials from my time teaching, I still think that the vision of change for this generation is still a bit foggy in their minds. I know that students in my Sustainability Studies degree program had a clearer picture and were quite focused in a vision of living for a Sustainable future. But how to bring that vision about still eludes them and of most of us. I feel that most of the problem is that we keep trying to shoehorn it into the existing consumer system, much like the developers I mentioned at the start of this post.
If we can instead begin with a new focus, one based in Imagination and Self-acceptance and no preconceived notion of an outcome, then I think we might have a better chance of succeeding. Yes, there are principles of sustainability – it’s why I named my Sustainable Living textbook that way. The change will be more organic and grow from experience and experimentation – there is no specific right way or right protocol to becoming sustainable. No one path to follow. It will be a creative process with a deep abiding regard for all others and the natural world.
Arab Spring (Started 2011) failed overall because it was hijacked by the very elites they were revolting against. We need to move forward with a vision of what society could look like to keep us focused on the big picture. But we must forget romantic nostalgic views of the past. What is the future vision? We must not allow our vision to be coopted by the elites, the Cabals, and the corporate systems. It will be grassroots activity everywhere, and definitely a bottom-up process. The reasonable hierarchy are too vested in their system to be of much help, and don’t ever think the Cabals will be anything except psychopathic. The creative juices for this Earth change will come from local communities and especially the young who have not become overly jaded in the possibilities of change and a positive future. As educator David Orr says, “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. You can’t go to despair, that’s a sin. And ‘optimism’? You just don’t know enough.”
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