“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.
Ultimate power used to reside with the monarchies and emperors in a highly structured hierarchy. Democracy came along with the American and French revolutions, but we were so used to having a hierarchy, we structured our modern governments on a similar hierarchical system. This led to a many political systems that still had not yet truly understood how to deal with the problems of power and corruption. The ideals of personal autonomy and sovereignty are core aspects of all democracies, but more and more we find the old hierarchy systems we thought we had left behind surface time and time again as ‘political and financial leaders’ use war, finance, and propaganda as tools to impose control and compliance over a population.
We think we are free and sovereign, but we unwittingly let ourselves be enslaved, and then justify the actions of the hierarchy since we think we made the decisions for the actions they did on our behalf. The illusions of democratic choice we think we have, are merely between the left and right hands of the same governing entity in whatever place you live. I use entity because it is the same Cabal that rules us all. But take heart. The ruling hierarchies are crumbling. If you can remove the blinkers of modern mass-media you will see that what looks like chaos is really just the Cabal struggling to keep control of the power it has known for millennia. All around the world, people are waking up in their tens of millions. You won’t see it in the news, but know that it is happening.
Humanity’s future is about learning how to live together in peaceful unity, without having to resort to violence over differences. We are moving from an egocentric mind to a heartfelt spiritual mind. Moving away from individualistic solutions to group ‘thinktank’ resolutions. It’s a time for humanity to redefine itself completely. Our current systems are extremely resistant to change. Our big challenge now is to stop and talk about what we want to see the future look like versus continuing to do the wrong things because that is what we know at the moment within the status quo.
There is real fear or fright when you encounter a real threat, but our species has this propensity to experience fear and then project forward on all the different ways an experience might have turned out, and we fixate on possible negative experiences that will never happen, all based on some past experience. Rather than dwell on all the past negative experiences, e.g., World Wars and multiple small wars that always seem to be going on, let’s make a personal decision to make ourselves responsible for our future that starts Now.
I got a message from a close friend about the frustrations of trying to change the world, with which I am sure most of you will identify. I was given permission to include it as sent to me; “I remember a time in grade school when our class entered a government sponsored poster competition, the subject of which was the campaign against pollution. I was eleven years old. Since that time in my life, I have picked up trash in the street and on the trails where I walk. At about the same time in my life recycling hit the scene in a big way and so I recycled. I separated the plastics from the glass from the paper. I hauled it to the recycling station every time the bins were full. Today I’m mindful of the amount of packaging that exists and try to cut down on waste where I can.
When I was in grade school me and my dad would hike in the mountains of Colorado on the weekends. We carried a minimal amount of water with us because we could drink the water in the streams. Today I’m never without a water bottle and I don’t drink water from the streams unless it’s filtered first and in fact, I don’t drink water from the tap unless it’s filtered first.
And let’s not forget the threat of nuclear extinction. In middle school we routinely engaged in duck and cover exercises in case of a nuclear attack. When I was in high school, in protest to the production of nuclear triggers that were produced at Rocky Flats I joined hands with thousands of other concerned citizens to encircle the hundreds of acres that the facility occupied. It was a beautiful experience to be a part of a unified community. Rocky Flats eventually stopped making triggers but not because of our efforts.
Today I have food sensitivity due primarily (in my opinion) to glyphosate usage on crops grown here in the United States. I have a garden and I buy organic when I can. Recently I’ve learned that my efforts may be in vain as glyphosate is measurable in the air. There’s no getting away from it.
All of this to say, environmental sustainability has been in my preview since I was a child, before it was a subject of study. Today I’m in my mid-sixties. I still recycle and pick up trash on the walking paths and street. I live close to my job so I can walk instead of drive. I read articles and blogs like yours. I listen to TED talks and YouTube. And I’m frustrated. Perhaps this is why people don’t comment on your blog. They are like me. We’ve lived an entire life time of being cognizant to the environmental problems. And as the problems continue to grow, we watch as people with money and power do whatever it takes to make more money and have more power. What are we to do? I want to make a positive difference in this world. I’m looking for something tangible I can do. How can I have more of an impact?”
In the Hobbit movie, a character (Gandalf?) says: “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found it is small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” The solution, as I see it, and have expounded upon for much of this blog, is to take back our power and stop giving it to whatever hierarchical system we currently pay homage. These hierarchical systems have for so long been a part of our generational lives, we think it is how humanity is meant to live. Hierarchies are the problem. Putting power into the hands of them is the problem. “All governments suffer a recurring problem: power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible” Frank Herbert, Dune (see link). So how do we live if not hierarchically. I’ve said this many times in this blog. Let me go over it again.
We need leaders, but not despots addicted to power and control. There will be many leaders at any time who are perfect for the moment, but these leadership positions are not careers. And they will not be individuals who have all the answers. These new leaders will be more like different kinds of guides who help groups of all kinds recognize what needs to be done at any given time. It will be collectives that ebb and flow with the challenges of community living. Neo-tribal systems that use the best of what indigenous tribes enjoyed (enjoy) but incorporate the best of modern systems as well. It will be true resilience rather than trying to maintain the status quo.
It will be Individualism within Collectivism that uses power differently than we have known. It is the idea of ‘power used for something collective’ versus our current hierarchical ‘power over groups of people.’ It will be necessary to craft this anew and therefore will require crafting with a careful balance. The governments of the American and French revolutions spent years deliberating of ways to govern via a republic but were limited by the idea that a hierarchy was the only way to go. The new and peaceful revolution for us is to craft a new way of living where it is a WE versus the I, without minimizing the I. We don’t need to overthrow the hierarchy, just ignore it – it is going away anyway, unless we let them bamboozle us into believing that power exists only with them. We have to believe in ourselves (see link).
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to a deal with a world that no longer exists” Eric Hoffer.
To Be Continued ………..
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