I heard a beautiful question the other day, “When pundits state that we all need to wake up, the real question is, why are so many asleep and oblivious?”
In last week’s post a friend asked me why I seemed apologetic about the ‘dark’ aspect of the post. A good question. As an optimist and a great believer that humanity can actually achieve a sustainable future, I try to be positive; even as I speak about a greater reality ‘of the hierarchy’ that keeps us imprisoned in worldviews that are detrimental to all of life and hence the health of the planet. I could go on with the doom and gloom approach that the environmental movement is so fond of, which is based on the idea that fear motivates us into action. This is all too evident in the Climate Change narratives that the hierarchies use to get our permission to let them make the decisions on how the future will run. I give, what I hope you readers see, as a more positive and realistic approach. even if I state that the sustainable solutions are transformative and require us to take back our power and become sovereign individuals within localized communities.
For more than 50 years all around the planet, Countries have been trying to legislate better behaviors that emphasize more ethical and moral behaviors towards the planet. I have to smile, because in every country there are laws about what is proper and allowed and what is not. Most laws follow dictates from religious teachings and are backed up with consequences, often severe, even extreme, for breaking those laws. The simple fact that punishments are carried out all too frequently and prisons in most countries are overflowing with inmates attests how poorly legislating behaviors fails to create better behaviors. Fear of punishment or further socio-decay is not going to create a better world – it hasn’t so far.
Environmental laws are little better in effecting better behavior than social laws. Most people toe the line, yet even good and moral people break the laws in some capacity. When I rented a car in Morocco a few years ago, the rental clerk said that despite many traffic laws, there were basically only three laws I must obey if I wanted to avoid a traffic ticket: Obey the speed limit absolutely, even in most remote rural and mountain areas; stop completely at all stop signs and red traffic lights, and; make sure the cars legal documents are always with the car. Apparently, as I found out, everything else seems negotiable. Yet, I saw no reckless driving. Sadly, the same cannot be said of commercial and financial interests or consumer behavior that goes right up to the line, often crossing it, when it comes to tight laws and regulations about anything that affects environmental behavior and ecological quality.
After more than 35 years of studying what makes people act, I have come to the conclusion that while fear motivates, people in fear mode are all too easily manipulated. A consequence of people giving their power away is that they cower with the forlorn-hope that somehow the hierarchies they dislike will somehow start acting for the highest good. They almost never have and we cannot realistically expect them to do so. While the top of this power pyramid is the global Cabal, the majority of politicians and corporate leaders cannot create the changes needed – they are way to entrenched in to the negative worldviews and market economy that currently dominate the world’s thinking. And for that matter, so are a large number of people in the developed world who currently embrace the hedonistic material-consumer lifestyle, which is antithetical to a sustainable future.
In essence they are the ones asleep because they are ignorant of what is happening in the world, or they refuse to wake up and look. In my blog, the audience I am catering to are the awakened ones who want to know how to get to a sustainable future, and a large group I termed “Logical Realists’ (see link) that would happily adopt a move to a sustainable lifestyle if it didn’t mean they had to give up ‘aspects of the good life’ they currently enjoy. Understanding beliefs, values, and worldviews has been a major focus of my life – and figuring out why so many are asleep and obvious to what is happening in our world. I am reminded of the Zaphod Beeblebrox character in Douglas Adams book Hitchhikers guide to the Universe; He wears ‘Blackout Glasses’ that at the slightest sign of danger go completely black so he is not faced with anything fearful. The catch of course being that suddenly being thrust into darkness was fearful in its own way.
On a weekly basis I read a lot about new ‘green’ technologies that will make a big difference in creating a sustainable future. I read about them and smile wistfully to myself, knowing that unless ‘Big’ money gets involved to nurture these better technologies, these creative and beneficial technologies usually disappear. Indeed, it is a sad call that Big money usually does get involved, but to make these disruptive technologies go away – can’t have that kind of competition in a rigged market economy now, can we. If, when we hear about these technologies, and the kinds of communities trying to utilize them, then it is up to us, the masses, to use our sovereign power to make the needed consequential decisions. It’s really a choice between fear and Love – fear, they control us; Love, we create a much better world.
I think The Need to Grow’ (2019) documentary by Rosario Dawson is a typical story. It is available to watch for free at the moment (go to link) – the 2 minute trailer is revealing in itself. The three main story lines in the video are a sustainability farmer struggling to keep his land as he revolutionizes resource-efficient agriculture, A visionary inventor developing a truly game-changing agricultural and energy producing technology, and an 8-year-old girl challenging the ethics of a global organization. While the film is set in the USA, it captures the problem of trying to face down technocrats and corporate systems everywhere.
When we try to legislate better behaviors, we are not changing the fundamental values that keep the system so reluctant to change – the market economy that inherently promotes ruthless (literally insane) profit driving behaviors. You would think that healthy food would be a simple ethic everyone wanted, and in truth they do, but until we, the regular people and consumers, make that choice for ourselves, the hierarchy is not going to do it. The way our food has become so corrupted should enrage us, but people just buy into the propaganda it is OK and never question the consequences. Readers of the blog I am sure do question it, but sadly we seem a minority – for now. The fact we have so much more ‘organic food in the markets is a testament to the fatc that we are making headway. Aldo Leopold expounded on the need for a ‘Land Ethic’ in his seminal book A Sand County Almanac in 1949. It is a book that has never gone out of print, because I think he lays out the philosophical reasoning for an ethic that drives our choices, and not a commercial one, when it comes humans interacting with the natural world.
Ethics demands that we respect life, in all its forms and at all levels in biological systems. When the biotic world is coherent with the geological one, we get the optimum conditions for life to thrive. Nature creates processes that allow such coherent systems, it is just humans that think they can completely disregard coherence when systems go awry – as they current are doing. We can work with and modify systems, but to believe we can wage ecological war and destroy systems that seem insignificant to us is folly at best. Talk about biting the hand that feeds us.
To Be Continued ………….
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