Here I am at part 62 in my discussing The Great Healing. I started out with the five main things we need to do to make sustainable decisions for ourselves and our communities. item number one: Mindfulness; Item number two: New Economics; Item number three: New Metrics; Item number four: Food health and resiliency, and; Item number five: Energy resiliency. These make communities independent and resilient. Obviously, consumer needs will still be present, but as we change our ethics at the community level, this will force change at the larger commercial level. They need us to buy their stuff. If we will only buy what is ecologically healthy, then they will have to change their practices and eventually ethics to fit with our needs. Don’t ever doubt the power of an informed and sovereign consumer. Recall the quote, attributed to Margaret Mead, but which shows up in different forms from many other great motivating thinkers; “Never Doubt That a Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens Can Change the World; Indeed, It’s the Only Thing That Ever Has.”
I think I have laid out the problems with trying to rely on any hierarchical system above the community level being able or willing to do it. Governments (at all levels), by definition are supposed to facilitate and coordinate the systems within which we live. Most democracies stipulate that the power lies with the people, the sovereign individuals for which the governments exist to serve. It has become a sad joke that come any election period, people still think that maybe any politician will make a difference. If meaningful change is to come it has to occur at the grassroots. Not as a revolution to create a new government, but as a silent and peaceful transformation that simply creates a parallel culture where ethics and values for the natural world take priority.
Revelations come in many forms and at many levels. One time I was in assigned a biology teaching lab where that week’s entry level college biology lectures for non-biology students were about the human digestive system (I didn’t do the lectures). The lab was planned to show how various enzymic and chemical processes broke down our food throughout the alimentary canal (digestive tract). When the students arrived, I gave an overview of that day’s lab on the lab board at the front of the lab classroom. In lecture the students had been shown the pictures and anatomy of the human digestive tract within the body. On the board I drew the digestive tract as a single tube starting at the mouth and ending at the anus, with appropriate larger and smaller tubing that I labelled as the various parts of the alimentary canal. I added the names of the various enzymes and chemical processes, indicating the interaction with various organs where they occurred in the tract. Pretty boiler plate explanation I thought since this is how I explained digestion when I did lecture. When I looked at the class, they were busy copying my drawing. When I asked, “haven’t you already had the lecture,” they piped up that the lecture left them confused and daunted about the topic.
No offense to my colleagues who lectured that week, but this is not unusual. The students had seen only pictures of a convoluted set of intestines along with all the organs in a peeled back skin body cavity view. The alimentary canal is not a simple elongated 5-9 meter long tube, yet understanding it is easier if it is viewed that way, before getting into the complexities. The same idea is true of any system. Once you understand the basics, it is easier to understand the complexities. Note: I emphasize understanding the basics, not simplifying to the point of inaccuracy. If you don’t grasp the basics, the rest is just informational junk, leaving people frustrated and unwilling to go further with a topic. Think about the teachers you liked and for which you did well in class, versus the opposite. For some students, every class was confusing, especially if their learning preferences were completely different from the way the teacher taught. And this is not including those with special needs such as mild autism or dyslexia.
Our world has become complex in so many ways. And the hierarchy capitalize on that to befuddle the masses into accepting technocrats as authorities not to be questioned. I watched a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode (A matter of Time) the other day. There was this planet hit by an asteroid where atmospheric dust was blocking the sun. They needed to quickly warm up the planet and so located deep underground pockets of carbon dioxide to release into the atmosphere to increase the greenhouse effect. For the regular viewer this would seem quite logical. For anyone with a deeper understanding of climate science, it was simplistically dubious at best. The carbon dioxide was merely a hook on which to hang the larger storyline – that’s how entertainment works. Yet, when it comes to real world problems, relying on memes and taglines to understand complex systems doesn’t work. Most of us need to at least grasp the basics enough to understand when the science is comprehensibly sound and when it being overly simplified to push agendas. The latter is how mass entertainment erroneously educates the masses. And curiously, how it keeps dystopic beliefs and values for a failing global system alive and well.
Now trying to educate everyone to a high level of comprehension of how the world works is a humongous task. One environmental educators’ do all the time. Educators are required not to push beliefs and values onto learners. Indigenous peoples do not know about all the scientific complexities of the world, but they better know how to live more harmoniously with the natural world. Their children are brought up and taught to understand the ecological basics, then complexities of the system where they live. They have a spiritual connection to that place that transfers to any natural place they may go. They are inherently mindful (item one), and that mindfulness means they apply that mindfulness to items two through five.
Life sustaining ethics and values are naturally a part of their upbringing, the way they live and the choices they make. They consume, and novelty and comforts are as much a lure to them as they are to us. But to ethically question every decision is a natural part of how they think and act. We are at a socio-cultural crossroads. You don’t need a crystal ball to recognize all the chaos that is promoting a worldwide change. Complex systems are not predictable. We can embrace the complexity and uncertainty and take the reins of change to make it what we want it to be. Doing it at the local level gives us more control and resiliency. We can understand the system even if we do not understand all the interactions of all the factors in that system. We learn as we go along. We heal the world and ourselves. Something no hierarchical groups are able, or willing, to do.
To Be Continued …………..
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