Happy Winter Solstice Day! In ancient traditions around the world, this day marked the last day of the old year as the sun reached its lowest point for three days and the longest night (in the northern hemisphere) – the aboriginal peoples of the southern hemisphere celebrated this in June of course. The rebirth of the new year was a big deal as it signified the point at which light began to increase, and especially in the climates closer to the planetary poles, warmth crept back into the land and life flourished again – it was always a celebration of rebirth. Since global culture is now dominated by the traditions of the northern hemisphere because of the European colonization periods during the last 1000 years, our business calendar, that also dominates the world, is also Euro-centrically fixed.
I’ve spent a lot of time laying out the reasons for preparing for the big changes needed to heal the world, and especially how to heal ourselves as the primary planetary antagonists in creating the socio-ecological problems we face both locally and globally. Ancient cultures and indigenous peoples lived spiritually with the land – a worldview based on eco-centric connectivity. It was a wisdom born out of deep knowledge and understanding of what worked to allow life to flourish and what created hardship or even the demise of life in an area that led to the demise of the people. They may not have been scientific ecologists but their knowledge was as complete in its understanding of ecology; probably more so than many mainstream ecologists today who still think of isolated systems rather than global interconnectivity.
“The planet doesn’t care about your political beliefs. The laws of nature don’t bend to human stubbornness. Either we adapt to a world without endless extraction, pollution, and destruction, or nature will remind us that we are not in control” Powwows.com.
I covered the idea of accepting ‘collateral damage’ as inevitable. “As Robin Wall Kimmerer (RWK) puts it: “Collateral Damage: Shielding words to keep us from naming the consequences of a missile gone astray. The words ask us to turn out faces away, as if man-made destruction were an inescapable fact of nature.” We can use and alter nature, but only a fool destroys what sustains them. Most collateral damage in our modern world isn’t a deliberate act of malfeasance but more a lack of understanding of connection, and a focus on human economic and financial primacy that probably and more unconsciously, promotes a complete ignorance and disregard for the real future – the future where life thrives.
“It has been said that people of the modern world suffer from a great sadness, a ‘species loneliness’ – estrangement from the rest of creation… [on the path before me] I see people… walking towards the crossroads with all they have gathered. They carry in their bundles the precious seeds for a change of worldview. Not so they can continue to return to some atavistic utopia, but to find the tools that allow us to walk into the future… the path is lined with all the world’s people, in all colors of the medicine wheel red, white, black, yellow – who understand the choice ahead, who share a vision of respect and reciprocity, of fellowship with the more-than-human world” RWK.
Cultural anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins, talks about the differing worldviews ascribed to the term ‘Affluent Society.’ Indigenous cultures with few possessions and were the original affluent societies – they had all they needed to live in abundance (note the term need not want). “Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity. Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world’s [monetarily] wealthiest peoples… The market system artificially creates scarcity by blocking the flow between the source and the consumer… The result is famine for some and disease of excess for others.”
“It is not just changes in policies that we need, but also changes to the heart. Scarcity and plenty are as much qualities of the mind and spirit as they are of the [human] economy. [Our focus must be] to refuse to participate in an economy that destroys the beloved earth to line the pockets of the greedy. To demand an economy that is aligned with life, not stacked against it” RWK.
Forgive me. I stand on my speaker’s ‘soapbox’ advocating a better future for us all. I use the words of wise others that mirror my own to demonstrate that my vision of a new sustainable future is not just my own. My five items are my creation (as far as I know), but they are my synthesis from years of pondering the options for a significant change, boiled down to five doable aspects. We can’t change the global market-economic by supporting it. Decades of environmental education have made us all aware of the socio-economic-ecological problems, and yet the problems still persist. We create the change not by fighting the global system, but almost contradictory by ignoring it and by going back to the simplest common denominator we can control – ourselves, our families, and our immediate neighborhoods to recreate true community. From there, our shared new worldview and vision will ripple out rapidly to embrace billions of people worldwide, as ‘Sustainable Living’ becomes a mindset and not just a marketing slogan.
Hundreds of millions of us are already there, scattered around the world hoping and praying for this change. What I ask now is a call to action, a call to think and act with wisdom about what we do to live well within the world. Contrary to what the mass media wants us to believe, humanity at its core is a compassionate, loving and collaborative species. It takes a lot of continual effort from the powers-that-be to goad us into being the horrid conditioned species that is destroys the world and itself for greed, profit, and control. It’s not who we really are. Even if you are in a warzone, look around and look at the people around you. There is a lot of love to be seen.
From the opening script of that corny and flawed, yet now beloved, Christmas movie Love Actually (2003), “Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the Arrivals Gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting makes out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. Seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it’s not particularly dignified, or newsworthy – but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends.”
My best friend just emailed me with a probing question, which I offer to you all as well, “I personally feel the pull to make the next step so I’m wondering what changes have you made in your life that will shift the collective, not intellectually like you’ve already guided us, through your blog, but habits, everyday habits. Have you given up or added anything. What can I do in my small part that will reflect out into the community to help make this collective change? Do I stop making any purchases on line? Do I shop only local independent stores. What do YOU do that would help me better understand the next step because I’d rather not wait around for social collapse. Waiting seems like giving permission to continue a corrupt system” LDC.
My friend is a wise person and I am sure her thoughts echo within many of you, my readers. So until next week, may your holidays (whatever they may be – there are over 200 types of festivities worldwide, which show how important the turning of the year was to our ancestors) at this time of the year be peaceful, loving, and thoughtful as you ponder your actions for the coming year….
To be Continued……………
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