If you are connected by any electronic device, you are being targeted every minute of every day with negative memes designed to disempower and scare you! Whether you listen is up to you – that is your first step to self-empowerment. To those of you using vinyl records, I must sound like a scratched record endlessly droning on about the need to heal ourselves spiritually, socially, and intellectually. To the younger ones reading this blog, if the term ‘scratched record’ is meaningless, imagine a never-ending loop of communication repeating itself. The crazy thing about the sustainability revolution is that there are a multitude saying the same thing as myself in different ways, but nothing ‘seems’ to change.
In an annoyed fashion recently, I told someone to shit or get off the pot, and stop plaguing me with their incessant whining about how the system keeps them enslaved and in debt. I quickly apologized, but I’ll be honest, what is it about this change that has so many in paralyzed inertia, making me resort to sounding like a scratched record.
If I am not sexy enough to get everyone’s attention, (I am according to my wife, but then she is biased) then perhaps Benedict Cumberbach narrating the new 2026 documentary – How to live on Earth (trailer link) might get more attention. If you are frustrated with the state of the world, then YOU have to do something about it – complaining just pisses off you and probably everybody else around you. And similarly, listening to the same moans and groans of everyone around you (family, friends, associates, etc.) keeps you trapped in a way of thinking. If you consciously acknowledge the disempowering thoughts droning as endless mind-chatter then you have a chance to start rising above the bullshit and start healing the internal wounds that bind us to the conditioning, and then doing the external work to create a new and sustainable world.
You don’t have to save the whole world. Just empower yourself to be sovereign in your own right and then work with others to develop the local area you live within as a new sustainable living zone. When people do that everywhere, they create a surge of energy that propels a dream onward and upwards – ‘to infinity and beyond (Buzz Lightyear).’ Wendell Berry commented on the Assumption of Self-Interest, “We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.” “Berry’s point is a call to reverse the long-standing human tendency to judge the value of the world by our own narrow self-interest. Historically, this has meant prioritizing personal gain, convenience, or economic growth over the health of ecosystems, communities, and future generations. He argues that this assumption has led to environmental degradation, social fragmentation, and a loss of reverence for the natural world” Goodreads.
Berry urged the application of wisdom – thinking differently. Seeing the world through a more spiritual worldview of interconnectivity. What I have been warbling about in this blog for this past eight and half years. Simple ideas like shifting perspective, such as from “what is good for me” to “what is good for the world.” Deep engagement through actively learning about and understanding the world’s needs and limits. Moving through life with more humility and reverence by recognizing the majesty of creation and standing in awe of it, rather than imposing human arrogance on everything. Moving past competition and exploitation to cooperation and limits by working with natural processes and respecting ecological boundaries. “In essence, Berry’s quote above, is both a critique of modern consumerism and a moral imperative — that sustainable living and human flourishing are inseparable, and that true well-being depends on caring for the world as a shared inheritance.
“It’s in the convergence of spiritual people becoming active, and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity now rests” Van Jones. And here is a conundrum – or at least in the USA. That collaborative spiritual-connectivity I talk about is an essential component of how we will all live together. The idea of deep-friendships within community where I grew up in England was very different from what I found generally in the USA. In the UK, friendship was more kinship, especially in neighborhoods where you were close. “You can call at any hour. You can turn up uninvited and stay the night. You can sit in the kitchen for hours, talking and talking. You solve one another’s problems. In short, you are medicine and candy to each other all at once” Elvira Bary (Blogger).
In the USA, I have found good friends, but deep-bonding with adults in neighborhoods where we merely happen to live together seems reserved for individuals not communities. Only groups that grew up together or had longer-period intense connectivity in early adulthood have that kind of lasting friendship. Getting close as adults, and especially adults thrown together from different parts of the country, deep-bonding is not the custom. I’m sure some U.S. readers may disagree with me, but having lived in 3 different areas of the U.S. I have not found this connectivity despite wanting to be more deeply engaged within a community and not just a part of it. Hence my observation, neighborhoods are people living in the same area, communities are people living together in daily collaboration.
Recently I watched a clip of a show called ‘Who’s line is it anyway,’ which is a show with four comedians improvising very short skits based on an idea from the show’s host. One such idea was “something that seems true but isn’t.” One comedian went to the center of the stage and simply said “The News.” Suddenly the whole stage, audience and show’s crew erupted in clapping that lasted for over a minute. Most of us know that ‘the news’ is all manipulated to scare and manipulate and keep everyone in fear. When I see so many intelligent people falling for this manipulation, a question for me is why? Why don’t they see it when it seems so obvious?
Historian and philosopher, Yuval Noah Harari, gives the answer quite succinctly. We have to stop confusing intelligence with wisdom. Harari comments that give highly intelligent people bad info and you get stupid decisions. We are all flooded with bad information and junk through social media that is unconsciously accepted because it reinforces and confirms beliefs. One such belief is that of human supremacy with technology. Each step forward we take in technological progress is not accompanied by an equally large step of emotional development, maturity, and wisdom. You don’t have to be an intellectual to be wise. All of us have this innate wisdom when we stop and listen to our hearts instead of our heads – spirit versus ego.
Our planet is overwhelmed with technology. It’s a sign of our advanced kind if civilization. But just because we can invent it and develop it doesn’t mean we should. To complicate this idea is the fact that economics determines how technology is applied in our lives. The consequences we see all the time in ecological tipping points being exceeded because of the lack of wisdom being applied.
Globally we have this unprecedented rush to electrify everything to get away from fossil fuels and polluting emissions. While there are many brilliant plans on how this energy transition system might function, I see almost no wisdom being heard at the top tier of decision making from wise voices below that have pondered unintended consequences. When intelligence is overruled by economic profit generation (especially the case since the industrial revolution began) we get bad decisions from misguided clever driving the future.
Japan recently started running a hydrogen fueled train. It runs clean, emits only water vapor and no polluting emissions of real consequence. Iceland has had hydrogen fuel filling station for several years already – started by Shell Global petrochemical corporation of all things.
Indeed, hydrogen fuel has been available in various forms of technology for well over a century and more technologically so in the last 30 years. So why is it not a top runner for clean energy? For a similar reason that alternate cleaner electrical energy generation is currently stalling. The second law of thermodynamics, global-market-economic costs and control, and human short-sightedness. Positive ecological feedback loops (that push a process in one direction) and ecological limits continue to haunt us. Humanity’s self-assured hubris is something we can no longer ignore or tolerate. “Natures ready to help us turn things around” Cumberbach.
To be Continued …………………….
Economics, energy, wisdom
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