I ended the last post talking about ‘Collective Refusal’ as a way to move us into the better world we all want. Nearly everyone I know and hear from, regardless of any political leanings, agrees that the world as it currently runs is a shit show.
For a collective refusal to work, each person must act, and most person will not act unless they believe enough like-minded others will act with them. And there is the primary problem, especially in these highly polarized times. Unless we talk to each other and search for common ground in our values, we do not know what others think. I believe that despite the many problems of social media in separating us, the advantage of connectivity is still there.
As blogger Chris Goode says, “The farmer in one valley has no idea that the farmer in the next valley is just as finished with the arrangement as he is. Each assumes he is nearly alone. Each stay’s quiet, because moving alone is ruin. And so a majority that wants the same thing, at the same time, with the same intensity, sits motionless for a generation, not because it is weak, but because it is invisible to itself. That invisibility is the entire fortress [of how we are controlled]. Every extraction system in history has rested its full weight on one load-bearing fact: the people it extracts from cannot see each other wanting” Chris Coode.
Your discomfort with the needed change and choices that you would make if you didn’t feel alone, is understandable. But You are not alone. As evidenced by work from Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, ‘Cultural Creatives’ wanting change far outnumber the passive and apathetic portion of society. By stepping back from the perceptions of what we think separates us, and sharing our hopes and dreams, we come together with hope for a better future.
“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory” Howard Zinn.
When we finally accept that human welfare or even planetary welfare are not on the global hierarchies agendas, we are moved to act. A simple collective refusal to play the trauma game imposed on us for millennia then ends! I was recently remined of an old ‘Twilight Zone episode by Rod Sterling called ‘To Serve Man.’ It uses aliens to show a point. Don’t believe any of the disclosure stuff prevalent in the media to think this could ever be true. The part played by the aliens in the show is really the global Cabal. In the show the aliens come to Earth and give humanity lots of technology and promote how they are here to ‘Serve man.’ They leave a book in their language that outlines their agenda. The aliens then start offering free trips to their home world, at which lots of people happily join. Meanwhile a researcher has a breakthrough in understanding the alien language and realizes with horror that the book is not an agenda for helping man, but how to best serve man as a dish – it is a cookbook. The Cabal have been feeding off of us for millennia. As Rod Sterling once said about this episode, “if you aren’t paying you are the product.”
Our current form of capitalism focuses on production over distribution, in order to create scarcity and hunger as drivers of monetary wealth, power and control. Our collective future was stolen from us. We were sold a bill of goods that this was the only way to live and we bought into it, forgetting over the generations most of human history. What we now think of our history is just a myth of ideas to keep us imprisoned in our own minds. Technology ought to be our road to a better world. Instead, it is the means by which we play along with an agenda to ruin us and the planet. Even AI, which has amazing potential is being used to accelerate our global problems.
“If AI is the most advanced hammer ever made, we are trying to use it for everything from glass repair to brain surgery, and not much for driving nails. Our [global] system is built with one Key Performance Indicator: Endless Growth. It drives the stock market, our monetary policy, our politics, our corporate targets, our personal goals, and our ego as people and nations. GDP, earnings, profits, quality of life, and processing power all have to increase to keep the current system going. Stagnation or retraction can spell doom across many segments. It has to grow for two simple reasons: Debt and greed: Reid Pierpoint.
I’m sorry if I continue to dwell on this failed system, but until we all say (and that means the vast majority of us), ‘Enough is enough’ the transition to a better world remains elusive. Connectivity and a new kind of education are the tools we need to foster this change. Not facts and figures. We are already overwhelmed with data. Real communication and education about how to live well in a place are our light forward. Environmental educators like David Orr and deep education thinkers like Ken Richardson and Chet Bowers have been pointing us in the right direction for decades, but still we plow ahead in our deep ruts of despair, afraid to act. Long time readers of this blog will know these names. Newer readers, go back through my blog (search education).
Way back in 1992, David Orr talked about a core idea of Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World.
Orr argues that education should be grounded in the local environment and community rather than abstract, detached study. ‘Living well in a place’ means engaging directly with the natural world, local history, and community life, using the place itself as a ‘laboratory’ for learning.”
While educational institutions tend to be controlled at the national level, the actual learning occur locally. Changing how we do education and communication by focusing on integrated and transdisciplinary models instead of isolated discipline-based models deepens our understanding of ‘information’ by connecting knowledge to real-world contexts. Healing our planet and ourselves begins with applying real wisdom that comes from understanding the causes, consequences and mindsets behind current policies.
Why does this kind of change matter? Orr’s vision counters the ‘abstraction’ of traditional education by making learning place-specific and life-relevant. In his view, living well in a place is not just about environmental stewardship—it’s about developing the skills, values, and civic engagement needed to sustain both human communities and the ecosystems on which they depend. Instead of competitive survival and scarcity mindset, we begin to see a cooperative and abundant sharing mindset as a viable option, not dependent on hierarchical systems to tell us what to do. We then recognize the value of diversity in all it forms as a positive tool for growth and find avenues of shared hopes and dreams in which Love and Compassion become normal and not just isolated acts.
We don’t need national committees to start education and to communicate like this, we can choose local autonomy now. I understand why governments want standards to show that whatever they are working with can be measured. But what are we measuring exactly – knowledge that does what? Makes us fit the skills required workers for corporate systems? How about literacy and wisdom in how to live well in a place? How to play well in a sandbox – ability to collaborate, share and display respect. That is not a crazy as it might first sound. Those are the social abilities that make a sustainable system possible. It allows us to create a new system, and just stay stuck in trying to tweak the existing system.
When students learn by investigating their surroundings, experimenting, and using local materials they practice direct observation with hands-on learning, not just abstract ideas. Transdisciplinary learning means having to use knowledge from multiple fields at the same time in order to understand the interconnectedness of the biosphere for all species and the planet. Teaching how to live well in a place also shows community connections and how they are tied local culture, history, and social systems, not just academic theory. Just imagine how transformative it is to recognize that what we share far outweighs anything we might see as differences. It’s how expressing Love and Compassion begin.
The more we heal our planet through love, the less able the big corporations are to decimate society through their work. We develop an Ecological consciousness instead of a destructive one. The current disruption that AI is causing is not because of the technology itself, but the motives behind its promise. We could have built this tech with the intent to improve life for the humanity and the biosphere, but we didn’t. We went straight for a dystopian science fiction model and never looked back. Good news though. This week, the European Union categorized AI as a search tool. That means it is now subject to search tool rules and regulations. That means making the mega corporate AI companies meet more socially sponsible conditions. That means change is possible in multiple areas of our dystopian world. We begin by collectively refusing to accept what is no longer acceptable. That means transformation is coming.
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