The acquisition of consumer goods (stuff) to make our lives more comfortable and luxurious succinctly describes the consumer mindset. (Consumerism – a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.) But it has Read more
For the last couple of centuries, the urban environment has been designed to push nature back beyond the edges of the human built world with manicured parks and tree lined roads within the urban boundaries. We even design many of Read more
Years ago, when I first started teaching environmental science, it seemed a lot simpler (although anything environmental has always been an uphill struggle) with mainly a push for non-polluting green technology, trying to get business to adopt a better set Read more
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly to add another $25 billion to an already inflated Pentagon budget request by President Biden of $715 billion. It is not my point to debate whether the military Read more
Sustainability is about sovereignty, service in cooperation with each other and the natural world, and a spirituality that understands connectedness. For humanity, it is also about being kind. Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Being Read more
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – this is a well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence. I doubt the founding fathers of the new United States in the 1780s envisioned a time could occur when the Read more
If you are still debating whether to get jabbed or not, my advice, DON’T. It will not be any surprise to regular readers of my blog that I think something more serious than the Covid (C-19) pandemic is going on. Read more
“We seem to understand the value of oil, timber, minerals, and housing, but not the value of unspoiled beauty, wildlife, solitude, and spiritual renewal” Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes). We live in a global societal system (or systems if you Read more
“If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve the people. And in order to improve people, you begin with Read more
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it” Robert Swan At the core of everything, as I said in several posts recently (Coming Back into our Sovereignty {March-June 2021}), is our individual sovereignty. Read more
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” ― David Graeber. I saw a cartoon this morning that showed lemmings as a flowing crowd leaping off a Read more
Throughout the Earth’s long history of life, there have been 5 mass extinctions due to cataclysmic conditions. (A mass extinction is usually defined as a loss of about three quarters of all species in existence across the entire Earth over Read more
I was again looking over The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent who really does have fascinating insights into how humanity has historically created our worldviews and the cultural norms we take for granted (see earlier post Cultivating a Flourishing Future Read more
We live on an amazing planet full of teeming and diverse life forms with replenishable resources we can use to give us wonderful lives. Being spiritual means to care for the planet, because if we do, it will nurture us Read more
Think about our global economic system. Who and what does it serve? It’s a human construct yet it has a life of its own and we are all but servants (or slaves) to the wants and needs of this system. Read more
“Most people do not have the willingness to break bad habits. They have lots of excuses and they talk like victims” Carlos Santana. We have this story that is shared by all our modern cultures, but not the indigenous ones, Read more
Back during the Roman times, soldiers were often paid in ‘Salt’ (it is the Latin origin of the word salary), which they could barter for other goods they wanted. Salt has an intrinsic value and has multiple uses besides spicing Read more
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, that you can walk with Love and Reverence” Henry David Thoreau. Sovereignty is about having the right to choose what you do, and I might add, the willingness to do so. You may Read more
“One of the ways that humanity is controlled and contained is by manipulating us to live vicariously through the ‘cool,’ the rich, the famous. This is fundamental to predatory marketing constructs. The more identified we are with someone else’s (allegedly) Read more
“The Problem isn’t a lack of money, food, water or land. The problem is that you’re given control of these things to a group of greedy psychopaths who care more about maintaining their own power than helping mankind” Bill Hicks: Read more
Your beliefs are just thoughts that you keep thinking. Yet, they are so entrenched in most of our psyches, that we take them to be literal descriptors of who we come to think we are. This is how we are Read more
“How do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t know you are in the matrix?” Tristan Harris (Center for Humane Technology) I seem to be unusual when it comes to my electronic joy. Friends try to contact me Read more
“It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for Read more
I have talked how our reality is shaped by the stories we tell ourselves. This is also about how we use specific words to describe our reality. “The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If Read more
When we watch movies about wizards and witches, they are always making things happen by casting ‘spells’ using strange ancient magical words in arcane languages. Yet, the reality is that all Words, in whatever language, have power. All of us Read more
“One way to pick a future is to believe it is inevitable” Richard Bach. I find it amazing that most people I talk with really want a better world that is sustainable and harmonious with the natural world, and also Read more
“The last person to trust with power is someone who is dying to have it. The best person to wield power is someone who is reluctant to do so, but who will do it for a while as a civic Read more
“We must be careful not to believe things simply because we want them to be true. No one can fool you as easily as you can fool yourself.” Richard Feynman. A question I have asked often of my readers is, Read more
The problem with industrial farming is that it is a one size fits all kind of situation, but different areas with different ecosystems and microecosystems do not really lend themselves to that mentality. In the last post, I mentioned that Read more
Most people do not associate food with their sovereignty, but it is one of the most crucial freedoms we have. For most people it is a simple process of going to the grocery store, but stop and think about the Read more