Like it or not, you are on the Earth at a time when the prevailing social and economic systems are in free-fall acceleration, unchecked by another option, we all fall into this one where we are.
Things are constantly changing in our world, and more than that, the rate and pace of change is itself accelerating. Just as you accommodate one life transformation with changes in thought, word and action, your senses tell you that the situation has changed again, and you too must change.
Change or die.
Our ancestors surely faced these conditions and their reactions dictated their fate as they faced death from predators every day, death from starvation, from disease or ignorance and violence from others in their families and tribes.
Our collective civilization was meant to balance the needs of the many with the needs of the one, and to protect the right of each life to be fully lived.
Yet from the great myriad of economies among human tribes and cultures, the modern global "free market" economic reality is accepted as "The One" true form of resource exploitation and delivery of the basic necessities of life. We have no competition of ideas, and Capital is King.
In an uncrowded and unpolluted, yet dangerous world, everyone was willing to throw it over their shoulder and keep moving on to the next consumable. For generations and generations through the rise and fall of empires, faster was always better, more was, well, more!
Even now, well aware of the cliff, we accelerate towards unsustainability with the exponential passion for overshooting that only a lemming drinking beer in designer jeans and texting on its iPhone could muster.
We may pretend we have solutions and three-point plans to address the challenges. I even develop quite a few three-point plans for myself in my personal life. Working hard to make that change, and that acceleration work for me and not against me....if I can.
But really that's just hedging our bets, isn't it? Don't we truly need radical and immediate change if we are to be capable of fixing our growing problems of pollution, food, energy and population?
If we are to survive, must not we replace this never-ending, constantly-accelerating chimera of growth with a model of contribution and benefaction that protects opportunity for ALL?
The problem with this is that alone, one cannot change the society. In order for the Western World to adapt we have to let go of the politics of better and superior to We are all one.
Its my great hope that the only benefit the death of the Environment may provide is the truth that we are all in this together.
Posted by: bgk | Monday, October 27, 2008 at 11:02 AM