We watch our banks… collapsing? Or being made to appear as if they are anyway.
I wonder how much longer… before all the systems ~ every one of which is showing signs of strain… to keep up with growing needs, improve upon services, or even maintain its basic foundations ~ are simply GONE.
We joke about the internet disappearing. Yet, how much is already unavailable… under the thumb that ensures no “misinformation”? (Or… maybe just moved… to a new platform… where one can still speak freely?) But is the day soon? When we simply won’t have these magic computers in our pockets to tell us…
Who to be. Which place has the best doohickey for the least output. How to get where we’re going.
Some joke about humans who cannot get from point A to B without a GPS machine directing them. The latest fad is using paper maps. (Who knew, Mom!?! You’ve always been ahead of the curve.)
So how are we navigating now? Are we still following the signs of a colonized culture, hell bent on using military might to ensure its GDP? Are we still mindlessly seeking the next job, clothes, partner, car, house… that will fulfill us? Are we sensing the fruitlessness, nay cruelty, of the American Way of Life?
Many more each day, by choice or circumstance, are choosing a new way. A holistic, universal, mutual aid network way of engaging with their fellow crew members. A way that is more direct, local, sustainable, and… FUN!!! I am calling it the BEconomy.
This is a place where each of us can BE who we are… doing the work we love ~ be it cooking, researching, fishing, sewing, cleaning, growing, organizing, teaching, entertaining ~ each and every one of us… loving our neighbors as we find our way forward together… in love, for the good of all.
Some may call me a Dreamer. Nevertheless.
This feels like a big new year opening before me… And I feel it just may be… My best yet. 😍
Seems people are getting less and less consideration by governments and corporations around the world. We are feeling more each day that we’re reaching a breaking point.
Robert F. Kennedy on including the cost of cleaning up after yourself… and how polluters pass this on to us. 28 minutes
RFK tells some great stories about the Hudson River… and by great… I mean horrible. My old employer, GE (though I was at Aircraft Engines), polluted and privatized the commons… not cleaning up their mess.
We see the ever-growing Sock-Puppet Agencies, the Compromising of the Press, the Local Sovereignty Elimination, and the End of Transparency. People are saying, “Enough is Enough!”
I mean, we’re supposedly working to stay below 1.5 degrees Celcius… and we’re already at 1.23?
Last week in Minnesota, we saw:
Standing with Indigenous groups, Physicians call on Biden to revoke Enbridge’s permit.
Enbridge has said the upgrade is needed for safety reasons, to reduce maintenance needs, and to “create fewer disruptions to landowners and the environment.” But opponents from the medical community disagree. According to Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate, or HPHC — the advocacy group that organized Tuesday’s nationwide protests — the project poses both immediate and long-term threats to Minnesota communities and Indigenous peoples, whether from an oil spill or from the pipeline’s contribution to climate change.
Vishnu Laalitha Surapaneni, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota who helped organize the rally in St. Paul, told Grist she is particularly worried about the pipeline’s potential impact on water quality. “We’re in the Land of 10,000 Lakes,” she explained, using Minnesota’s unofficial nickname. “This is not something that is compatible with healthy water.”
The protests will start with a rally in Trafalgar Square on Monday morning, 23 August. This is the anniversary of the Haitian slave rebellion of 1791 and the international day for the remembrance of the slave trade and its abolition. XR said its events were also intended to show solidarity with people in the global south who are worst affected by climate breakdown.
We are not powerless – you have more power than you think. We are the collective power to be the change that we need.”
Tim Crosland, of the pressure group Plan B, who was found in contempt of court for revealing early a supreme court ruling relating to Heathrow’s third runway plans, said: “We are targeting the City because these are the kind of people who are the real contributors to this crisis.”
He spoke out against recent claims by members of the Conservative party that reaching net zero emissions by 2050 – the government’s target, set out in law – would cost too much money. “It’s embarrassing to claim that it is too expensive to save young people and our country and our planet. This is extremist ideology from some parts of the Conservative party,” he said. “They believe science will have to give way to the market, but it is not going to work that way, it’s the other way round. The economy will have to adapt to the science.”
By the time this posts, we’ll likely be hearing news from Trafalgar.
And if YOU Want To F*ck The System That’s Been F*cking You? – WATCH THIS!
Protest, Protect, and Build! A coherent movement. Ends should be human well-being and means should be money, economy, industry. Instead, we have a consumption-based economy that cares little for human well-being. The means are Nature and Humans. Remaining individualistic, we continue to suffer.
In other words:
Slavery never went away. It just got better clothes.”
Dan… as we watched the video
We cannot have social justice without environmental justice… until we behave justly to the planet upon which we live, our host system… our Mother.”
Russell Brand 10:47
Individualism is rooted in Separation. Division must be overcome. Long live difference and diversity… [as we eliminate caste?] dancing together. … We Belong to Each Other!”
Drill pressure is such that fluid expands outside the channel – seen when bursting through into bottom of stream, wetland, or land.
I realized the other night, that they may never listen to us.
When we cannot even listen to each other, how can we hope that the aligned powers that be, will ever have an ear to hear our pleas?
Perhaps they will learn to hear us? When they realize the pain they have caused… in their own heated rush… for self-fulfillment… of a greed that is not truly satisfied… by force?
Perhaps they will realize it is through coherent, collective, collaborative cooperation – where all have enough and all are fulfilled, all are heard and heeded – that we release the old ways and find a new way forward? A way that is truly and beautifully compassionate, loving, and coherent.
I’m sorry, Nimaamaaaki… for not listening to You when you called to me… asking.
How many more times can You take this failure from us? How many more times will You forgive us for not listening? For not doing what You ask of us – to love and protect you… …as You love and protect us?
Giving up Everything
Giving up everything my hungry ghost of hopefulness
Giving up everything not haunted by wanting this
Giving up everything the fortune I was saving
Giving up everything I mercy-killed my craving
Giving up everything I’ve opened up my eyes for this
Giving up everything see the whole magnificent emptiness
Gave what I want for how it is for the stone inside and the bitterness for the sweetness at the core of it
Giving up everything The master plan, the scheming
Giving up everything my cursed search for meaning
Giving up everything the compass and the map I was reading.
The hinterlands I’m leaving I’m finally leaving behind
Giving up everything the big to-do, the hullabaloo The tug-of-war for some twisted truth For the everlasting ache of it No longer slave, not chained to it no gate, no guard, no keeper no guru, master, teacher
See the slow-receding faces dissolve to black, no traces
Are we feeling the hopeful desperation… of birthing this new world? It feels we’re almost there.
She’s going to be worth all the pains, pressures, gains, and losses… of this long, hard labor.
Today’s blog was inspired by and empowered through the work of many fine woman. Some know not their influence, some do. There are too many to name… so the musical ones have my formal recognition here today: Amy Ray & Emily Saliers, AnnieHumphrey, Carrie Newcomer, The Highwomen, the incomparable Natalie Merchant, and so many others.
With all the Enbridge work in the wetlands behind our home, we’ve been concerned about how our many relatives have been affected.
We watched as the trees were clearcut with speed.
We witnessed the lumber matting thudding into place to create a road behind our home closer than the road in front of our home.
We watched as the dozers ran over the land cutting the scrub remaining from the slaughter and the grabbers snatched up the dead, piling them into giant brush piles to burn and pollute the air.
We listened to the fires crackling in the woods for hours, filling the Mississippi River Valley, and the scenic drive along County 2 from US Highway 2 to Itasca State Park, with smoke.
Now we wait. To hear the frogs return. To listen to the sandhills breeding in the water-rich land.
More than just the Enbridge destruction of recent weeks is affecting whether or not we’ll hear sandhills return to our swamp.
This time of year, the yard is typically full of water with our little man-made pondlet overflowing into the yard. The melting of winter usually disappears our little pond into a lakelet that has remained in recent years until May or June.
This year, the small plastic pond liner is the only thing holding any water. Looks like severe drought is in order as we watch ditches, usually flowing steady, trickle by along the county road out front… another product of the changing climate, in large part brought by the fossil fuel industry that Enbridge serves.
So quiet in the swamp.
We did hear a few sandhills flying over in the last week, but the throng we typically hear has not yet populated our backyard wetlands. We’ve heard nothing of the peepers. All I can think is that the dozers crushed them all in their hibernation.
Time will tell if we’ve gone too far to save ourselves.
Do we not realize… if the birds and insects disappear, eventually we will too?
How long can we keep up the charade of living as if reciprocity to the land is something with which we need not concern ourselves?
Have we actually bypassed all our opportunities to save the planet on which we reside… for our own long-term habitation?
What will the pandemic, and emerging drought, bring for the humans of the USA in 2021?
We watch as the rich gather up their stock market returns of 60-70%, remembering days when an 8% ROI was a good thing. We wonder how they can feel happy about money made in a system of so much corruption.
Meanwhile, homeless encampments – the only option for many who are now over year from their last paying job – are overrun with bulldozers as police remove the unwanted residents. Similar to how we eradicated the mosquitoes, mice, beaver, fox, wolf… who interfered with OUR management of the land?
How soon until that revolution I’ve been predicting for decades becomes a reality? How soon until so many feel they have no option but to process through their frustration and overwhelm with suicide? Or homicide?
As mass shootings continue… and people mindlessly travel without considering COVID risks… and many hope for the world to “go back to normal”, I believe we will never again go back to where we were before 2020.
And I wonder if we will continue to spiral down the drain to our own extinction… or if we will find many and myriad small communities gathering to help each other as we weather this largest storm we’ve ever seen coming at us.
I hope for love to win. For us to come together and feed, clothe, protect those not provided as much in our unequal system of sharing of the resources we have. For those who win most to realize this doesn’t bring happiness… when so many suffer for our winning. For all of us to find the goal of our common happiness and security as the most worthy of them all.
While it may be naive… I believe voting still matters. But the rest of this… let’s get going!
As humans race with track-hoes to pretend they can keep doing what they’ve always done… And the world floods and burns and withers from drought.
As engines beep in movement all around me, building a pipeline for the dirtiest of crude – Tar Sands… it’s hard to pretend we have any notion of saving ourselves.
As we cut down the very beings that provide us oxygen to breathe.
As many grow excited for schools to open… ready to go back to a “normal” economy… [Normal? Are we psychopaths? Apparently so.] … we see the numbers in cases and infections beginning to surge again.
We watch millions focus on dollars and economics… giving not a thought to the water, trees, plants, and bees that make everyday life possible. Will we soon realize how dependent we have become on systems that do not support life but instead bring death?
The fossil fuel industry is taking itself out… as the climate chaos we saw in Texas – and throughout the middle of the country – was a result of the burning we’ve done for centuries now.
And for decades now – longer for those selling the fossil fuels – while we knew exactly what they were delivering… we did nearly nothing? Simply burning fossil fuels faster and faster?
How will our children forgive us? Or rather, will they?
In addition to the fuels and plastics, the oil industry brings death and extinction for life of all kinds. And now – are we realizing… that “life” is ours?
As loads of freight remain in place, unmovable with no electricity to fill tanks with gas, ratios of loads to drivers go to astronomical figures… Indy shoots from 7 loads per driver to 37… while in Cincy reefer trucks, normally around the mid-30s, report their status as not available… with over 200 loads and zero drivers to move them. Watch those store shelves as we “catch up” from the backlog caused by the polar vortex we created?
Or will we get to watch as production lines slow… because there is no shipment of already done freight… and before you can make more, you need to move out what you have?
And will we again have loads of milks and potatoes dumped and buried as we have no way to move food in the massive system we’ve created… so un-localized and heavily reliant on fuels?
Can many of us foresee how much worse 2021 will be in comparison to 2020? Even with the vaccinations… and the talk of environmental justice… and green paths going forward… from the all-hands-on-deck portrayed administration that is calming and encouraging so many?
The new managers don’t calm us. Not those of us who’ve seen that already [!!!] we’re headed for 5-6° warming… with 1.5° being a dream scenario that we lost in decades past.
It’s been 875 days since the IPCC 1.5° report was issued giving us a dozen years. And I heard this past week that the UN is now giving us 10 months to get it together? Anyone noticed the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) slowing? Faster than many can predict? [Well, than many are realizing… The scientists always have someone quietly saying, “You might want to consider this…”]
As we watch a Tar Sands pipeline project proceed across the state of Minnesota… just outside the living room window.
As if we can all just… Go back to “normal”.
The worst of the 1918 Spanish Flu were the deaths in the Spring of 1920. Does this still await?
While some caw about vaccines, we also watch as these quick-whip cures kill with cytokine storm jump starts via injection. I see why some aren’t ready… even if they aren’t on the list… of those who can get the magic elixers.
Every day, we watch… as it seems we lose ground… sacrificing the trees and wetlands of Northern Minnesota… to a Canadian corporation treating this place like it’s their colony.
Bought and paid for agencies beholden to their regulatory captors got us into this mess. Will they have the courage to save us? If not, will the courts?
If not, we will simply keep trudging toward extinction… like the elephants seeking water in African deserts… or polar bears seeking another ice island on which to take a breather?
Or will we be running from the flood as it wipes our house away?
It seems like everything is slower than normal… or faster than normal, depending on who you are. Perhaps.
If you’re a retired engineer in the north woods, awaiting some special news, time drags like an eternity, regardless of how much you do.
Days end as you talk with a friend realizing hazily that it seems two days have passed since this morning, when you happened down to the river to pray and ran into that surprise.
Days seem to have 48 hours instead of 24. And yet, so little seems to get done.
All talk. No sense of any progress. 24/7 “news” cycles crowing together in a cacophony of chaos.
Perhaps it’s those currently overwhelmed for whom time seems to race? As one tends vent tubes, receives new patients, swabs noses, or transports victims of our newest plague, perhaps the time seems to flash by as the end of the day arrives before one is aware… though grief persists around all the lost hours missed with children and lovers.
It feels a prayer for the world is in order in each moment.
Yet we are the gods creating each day here on Mother Earth. We are the ones managing the planet’s infrastructure now, as humans have become their own sort of plague upon the planet… some spewing excessive carbon for glorious lives of ease… while others toil for pennies, hoping to have enough to eat each evening.
It seems us children have gone a bit too far with Mother these days. She’s hotter than ever about our obstinance – our commitment to fashion and fast, our desires for more. In our haste, we’ve seemed to have bypassed all the tipping points She tried to provide as warnings.
The arctic waters no longer cool and the forests are burning with abandon, while floods wipe away dreams and beings perish at ever increasing rates. In the last year humans have reckoned our pending demise as the pandemic dead pile and require disposal. For those who care to heed the signs, evidence is clear. Losing a “9/11” of American victims each day seems enough, does it not, to make it clear?
So what of those who will not see? Those in denial? Is it truly all of us?
What is to be done when many among us fail to consider their fellow man? Those who fly about, not considering the tremendous impacts personal actions have for all others? Those who blast through the fast food bag, throwing it out the window as they speed to work, where they will earn only enough to afford that cheap substitute for nourishment? Those who piss into potable water as many around the world struggle to find clean water to drink? Will this be the fate of us all as we poison our surroundings to assure we can keep living faster? Giving back far too little in reciprocity to the Mother keeping us alive each day?
What of those so afraid of their loss of perceived power that they’ve allowed their secret plans for insurrection to become real… and revealed? Will we ever truly know the truth of what has transpired in our government, our agencies, our law enforcement ranks, as the power of money has trumped the power of compassion for our fellows? Will we ever find our ways forward to a place of peace?
Time will tell. She always does.
Thanks to BrainPickings for these fine graphic additions today.
The ideas are flying fast and furious these days. So much seems to be happening so fast… with no certainty as to where we are going or how we will get there.
As the Old World continues to hold sway, we see a NEW WORLD opening…
Increasingly, many are working from home… and most don’t want to go back to the office.
Homeschooling on the rise as parents want to minimize the risk of children bringing home the virus.
Consumer spending is down… but the Stock Market is up?
Businesses not necessary to LIFE are folding… though some still work to prop them up… [in denial and desperation?]
Social unrest continues to grow… worldwide.
Mother Earth is bringing much big change in the form of fires, floods, drought, a pandemic (FFS), and… Her simple inability to support the number of people currently residing here is becoming quite clear.
As business works to try to get people back into offices, smart companies are realizing the benefit of NOT continuing with Old Ways… the overhead of big office buildings, salespeople flying all over the world, and the like are being recognized for the HUGE waste they create. [And people are enjoying not having to wear pants to work. I could have told you about this LONG AGO – working from home was a pretty amazing several years back in the early 2000s.] I can attest to the cost savings working from home brings to a family. As well as the connectivity.
Connectivity is what I believe will save us. If we, in fact, retain enough time to save humanity from itself. [For the record, I don’t believe we’re worth saving if we are gonna continue with Old World ways.]
As families face hardship from lost income or jobs, death or sickness of loved ones, difficulties finding enough fresh food, and other calamities, the WORLD is awakening to the understanding that some few have managed to amass great wealth and privilege… pretty much on the backs of the larger populations who are mainly being pillaged for their work, children, land… until they are left without enough to survive. These oppressed have lost more and more political power in the past decades and it seems a time when governments worldwide are failing to account to their people and… the world is UPRISING in response.
Here in the US, it’s time to clean house, re-evaluate priorities, and find a new way forward. One that works for the masses, not just billionaire oligarchs. And good news! There’s (almost) NOWHERE TO GO!
There are a limited number of places to go for US citizens… and most of those look like destinations where you’re going to see first hand the crises the planet is facing? Albania, Belarus, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Mexico, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Zambia. Looks like anywhere you want to go, there might be a chance to see war?
Limited choices for US travellers 9-26-20
So what is to be done?
I’d suggest finding a place that needs care and attention and giving it.
My efforts of late are to support local Indigenous groups that are focusing on Treaty Rights and the Rights of Nature. Groups like Indigenous Environmental Network have been successfully doing this work since the 90s. Even more locally (since IEN is pretty local in some big ways), RISE Coalition is a group of Resilient Indigenous Sisters Engaging to bring education and understanding to all people on how to support Treaty Rights for the Indigenous, which in itself offers protections for us all.
We stand in solidarity to protect the land, water, fire, and air for the next seven generations. We do this by educating, empowering, and inspiring our neighbors, friends, and allies.”
And just now, a new film is emerging that speaks to the issues particular to Northern Minnesota. NECESSITY is bringing awareness to the crises our planet faces… and what each of us can do to help resolve them. I’d encourage each of us in Minnesota watching to learn more about what is happening in our state, and how it is affecting the Indigenous… and us all.
NECESSITY traces the fight in Minnesota against the expansion of pipelines carrying highly toxic tar sands oil through Native lands and essential waterways in North America. Front line communities–Native Peoples and communities of color–suffer the most immediate and severe consequences of the climate crisis: impacts on physical and mental health as well as territorial desecration and displacement. Yet with painful histories have come deep insights, forms of resilience and modes of resistance. This feature-length documentary follows indigenous leaders and white allies, using direct action to protect the sacred and demand justice. Legal experts discuss the record of disparate treatment in the justice system and the legal strategy of the necessity defense, which makes a moral case for acts of civil disobedience, while medical and scientific experts address the health effects of fossil fuels and dangers of pipeline and refinery infrastructure. Capturing the natural beauty of the region as well as the vulnerability of local habitats, aesthetic and stylistic elements drive the action forward, including animated maps with illustrations. The filmmaking team builds collectively on their training in psychology and anthropology.”
So in case it hasn’t become clear to you yet, the end will not be Logan’s Run or Mad Max or even Threads (my personal prediction). It’s more like the book of the same name for the year Threads came out… 1984.
The doublespeak is insane. The arrogance with which they are acting is more blatant each year. They seemed to really kick it in to high gear with the Kavanagh debacle and I’ll be dammed if that shit didn’t stick!
They’ve escalated the antics, right through an impeachment “trial” with no witnesses or evidence. We’re living in a recession, eight months in to a global pandemic, and Congress left for recess! [Well, of course, they’re people of means… why wouldn’t they head out for vacation, while millions of Americans suffer? It seems the way of the wealthy – their Cancer of Greed has gotten to Stage 4.]
People are being evicted from their homes, finding themselves without enough money to buy food and medicine, largely due to severe unemployment, levels we haven’t seen since when? 1958? [Many of us experienced this in 2008… and many since have struggled for employment, or worked multiple shitty paying jobs to make ends meet in the “new economy” of the last decade. I will say the 2008 Recession was Dan and my clear sign to GTFO.] And yet the Stock Market is soaring! [You know, as the Federal Reserve pumps 15 Trillion of our tax dollars in, like so many little blue pills, to prop it up…
And NOW! They’re taking out the fucking mailboxes for Christ’s sake!!
So, yes, it’s the hunger games. For realz now.
Got a text this morning from a friend: Is Mother Earth trying to give us another wake up call??? I’ve had some really dark meditations and it’s focused on the earth. Maybe it’s as simple as my mind working through all the data points.
Have you or any of your more spiritual friends sensed that something really bad is going to happen?
I don’t watch the news, don’t have any subscriptions online but the number of natural disasters I’m aware of is increasing exponentially.
You and I talked a few years ago and I ignorantly said, “nothing catastrophic has happened”. You rattled off 3-4 significant natural disasters around the world.
(Stopped) reading because I need to put this out there. In the last 2 weeks I can think of 8-10 non precedented weather events. … • Mumbai, India 50% of the slum population has COVID and they are experiencing monsoon rains with more rainfall than ever recorded. • Ice melts in Serbia and Canada. • Heat wave in CA. • Severe thunderstorm, heavy winds, tornadoes from the Midwest to NE. 1. Cedar Rapids, IW had hurricane level 2 force winds, 1M trees down, 300K people without power. 2. IN power outages all over, trees down and damage to structures. 3. Same storm hit the NE… CT lost power for 9 days. • Earthquake in NC or GA • Excessive rainfall in MN
Yep. And I sat on the porch last night thinking: • It’s August and I’m on the porch excited about drinking a WARM beverage… • We got 8″ of rain in the last week… • And what’s with all the rocket launches? Is there already a secret war on Mars? Who has a relative or friend in Space Force? Anyone?
I replied to my my friend: Yeah. Dan had been saying ‘we’ve gone too far’ for a while now. I think because HE senses it based on data. I just thought he was a pessimist, which he can be, but I’m wondering more each day. Yeah. We had 8″ of rain in 6 days this past week. Sunday-Monday 4″+ in 48 hours, then Friday we got 4″+ in 24 hours…
IT is happening. (has been… for decades) again.. water on the toes… some of us have been feeling it for years now but the powers that be aren’t listening. Watch The Power – #1 movie on Netflix this week. Pretty accurate depiction of a metaphor of current situation. Mankind keeps pushing limits until there’s no breathing room. Literally. 🤨
I think it’s gonna be mass migration and starvation this year… even in the US.
Get ready, my friends. It’s seems a train is coming. A big train. It’s begun picking up passengers… thousands by the day. The climate chaos predicted is happening… at an exponentially increasing pace it seems – and the starvation and migration have been happening for years in some places on the globe. Places the humans in power don’t look at or talk about… as much as they can avoid it.
The pace seems to be quickening – or at least bumping up in fits and starts – but I am hopeful many will remain to rebuild – more sustainably, I hope – after the starving times. And there will be some who have enough to share with their communities around them to help them survive.
You’re all pretty enlightened, so you know that the Wiindigo system doesn’t work like ours. Instead of understanding and respecting the natural world or the rights of Mother Earth or the Creator’s laws—the highest laws— we live in a society that writes a bunch of laws based on who’s in power, redistributes pollution, arbitrarily changes recommended daily allowances of radiation and contaminants, and pretends that it’s all right to allocate the water in western basins until there’s no water left there. That’s the arrogance of a system that has no check with reality. And that’s what’s going on. There is no understanding for a cyclical system. We all live in a super-linear world instead of a cyclical world, and perhaps one of the best examples of that, in addition to the pipeline battles, is the fact that we live in a society with something like 13 trillion pounds of waste produced annually in the U.S. That doesn’t include waste water, and I ask myself, what is waste water? There’s no new water being made. In 2010 Americans wasted some 133 billion pounds of food. With a 430 billion pound food supply, that’s more than one-third of the whole being wasted. Economically, it’s $161.6 billion in food wastage. … In an Anishinaabe or other indigenous economy, one’s stature is associated with one’s generosity. That is why we have massive giveaways; that is why we have massive potlatches, which are ceremonial feasts at which possessions are given away or destroyed to display wealth and enhance prestige, because your stature in your community is ensured by how much you give away. In today’s society, people’s stature is ensured by how much they accumulate, and wealth is aggrandized. We don’t ask where they got it, how they got it, and how much they need. We act as if it doesn’t matter, and what I’m saying is that perhaps the time has come to turn that around because it’s not going to work out. Let me tell you what I think about this. And I won’t go into the consequences because I think you already know about the destruction of so many species of life. For example, fifty million buffalo, the single largest migratory herd in the world, destroyed. General Philip Sheridan, commanding armies of the west, urged destruction of the buffalo herds, foreseeing that when they disappeared, the Indians would disappear along with them; by 1885 the buffalo were virtually extinct, and the Indians were starving.
Winona goes on and I recommend reading her entire piece. [Makes one pretty pissed to realize local lumber company Potlatch is such a salt in the wound brand name…] I told my friend: I think all this – and it’s in the “Heartbeat of Wounded Knee” and recent stories in movies – talks about this human (male/dominator/white supremacy/colonial culture) tendency to destroy being the main way we eliminate enemies.. by destroying their food sources, their villages and homes, or taking their lives… this becomes the devastation for those that follow… nothing remains when destruction – or even thoughtless overharvest – depletes completely. We’re apparently far too short sighted a species to make much more than a couple thousand years before we annihilate ourselves… and this time we’re taking a bunch of species with us.
But. Keep hope! (And plan…) it may turn out some of us make it. And enough of us may die… or be sacrificed? I imagine Billionaire Bingo… where each of the 26 richest billionaires get to face trial for their gluttony and convince us that they are worth NOT SACRIFICING because they are going to commit to full time problem resolution with their cash going to good causes. (Of course, this vision requires a planet capable of human survival, so it may be a pipe dream at this point. But hey, a girl can dream!)
Let’s hope those billionaires find their hearts soon. 26 people who could remedy it all… if only they’d share. Perhaps we can put them all on a rocket to Mars to discuss it?
There might yet be time for a peace train after all.
Why is it that so many Americans seem to work too many hours for too little pay and then have almost no free time?
Do we really need all the “stuff” we buy? Is it really making us happy?
Could we reduce our spending to a point where we don’t need so much income and can perhaps work less hours? Why is it that we don’t think more about how much money we really need instead of about simply getting a big paycheck job? Are we questioning how many of our hours we give to our bosses versus those given to our families?
Do we need all the separation we have? Could co-housing or multi-generational housing bring more happiness and socializing along with lower costs and added adult resources?
Can we look at what we truly want and need rather than what society tells us we do?
Take the holidays.
Do we need lots of decorations? Or can the few special decorations from the past suffice? Especially if they have connection to those we love? And aren’t the faces of our friends and family the best decorations in our homes?
Winter Solstice Owl by Laura Burlis (Minneapolis polymer clay artist)
Do we need to cut down a tree this season? Or can we simply enjoy the beautiful pines outside, in their natural snow-covered beauty?
And what about gifts? The focus in consumption-driven America is often on quantity. But do all gifts bring happiness? Have you ever gotten a gift that seemed like just a “thing to unwrap”? Why do we feel this compulsion to give so many gifts? For me, the best gifts are a hug, a smile, or a story from a friend. Sharing time is the best gift of all.
Yes, there are many things that can bring comfort or joy. And a gift that fulfills a need or wish can be wonderful. But if I get a gift that seems like a financial stretch for the giver, or one that is simply something I do not need or want, the gift becomes a burden. I’d rather have a story, a hug, or a smile. These are free blessings and they come with the added benefit of not putting more pressure on our already struggling planet.
This holiday season, I hope for less materialism and more love. I will focus on spending time with friends and family enjoying simple pleasures.
Retired at 45 