Strategic Plan

 Strategic Plan: acknowledge the problems and trends that seem to stand in the way of this planets survival.

Love Everyone: Live in gratitude for those who offer insight, wisdom, from their heart as well as their minds.

Hate No-One: Hate removes me from choosing to do what I can to care for and support the human experience. This frees my mind to explore options to help this place become free of fear, hatred and greed.

Move To The Edge: I read the articles that are about the failings and the potential for each of us to contribute to healing the planet. How likely is it that others will do the same, how can we know and measure it? I live on the frontier of my life and the only one I have power over, is myself. Deal with it.

This was first published in Sleep With Me: Lullaby for an Anxious Planet. Ekstasis 2020. It was also submitted to the Comments in reply to Chris Hedges article in sub stack "The Dawn of The Apocalypse.

Let It Be

 Let It Be

Let the megalomaniac sleep

Put the authoritarian to bed

Be the son the King never had

Give the coat back to Joseph

and let him wear it

Let the flowers die when they no longer bloom

Let all the butterflies of self deception fly away

Let Pandora out of the box

and begin again in love.

Canada's Oil Industry

"The oil companies complaining about the cost of reducing emissions are the same ones making near-record profits and shovelling billions into the pockets of their investors through share buybacks and dividends right now." Max Faucett, July 21, 2022. National Observer. 

The Ubiquitous Nature of Power

Why would previously elected governments cut services that would ultimately harm the economy when they build their campaigns on the economy?

Why are essential services, that intervene in crises before they reach their ultimate social cost, being underfunded or shut down?

Why does the corporate media in its news and entertainment programs promote an image of our world as greed-driven, macho, and violent while all the serious discussions around how to effectively deal with the problems are slotted in the back pages or late night shows?

Why has so much hatred been directed towards those who love or pray differently and why has so much contempt for the poor and marginalized been inflamed and so little done to alleviate the misery?

Why have our governments failed to care for the environment upon which our future health and wealth depend?

At first these may seem like separate issues but to me, they are all connected in one very important way – they lead towards social breakdown and ultimately destroy civil society.

So it appears that some in government and media, actively support and work towards the destruction of the entity they are supposed to be governing. It also appears as though people in Western democracies are voting for the parties that are destroying their futures.

Is this intentional? Are there powerful interests conspiring to bring about a slow and painful end to the human project, or has something gone terribly wrong in the way we identify with the collective future?

David Suzuki points out that we have “developed a way to estimate economic activity by measuring the value of all transactions for goods and services” called the Gross Domestic Product. However it doesn’t seem to include the services that come from government – that is disdainfully called taxes.

Corporations measure their success not by the quality of their products or how it helps people, but by how much their stock sells for. Politicians measure their success, not by what they have done for their constituents, but by how many votes they get.

In essence, what this means is that the health and well-being of humanity and the environment, is “overburden” to use a mining term. What this means for us and our children is less health care, lower education in terms of learning rather than superficial tests, less public transportation, more pollution environmentally and culturally, the silencing of real debate, the end of science, a global distancing from the reality we live, and a greater focus on invasive corporate measures.

Prisons will be filled with environmentalists and activists for social justice. People will be afraid to talk to their neighbours. City centres will become territorial battle grounds for drug lords. The sensitive and educated will die quietly from drug overdose. Families will break up under stress. Suicide will overtake obesity as the major epidemic. Bigotry, prejudice and balkanized wars will make the commons uninhabitable.

If we want to know what this looks like, think of all the failed nation states constantly in turmoil while transnational companies extract huge profits. Think of pipelines covering the earth, the sky filled with industrial chimneys and dark satanic mills powered by slave labour getting crushed or burned in hazardous warehouses. To use a quote attributed to George Orwell “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

The enemy is not one particular country, the enemy is that dissociated power universally accepted as force, rather than something that flows from our relationship to the environment in which we live. When we cease to look inside ourselves for the capacity to care and organize a humane world, we become victims or sociopathic egos punishing all that we can’t control.

We have come to this stage not because of progress but because of a ubiquitous disorder which we must examine to begin the work of healing. Our power lies in many things but mostly in accepting we are vulnerable, fallible and mortal.

This post was first published in The Flying Shingle then online at Episyllogism.

The Power of Deep Listening

"political vulnerability: the ease with which democracy is crushed by the power of money. We cannot protect the living world, or women’s reproductive rights, or anything else we value until we get the money out of politics, and break up the media empires that make a mockery of informed political consent." George Monbiot  https://www.monbiot.com/2022/07/14/willing-the-end/

"The scale of change we need will come when we take collective responsibility for motivating decision-makers to end carbon and methane pollution. Write that letter or join us in having conversations with your neighbours — in person or online! Deep canvassing has truly changed my life. The skills I have learned help me navigate a politically polarized world and led me to pursue a conflict management and mediation certificate program at the University of Waterloo." Natasha Edmonds https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/07/11.

When the Women of Iceland Went on Strike | "Where To Invade Next" Scene

Worth listening to.

Question: who taught us winning wars is the only way to survive?

 

While humanity is not getting much positive applause lately,

• it would be good to remember the ones who seek to heal others, 
• to cook nutritious food, 
• to farm and bring food to market, 
• to draw and paint and sing beautiful art, play instruments and make inspiring music, 
• bring into the world children they may spend the next 20 years caring for, giving advice, working to provide shelter, 
• entertaining us with comedy to make us laugh, 
• listen to friends problems, 
• worrying about the future 

... are the same species as those who manufacture bombs, missiles and train young adults to kill others they have not personally met. 

The question is - how has it come to this? How have we all allowed those who purport to be our leaders - politically, socially and spiritually, to believe it is their job to kill others in order to protect us?

Your Horoscope For Today

 

If you are breathing you are alive today, but in order to survive you must keep breathing.

You were born on this planet sometime between the month of January to December. It will affect you because this planet, this universe has its own habits and ways.

If you are still alive you were born in the last hundred years. You had a mother and a father even if you don't know who they are. Your childhood was not always happy. There were happy times and some traumatic times. You grew up to the degree you were capable of. 

Your skills depend on innate talents in your personality and the nurture you received as you were growing up.

You belong to the family of homo sapiens. You are not a lizard, hyena or elephant. You are more than the colour of your skin. The skin is there just to keep your muscles and organs in place. The colour of your eyes do not matter as much as the eyes help you from bumping into walls. 

The size of your reproductive organs only matter in as much as they enable you to co-create. Other than that, it's no-ones business what they are - they belong to you and will be there for you until you die or decide to have them removed.

You need love and support from other humans no matter how strong or smart you are, or what you have accomplished. If you think you don't there will be no-one to tell you how you are doing if you make mistakes.

You are not self-made. To believe that will isolate you and eventually cause harm to your mental health and those you live among.

Your family and your home need you to pay attention to how they are doing. How they are doing depends on your ability to feel and see truth.

You are not God, you never were and never will be. 

A Quiet Friday Afternoon

 All that grows will die

All that dies will speak to me

When I sleep

With my conscience and ignorance

All I have to offer is the wish to help

Create a kinder world.