(Originally posted on a separate page earlier in the week, now moved to its new category)
I read with alarm the opening three paragraphs of last weeks otherwise excellent article “The Carbon Conundrum”. The author is portraying our entitled citizenry as caring about our environmental challenges in word only, while he writes that no one seems to be willing to personally do a darn thing differently and heck, why should we, this is after all a resort playground. This is indeed the crux of a severely disturbing problem. Can the behaviors listed in this article’s paragraphs really be sacrosanct? While I don’t believe that we can lump everyone in the same boat, taking a good hard look around town it is easy to see why the author began his piece as he did–there is wastefulness just about everywhere. Our current US way of life can be labeled as arrogant and is in no way sustainable. And if this is so, what does it say about us that many just don’t care? Where are our scruples?
The agitation in me kept saying “it doesn’t have to be this way, we can transform these attitudes”. Thankfully around here there have been, and are, many people striving to make a difference. Bucking the trend of this cultures misguided misuse of resources, both finite carbon varieties and personal inner ones certainly is difficult, but it is also becoming mandatory. Do things really have to remain the way they have been for these past decades?
Focusing on what governments and large entities could potentially accomplish as part one of this article states is important, but each of us as individuals have the first responsibility to clean up our own act. This begins with awareness, education, and a sense of fairness–essentially expanding our consciousness to question every element of our existence, how we think about it and what we take for granted. And then changing. Colin Beavon’s No Impact Man Project is a great primer for just what one person can accomplish. Regarding our impact, Bill McKibben’s 2010 book Eaarth– that’s the correct spelling because his thesis states that we are in fact living on a new earth, the old one is gone, and that we are going to have to very quickly adapt. Rain in CB South in December is a harbinger for what this new planet might look like.
Pondering any of this might lead to questions such as–Is it really my God given right to squander everything in sight? Do resources, including animals and plants really exist solely for my benefit? Is huddling together, in tiny nuclear family units, within single family boxes really conducive to societal health? Is outright disregard for the consequences of our actions bringing about a saner, more peaceful, open hearted society? Does pumping ourselves up with substances of any kind that are inherently addictive create a connected loving world? Isn’t this the moment in our species’ evolution when we can grow into our hearts and leave behind our adolescent cultural inebriations?
We here have so very much to cherish, we can look out any window or be walking anywhere and gaze around us and witness and experience the splendor absolutely everywhere. The sky’s majesty and ethereal lighting upon our neighborly peaks is enough to bring us to our knees. What would happen if every one of us knelt down?
This valley offers such a richness for potentially re-visioning what we can be. Several others recently in this paper have lamented about either the wishywashyness of, or lack of clear vision. This is certainly understandable if the former visioning was seen through the eyes of money, exploitation and our unquestioned entitlements.
What would happen though if we saw ourselves as inherently connected and deeply blessed? Where might these feelings lead us and what kinds of visions might manifest? We could become an incubator as a community, willing to learn or relearn how to live within the finite limits of reality. We’d recognize the problems with becoming, as the PA governor said, wussies. We’d live with vastly lower indoor temperature’s, more of us would bicycle, as many in this town already do. We’d produce, in an ethical manner items that are truly necessities, right here. We’d gather together to really learn about our dormant capacities as human beings, namely our underdeveloped spiritual selves, and how this leads to an awareness of love, that until this moment was only thought to reside with “the enlightened ones”. We could be a place where “friendliness” was never again questioned. People would arrive here and recognize something much, much deeper about us, think Findhorn in Scotland, or Damanhur in Italy. We could become a “Transition Town”, modeling something other than greed, and not with green washing, but with actual behavioral transformation.
This will take so much deliberation, dedication and action, both external and internal. People have been gathering, having been drawn to this place, and are in fact beginning the move towards healthier aspects of being that are truly the antithesis of the article’s first paragraphs. We can care, we can learn, we can change, we can evolve. We are.
Our Deeper Truths 