Just had to share this incredible little bon bon that was in my inbox yesterday morning penned by my dear friend and "Keeper of the Peace" here in Rochester, NY, Hank Stone
EARTH GARDEN
Hank Stone
You are on your way to an exam, and are late. Furthermore, you haven’t
studied for it, and don’t remember what the subject is, and don’t know
where it’s being held. That’s an unsolvable set of problems! Many people
have experienced such circumstances, in bad dreams.
You can’t solve these problems. But when you wake up, you find that each
problem in the dream has vanished.
The world is plagued by a complex of interconnected, global problems.
When the world situation is presented as problems, they are too intimidating
for people to face, because we can’t “adjust” our society enough to solve
them. In other words, these problems are so serious, they CAN’T BE SOLVED!
But WE CAN WAKE UP FROM THEM. We can wake up from the American dream.
We live in the PROGRESS Paradigm, of scientific progress, economic growth,
population growth, and the promise of more of everything-- forever.
I propose an entirely different paradigm: EARTH GARDEN.
In this story, humankind is a family tending a garden. What are we humans here
on Earth to do? Garden. We plan the garden, work the soil, plant the seeds,
water, weed, protect the crops, harvest, prepare the food, and eat the food.
We raise a family. Our children help in the garden, grow up, get married, and
grow their own gardens.
We can create a new society, better than the one we have now, without the
present problems. We can preserve the best of present society, and prosper for
the indefinite future. And we can live happily through the transition. But
PROGRESS will not get us there.
COW PUW
We will not dwell on the global problems, about which much is known, but will
name six big ones. It is our human nature to drift into denial. Denial is
comfortable, but if we are asleep we are irrelevant to the human future.
C is for climate change.
O is for peak oil. World production of conventional oil has already peaked.
W is for fresh water scarcity, from snow melt failure and over pumping
aquifers.
P is for world population, which has doubled twice in the last 100 years.
U is for unsustainable economics. Our debt-based Capitalism can only grow or
collapse.
W is for the war system of dispute settlement. In the nuclear age, war itself
is unsustainable.
Our way of life assumes continuous growth for the indefinite future: PROGRESS.
Continuous growth on a finite planet is, of course, absurd. So things WILL
change.
If we are to control that change, we must in some way address COW PUW.
SOLVING OUR PROBLEMS
Waking up from the American dream sounds drastic. Can’t we make adjustments
to the status quo to address COW PUW?
We know that big jobs can be divided up so they can be handled by ordinary
people. That’s bureaucracy. Corporations, governments and militaries
routinely do this, and achieve large-scale objectives.
If “everyone does his part,” we suppose we can get society “back to
normal.” People take refuge in doing activism they feel can “make a
difference.” It feels good to be working purposefully to help society.
Sometimes success is achieved, which also feels good.
But the divide-and-conquer approach cannot succeed with our very large scale
problems, for three reasons.
FIRST, rich and powerful people, who could theoretically give society the
structural change it needs, see no need for change. Society is set up to give
them comfort and privilege, thank you very much.
Society is therefore set up to distract us ordinary people from believing that
anything is fundamentally wrong. “The experts” will figure out what to do.
“They” have the time, expertise and legitimacy to make things work.
Consider that for the whole of our lives, we have been relatively prosperous,
comfortable and free—without having to “wake up” from anything!
We individuals can “make a difference” all we want, but while powerful
bureaucracies promote the status quo, that’s what we get.
SECOND, society does evolve. Slavery was once widely accepted, but now is not.
The problem is, we need a generational change, but don’t have a generation.
Now that our society is toying with evolutionary dead ends, the time for
adjustments is past. The time for activism is past. The only action we can
take that is fast enough is to transform our thinking—to wake up.
The THIRD and most important reason we cannot solve our large-scale problems is
that there is no “normal” to which society can return. World population
has been able to grow to 6.9 billion by using up resources, including oil,
arable land, minerals, fish stocks and forests. There is no prospect of
feeding everyone on Earth as was done before the age of oil. America’s
banquet has become musical chairs.
No adjustments to “life as we know it” can solve these problems. In fact,
adjustments are how we got where we are. Very large numbers of people have
been working earnestly to improve some aspect of public life, but our society
is in increasingly severe trouble. We suppose it would just take more people
working for the good, or working harder. We suppose the public is in denial
and/or discouraged, and they are. But that’s not the central point.
Even talking about our interconnected, global COW PUW problems binds us to the
story of PROGRESS, and leads us to believe we can make adjustments so that
PROGRESS can continue. It cannot. Adjustments to the Progress story ARE the
Progress story. Adjustments to the status quo ARE the status quo.
CULTURAL STORIES
How does a bee know how to communicate with other bees, find flowers, and make
honey? We talk about “instincts” that we assume are programmed into their
DNA.
Our relatively complicated human “operating systems” are mostly taught to
us when we are children. We learn speech, toilet training, table manners,
social skills, reading and writing. We learn how the world works, and how to
get along in it. We learn what is true and false, right and wrong, possible
and impossible. Cultural stories are everything we learn through our whole
lives: everything we know or believe.
Our cultural stories appear to us to simply be the way of things: Reality. But
because we can point to cultures with very different stories from our own, we
see it’s not that simple.
We all want to do “what’s right,” but what is that? Our behaviors tend
to reflect our mores and laws, which tend to reflect our beliefs: our cultural
stories. The cultural stories, behaviors, laws and institutions of a culture
all tend to evolve together. Schools (and other institutions) teach children
what the society thinks they should know. The children grow into adults who
know “the way of things,” and behave more-or-less as the culture thinks
they should. The adults then reinforce society’s institutions, laws and
practices, and teach them to the next generation.
When times are stable, the cultural stories we learn as children prepare us for
our roles in society. Our stories unite us, giving us a shared interpretation
of the events we all experience. When times are changing, as they are now, our
stories may not be equal to the task of preparing us to live successfully in
the world as it is. Our cultural stories need to be challenged.
For example, we were all brought up to believe that war was necessary, from
time to time, to protect our country. The role of citizens was to trust our
leaders, pay our taxes, and make occasional sacrifices--sometimes human
sacrifices. Now we find ourselves involved in the military occupation of two
countries. We are told that keeping just one soldier in Afghanistan for one
year costs $1 million. Why are we there? Trust your leaders and don’t ask
questions.
There are quite a lot of cultural stories we are not invited to question. Yet
our unquestioning obedience has brought us to COW PUW.
DECEPTIVE PERCEPTION
Why not simply change our stories, when reason says they no longer serve us?
Our perception deceives us. Deceptive Perception is a mental illusion all
normal people experience that gives us the impression that we live in “the
real world.”
We have five senses, which, we think, anchor us to reality. But in truth, the
flow of sensory information coming into us at every moment is so great that our
conscious minds couldn’t handle it. Our sensory data are filtered through
our subconscious minds, eliminating the extraneous, so we can concentrate on
the business at hand.
The filtering, however, is based on what we know (or believe we know): our
cultural stories. What do we need to see / hear / smell / taste / touch for
what we are doing? Depending on our task, our perception may be distracted,
narrow, prejudiced, and otherwise subjective.
Our subconscious then knits together “reality” for us, so we have the
impression that there is one “real world” in which we all live. Though our
worlds are very real to us, WE ALL LIVE IN DIFFERENT WORLDS.
We imagine that other people live in the same world we do. Therefore, when
people act in ways we would not, they may seem malicious—or just plain crazy!
Saying the rich and powerful could change society but do not makes it sound as
if they are our enemies. They are not.
Almost everyone at almost every time is trying to do what he or she thinks is
best under the circumstances. But what are the circumstances?
Every normal person knows many things, only some of which are true.
EARTH AS GARDEN
Earth-as-Garden is a proposal for new cultural stories that would lead to new
institutions, mores and laws. The Earth Garden story is a starting point for
urging people into behaviors that would give us planetary residents the best
hope of happy lives, and a sustainable, healthy and prosperous future.
The Garden paradigm is about planning, preparing, planting, tending, and
harvesting, in a cycle that continues sustainably. Scraps and waste are
recycled, in a closed system—like the Earth.
Of course, gardens alone do not serve all human needs. What might a community
be like that expressed the Garden paradigm?
Community-as-garden would not just grow plants and animals sustainably, but
provide all goods and services needed. It would make and distribute clothing,
shoes, furniture, tools, hardware, communications, musical instruments, books,
means of transportation, medicine, dentistry, education, and so on. Doing so
it would provide work not just for gardeners and farmers, but also miners,
manufacturers, teachers, doctors, systems analysts, builders, shopkeepers and
laborers.
If we envision our communities as gardens, how do we know what belongs, and
what doesn’t belong? Which are the plants, and which are the weeds?
EARTH GARDEN PRINCIPLES
Four particular Earth Garden principles are Sustainability, Cooperation,
Efficiency, and Beauty. Of course, living successfully also requires
integrity, independence, trustworthiness, reason, knowledge, and assorted
virtues. The need for these latter is already part of our cultural stories.
SUSTAINABILITY. We humans have demonstrated the ability to do adventurous
things, like breaking the sound barrier and traveling to the moon. We have
created amazing technologies and sophisticated social systems.
But we have been slow to recognize the problems with runaway growth on a finite
planet.
In the future, we can’t have more people than resources. Every person alive
requires food. We can have arbitrarily great wealth, but not for an
arbitrarily large population.
We will have to give up unsustainable use of fresh water, oil, coal, natural
gas, and give up activities that pollute the ground, air, or water.
Our economy is being crushed by debt that can’t be paid pack. That is
unsustainable.
Any system or practice that can’t be sustained must be changed, or fail.
This is obvious. This is reality. If we expect to live in this world for the
indefinite future, we must live sustainably. We must sooner or later discard
any activity that degrades the environment.
COOPERATION. The “garden” we tend must be the Earth. In an interconnected
world, attending to just our community or our country is unsustainable. Since
we rely on the global climate, and global resources, and the natural world, our
attention must extend to the whole Earth, as well as the community of human
beings.
Any plan that would benefit ourselves but would seem unjust to others, can’t
be adopted. Most people are suspicious of those with different cultural
stories. We need plans robust enough to accommodate everyone, and that are
transparently fair, or they won’t be supported.
Designing a world that works requires brainstorming “far out”
possibilities, then trusting ourselves to discard unworkable ideas. We need
patience to discuss how to proceed, despite our different perceptions and
cultural stories. Our “gut feelings” have failed us in the past. We need
logical procedures for coming to agreement.
EFFICIENCY. The present GROWTH-society tolerates a lot of waste.
We build automobiles that are expensive to repair. The original Volkswagen
Beetles were built with few changes year over year. This made it possible to
keep old cars running using salvaged parts. Of course, manufacturing and
selling new cars generates more economic activity than does repairing old cars.
In the growth era, waste created wealth. But in a resource-constrained world,
waste creates deprivation.
Composting is the ultimate efficiency. Plant waste and garbage become high
quality plant food. Waste doesn’t accumulate, the plants prosper, the garden
thrives, our lives are supported, and the whole system works on renewable solar
power. Simple and elegant.
Any human activity that produces waste that doesn’t feed another process is
unsustainable, but also wasteful and--inefficient.
BEAUTY. Earth-as-garden must be cooperative and harmonious, but also
beautiful. If we grow the human population beyond the point where everyone can
have a good life, including healthy food, shelter, basic education, healthcare
and other human rights—then not everyone will have a good life. Such a
situation could be sustainable, in the sense that famine and plague will always
limit population. But is it good? Is it beautiful?
People will resist a plan that they don’t experience as good, and right. The
paradigm must change, but our need to do what we think is right -- cannot
change.
What shall we take with us into the Garden? Beliefs, institutions and
practices that are sustainable, cooperative, efficient, and beautiful
GOD OF THE GARDEN
Gardening is what God does. The sun comes up in the morning and goes down at
night; rains come; seeds grow; and animals, including ourselves, eat of his
garden.
Consider the butterflies, the birds, the bees, and the babbling brooks: the
Creator is making beauty. The Creator is writing a beautiful story, in which
we get to play a part. That’s not a trivial role for us human beings.
Atheists, don’t be put off by this wording. Just observe: the Universe
creates life.
We parents love and try to protect our children. Suppose there is a God, who
created us all. Would we expect that God to be a less loving, less caring
parent than we ourselves?
We human parents can’t guarantee the success of our children. They must be
able to make mistakes, or they can’t grow. But we try to provide them a
successful path forward.
The creative elements of the Universe have given humankind an impressive DNA
inheritance, rich historical experiences, and a planetary home with abundant
resources and beauty.
A billion-year successful future is possible for humankind, if we choose to
claim it. But it is not guaranteed; it can slip through our fingers.
If there is a path to a successful human future, then ordinary reason tells us
how to follow it. Considering the effects of our actions on the next seven
generations, for example, is a good start.
Cause and effect apply. In these times, we are badly served by the notion of
an impatient and warlike God. If our religious beliefs conflict with meeting
society’s present needs, our religious beliefs must be updated.
If we believe we can have a billion-year successful future, we can release
ourselves from incremental thinking, and explore ways to make human life truly
wonderful.
WHAT CAN ONE PERSON DO?
My activist friends are in a hurry to “do something” to “make a
difference.” We know that things break and need to be fixed, and we should
fix them. If we can’t fix them personally, we report them to the
authorities. When that doesn’t work, we protest, or “struggle against”
unjust people or policies or institutions, hoping they will fix them.
This approach assumes that our civilization is essentially on the right path,
and relatively minor adjustments will serve.
What can we do if our social systems aren’t broken, but are wrong for the
times? Suppose we are a caterpillar, but need to be a butterfly? The
butterfly we need to be is not a caterpillar with wings, but something entirely
different. The caterpillar doesn’t need to be protested, but transformed.
Here’s something you can do. Every day, set a timer for 10 minutes. For
that time, give yourself a vacation from business as usual:
FIRST, discharge any ANGER you may have at people, institutions, or policies.
Yell and scream if you have a suitable place. If you are keeping any enemies,
confront them if it will help, but get your anger out without doing harm. Then
forgive everyone.
SECOND, if you have time left, take a vacation from WORRY. Give yourself
permission to look at our global circumstances without fear. Remember that no
matter how serious things may appear, nothing will get appreciably worse during
your 10 minutes.
THIRD, if you have time left, consider what a sustainable future that works for
everyone might look like. ENTER THE GARDEN and look at the fruits of
sustainable, efficient, cooperative and beautiful choices.
If you find envisioning the Garden hard, then read, or talk to others about
their ideas. Quite a lot of people are working on transforming society.
LASTLY, if you have time left, APPRECIATE your world. Bring to mind everything
for which you are grateful. Gratitude helps possibility thinking.
How, asks the PROGRESS mind, can this inner work address our outer COW PUW
situation?
In the PROGRESS dream, it cannot. Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz clicks together
her red slippers and says “There’s no place like home.” In Oz these are
nonsensical acts. But Oz is the dream! Dorothy has to wake up to return to
Kansas.
Realization of the outer EARTH GARDEN will have to wait for more people to wake
up. Lots of people are waking up, and leadership is emerging. But that is
almost beside the point.
When we were growing up, we weren’t told we could choose the story we live
in, but we can. Once we wake up to the state of the Earth, we think
differently. We hear the conversations around us in a different way. We have
new options. We are already free of the dream.
We see that the Earth is already a great garden. The sun evaporates water and
rain falls. Plants grow. Abundance and possibilities surround us.
The inner EARTH GARDEN is ours as soon as we claim it. The Universe is already
biased toward abundant life, and we can cooperate with it. We can plan, and
plant and prune our share of the garden. We can be patient, appreciative,
grounded, and secure.
Ready or not, the world is changing. The most important contribution you can
make to the change is to bring the EARTH GARDEN inside yourself.
You can live in the Garden at every moment, starting now.
Hank Stone
hstone@rochester.rr.com
December 29, 2010
EARTH GARDEN
Hank Stone
You are on your way to an exam, and are late. Furthermore, you haven’t
studied for it, and don’t remember what the subject is, and don’t know
where it’s being held. That’s an unsolvable set of problems! Many people
have experienced such circumstances, in bad dreams.
You can’t solve these problems. But when you wake up, you find that each
problem in the dream has vanished.
The world is plagued by a complex of interconnected, global problems.
When the world situation is presented as problems, they are too intimidating
for people to face, because we can’t “adjust” our society enough to solve
them. In other words, these problems are so serious, they CAN’T BE SOLVED!
But WE CAN WAKE UP FROM THEM. We can wake up from the American dream.
We live in the PROGRESS Paradigm, of scientific progress, economic growth,
population growth, and the promise of more of everything-- forever.
I propose an entirely different paradigm: EARTH GARDEN.
In this story, humankind is a family tending a garden. What are we humans here
on Earth to do? Garden. We plan the garden, work the soil, plant the seeds,
water, weed, protect the crops, harvest, prepare the food, and eat the food.
We raise a family. Our children help in the garden, grow up, get married, and
grow their own gardens.
We can create a new society, better than the one we have now, without the
present problems. We can preserve the best of present society, and prosper for
the indefinite future. And we can live happily through the transition. But
PROGRESS will not get us there.
COW PUW
We will not dwell on the global problems, about which much is known, but will
name six big ones. It is our human nature to drift into denial. Denial is
comfortable, but if we are asleep we are irrelevant to the human future.
C is for climate change.
O is for peak oil. World production of conventional oil has already peaked.
W is for fresh water scarcity, from snow melt failure and over pumping
aquifers.
P is for world population, which has doubled twice in the last 100 years.
U is for unsustainable economics. Our debt-based Capitalism can only grow or
collapse.
W is for the war system of dispute settlement. In the nuclear age, war itself
is unsustainable.
Our way of life assumes continuous growth for the indefinite future: PROGRESS.
Continuous growth on a finite planet is, of course, absurd. So things WILL
change.
If we are to control that change, we must in some way address COW PUW.
SOLVING OUR PROBLEMS
Waking up from the American dream sounds drastic. Can’t we make adjustments
to the status quo to address COW PUW?
We know that big jobs can be divided up so they can be handled by ordinary
people. That’s bureaucracy. Corporations, governments and militaries
routinely do this, and achieve large-scale objectives.
If “everyone does his part,” we suppose we can get society “back to
normal.” People take refuge in doing activism they feel can “make a
difference.” It feels good to be working purposefully to help society.
Sometimes success is achieved, which also feels good.
But the divide-and-conquer approach cannot succeed with our very large scale
problems, for three reasons.
FIRST, rich and powerful people, who could theoretically give society the
structural change it needs, see no need for change. Society is set up to give
them comfort and privilege, thank you very much.
Society is therefore set up to distract us ordinary people from believing that
anything is fundamentally wrong. “The experts” will figure out what to do.
“They” have the time, expertise and legitimacy to make things work.
Consider that for the whole of our lives, we have been relatively prosperous,
comfortable and free—without having to “wake up” from anything!
We individuals can “make a difference” all we want, but while powerful
bureaucracies promote the status quo, that’s what we get.
SECOND, society does evolve. Slavery was once widely accepted, but now is not.
The problem is, we need a generational change, but don’t have a generation.
Now that our society is toying with evolutionary dead ends, the time for
adjustments is past. The time for activism is past. The only action we can
take that is fast enough is to transform our thinking—to wake up.
The THIRD and most important reason we cannot solve our large-scale problems is
that there is no “normal” to which society can return. World population
has been able to grow to 6.9 billion by using up resources, including oil,
arable land, minerals, fish stocks and forests. There is no prospect of
feeding everyone on Earth as was done before the age of oil. America’s
banquet has become musical chairs.
No adjustments to “life as we know it” can solve these problems. In fact,
adjustments are how we got where we are. Very large numbers of people have
been working earnestly to improve some aspect of public life, but our society
is in increasingly severe trouble. We suppose it would just take more people
working for the good, or working harder. We suppose the public is in denial
and/or discouraged, and they are. But that’s not the central point.
Even talking about our interconnected, global COW PUW problems binds us to the
story of PROGRESS, and leads us to believe we can make adjustments so that
PROGRESS can continue. It cannot. Adjustments to the Progress story ARE the
Progress story. Adjustments to the status quo ARE the status quo.
CULTURAL STORIES
How does a bee know how to communicate with other bees, find flowers, and make
honey? We talk about “instincts” that we assume are programmed into their
DNA.
Our relatively complicated human “operating systems” are mostly taught to
us when we are children. We learn speech, toilet training, table manners,
social skills, reading and writing. We learn how the world works, and how to
get along in it. We learn what is true and false, right and wrong, possible
and impossible. Cultural stories are everything we learn through our whole
lives: everything we know or believe.
Our cultural stories appear to us to simply be the way of things: Reality. But
because we can point to cultures with very different stories from our own, we
see it’s not that simple.
We all want to do “what’s right,” but what is that? Our behaviors tend
to reflect our mores and laws, which tend to reflect our beliefs: our cultural
stories. The cultural stories, behaviors, laws and institutions of a culture
all tend to evolve together. Schools (and other institutions) teach children
what the society thinks they should know. The children grow into adults who
know “the way of things,” and behave more-or-less as the culture thinks
they should. The adults then reinforce society’s institutions, laws and
practices, and teach them to the next generation.
When times are stable, the cultural stories we learn as children prepare us for
our roles in society. Our stories unite us, giving us a shared interpretation
of the events we all experience. When times are changing, as they are now, our
stories may not be equal to the task of preparing us to live successfully in
the world as it is. Our cultural stories need to be challenged.
For example, we were all brought up to believe that war was necessary, from
time to time, to protect our country. The role of citizens was to trust our
leaders, pay our taxes, and make occasional sacrifices--sometimes human
sacrifices. Now we find ourselves involved in the military occupation of two
countries. We are told that keeping just one soldier in Afghanistan for one
year costs $1 million. Why are we there? Trust your leaders and don’t ask
questions.
There are quite a lot of cultural stories we are not invited to question. Yet
our unquestioning obedience has brought us to COW PUW.
DECEPTIVE PERCEPTION
Why not simply change our stories, when reason says they no longer serve us?
Our perception deceives us. Deceptive Perception is a mental illusion all
normal people experience that gives us the impression that we live in “the
real world.”
We have five senses, which, we think, anchor us to reality. But in truth, the
flow of sensory information coming into us at every moment is so great that our
conscious minds couldn’t handle it. Our sensory data are filtered through
our subconscious minds, eliminating the extraneous, so we can concentrate on
the business at hand.
The filtering, however, is based on what we know (or believe we know): our
cultural stories. What do we need to see / hear / smell / taste / touch for
what we are doing? Depending on our task, our perception may be distracted,
narrow, prejudiced, and otherwise subjective.
Our subconscious then knits together “reality” for us, so we have the
impression that there is one “real world” in which we all live. Though our
worlds are very real to us, WE ALL LIVE IN DIFFERENT WORLDS.
We imagine that other people live in the same world we do. Therefore, when
people act in ways we would not, they may seem malicious—or just plain crazy!
Saying the rich and powerful could change society but do not makes it sound as
if they are our enemies. They are not.
Almost everyone at almost every time is trying to do what he or she thinks is
best under the circumstances. But what are the circumstances?
Every normal person knows many things, only some of which are true.
EARTH AS GARDEN
Earth-as-Garden is a proposal for new cultural stories that would lead to new
institutions, mores and laws. The Earth Garden story is a starting point for
urging people into behaviors that would give us planetary residents the best
hope of happy lives, and a sustainable, healthy and prosperous future.
The Garden paradigm is about planning, preparing, planting, tending, and
harvesting, in a cycle that continues sustainably. Scraps and waste are
recycled, in a closed system—like the Earth.
Of course, gardens alone do not serve all human needs. What might a community
be like that expressed the Garden paradigm?
Community-as-garden would not just grow plants and animals sustainably, but
provide all goods and services needed. It would make and distribute clothing,
shoes, furniture, tools, hardware, communications, musical instruments, books,
means of transportation, medicine, dentistry, education, and so on. Doing so
it would provide work not just for gardeners and farmers, but also miners,
manufacturers, teachers, doctors, systems analysts, builders, shopkeepers and
laborers.
If we envision our communities as gardens, how do we know what belongs, and
what doesn’t belong? Which are the plants, and which are the weeds?
EARTH GARDEN PRINCIPLES
Four particular Earth Garden principles are Sustainability, Cooperation,
Efficiency, and Beauty. Of course, living successfully also requires
integrity, independence, trustworthiness, reason, knowledge, and assorted
virtues. The need for these latter is already part of our cultural stories.
SUSTAINABILITY. We humans have demonstrated the ability to do adventurous
things, like breaking the sound barrier and traveling to the moon. We have
created amazing technologies and sophisticated social systems.
But we have been slow to recognize the problems with runaway growth on a finite
planet.
In the future, we can’t have more people than resources. Every person alive
requires food. We can have arbitrarily great wealth, but not for an
arbitrarily large population.
We will have to give up unsustainable use of fresh water, oil, coal, natural
gas, and give up activities that pollute the ground, air, or water.
Our economy is being crushed by debt that can’t be paid pack. That is
unsustainable.
Any system or practice that can’t be sustained must be changed, or fail.
This is obvious. This is reality. If we expect to live in this world for the
indefinite future, we must live sustainably. We must sooner or later discard
any activity that degrades the environment.
COOPERATION. The “garden” we tend must be the Earth. In an interconnected
world, attending to just our community or our country is unsustainable. Since
we rely on the global climate, and global resources, and the natural world, our
attention must extend to the whole Earth, as well as the community of human
beings.
Any plan that would benefit ourselves but would seem unjust to others, can’t
be adopted. Most people are suspicious of those with different cultural
stories. We need plans robust enough to accommodate everyone, and that are
transparently fair, or they won’t be supported.
Designing a world that works requires brainstorming “far out”
possibilities, then trusting ourselves to discard unworkable ideas. We need
patience to discuss how to proceed, despite our different perceptions and
cultural stories. Our “gut feelings” have failed us in the past. We need
logical procedures for coming to agreement.
EFFICIENCY. The present GROWTH-society tolerates a lot of waste.
We build automobiles that are expensive to repair. The original Volkswagen
Beetles were built with few changes year over year. This made it possible to
keep old cars running using salvaged parts. Of course, manufacturing and
selling new cars generates more economic activity than does repairing old cars.
In the growth era, waste created wealth. But in a resource-constrained world,
waste creates deprivation.
Composting is the ultimate efficiency. Plant waste and garbage become high
quality plant food. Waste doesn’t accumulate, the plants prosper, the garden
thrives, our lives are supported, and the whole system works on renewable solar
power. Simple and elegant.
Any human activity that produces waste that doesn’t feed another process is
unsustainable, but also wasteful and--inefficient.
BEAUTY. Earth-as-garden must be cooperative and harmonious, but also
beautiful. If we grow the human population beyond the point where everyone can
have a good life, including healthy food, shelter, basic education, healthcare
and other human rights—then not everyone will have a good life. Such a
situation could be sustainable, in the sense that famine and plague will always
limit population. But is it good? Is it beautiful?
People will resist a plan that they don’t experience as good, and right. The
paradigm must change, but our need to do what we think is right -- cannot
change.
What shall we take with us into the Garden? Beliefs, institutions and
practices that are sustainable, cooperative, efficient, and beautiful
GOD OF THE GARDEN
Gardening is what God does. The sun comes up in the morning and goes down at
night; rains come; seeds grow; and animals, including ourselves, eat of his
garden.
Consider the butterflies, the birds, the bees, and the babbling brooks: the
Creator is making beauty. The Creator is writing a beautiful story, in which
we get to play a part. That’s not a trivial role for us human beings.
Atheists, don’t be put off by this wording. Just observe: the Universe
creates life.
We parents love and try to protect our children. Suppose there is a God, who
created us all. Would we expect that God to be a less loving, less caring
parent than we ourselves?
We human parents can’t guarantee the success of our children. They must be
able to make mistakes, or they can’t grow. But we try to provide them a
successful path forward.
The creative elements of the Universe have given humankind an impressive DNA
inheritance, rich historical experiences, and a planetary home with abundant
resources and beauty.
A billion-year successful future is possible for humankind, if we choose to
claim it. But it is not guaranteed; it can slip through our fingers.
If there is a path to a successful human future, then ordinary reason tells us
how to follow it. Considering the effects of our actions on the next seven
generations, for example, is a good start.
Cause and effect apply. In these times, we are badly served by the notion of
an impatient and warlike God. If our religious beliefs conflict with meeting
society’s present needs, our religious beliefs must be updated.
If we believe we can have a billion-year successful future, we can release
ourselves from incremental thinking, and explore ways to make human life truly
wonderful.
WHAT CAN ONE PERSON DO?
My activist friends are in a hurry to “do something” to “make a
difference.” We know that things break and need to be fixed, and we should
fix them. If we can’t fix them personally, we report them to the
authorities. When that doesn’t work, we protest, or “struggle against”
unjust people or policies or institutions, hoping they will fix them.
This approach assumes that our civilization is essentially on the right path,
and relatively minor adjustments will serve.
What can we do if our social systems aren’t broken, but are wrong for the
times? Suppose we are a caterpillar, but need to be a butterfly? The
butterfly we need to be is not a caterpillar with wings, but something entirely
different. The caterpillar doesn’t need to be protested, but transformed.
Here’s something you can do. Every day, set a timer for 10 minutes. For
that time, give yourself a vacation from business as usual:
FIRST, discharge any ANGER you may have at people, institutions, or policies.
Yell and scream if you have a suitable place. If you are keeping any enemies,
confront them if it will help, but get your anger out without doing harm. Then
forgive everyone.
SECOND, if you have time left, take a vacation from WORRY. Give yourself
permission to look at our global circumstances without fear. Remember that no
matter how serious things may appear, nothing will get appreciably worse during
your 10 minutes.
THIRD, if you have time left, consider what a sustainable future that works for
everyone might look like. ENTER THE GARDEN and look at the fruits of
sustainable, efficient, cooperative and beautiful choices.
If you find envisioning the Garden hard, then read, or talk to others about
their ideas. Quite a lot of people are working on transforming society.
LASTLY, if you have time left, APPRECIATE your world. Bring to mind everything
for which you are grateful. Gratitude helps possibility thinking.
How, asks the PROGRESS mind, can this inner work address our outer COW PUW
situation?
In the PROGRESS dream, it cannot. Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz clicks together
her red slippers and says “There’s no place like home.” In Oz these are
nonsensical acts. But Oz is the dream! Dorothy has to wake up to return to
Kansas.
Realization of the outer EARTH GARDEN will have to wait for more people to wake
up. Lots of people are waking up, and leadership is emerging. But that is
almost beside the point.
When we were growing up, we weren’t told we could choose the story we live
in, but we can. Once we wake up to the state of the Earth, we think
differently. We hear the conversations around us in a different way. We have
new options. We are already free of the dream.
We see that the Earth is already a great garden. The sun evaporates water and
rain falls. Plants grow. Abundance and possibilities surround us.
The inner EARTH GARDEN is ours as soon as we claim it. The Universe is already
biased toward abundant life, and we can cooperate with it. We can plan, and
plant and prune our share of the garden. We can be patient, appreciative,
grounded, and secure.
Ready or not, the world is changing. The most important contribution you can
make to the change is to bring the EARTH GARDEN inside yourself.
You can live in the Garden at every moment, starting now.
Hank Stone
hstone@rochester.rr.com
December 29, 2010
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