It
is hard to change learned behaviours, but change is imperative. We have no
choice if we are to halt and reverse the frenzied drive through the bleak landscape
of societal and ecological decline. The climate is changing faster than we
recognize. There are some that, remarkably, still - heads in the sand - fail to
recognize this at all, while calamities
befall mostly those who can least bear them. Where will the next one hit?
At
the top, governments are creaking. Their stock response to new challenges is often
to pile on more misery through austerity and cuts to services. Refugees are corralled,
ridiculed and marginalized. “Hundreds
of millions of people across the globe have been cast aside by globalization as
human refuse. They are worth nothing to the corporate state. They are denied
jobs, benefits, dignity and self-worth,” writes Chris Hedges at www.truthdig.org.
The natural world is assaulted and battered.
Wars proliferate; nations and countless (undocumented) innocents that do not
count are condemned to an endless cycle
of suffering. Tit-for-tat, an-eye-for-an-eye, it is said, leads to a world that
is blind. The elite are laughing all the way to the bank, of course. They
double down on their attrition, knee-jerk vengeful reactions, arming shady
militias and switching sides with their divide-and-conquer tactics. They shake
it up, drive a wedge, and deliver with shock-and-awe pyrotechnics for the home
audience. At the same time, pressing issues are ignored, vital choices are
sidestepped, as governments in cahoots with corporations dither and obfuscate, kicking
the collective can down the road, leaving their successors and future
generations to try to clean up their mess.
Stand
back, take a deep breath, and reflect. Where does all this lead? Where does it
end up? Back at the beginning, where we
were, no progress made? What goes around, comes around. As Jean-Baptiste
Alphonse Karr noted in 1849: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
Time to press re-set and start over with a fresh approach.
***
At
the grassroots, a willful transformation is taking place, taking root and
flourishing in many communities around the world. Passionate, fiery voices tell
it as it is. They champion vital causes. They are intrepid souls like Vandana
Shiva, Naomi Klein, Jane Goodall, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Jon Pilger, Chris
Hedges, Julien Assange, Edward Snowden, Paul Craig Roberts, Eric Margolis,
David Suzuki, George Monbiot, Nafeez Ahmed, Thierry Meyssan, Yanis Varoufakis,
Derrick Jensen, Bill McKibben, Joel Salatin and many, many more….
Organizations
such as Greenpeace, 350.org, Resilience, Sustainable Pulse, Survival
International, Friends of the Earth, The Ecologist, Bioneers, Transition Towns
Network, Pachamama Alliance, NextGen Climate, The Cornucopia Project, Non-GMO
Project, Avaaz, WikiLeaks and many many more are raising the consciousness and
effecting genuine change. The paradigm shift is underway. These worthy, truly
transformative efforts are already stemming the slide in so many directions – a
warming planet, extreme weather events, acidifying oceans, chemical pollution,
heightened atmospheric radiation, depleted and poisoned soils, desertification,
deforestation, threats to democracy, national and personal freedoms and much
more besides….
Caring
and sharing are occurring allowing a certain level of healing to occur. A parallel economy, replacing
competition with co-operation is sprouting, utilizing principles of localism. Using
only what we need, when and where we need it, individuals, families and
communities are learning how to be frugal, minimize waste and work together creatively
in a spirit of collaboration.
Social media have
taught us valuable lessons in how to share, with friends, with community, with
the world. Gone (sadly) are the days of letter-writing as a principle way of
staying in touch across distances. We still have the ubiquitous phone, but
lives have been transformed by the convenience and speed of text, instant
messaging, email, digital video and image. We post to our Facebook wall, tweet,
blog our thoughts and post our photos on Instagram. In sharing so instantly and
often with our circle of friends and
the world at large, we are having to learn how to prioritize our time instead
of wasting it, and these lessons are hard. Time that used to be spent talking
in person is replaced by hours of solitary surfing, browsing, ogling, googling,
messaging, commenting, liking and posting, in thrall to our personal devices.
Slaves to technology, it is easy for us to forget to look up, smell the coffee
(and roses), spend time in Nature, and truly take in our surroundings,
especially when swept away in the moment.
But at least in our digital pursuits, we are generally sharing, be it
information or entertainment.
A lot of these
easy means of communication come to us for free. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter,
Instagram, Pinterest, Blogger, WordPress and many apps are there for the taking.
It is no wonder that we are streaming movies and news, using wi-fi, posting
freely and abandoning mainstream television and newspapers. The talking heads
of TV and the puppet scribes of the press are delivering mainly bland
commentary sanctioned and sanitized by the corporate barons and their elite;
alternative viewpoints online can be so much more salient and edifying when one
learns where to find them midst the hysteria.
At the same
time, many of us are seeking ways to share more locally, within our
communities. While it is nice to be able to drink fine wines from France and Chile ,
eat artisan cheeses from Italy ,
sip on fair trade coffee from Costa Rica
and Columbia , and use organic olive oil from Spain and Greece
Many of us have
too much stuff stowed away; stuff that lurks in boxes and cupboards and
basements, rarely seeing the light of day; stuff that other people could use. We
have over-consumed. We can shift focus from buying-and-selling-and-renting-and-wasting
to sharing-and-trading-and-using-and-returning. This would foster community
participation and networking. As an organic farmer selling at farmers markets,
I know well that it is good to trade with fellow-farmers and-producers; to share experience and
knowledge with customers. A personal goal is to help develop a localized free
exchange & trading of goods and services in the community which I call
home, in which money does not need to change hands. A pilot program here in
Northumberland is mooted.
The
corporations may be tightening their control and governments may be leading us
into wars and want with no end in sight, but smallholders and radical thinkers
around the world are making a difference in effecting substantial change at the
local level. In appealing to our better natures, they are helping to build
resilient communities based on eternal virtues of love and empathy, through
caring and sharing. Back in 1759 Voltaire advised in Candide “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
In
1969, Joni Mitchell sang
“We are stardust
We are golden
Billion year old carbon
Caught in the devil’s
bargain
And we’ve got to get
ourselves
Back to the garden.”
And
in 1973 E.F. Schumacher authored “Small is Beautiful” , championing
village-based economics and smaller-scale, appropriate technologies. It is time
to re-adopt forward ways of thinking. Press
Re-set. After all, as Vandana Shiva says: “We are all seeds.”
