Club Earth Forums--Main Conclusion
Can you lead your family, colleagues and community toward principled action to conserve and protect the gifts and blessings of the natural world? This central question represents the overall conclusion of The Cepia Club’s Earth Month Critical Community Issues Forums of April 2008.
As with all revolutions in a society, the long-term changes for a better way of living together become permanent when rooted in the culture. Culture has a sense of attachment and concern to a particular place and feelings, thoughts or values of the people there. Culture simply happens from the bottom up, instead of top down. True culture, true living, and indeed the good life, all happen where the land meet the people. Nothing will ever prove as important as choosing the ground upon which one stands, and then having the conviction to stand up for right and justice. In terms of the earth’s future to sustain a political system, an economy, a society, and the values of good, honest people, time runs quick.
Circumstances, issues and concerns switch once in a while. As predicted in the 1970s by several think-tank studies, civilization developed by the human species now faces the troubling catastrophes, all from a selfish consumption of the cheap and easy, now running out of supply. We have not stored our grain, so to say, for the famines that might have come. Catastrophes emerge. The earth as a living, developing, evolutionary organism, grows as we do, and it has always adapted to protect itself and the basic Prime Cause and Purpose: “To be able to grow life.” But that might mean other than human life. The Earth possess one simple fact: It is the only place within the known universe right now that did allow life as we define it to develop.
It should not matter what the concerns us–war over energy, food, water, and temperate air; global warming or an ice age; poverty, disease, or political and religious conflicts–the earth will change to protect itself, even at our expense. In all the intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual forms, our life here might change despite wanting something different. If humanity does not change, the suffering might well grow cataclysmic to the extent of a war of all against all. Change must come. But the individual must be that agent of change. And choosing to change is the power nature gives us humans.
Political systems determine “who gets what, how much do they get, and when do they get it.” Cynically, the common public accepts that as normal. Like self-interested people we are, we follow toward that golden goose to get what we can. No one is immune from it. Who would not want to get something for free, even by honest cheating or self-justified ignorance? As was stated by Club Friend Dylarg, It is not within the ability or even the responsibility of government to fix all mistakes which we have created for ourselves.
Choosing a new President every four or eight years does not make any difference, let alone a difference in how we treat or rather mistreat nature. One person at the head of government in the Oval Office must battle 435 Representatives and 100 Senators in Congress, several million Federal government employees or contractors, 50 governors and 50 state houses, and scores of thousands of local county, city, village and town boards, plus all the millions of state and local government workers at that level. Attempts to change anything that affects large public constituencies like must measure the costs. Tens of millions of people with some form of government post or job (from the Secretary of State to the city mayor and dog catcher, or defense contractor factory worker) want to keep what they got, keep getting more (raises, pension, benefits, etc.), and keep on getting it without end.
Can a government really make the change from the top down with the institutions resistant to rapid change? Only three times in American history has the country faced the type of rapid, transformation and reordering on the faster than normal speed and scale. First, came the Revolution and Constitutional Era–the very beginning of our sovereign self-government. Second, occurred the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. Third, the Great Depression and World War II Era. All three instances of revolution in our cultural of ideas and biases, following to the politics and economics that changed afterward, had near catastrophic consequences for our independence if the change did not happen. Cchange took slow form over a decade or more, or in the case of civil and equal rights, a century (and still not completed). People resistant to the changes in all three cases–the Reactionaries–had enough power to delay, stymie, and almost end the government’s actions.
Whether we mean our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or our ability to obtain and consume healthy food and clean water, we have no time to wait for the top down change. RIGHT NOW we must think and act to save our planet, its resources, and its ability to sustain its people, and to preserve the peaceful sharing of it justly with all peoples of all colors and beliefs.
What power of the masses working on their own in peace and cooperation have any need for government? Activism in partisan and party politics ends in useless, mean, divisive, pointless waste of time and effort, unless with a particular project. Awareness from one person to another; apprenticeship in the actions at the level of person, home, and friends; where the feet touch the ground will make a revolution of thought and action permanent in culture. Ideas and behavior move mountains, feed the hungry, not passing a law outlawing “tragedy.” The only force against it comes from the reaction of government finding out that the people really do not need their “leadership,” nor want to pay them millionaire pensions and health benefits for life. Except for narrow things, as how the Constitution defined them, people govern themselves quite well without a President or a Congress, or even a governor for that matter.
The Cepia Club endorses full of faith the B.I.S.O.N. philosophy, as presented to one of its followers, to BEGIN the process of awareness and action.
1) Believe in the Spirit of Nature–just come to realize and accept your impact on it, for good or not good, then act for good. 2) Bring In the Spirit of Nature–plant things, get dirty in the playing and working, and focus the energy you have into that needed by the things in nature, which may differ from pre-biased ideas. 3) Be in the Spirit of Nature–once finished with the work, look at the beauty, and look as the helper of Creative Nature, and humble in enjoyment of the power and cycles of the living on earth.
From such little simple steps, one can grow redwoods and rainforests, again.
As with all revolutions in a society, the long-term changes for a better way of living together become permanent when rooted in the culture. Culture has a sense of attachment and concern to a particular place and feelings, thoughts or values of the people there. Culture simply happens from the bottom up, instead of top down. True culture, true living, and indeed the good life, all happen where the land meet the people. Nothing will ever prove as important as choosing the ground upon which one stands, and then having the conviction to stand up for right and justice. In terms of the earth’s future to sustain a political system, an economy, a society, and the values of good, honest people, time runs quick.
Circumstances, issues and concerns switch once in a while. As predicted in the 1970s by several think-tank studies, civilization developed by the human species now faces the troubling catastrophes, all from a selfish consumption of the cheap and easy, now running out of supply. We have not stored our grain, so to say, for the famines that might have come. Catastrophes emerge. The earth as a living, developing, evolutionary organism, grows as we do, and it has always adapted to protect itself and the basic Prime Cause and Purpose: “To be able to grow life.” But that might mean other than human life. The Earth possess one simple fact: It is the only place within the known universe right now that did allow life as we define it to develop.
It should not matter what the concerns us–war over energy, food, water, and temperate air; global warming or an ice age; poverty, disease, or political and religious conflicts–the earth will change to protect itself, even at our expense. In all the intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual forms, our life here might change despite wanting something different. If humanity does not change, the suffering might well grow cataclysmic to the extent of a war of all against all. Change must come. But the individual must be that agent of change. And choosing to change is the power nature gives us humans.
Political systems determine “who gets what, how much do they get, and when do they get it.” Cynically, the common public accepts that as normal. Like self-interested people we are, we follow toward that golden goose to get what we can. No one is immune from it. Who would not want to get something for free, even by honest cheating or self-justified ignorance? As was stated by Club Friend Dylarg, It is not within the ability or even the responsibility of government to fix all mistakes which we have created for ourselves.
Choosing a new President every four or eight years does not make any difference, let alone a difference in how we treat or rather mistreat nature. One person at the head of government in the Oval Office must battle 435 Representatives and 100 Senators in Congress, several million Federal government employees or contractors, 50 governors and 50 state houses, and scores of thousands of local county, city, village and town boards, plus all the millions of state and local government workers at that level. Attempts to change anything that affects large public constituencies like must measure the costs. Tens of millions of people with some form of government post or job (from the Secretary of State to the city mayor and dog catcher, or defense contractor factory worker) want to keep what they got, keep getting more (raises, pension, benefits, etc.), and keep on getting it without end.
Can a government really make the change from the top down with the institutions resistant to rapid change? Only three times in American history has the country faced the type of rapid, transformation and reordering on the faster than normal speed and scale. First, came the Revolution and Constitutional Era–the very beginning of our sovereign self-government. Second, occurred the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. Third, the Great Depression and World War II Era. All three instances of revolution in our cultural of ideas and biases, following to the politics and economics that changed afterward, had near catastrophic consequences for our independence if the change did not happen. Cchange took slow form over a decade or more, or in the case of civil and equal rights, a century (and still not completed). People resistant to the changes in all three cases–the Reactionaries–had enough power to delay, stymie, and almost end the government’s actions.
Whether we mean our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or our ability to obtain and consume healthy food and clean water, we have no time to wait for the top down change. RIGHT NOW we must think and act to save our planet, its resources, and its ability to sustain its people, and to preserve the peaceful sharing of it justly with all peoples of all colors and beliefs.
What power of the masses working on their own in peace and cooperation have any need for government? Activism in partisan and party politics ends in useless, mean, divisive, pointless waste of time and effort, unless with a particular project. Awareness from one person to another; apprenticeship in the actions at the level of person, home, and friends; where the feet touch the ground will make a revolution of thought and action permanent in culture. Ideas and behavior move mountains, feed the hungry, not passing a law outlawing “tragedy.” The only force against it comes from the reaction of government finding out that the people really do not need their “leadership,” nor want to pay them millionaire pensions and health benefits for life. Except for narrow things, as how the Constitution defined them, people govern themselves quite well without a President or a Congress, or even a governor for that matter.
The Cepia Club endorses full of faith the B.I.S.O.N. philosophy, as presented to one of its followers, to BEGIN the process of awareness and action.
1) Believe in the Spirit of Nature–just come to realize and accept your impact on it, for good or not good, then act for good. 2) Bring In the Spirit of Nature–plant things, get dirty in the playing and working, and focus the energy you have into that needed by the things in nature, which may differ from pre-biased ideas. 3) Be in the Spirit of Nature–once finished with the work, look at the beauty, and look as the helper of Creative Nature, and humble in enjoyment of the power and cycles of the living on earth.
From such little simple steps, one can grow redwoods and rainforests, again.
posted by Scipio Cepicanus @ 12:32 PM
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