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| Progress today means everyone stopping and having a lie down. |
It is interesting to note that the way to deal with the corona virus is the very same way to deal with so many other challenges facing humanity - stop doing so much unnecessary, completely unnecessary, and wasteful things.
In other words, stay home, or close to home, more often.
Right now the world has stopped doing lots of "extra but nice to have" things to save ourselves. I wonder - will we do the same to save Mother Earth, and ultimately ourselves?
Will we continue our temporary forced simplicity, in which we are concentrating more on things like where our food is coming and how it gets to our table, or will we be lured back to the abnormality of excessive and wasteful ways?
While the demise of our planetary life support system isn't as pronounced as a highly contagious virus killing thousands of friends and family in a short period of time, it is a more urgent issue.
Climate change, air pollution, species extinction, soil depletion, and habitat loss might not kill you quickly, but that masks the fact that people are already dying from all of these things.
Expect that trend to continue. Many more will die down the road if we fail to seize the moment, have the courage to take back our lives, and continue our collective simplification and lifestyle downsizing.
We will do it to save ourselves an loved ones from a virus, but will we do it to save the Earth? Will we stop to save ourselves in the long run?
Any way we go is going to be difficult, which is why you will never hear anyone in the establishment make any recommendations large enough to help solve any of our problems. No one wants to be the bummer at the party.
What they don't recognize, is that the party is over.
At this late stage in the game, a planned downsizing is preferred to an imminent collapse, and over the past few weeks we have already started the downsizing.
I consider this to be a good start in the direction we desperately need to go.
We will have regrets if we don't take advantage of this time in history when things are ripe for turning things toward simpler, slower, and more sustainable ways.
Otherwise, future generations will be asking, "When they well knew the generational effects of their lifestyles and their economies and their systems and their greed, why didn't they stop?"
A big part of the problem, as so many others have eloquently pointed out before, is that most people don't look at the big picture or think long term. They're more concerned with immediate gratification, or immediate consequences. Therefore, with something like the coronavirus, they will take action urgently, while the destruction of the very earth and species we depend upon for survival of all mankind is barely an afterthought. Because it's not an immediately pressing issue that affects most people's (at least in the West) daily lives, they can ignore it, or deny it, or pretend it won't affect them. Or, as many individuals are wont to do, they blatantly are apathetic about it all, because they believe by the time their lives end they won't have to face any of the consequences, so why bother worrying about it or doing anything to change it? They can party, use up all the resources, decimate species, ecosystems, and cause suffering to people, but they won't have to pay the tab at the end of it all. Couple that with the fact that we live in a plutocracy where the government, politicians, big corporations, and whomever has wealth has the power, those people are actively opposed to doing anything that would cut into their bottom line: money. It really is up to the average citizen to come together with one another and force these changes. Problem is, getting enough people on board with the same goal in mind and continually working towards it together and not allowing differing agendas and in-fighting to dissolve the cohesion of the group. Additionally, our governments have heavy artillery and police forces to incarcerate or use violence against their own citizens in order to stop them. I'm not saying we should give up or give in, but there are a lot of obstacles and forces we're up against, and looking back through all the decades of movements and leaders and individuals trying to enact these changes, we've made minimal progression in comparison to the juggernaut of industrial civilization and corporations utterly destroying the natural world. I still hope with all my might that we can stop it, and I try my best to not add to the destruction of earth, but it seems like it's going to take an absolute miracle at this point. I'd love to be proven wrong though. I want to be.
ReplyDeleteA pretty accurate assessment, in my opinion. The forces are being brought against the Earth and against her people are mighty indeed.
DeleteBut nature is resilient, and there is still a chance that humanity may take this opportunity to do some serious learning about what it is we are all doing here on this little blue/green marble hanging in the blackness of space.
We have overcome immense obstacles in the past. Hopefully we choose to do so again before collapse becomes unavoidable.
Thank you for your non-destructive ways. I hope you are proven wrong some day. Some day soon.
Just wanted to share a blog post I read that elucidates on all the points you made in your post.
ReplyDeletehttps://howtosavetheworld.ca/2020/05/08/the-needs-of-the-moment/#respond
Thank you for sharing. A lot of good stuff in this post, and on the site. As coronavirus has shown us, we need to be ready for anything. Community resilience is essential.
DeleteMay I share a post from same site that I enjoyed (if reading about global civilizational collapse can be said to be enjoyable)?
https://howtosavetheworld.ca/2019/06/28/being-adaptable-a-reminder-list/
Recently, I came across "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry. I particularly liked this passage about looking to the future as we live our lives.
ReplyDeleteInvest in the millennium.
Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
This is a link to the entire work, a manifesto to live by. https://madagriculture.org/mad-farmer-poems
This is beautiful.
DeleteWe all need to lie down and take a nap - not for Mother Earth, who can shrug us off any time she chooses, thank you corona virus for that gentle or maybe not-so-gentle warning - but for our own continued existence. I, for one, will continue to not buy anything and take many naps for the good of the whole community. You are most welcome.
ReplyDeleteMother Nature, and your community, thank you. Me, too.
DeleteMy new slogan: "Don't Buy Crap - Take A Nap".
As someone with a junk food addiction that is triggered by tiredness , I'd like to add "don't EAT crap, take a nap"
ReplyDeleteVery important. Good food is required for good health.
Delete