Greetings to you on Samhain, C.E. 2011.
I have read that one of the last things Dr. Timothy Leary was quoted as saying shortly before his death was “Hold on to your seats! We’re in for a wild ride!”
The news tonight reports the 7th billionth person born on our Sacred Mother Earth today. Somewhere I heard it said they are expecting it to reach around 9 billion by the year 2050. It is my feeling that humans as a species should probably not exceed 3 billion people if we want to have any room left for a natural world (our Mother and sustenance.) We topped that in 1965. So welcome, little one. I hope we can give you a world worth living in.
In virtually every arena of “modern-life” there is the notion that for an entity to be well it must be in a state of constant growth. In technology, economics, education and many others the “more is better” is seemingly integral to our perception that something is doing well, e.g., is “progress.” Yet this same necessity of “constant growth” is the very definition of cancer cells.
The heralded “globalization” we have witnessed has had a dark side it carries within it. For what once now could be a nation-state event is almost always a world event. Having worked for most of my adult life towards an “awakening” of sorts I find myself extremely frustrated at the short-sightedness of my nation, the Human Beings. We have been given the gift of the Sacred Fire and in our intelligence the ability to see beyond the immediate moment and the faculty of Reason to make decisions for our future. Yet I see little evidence we (or at least our so-called leaders) have done anything but look forward with the immediate motive of profit in the economic, political, and social realms. And this is simply a irresponsible, unsustainable and obscene motivation. By these means the Human Nation can never come close to what we are meant to be.
While population rises rapidly, resources are required to maintain the above mentioned “constant growth.” In fact, a state of constant growth is in itself unsustainable within any closed system. And if we cannot function as our Sacred Mother Earth has for billions of years, i.e., as a sustainable process of sacred evolutionary life, then our species will fail. All life and being upon this Mother Earth is inextricably woven together. Brought about through ancient forces and the process of time, the Star Father Sun pouring out his energy to make Mother Earth fecund with life. This mysterious power and sacred gift called Life. This way is a teaching and a mirroring to us and our evolution beyond a collapsing world, for this “Human Nation” world will most certainly collapse continuing in the way it has since nearly the dawn of history. Trying to escape this closed-system by looking to the stars is no solution, for if we cannot live sustainably within the matrix of life upon this planet we have no business exporting a devouring paradigm in space exploration. That, and, it’s simply not do-able.
There are many, many places to point to in illustration. We have mentioned overpopulation. So let’s move on to Energy, for a technological society is the fundamental instrument in globalization. Here looms the initial “salvation” and now immanent damnation of our Human World: carbon-based fossil fuels. So much of the global economy is still bound by it’s addiction to fossil fuels, and so many powerful economic and political entities are arrayed to fight till our atmosphere chokes, our planet burns, drowns, freezes, droughts and blows with toxins; as long as their profits remain outlandish and obscene. It *WILL* take a major awakening by the Human Beings to overthrow this entrenched and elite band of planetary criminals. And a hard battle.
And now we come to the third elephant in the room. Economy. Unrestricted, laissez faire Capitalism is based on “constant growth.” In earlier periods of history it formed an important stepping stone in social development. Soon, however, the fact that under this unrestricted capitalism all money eventually moves further and further into the hands of fewer and fewer became evident. We have known the “Great Depression” as one of its’ faces.
[Synchronicity Interlude: I just received a telephone call from the Human Rights Campaign while typing this and after listening to a well spoken advocate asking for my continued support, I knew what was coming next and interrupted him by saying, "look...I live below the poverty level, so if your asking me to become a "member" and give you $35.00, I just can't do it. I do what I can in the ways that I can, but somehow we have to get beyond the 'whoever has the most money wins' dynamic."]
Anyway, I don’t know of any economic model for “steady-state” capitalism. I know of mixtures of capitalism and socialism and capitalism and communism but I don’t know any form of sustainable pure capitalism. At the end of the day, every business that can’t make a profit is a business that is failing. Can an economy grow forever without running into limitations in both natural resources and human population. Does a “healthy economy” mean we have to have more and more people buying more and more “stuff?” Has anyone ever considered such a thing as a “steady state” economy? Would such a thing be antithesis to so-called free-market capitalism?
I see some hope in the recent global Occupy Movements, for it is the first time that those losing out, or about to lose out in the coming Global Collapse are moving from the grass roots and fighting back against their growing disenfranchisement from the political, economic and social realities I speak of. I can only hope this soon encompasses the planetary-biological realms as well.
Nothing in nature operates in a way even remotely connected to capitalistic growth economics.
“The major problems of this world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way humans think.”
Gregory Bateson
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