Mass Delusion amidst Mass Disinformation and Fear-Based Distraction

Today, three of us had a very provocative conversation here at this hostel in the middle of nowhere ‘Now Here’ in Portugal; a Portuguese guy, an Argentinian IT worker I’ve come to know in the last week and myself. We talked about how the media uses fear to manipulate people, how Pharma companies have lied about and manipulated the entire world towards feeling fear and guilt about vaccines (along with truths about Covid) and how one very inexpensive and effective cure Ivermectin has been quickly denounced and silenced. We talked about cell phone addictions and ultra materialism….and that many of the political satirists, from George Carlin years ago foreseeing how the government and media are puppets to multinationals who are actually the elite in control. 

The Portuguese guy says that it’s almost the same as an authoritarian dictatorship, except that a tyrannical ruler has a face you can point to and blame, whereas this convoluted machine of money and power driving people to busily occupy themselves with just trying to survive with high costs and who are complacently consuming social media (addictively and incessantly) wind up not really questioning or even being consciously aware of the degree to which they are being controlled.

The NY Times has had one after another super frightening article in the last days, yesterday about Philadelphia being rife with guns and shootings, more than NYC or LA. And today an article about a MASSIVE PERFECT STORM that will at any time hit California. Not earthquakes, droughts or fires, but a brewing mega storm with water building from Hawaii, to the extent of the Mississippi river in the sky…and that when it hits the mountains of CA, it will bring biblical rains. This was in today’s paper. So though it may very well be true, the media does its job of keeping people at a high pitch of fear and dread, because this is an excellent vehicle to control people.

The one guy was saying that George Carlin was so right on…and yet few people are aware enough to even question or seek to know. He and I have seen families, sitting with each parent looking down at their phone while their toddlers are acting out, simply seeking to get attention from a parent who sits there entranced, absent and unavailable to properly give he child attention.

I just made a list of (some) of the political satirists from whom I’ve been enlightened about issues, plus another Brit I hadn’t yet heard of till today, Ricky Gervais. If you haven’t listened to Russel Brand, Bill Maher, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Hasan Minhaj…I suggest that you do.

They discuss truths in depth, which mainstream media averts talking about. And the three wealthiest men in the world – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson – who each coordinated their rocket launches with their massive carbon footprint and complete audacity to ignore the global warming occurring that is causing the massive droughts, floods, mass extinction, as if they are above it all and act with impunity with absolutely no regard for what is occurring on the earth – rather than using their money and power to instigate massive action to begin to heal the world, they are guilty for soaring mass delusion. 

What can we do about it? It seems not much. Except that the more that people become aware that our financial system is perpetuating our demise – 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6obeUKWmw&t=166s – the more that the massive population  – and the industries profiting from misinformation and disinformation – and government officials who are millionaire pawns pocketing their gifts and continuing as if we aren’t in the middle of a disaster of magnanimous proportions – can hold them accountable. But as long as people are sleep walking and bent over looking down at their phones rather than looking up and speaking personally with one another, nothing will change. 

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition. The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.

Prince Ea – Depression? Watch this | USA Declining Life Expectancy – Deaths by Despair

Prince Ea Silent Epidemic of Depression

Deaths by despair among the college educated and working class and declining life expectancy rates and poor health from diets low in nutrition have contributed to the physical and emotional health issues of many Americans. And just as the mass extinctions occurring across the globe and the heating of the planet causing extreme weather are human induced and IN OUR CONTROL, I feel that the human condition of physical and emotional illness is also IN OUR CONTROL, induced by negligence and nativity and a system that is closed and protecting the wealthier high dice rollers, and excluding the possibility of small entrepreneurs to even participate on the playing field. 

There must be a paradigm shift from top-down to horizontal, in which everyone is involved in reaching out to help everyone. Right now, I don’t think that anyone in this small community had a clue or a say about their corn fields being torn away to make way for a huge (private industry) Sheets Gas station and truck stop now parked at the edge of their town, and subsequent Sheets 18 wheeler trucks barreling down Main street. In an age of declining oil resources and the more than obvious need to divest and get away from this polluting industry, I feel that this private ownership bombardment is ruthless and should not be acceptable. This new sprawling gas station and truck stop just seems so wrong, at a time that extreme weather is a fallout of global warming and the last thing humans should be doing is further investment in the oil and gas and combustible engine industry.

Education! Education! Sharing the insights, leveling the playing field. Creating common areas for community and residential gardens and fruit trees. We live on a planet that is a garden. Why are fruit and vegetables bar coded?

Startling news in an article July 22nd, 2021 New York Times regarding the US declining life expectancy report.

“Even before the pandemic, the U.S. was mired in an alarming period of rising mortality. It had no modern precedent: During the second half of the 2010s, life expectancy fell on a sustained basis for the first time since the fighting of World War II killed several hundred thousand Americans.

Deaths of despair

“While some of the reasons are mysterious, others are fairly clear. American society has become far more unequal than it used to be, and the recent increases in mortality are concentrated among working-class Americans, especially those without a four-year college degree.

For many, daily life lacks the structure, status and meaning that it once had, as the Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have explained. Many people feel less of a connection to an employer, a labor union, a church or community groups. They are less likely to be married. They are more likely to endure chronic pain and to report being unhappy.

These trends have led to a surge of “deaths of despair” (a phrase that Case and Deaton coined), from drugs, alcohol and suicide. Other health problems, including diabetes and strokes, have also surged among the working class. Notably, the class gaps in life expectancy seem to be starker in the U.S. than in most other rich countries.”

I have been looking for housing and living without a roof for the last week, having returned to the state where I was born and raised to sort through my storage locker, and doing it quite well. I am indeed a survivor who plans ahead for what I’m packing and bringing along with me. I have been surprised and shocked by the continued growth of this once sleepy area; construction, housing developments, investment in the oil and gas industry along with shrinking corn fields. I will be doing a video blog (vlog) shortly, as I daily am able to catch more hours of sleep. In the meantime, I have always eaten well (fruits and veggies), drink lots of water and maintain a daily routine of heart rhythm meditation and remain open and resilient to the various factors which influence my circumstances. 

I believe that mediation is a form of prayer, in which an individual reaches out in silence to a larger entity, for me, God is Dog, Nature, the intelligence of the very, very small, the subatomic in fact.

In my search for housing, I continue to ride my bicycle profusely which keeps me in good shape, and I continually feel gratitude and recognize the positive aspects of all situations, I feel a joy with very, very small things. I notice in my travels, comparisons and returns, for example, to quaint towns and villages which once were my ‘hometown’, are now bustling, heavily trafficked with trucks and extremely loud belching engines and fumes down the main streets. Corn fields have signs advertising multiple sales into creating housing developments, gun shooting warehouses and industries.

I found many, too many, American flags, banners draping patriotism across their lawn and few and far in between signs expressing inclusivity and open borders. I’ve already received hate mail for expressing that Black Lives Matter and Injustice Anywhere is Injustice Everywhere.

As I spent the day cycling and investigating, I found that the typical signs I see on peoples’ lawns and porches are “We Support our Police”, “Trump”, “Beware of Dog”, lots of flags and the occasional “Welcome to My Porch” “Black Lives Matter” and “You are welcome in my neighborhood in Spanish, English and some Asian language. 

The postman in Palmyra said that many properties are for sale and another guy echoed the same statement a few minutes later. Yet whereas previously there were “Room For Rent” signs, I guess these got sort of Covided out. 

Here’s a pic of one person’s local Trump spirit. 

scary!

I stopped to take a picture of this lovely wildflower, growing between the street and the curb. I can identify with this! 

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition.

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“12 Steps to Climate Sobriety” by Erik Molvar

12 Steps to Climate Sobriety by Erik Molvar 12/17/15 

“The nations of the world have unanimously agreed, 195 to zero, that climate change is a major problem, that human activities are a major cause and that it’s high time to do something about it. Those debates are now over globally, although some American politicians have yet to notice.

This signals the arrival of a new era, an era in which the catastrophic consequences of our global fossil fuel addiction have become so obvious that they can no longer be ignored. Recognizing that the world has a problem — and that human activities caused it — is the first step on the long and uncertain path to finding solutions. The Paris summit should put to rest the last of the climate deniers in our own nation.

A new Yale University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science demonstrates that for past two decades, corporate funding has served as the underpinning of a unified network of “contrarian” lobbying firms, politicians and think tanks dedicated to polarizing the issue of climate change and creating the appearance of scientific doubt that human activities are the source of global climate problems. In short, we’ve been taken for a ride. Now that the tie between corporate funding and specific language and thematic content of climate deniers has been demonstrated scientifically with robust data, political leaders should dispense with the charades and start seeking solutions instead.

Solving the world’s climate crisis probably won’t involve digging up Canadian boreal forests to extract tar sands, and then spending more fossil fuels refining them into a usable product to burn. They probably don’t involve strip mining the American West in a quest for low-grade kerogen trapped in “oil shale,” a primitive oil precursor, or digging up the even more primitive deposits of coal. Drilling and fracking the Sagebrush Sea for natural gas and oil will only set progress back. Deforestation, either in remaining old-growth pockets in the Pacific Northwest that still support spotted owls, or in the tropical rainforests so amazing in their biodiversity, will need to be reversed, not accelerated.Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) has developed a famously successful 12-step pathway to help people beat their addictions to alcohol. Modern society’s addiction to fossil fuels is disastrous on a global scale, disrupting the family of nations and visiting calamity on individuals and communities, in a macrocosm of the problems caused by alcoholism. So presented below is a 12-step pathway to climate sobriety, adapted from the blueprint invented by AA (while honoring our Constitution, which requires separation of church and state) to put us all on a path to a more fruitful and sustainable human future:

1. Recognize that burning fossil fuels has altered our global climate by radically increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the air, that deforestation is crippling the planet’s natural ability to absorb this extra carbon and that animal agriculture (especially ruminants like cattle that belch climactically potent methane) plays a significant role in accelerating the aboveground carbon cycle.

2. Recognize that there is a higher authority that can help solve these problems and help restore us to sanity, and it’s called “science.”

3. Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the planet, without which there is no survival for our interdependent web of life, humans included.

4. Make a searching inventory of our own energy uses to increase our own efficiency and reduce our energy footprint as individuals, corporations, governments and nations.

5. Admit to the world that throughout our development as a nation, these United States have, more than any other nation, contributed to the changing global climate through our conspicuous consumption of fossil fuels and have profited from this problematic behavior through the enrichment of a privileged few exploiting mineral resources, both here in the United States and around the world.

6. Make it a priority at all levels of government to remove our own defects of energy use, through ending fossil fuel subsidies of all kinds, keeping publicly owned fossil fuels in the ground, incentivizing renewable energy sources, developing a smarter electrical grid to handle complexities in powering our nation from renewable sources, and empowering individual citizens to become renewable energy producers at the household scale.

7. Humbly ask scientific researchers and engineers, with the support of ample research and development funding, to invent more energy-efficient instruments for our daily lives, and to provide new solutions to global transportation, electrical generation and agricultural practices that eliminate fossil fuel consumption.

8. Make a list of all human communities and natural ecosystems harmed by fossil fuel extraction, combustion and resulting climate disruptions, to gain a complete understanding of the harm we have caused.

9. Make direct amends to such communities and ecosystems through reparations by the fossil fuel industry that fund active restoration of damaged ecosystems, build resilience into communities battered by climate disruption and especially provide subsidies for developing nations to develop their energy technologies along clean, renewable lines.

10. Continue to take an inventory of energy consumption and production here in the United States in an energy audit every five years, and take corrective actions as needed to ensure that we are meeting or exceeding targets to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

11. Seek through continued scientific research to improve our conscious contact with the planet that supports us, developing methods to move from a culture of exploitation to a culture of stewardship that respects the health of the planet and all living beings, and thereby safeguards the future well-being of humanity for all time.

12. Having achieved our climate awakening and developed sustainable, renewable ways to power our society while protecting our environment as a result of these steps, carry this message and these technologies and innovations to other nations throughout the world so that they might also thrive, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

The fossil fuel industry’s public relations teams would like us all to believe that we are powerless to control our energy habits. Now is our big opportunity to prove that we are not slaves. Step one is to banish the doubts (and doubters) of human-caused climate change to the dustbin of history. The Paris accord has done just that.

Molvar is the Sagebrush Sea Campaign Director for WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit environmental group working to protect wildlife, wild places, wild rivers and the health of the American West.”

C-Change Conversations | Making Sense

C-change conversations has a group of volunteers that span the spectrum in terms of political interests:

C-change conversations has a group of volunteers that converse and act on bringing their message about climate change across the country, in a non-partisan and unbiased manner. They are talking to all sorts of groups across the country > specifically garnered for skeptics. People have told them that their presentation opens peoples’ eyes, hearts and minds.

They have a powerful tool to wake people up: it is persuasive, data driven and based on science> open up minds and hearts without stirring up partisan resentment.

I just attended their presentation October 4th, which I found out about through a gentlemen who attends the same french conversation group. I am very impressed with the C-Change conversations group and presentation. They make an effort not to drag politics or anything that may ruffle peoples comfort. It’s thorough, professionally done, and is for climate change skeptics; people who haven’t really understood or known exactly what to think about climate change.

Our C-Change Primer is an educational, non-partisan presentation on the science of climate change. We developed the C-Change Primer in consultation with scientists, business leaders and public policy experts working on climate change. We present the Primer in cities and towns across the United States to community organizations, business and professional associations and at local libraries, etc.

C-Change conversations doesn’t look at climate change as an environmental issue, nor a political issue, but something as something much greater, that will impact what Americans say are most important to them:
> our economy and job security
> our health, well being and personal security
> our exposure to geopolitical instability

Their presentation takes us through 5 questions of how climate change affects us.

c-change conversations 5 questions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They claim that their powerful tool to wake people up is persuasive, data driven and based on science. It opens up minds and hearts without stirring up partisan resentment.

Climate change transcends politics, influencing you negatively regardless of your political persuasion and impact you regardless of your personal wealth.

NASA has released new data regarding how temperature change and rainfall patterns by 2100

NASA educational video melting arctic ice

“So it’s kind of a combination of both industry and conservative philanthropies that are funding this process, and what they did was they borrowed a great deal of the strategy and tactics that came out of the tobacco industry’s efforts to prevent action on the health impacts of smoking.”

Citizens Climate Change Primer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C-change conversations deliberately stays very far away from politics, but I don’t.

Smithsonian Nearly a Billion dollars flow into organized climate change counter movement

C-change conversations does not move into the ‘spiritual’, of the need to create a paradigm shift in how we approach our world, but I do. Charles Eisenstein says it in his speech to a group in New Zealand, about once again absolutely loving and valuing all of the natural world, as opposed to viewing it as a commodity to be manipulated and quantified.

Charles Eisenstein’s speech in New Zealand regarding A New Story of Climate Change  in New Zealand

A New Story of Climate Change – Charles Eisenstein at New Frontiers

Responsible Legislation: Curb Idling Cars & Build Cycling Infrastructure

Rather than diving into where I left off on my book or starting the new blog that is calling me, I just put this together and sent it to the mayor’s office (contact form online). Feel free to copy and paste it if you are aware of this disconnect (lack of awareness) in your own community and wish to send some of the information to your own city government.

Responsible Legislation to curb idling cars and build safe bicycling infrastructure – taking local responsibility for a global problem of extreme warming.

red hot planet article by Jason Samenow for the Washington Post

In lieu of the fact that global temperatures continue to exceed the ‘normal’ averages, year after year as expressed in this article by Jason Samenow in the Washington Post, Red-hot planet: All-time heat records have been set all over the world during the past week It displays the obvious, human induced global warming. I am currently residing in Providence. I get around on a bicycle everywhere that I live. I joined the mayor’s bike ride on the Thursday evening before the PVDfest, to promote bicycling. I have lived in numerous communities in the United States and in several European cities. For example, Germany has an extensive recycling program and an enormous functional infrastructure for bicycling in urban and rural areas. One is not ‘risking one’s life’ to commute by bicycle as they are in most American places. The city of Berlin, Germany hosts maintained and distinct bicycle paths. The bicycle paths are not merely lines drawn on the road or a logo of a bike lane painted on the road, but actually the bike paths are on the sidewalk, with a designated side for cyclists, the other for pedestrians. Cities in France and Scandinavian countries do the same thing. To ride on the road with only a line designating a bike path, is to me, risking injury and death. Therefore to encourage bicycling rather than discouraging it, infrastructure needs to be created to support safe family bicycling.

The cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands is like a science.

Fietspad bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands

The main point of this email is that as someone whose major form of transportation is bicycling, no matter what city or country, I have encountered in just the few months living here in Providence a stupendous number of people who sit in their cars with the engine on, idling, while typically looking down at their phones. People sitting in idling cars are not the exception, but the norm. This is not in exceedingly frigid temperatures or high heat, but pleasant temps. I quickly was able to ascertain that it is everywhere, nothing to do with education, socio economic class, race or age factors. 30% of the population are simply oblivious to how they are contributing to the climate crisis, and sorry to say, along with air conditioning units. I’m sure you are aware of the fact that Americans use much more energy and power than most of the other countries combined, and are directly and indirectly responsible for cataclysmic repercussions everywhere.

You can do the math. I feel the heat as I cycle past cars and smell the exhaust. As an acquaintance mentioned, if people could actually see carbon monoxide, it might be a different story. http://www.silentshadow.org/carbon-monoxide-in-your-car.html
This threat is not observable, like a disease, until it has rendered its affects on the body. Having lived 7 years in Berlin, Germany where I also bicycled, I would see people conscientiously ‘turning off their engine’ even at red lights. What in the world is this complete gap in awareness and education? I would have thought that in a New England capital city there would be a whole lot more awareness and education about this. I have made signs, I have tapped on windows, I have written to the mayor’s office and even mentioned this to the mayor in person during this bike ride.

By the way, sitting on a bus to return to Providence from New York city several weeks ago, the dispatcher called the bus driver and told her to turn off the ignition of the bus while she was waiting another 20 minutes prior to departure, regardless of how hot the bus becomes. She later informed me that in Manhattan, the fine is $2,000 per idling bus. Since people don’t seem to be cognizant whatsoever of their role in contributing to global warming, or their own actions, I suggest like cutting out the sales of HUGE sugary drinks, enforcing awareness upon them through instituting fines if people are found sitting in their cars with the engine on. A fine large enough to deter people from even thinking twice about it. And with the money accrued, build safe and convenient bicycling infrastructure. Lead the country in building community, in attracting people to healthier, sustainable habits that encourage people to exercise more and eat right and have awareness of how their actions affect the entire planet. Lead other cities by example of your proactive legislations.

This city is very, very easy and convenient to get around on bicycle, and it could be made to be even more bicycle friendly. And if you think I’m exaggerating or think that it is unimportant, put 15 of your police officers out on bicycles to see, feel and smell for themselves how an entire metropolitan population is contributing to the climate crisis that we are in, and seemingly completely oblivious. And if you have never heard of or read this prominent British journalist’s writings, I suggest that you do. http://www.monbiot.com/2018/07/02/in-memoriam/

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter the blogger

The Eloquently and Elegantly stated Truth

Nothing is more important than reading this. And then reading it again.

The most elegant and eloquent presentation of the facts, that anyone who can understand words, must be persuaded to hear and respond to emotionally and intuitively as the truth.

I have merely copied and pasted the text of this writing within the link below (minus the original links within it), feeling it to be the utterly most important statement of vast insight, that everyone must read. And continue to talk.

-.—.—-.—–.——.-.—.—-.—–.——.-.—.—-.—–.——.-.—.—-.—–.—-.-.—.–.-

http://www.grenzbegriff.com/2017/10/leaving.html

 

these are my words at the time of writing — I am more like tree than rock — as I bend to reach the sunlight

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Leaving

Hi friends,

I’m leaving Google at the end of next week.

There’s too much I want to say.  🙂

I spent the summer away from work, outdoors in Oregon, awash in beauty.  I learned a lot.  I wept at how we’re treating the earth, as I rode past mile after mile of logged forests, polluted streams, and lifeless monocrop fields.

I got to be part of what I’ll call “alternative culture”, to explore ways of meeting all of our human needs through local community alternatives to basically everything we currently use money for.  I wrote some about this time here on this blog.  I barely scratched the surface though.  More and more people, perhaps millions now even in the West, are devoting their lives to new (and sometimes ancient) ways of living in healthy relationship with each other and with the earth.  While they are usually partly within the current system, when all of these new ways of living come together, the current system becomes obsolete.  I see joyous glimpses of this everywhere.

Meanwhile our dominant civilization is killing its own foundation: the healthy web of life on earth.  Through deforestation and pollution we are destroying the ability of the planet to support all forms of life.  We can see this in the oceans where the fish populations are collapsing, the silent fields that were once thriving forests, and the deserts where millions of people go hungry in drought.  This ecological crisis can’t be solved simply by swapping oil for solar panels.  I’m no longer optimistic that we will soon fix these problems with some new technology.  It’s quite possible that climate change is exacerbating the storms and droughts and fires, and that these will continue to become more severe in the next years.

The effects are not evenly distributed.  The unhoused breathe wildfire smoke while many of the housed have filtered air.  Some of us see our homes flooded or burnt while for others business continues as usual.  Most communities in the country and increasingly in the world have lost the ability to sustain themselves from their land, and now must import almost everything they need from elsewhere, which becomes precarious when those importing the goods see no profit in it (food deserts), or when disaster breaks down the supply line like in Puerto Rico.  Many communities no longer have access to clean water, or are losing it as I write.  On Monday I listened to a man from Guatemala talk about a new silver mine near his home that is polluting and drying up the water supply for many villages there.  Almost all silver is used to produce electronics, and demand is rising.  In Oregon this summer, ancient trees thousands of years old were cleared for fire breaks.  The entire planet is being saturated with chemicals that we ought never to have created.  These kinds of damage cannot be undone or fixed by technology.  The story for other species is even worse, as most wild animal populations have died off and we pack billions of animals in cages in horrific factory farms.  The coral reefs, the rhinos, the ancient forests, the whales, and even the insects… who speaks for them?  Some people do, and they end up in jail if their actions threaten profits.  Profits are made at the expense of Life.

And within our civilization, we have more prisoners and refugees, more drugs and anxiety and depression and stress and addiction than ever.  Even in wealthy regions, most people don’t like the work they do all day.  It’s also not physically healthy to be indoors or using a computer or riding in vehicles for as many hours as many of us who are “successful” do.  What is happening to us?

It seems the leaders of our world are apathetic or powerless, as they fight over the most gaudy deck chairs on this titanic.  While it pains me, I don’t hate them for this; their actions are the product of a traumatic history that touches all of us.  They don’t know what they’re doing.

I envision a more beautiful world where humans have a healthy part to play, to love and respect the earth, not to dominate and exploit it.  I see many people living that vision already, and want to live my life in service to it.  I see the extremes of both ugliness and beauty grow more stark.  Ugliness as we close down and protect ourselves from the ‘other’, beauty as we come together in community, in love with mother earth.  Will “society” as a whole make some kind of transition, or continue the march into dystopia and eventual chaos?  I don’t know.  It will be both at the same time.  Some people are already in an obvious dystopia, some are in a beautiful place yet in the shadow of a collapsing ecosystem.  To hope for a peaceful transition would be to ignore the incredible violence on which the current system lives.  It will be violent because it already is.  May we learn to be kind to each other as these changes unfold.

It’s been said that we need the darkness to see the stars.  We can open ourselves to what is happening, feel and honor our pain, grieve what is lost, and revel in our deep gratitude for the beauty of life.  I don’t mean to be a downer pointing at all this ugliness.  I feel that we have a deep need to see it and acknowledge it.  It makes the beauty that much more precious and worth living for.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”
-Mary Oliver

What should we do then?

I don’t know exactly what we should do.  I don’t have a rational “here’s what everyone needs to do” that will resolve all of these crises.  I want to let go of my need to control what happens, because I’m really not in control.  At the same time, even if I let go and accept whatever comes, I am a human being and it is natural for me to care and want to help, to serve what I love.  I will not deny that part of me either.  So I find myself thinking about how to help, even if it seems “hopeless” overall.  I need not stress about the outcomes, but I will still act.  What else would I do with my few short years here?

So what might I do to be practical?

I don’t believe our technology is serving us well.  We, the wealthy humans near the top of the power hierarchy may see it as indispensable, but if we consider the animals or the fish or the trees or the laborers in the sweatshops and mines and plantations, it’s not working out so well.  Yes, our technology relieves some suffering in some places, but at what cost?  We simply do not, and probably cannot, count the costs of development.  I am not enthusiastic that further technological progress will heal us.

I also don’t believe that our problems are mostly due to money being in the wrong hands.  Measuring everything by monetary value seems to me one of the roots of the crises.  The mentality that values money over life drives much of the pollution and resource extraction and oppression around the world, since humans first accumulated “property” and enslaved each other.  I don’t feel that getting as much money as I can and giving it to the non-profit side of the system is the best way for me to serve what I love.  I feel that the money abstraction and the distance it puts between us and the effects of our actions makes us feel disconnected and alone.

I also don’t like our culture’s valuing of measurable impact over everything else.  Much of what is precious to me cannot be measured.  What’s the measurable value of a 5000 year old yew tree?  What’s the measurable value of caring for a disabled child?

“May what I do flow from me like a river
no forcing
and no holding back
the way it is with children.”
-Rilke

So I don’t know what we all should do exactly, and I don’t know what I will do beyond the short term.  I’m skeptical of money and the dominant culture’s value system.  I want to trust what makes me feel alive over our culture’s normal stories that usually are rooted in fear.  I recognize that I’m one of the most privileged people in the world.  I know most people do not have the options that I have.  I don’t mean to judge, only to encourage.

Right now what’s happening is I’ve been living in a homeless protest encampment in Berkeley the last couple months, which has given me still another perspective on our society.  It got interesting this weekend and we’re fighting eviction, hoping to benefit and inspire homeless communities around the country.  With all of the disaster and war refugees today, and housing crises in many places, there are more and more people who can’t have regular housing, and we could learn to live together with more kindness and understanding.  I’m also involved with the community here in other ways like Food Not Bombs.  I expect soon I’ll be moving on to other places, to learn and to live in service to what I love.  To restore soil and help plants grow and be community.

I’ve learned I don’t need much money to live well myself, so I don’t need to earn it for myself.  Perhaps my perspective on money and impact will change and I’ll eventually decide that earning money and supporting my many friends who don’t have much money in their various causes is the best way to contribute, and then I might return to a job, but we’ll see.  “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Wherever I am, I’ll be with some kind of community learning how to live in healthier relationship with each other and with the earth.  There’ll be dark moments and joyous moments, and this is life.  Life is good.  Whatever comes, I will give attention to the beauty around me, the beauty of community and of nature and of every form.  Beauty everywhere begs our attention.

“An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.

A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Feet: To chase after.

Rumi quote Spirit Mind

carol the blogger on her return hitch from Taos, New Mexico to Santa Fe. One side of my sign said Santa Fe, the other, Fanta Se