JULY 20/08 - BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER

“It is often said that we do not so much inherit our world from our forbears, but rather we borrow it from our children. It is increasingly urgent that we act to prevent our debt from growing out of control.” ‘What Goes Up: The Global Assault On Our Atmosphere”, John J Nance

Yesterday, Al Gore put forward a challenge that we move to a sustainable energy society, completely eliminating oil.

The CNN pundits immediately went on the attack.

It’s often good to look at both sides of an issue but at times that can freeze us into inertia.

Wouldn’t Al’s challenge make sense for our children anyway?

It takes a grand vision to rally people & money. Al has put out a vision that could energize (pun intended) our creative DNA.

Our souls long to reconnect with a healthy earth. Our minds just need follow our emotions.

We vacillate between logic & emotion, between faith & fear. Our lives can be as completely different as a new thought. Al Gore has presented a new thought. We can accept or reject the idea.

When we put others ahead of our own supposed needs, the universe comes to our aid. When it comes to our own children it is often easier to give. We allow emotions to run more freely when it is someone close to home, ‘blood is thicker than water’.

When difficulties affect our direct descendants it cuts to the quick but when problems are at a distance we tend to let them run off our conscience like ‘water off a duck’s back’.

Why do we see our microcosmic portion of the world as different from the whole? Isn’t the fern part of the forest?

When we cut down the trees in the Amazon, doesn’t that affect the air we breathe? Doesn’t the interconnectedness of nature apply to our human community?

The idea of asking these questions is to bring them into consciousness so that we have a chance to ‘see’ our world in a different light.

The first thought might be to dismiss them as meaningless or impossible to achieve but like Al Gore I suggest that we are capable of anything that we set our mind to.

Are our children worth the effort? Do our grandchildren deserve being passed a world with a chance of survival? Does it really matter whether we help arrive at the answer to that last question?

Don’t others take care of these seemingly impossible questions? Won’t Al Gore or some politician take care of things for us?

I was watching a documentary on the sixties this week & the commentators referred to the changing music, as the ‘60’s ended, as an indication that the revolution wasn’t going to happen.

They mentioned that ‘peace & flower power’ was just a dream & everyone was finally getting over it. Have we the baby-boomers actually sold out or given up? We surged forward questioning the status quo in the sixties & then cruised through the balance of the next 3 decades. We now have a chance to spark those prior flames into action during a period where we are in control, instead of our forbears.

We could blame things on the adults before but now we are they.

What to believe, who to listen to!

Putting money aside what makes sense? There is more than enough money available, look at the trillion dollars devoted to saving two institutions this week, Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae.

Money is only a medium of exchange, our environment should not be sacrificed for its attainment. Net profits have never assumed the costs to our environment or the social costs. You might want to pick up ‘Natural Capital’, Paul Hawken.

Why would we create a system, capitalism, where money is the sole objective? Our educational system fosters the economic system that we live within & making a buck becomes the winning formula.

The balance between people, environment, & economics, has skewed badly towards economics. Self interest sacrifices personal values. The market economy is based on the self interest concept. When values are taken out of the equation, when ‘anything goes’ in the name of business, the worst comes out in our human behavior.

Wealth tends to consolidate with a privileged few & the question arises, what is wealth?

These thoughts are meant to be global in nature but as close to home as your new grandchild.

The seed produces the flower & the crop produces our sustenance. Let’s not let the clouds of competition & greed sully the path our next of kin will walk when they are ready to stand on their own two feet.

Love may be an emotion but it is more powerful than logic.

Love can move mountains. Let’s let love loose.

David