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Occupy Earth: Nature Is the 99%, Too
Someone Got Rich and Someone Got Sick
What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems -- its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere -- goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power, and control by that corrupt and greedy 1% we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park? What if the assault on America’s middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same?
Money Rules: It’s not hard for me to understand how environmental quality and economic inequality came to be joined at the hip. In all my years as a grassroots organizer dealing with the tragic impact of degraded environments on public health, it was always the same: someone got rich and someone got sick.
photo: 350.org
In the struggles that I was involved in to curb polluters and safeguard public health, those who wanted curbs, accountability, and precautions were always outspent several times over by those who wanted no restrictions on their effluents. We dug into our own pockets for postage money, they had expense accounts. We made flyers to slip under the windshield wipers of parked cars, they bought ads on television. We took time off from jobs to visit legislators, only to discover that they had gone to lunch with fulltime lobbyists.
Naturally, the barons of the chemical and nuclear industries don’t live next to the radioactive or toxic-waste dumps that their corporations create; on the other hand, impoverished black and brown people often do live near such ecological sacrifice zones because they can’t afford better. Similarly, the gated communities of the hyper-wealthy are not built next to cesspool rivers or skylines filled with fuming smokestacks, but the slums of the planet are. Don’t think, though, that it’s just a matter of property values or scenery. It’s about health, about whether your kids have lead or dioxins running through their veins. It’s a simple formula, in fact: wealth disparities become health disparities.
And here’s another formula: when there’s money to be made, both workers and the environment are expendable. Just as jobs migrate if labor can be had cheaper overseas, I know workers who were tossed aside when they became ill from the foul air or poisonous chemicals they encountered on the job.
The fact is: we won’t free ourselves from a dysfunctional and unfair economic order until we begin to see ourselves as communities, not commodities. That is one clear message from Zuccotti Park.
Polluters routinely walk away from the ground they poison and expect taxpayers to clean up after them. By “externalizing” such costs, profits are increased. Examples of land abuse and abandonment are too legion to list, but most of us can refer to a familiar “superfund site” in our own backyard. Clearly, Mother Nature is among the disenfranchised, exploited, and struggling.
Democracy 101: The 99% pay for wealth disparity with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, weakening pensions, and slashed services, but Nature pays, too. In the world the one-percenters have created, the needs of whole ecosystems are as easy to disregard as, say, the need the young have for debt-free educations and meaningful jobs.
Extreme disparity and deep inequality generate a double standard with profound consequences. If you are a CEO who skims millions of dollars off other people’s labor, it’s called a “bonus.” If you are a flood victim who breaks into a sporting goods store to grab a lifejacket, it’s called looting. If you lose your job and fall behind on your mortgage, you get evicted. If you are a banker-broker who designed flawed mortgages that caused a million people to lose their homes, you get a second-home vacation-mansion near a golf course.
If you drag heavy fishnets across the ocean floor and pulverize an entire ecosystem, ending thousands of years of dynamic evolution and depriving future generations of a healthy ocean, it’s called free enterprise. But if, like Tim DeChristopher, you disrupt an auction of public land to oil and gas companies, it’s called a crime and you get two years in jail.
In campaigns to make polluting corporations accountable, my Utah neighbors and I learned this simple truth: decisions about what to allow into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat are soon enough translated into flesh and blood, bone and nerve, and daily experience. So it’s crucial that those decisions, involving environmental quality and public health, are made openly, inclusively, and accountably. That’s Democracy 101.
The corporations that shred habitat and contaminate your air and water are anything but democratic. Stand in line to get your 30 seconds in front of a microphone at a public hearing about the siting of a nuclear power plant, the effluent from a factory farm, or the removal of a mountaintop and you’ll get the picture quickly enough: the corporations that profit from such ecological destruction are distant, arrogant, secretive, and unresponsive. The 1% are willing to spend billions impeding democratic initiatives, which is why every so-called environmental issue is also about building a democratic culture.
First Kill the EPA, Then Social Security: Beyond all the rhetoric about freedom from the new stars of the Republican Party, the strategy is simple enough: obstruct and misinform, then blame the resulting dysfunction on “government.” It’s a great scam. Tell the voters that government doesn’t work and then, when elected, prove it. And first on the list of government outfits they want to sideline or kill is the Environmental Protection Agency, so they can do away with the already flimsy wall of regulation that stands between their toxins and your bloodstream.
Poll after poll shows that citizens understand the need for environmental rules and safeguards. Mercury is never put into the bloodstreams of nursing mothers by consensus, nor are watersheds fracked until they are flammable by popular demand. But the free market ideologues of the Republican Party are united in opposition to any rule or standard that impedes the “magic” of the marketplace and unchecked capital.
The same bottom-line quarterly-report fixation on profitability that accepts oil spills as inevitable also accepts unemployment as inevitable. Tearing apart wildlife habitat to make a profit and doing the same at a workplace are just considered the price of doing business. Clearcutting a forest and clearcutting a labor force are two sides of the same coin.
Beware of Growth: Getting the economy growing has been the refrain of the Obama administration and the justification for every bad deal, budget cut, and unbalanced compromise it’s made. The desperate effort to grow the economy to solve our economic woes is what keeps Timothy Geithner at the helm of the Treasury and is what stalls the regulation of greenhouse gasses. It’s why we are told we must sacrifice environmental quality for pipelines and why young men and women are sacrificed to protect access to oil, the lubricant for an acquisitive economic engine. The financial empire of the one percenters and the political order it has shaped are predicated on easy and relentless growth. How, we are asked, will there be enough for everyone if we don’t keep growing?
The fundamental contradiction of our time is this: we have built an all-encompassing economic engine that requires unending growth. A contraction of even a percent or two is a crisis, and yet we are embedded in ecosystems that are reaching or have reached their limits. This isn’t complicated: There’s only so much fertile soil or fresh water available, only so many fish in the ocean, only so much CO2 the planet can absorb and remain habitable.
Yes, you can get around this contradiction for a while by exploiting your neighbor’s habitat, using technological advances to extend your natural resources, and stealing from the future -- that is, using up soil, minerals, and water your grandchildren (someday to be part of that same 99%) will need. But the limits to those familiar and, in the past, largely successful strategies are becoming more evident all the time.
At some point, we’ll discover that you can’t exist for long beyond the boundaries of the natural world, that (as with every other species) if you overload the carrying capacity of your habitat, you crash. Warming temperatures, chaotic weather patterns, extreme storms, monster wildfires, epic droughts, Biblical floods, an avalanche of species extinction… that collapse is upon us now. In the human realm, it translates into hunger and violence, mass migrations and civil strife, failed states and resource wars.
Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us. The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99% will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris, or drowning. The Great Recession has previewed just how that will work.
An unsustainable economy is inherently unfair, and worse is to come. After all, the car is heading for the cliff’s edge, the grandkids are in the backseat, and all we’re arguing about is who can best put the pedal to the metal.
Occupy Earth: Give credit where it’s due: it’s been the genius of the protesters in Zuccotti Park to shift public discourse to whether the distribution of economic burdens and rewards is just and whether the economic system makes us whole or reduces and divides us. It’s hard to imagine how we’ll address our converging ecological crises without first addressing the way accumulating wealth and power has captured the political system. As long as Washington is dominated and intimidated by giant oil companies, Wall Street speculators, and corporations that can buy influence and even write the rules that make buying influence possible, there’s no meaningful way to deal with our economy’s addiction to fossil fuels and its dire consequences.
Nature’s 99% is an amazingly diverse community of species. They feed and share and recycle within a web of relationships so dynamic and complex that we have yet to fathom how it all fits together. What we have excelled at so far is breaking things down into their parts and then reassembling them; that, after all, is how a barrel of crude oil becomes rocket fuel or a lawn chair.
When it comes to the more chaotic, less linear features of life like climate, ecosystems, immune systems, or fetal development, we are only beginning to understand thresholds and feedback loops, the way the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. But we at least know that the parts matter deeply and that, before we even fully understand them, we’re losing them at an accelerating rate. Forests are dying, fisheries are going, extinction is on steroids.
Degrading the planet’s operating systems to bolster the bottom line is foolish and reckless. It hurts us all. No less important, it’s unfair. The 1% profit, while the rest of us cough and cope.
After Occupy Wall Street, isn’t it time for Occupy Earth?
- Posted in
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90 Comments so far
Show AllFunny, but I just finished a debate elsewhere with a couple of "Teabagger, Dittoheads" and their talking points all involved that, as they believed, excessive regulation was the cause of corruption. Government "interfering" with harmless 'lil corporations was THE root of all that is Evil in our world.
You can't tell them any different. They don't care if we live on a planet where tens of thousands of people die daily from preventable causes. They don't give a damn about the environment, unless their liberal neighbor's dog shits in their yard, then it's time to take the gloves off. As long as them and their's are OK, the hell with everybody else.
But I do agree with you that both sides participate equally in this Punch and Judy Show that we call politics. They are unable to reform themselves and neither side truthfully can see that they need to, other than a bunch of "slackers" camping in the park.
I hope this snowball OWS movement turns into an avalanche that sweeps all of the rich pricks and their accomplices away with it.
This is a very important article that should be widely disseminated, but it's true that this is not a Dem/Rep problem. It's a system problem. We need to replace the corporatocracy with a social democratic system.
well written, but completely pointless...
ranting about the conflict between the economy and the ecology is the correct thing to do, of course...
once again, however, we have no result...no suggestion on how to bring any of our ranting about...
at least, none we are mentioning...
shall we sacrifice our ownership of property, view all resources as our local, personal and communal responsibility, and take up arms against those charging us our rents and mortgages?
shall we terminate our years of electrical distribution? industrial farming and manufacturing?
excellent focus on molecular alteration...shall we stop?
even if we decide to make these changes, how can we do so?
together...globally...on September 22, 2012...
so difficult to make meaningful changes while driving and texting...
those will need to stop, too...
are we there, yet?
To seriously move toward sustainability ie to halt further degradation of the Global Ecosystem: share, reorder our priorities, cooperate, help one another, and reduce population. And how do we get one another on the same page so as to begin to get the above accomplished: the same way you would get the cooperation of people aboard a sinking ship--make them aware of the crisis.
Exactly, the deepest core of the problem is one of a world that emphasizes competition over cooperation.
Some are culturally conditioned as if in a trance to believe that competition is part of human nature. They believe to their core that NOTHING good would have ever been discovered or invented if it weren't for the perceived profit potential. And I look back at some of the greatest minds in history and see DaVinci and so many others who were motivated to know what was not previously known. Curiosity, now THAT is part of human nature nobody should be able to argue against.
Between these core beliefs and our culture's tendency toward requiring constant, external stimulation (sports, TV, movies) which is all "vicarious", not even real activity...just spectating. Now if you could get the NFL and NASCAR to go on strike, you'd get some attention from those oblivious to what's going on.
It's a Brave New World we're living in, for sure.
"...the problem is one of a world that emphasizes competition over cooperation."
Quoted for Truth.
What will happen on September 22, 2012? Let us know!
Nature is 100%. Destroy her and see if you can exist.
That's real talk, vaialdiavolo.
There's a passage about elite immunity in Ward's article:
"Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us. The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99% will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris, or drowning."
Well, I suppose the one percenters will have better defenses, at first. But the way the plutocrats conduct business, it's like they think they can buy survival with the money they make precipitating an ecological collapse. Insane.
The one percenters are nearly all old enough that they will not see the consequences of their activities. So they don't have to worry about buying survival.
"Nature is 100%"
nailed it, vaialdiavolo!
my first thought when i saw the title,
"i'll go ya one better, chip
Nature's 100%"
I totally agree with Chip Ward. However, it'd be nice if he mentioned the toxic effects of war in Iraq (and elsewhere) as another example of "free-market" capitalism's damage to the environment and humans. DU and white phosphorus contamination have caused so many birth defects and cancers in Iraq - human "endpoints" for environmental damage that undoubtedly goes much more deep and will affect generations of humans and other life in Iraq in the future. Anyway, there are more and more public health research publications indicating disparities in health that associate with economic status and which appear to be linked to neighborhood/location. For instance, one recent news article mentions a study that associates neighborhood with obesity:
http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-obesity-neighborhoods-20111020,0,2373227.story
Unfortunately, the authors don't mention the health effects of harmful environmental toxins, which are usually present in greater concentrations in urban and rural areas that are economically depressed (think inner city neighborhoods and natural/wilderness areas in which various kinds of industrial and power plants have been constructed).
For instance, Houston, TX, which, I believe, currently holds the dubious honor of having the highest levels of atmospheric benzene levels in the country (thanks to the oil/chemical industry and large amount of automobile traffic - the city was built *for* the car and has limited efficient public transportation, unlike other large cities in the U.S.), has neighborhoods in which benzene exposure is extremely high. Not only that, but often the neighborhoods in which atmospheric benzene is high (high traffic areas, areas close to industrial plants/refineries) are also inhabited by folks who may work for industries in which exposure to benzene may be increased at the workplace (oil/chemical plants). Benzene is a known carcinogen, but has also been recently linked to increased risk of a particular kind of birth defect:
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Study-links-Texas-birth-defects-to-benzene-levels-1702259.php
"If you are a banker-broker who designed flawed mortgages that caused a million people to lose their homes, you get a second-home vacation-mansion near a golf course."
Sh, don't tell any of those bankers-brokers this, but the environments in and around golf courses are absolutely chock-full of harmful toxins. How else can those golf-courses be kept so permanently and artificially green and "pretty"?
Good post, Wonder Woman. I think Chip Ward's essay is great, too. V.P mentioned the way Mr. Ward singled out the Republicans... and while it IS true that both parties are complicit, since both answer to their big money sponsors, it is the LIBERTARIAN meme that is more intent upon decimating big government and wiping out the EPA. So Mr. Ward is telling the truth on that issue.
One thing Mr. Ward left out was the power, cost, and calamitous expense (spanning multiple levels) of the M.I.C. The loss of vital resources to war, and what Alan MacDonald impressively associates with the "Sorrows of Empire" should factor into his analysis. The profits of war, after all, substantially figure into the calculus the 1% finds worthy of pursuing.
The more people who understand the interface between corporate profit, sans environmental regulations, and compromises to their own health (and quality of life), the more likely to get on board with OWS and its branches in other cities.
Thank you, Siouxrose. You and V.P. are right to point out that it isn't just the Republicans. I totally didn't catch that - that he singled out the Republicans - the first time I read his article. And, yes, I agree with you about the Libertarian stance, too. The M.I.C. comment and its indirect effect on other vital resources is a great one, as well.
The libertarians never read John Donne, so they think they are, in fact, islands. How else can their wacky ideas be interpreted?
Dubet, "even if we decide to make these changes, how can we do so?" First, making the decision to change, then, give reign to intelligence and imagination. Both political parties rely on fear of change for survival. Our survival demands a radical change and there is little time to waste. Blow up your TV, talk to your neighbor, tend your garden.
Also, the suggestion is implicit in Chip Ward's motto "Occupy Earth" that it would be a good idea for the current tidal wave of anarchic activism to take up concern for ecosystems as a primary motivator. It's time to hit the streets. Leveraging the power of collective action is crucial.
A widespread, general strike would move things along quite nicely.
Perhaps in the name of IDEAS?:
I -- International
D -- Dignity
E -- Equity
A -- Accountability (and)
S -- Sustainability
growth does not have to mean depletion of our natural resources or destruction of our environment
i could mean technologies and efforts that help preserve our resources or clean up our environment
Exactly.
Also, in a conversation with a young woman at our occupation camp the topic of a higher minimum wage came up. She (herself working for minimum wage) said: "But a higher wage will encourage consumption, which hurts the environment and also supports the corporations that produce the stuff the higher wages buy".
Well, aside from the fact that current minimum wage doensn't beging to cover necesitiies, particularly health care as one gets older this response reflects a peculiar USAn characteristic to associate a higher income and standard with buying big durable material goods that hurt the environment. A higher income can alternatively be spent like Europeans (with less than half the carbon footprint of USAns) tend to spend it - on dining, concerts, theater, art, adult education, pasive outdoor pastimes, and (environmentally conscious) travel, all of which have minimal environmental impacts while providing the maximum support for creative people-centered livlihoods, as well as education and enrichment for the spender.
You are right about how one might spend a higher income, but in this country, more people would end up at NASCAR events. The culture is different.
Exactly. If it doesn't have an internal combustion engine somewhere in the picture, it is not worth spending money on.
Why really fries my ass is when we hikers, whith nothing fancier than a little backpack and some sturdy shoes are called "elitists" by the rednecks destroying the trails and solitude with their, brobdignagian pickup trucks, $10,000 "quads" and high tech, radio-guided bear-hunting hounds that fill the WV Potomac Highlands this time of year.
"It's always best to forgive." I'm working on that one too. But like you always say: "Life is good. What an experience." It's a good attitude.
Sioux Rose, your comments are always sentient. Seriously, why don't you write a book?
She does!
America's poor are part of the 99% as well, but their voice and cause remain shut out of the public discussion. That's a mistake.The media (MSNBC, etc) defines this strictly as a "working middle class movement," continuing to imply that if you're poor/unemployed, you are something less than "regular Americans." In the US, one's human worth is clearly determined by his economic status. Consider that since Clinton's NAFTA was passed, over 28 million jobs have been shipped out of the country. At the same time, humanitarian aid (welfare) to America's poor was wiped out, increasing the number of people desperate for those disappearing jobs while making it almost impossible to work one's way back out of poverty. The number of permanently poor continues to increase. Fewer jobs, more desperate people. That's a classic formula for revolution.
COMMON BELIEFS
Here is a commonly held belief about the roles of the rich and of the activists:
“I think that you have good intensions, but I think it's a lost cause. In the first place, all of the politicians need lots of money to get elected, who has the money? Why of course the rich. People like you and I can't get them elected, 'cause we have no money. The rich finance their campaigns, and if they want to get re-elected they must pass laws to benefit the rich. The only person who can change the system is Jesus Christ himself. I applaud the Occupy Wall Street people, but believe me, nothing will ever come of it.”
My reply:
First come the protests, then come the planning, then the action. The action includes voter registering of vast numbers of mostly young folks who are among the most dissolusioned and angry folks on the planet. I cannot change the world by my own efforts. What I can do and will do is to extend my authorship to include these folks who will vent their rage with the pens. All of this effort will be directed at booting out of office the Radcons and electing honest folks with ethics to public office. The rich have the dollars on their side, but we have the numbers on our side – the 99%. We will not lose.
The Rich reply:
Want to bet?
What's your reply:
spoken like a human being shadowdancer,the well meaning protesters have an enormous amount of 1% insanity to dea lwith,while at the same time trying to drop all the garbage lifestyle unneeded crap of the socalled "advanced civilisation"!!!!!! ho ka hey/it is a good time to live
Believe it or not, many in the middle and right-leaning segments of the society honestly want to know if there's a better way than unfettered capitalism. But what is it that stops them from discovering the answer on their own? Answer: Organized religion, along with Madison Ave. Such indoctrination from early youth teaches people not to think for themselves. And specifically, not to recognize the complexity of life, especially intelligent life. When we recognize such complexity, we realize that the rules must be set by/for the great majority. Any elite minority setting the rules, manipulating the hearts/minds of the people, is a recipe for disaster. The 99% is now set to regain control over global society, without organized religion, without organized politics, without organized labor, etc.
We walk through a vast antiquities museum, Earth, that looks to the simple-minded like an unorganized clutter. For example, under a ledge off the coast of South Africa, scientists recently found a 100 million year old species of fish. Our museum has over 7 million known species today.
Maybe half of the species on Earth will now be wiped out by climate change, by pollution, by overfishing, by the greed of one person and the ignorance of many people. Maybe only 100,000 species will survive. We don't know. We people are just locked up in this bank vault and a very few of us are burning this useless money for enjoyment, without regard to the money's ownership. Our granchildren are the owners, and their kids in turn, and 1000 more generations of humans.
I love this article....THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I'VE BEEN FOCUSING ON.... If we don't work this revolution through AN ENVIRONMENTAL LENS, THEN WE WON'T CHANGE A THING. I went to Occupy Binghatmon again tonight and said that very thing. I have been trying to get them to add some envrionmental flavor to their message. I gave some of them an article about Naomi Kline's speech at OWS a couple of weeks ago, reported here on CD... Even some Verizon Unionists came by, about 7-10 and held up their signs..... they said to help add to our numbers.... two of them read that article.........
I have already prepared this article to take tomorrow and spread around..... THIS IS FANSTASTIC......!!!
A good piece of writing and living Chip ! As of October 28, 2011 we are entering the 6th World. Others believe it is December 21, 2012, although the Mayans say nothing about the 6th World which does make one wonder. Extinction events ended the previous worlds. Whether it is tomorrow or December of 2012, we are entering a new time. When we are looking at 26,000 year cycles, this discrepency of dates could easily fall within the margin of error. Either way, it represents both an ending and beginning, at least we hope it's a beginning. If there ever was an urgency to raise our consciousness it is now. A Mayan group is now racing across the United States performing a ceremony of the 13 Crystal Skulls. It will be in my area on Halloween, fitting huh? Whether the ceremony, or consciousness raising, or otherwise, we should pay close attention and participate. Mother Nature dwarfs man to insignificance. We had best be respectful. The time is NOW !
I met the new day with prayer. I will build a sacred fire and keep it burning. According to the Cherokee Calendar this day carries great significance.
How to Occupy the Earth
Let Earth occupy you
spell it with CAPITALS
it brews the cradle of your last hope:
a tree stands out on a five-hundred foot bluff
and there are sweet waters all around
the winds pound the rock
and the rocks sing like the sisters
of the great families of cells
that come together in magic and in reason
to prepare a place for you. You cannot fashion yourself a king
or queen from this chemistry, the movement of the systems
of the newest stars prevents these miracles
from being known completely, but our eye
and our ear can fathom such depth! Imagine it!
We hear the gong and the finger tins of our little time
and we know we can leave our waste
or our music.
*
Let the earth occupy you and then go out
into the field under a splay of indescribable nebula
the way the single stormclouds hover
over the coast at night and flash their messages
of rain and spark a revolution in the soul of cells
and worms, the shelled things that glow
rising up from the deepest waters
and how those same waters bust from dirt
made by the leaves made
by the bones and detritus of our short lives.
*
Be a success in the concerns of the earth.
This is the epistle of the prophets of snails and ladies-slippers
the lamentation of the ruined dirt in our own back yards
where we have dug deep graves for the profit in it
our piddly concerns with shiny things and the fossil fuel
of our imaginary Kings and Queens.
Shout out the naked snakes in the Capitals!
Make the Earth a voice and a scepter!
The time to torture the tongues of the alpine passes
and the flyways of the birds is done!
*
Make the earth your song and your destination
it is where you will lie in the last of your time
and where your children will rise up
like the waters from the rocks and ferns
like the ruins of the Atlantises of your years
like the gardens of your dreams and your fears.
Let the Earth Occupy you
*
Turn away from the last of the hoarders
vote out the liars who leave their greedy stains
in the lap of your religions and your inheritances.
Make way for the new visages!
And while the police scour the countryside for the leaders
of this chorus of equality they will find no one
but all of us; elusive as the boats of hope…
and the fens will give us food again
and the fish will be shareholders in our dreams
and the trees will heal the wounded litigations
of our complaints to the ones among us
who have the disease of want beyond what there is
to be had.
*
And when the great sacrifices return to the plains
of the review of our sins, and when the mountaintops
are restored and accuse their rocketeers
and when the great waters shrunk into saline sinks
are re-christened with the feathers of all the rare birds
and the Carolina Parakeet sits in the stands
and the Auk rises from the gullets of the chained presidents of ruin
and the false elections between this and that of our own destruction
lie exposed on the bottom of the courts of the reclaimed earth
we will know we have been in the struggle of our lives
and that all we have to lose is what they have already tried to take.
*
Is this a song or a lament?
The people took up their tents and walked until they could no longer walk.
The journey was guided by great auroras in the north.
The warriors cradled the old women who waited for this day to return.
The eagles stayed with the boys and the girls and traded visions
of the islands of their dreams. None could be forsaken
except for the shadows of ourselves left behind
that plundered such sacred groves
until they dug their own graves
and could not be delivered from the caves of their unnatural longings.
We kept walking.
*
Somewhere there were flowers
somewhere we were given the duties of the soil
stewards of the pathways of the puma and the bear
somewhere the great beech and hemlock populate the future
of the ravines where the layers of leaves spout
the drink of our seasons of living. Somewhere
we go on, all ways.
It is the earth that occupies us, remember…
Those who forget leave themselves behind.
Magnificent! Your best ever, Bob V! I need to go out, but will return to re-read it again later... it's positively FOOD for the soul, my inspired friend!
Thank you.... I hope to occcupy my day today... and you?
Putting it all together - Congratulations Chip Ward!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Occupy Earth - I like it.
Same idea Evo Morales and the Bolivians have - but here and now - in North America - and hopefully, around the world.
Occupy Earth - that's it - that's the centralizing theme.
Manysummits in Calgary
========
A note to the 'native' American posters here:
I used to think wisdom lay with you - but my views have changed.
Human nature is consistent - everywhere I have looked.
From the Blackfoot and Sarcee here around Calgary to the Aborigines of Australia and the Innuit of the Arctic - and across time from Blombos Cave at the southern tip of Africa 80,000 years ago to the wayfarers who colonized the Americas some fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, plus or minus, by boat and on foot.
Human nature is consistent, and I see no forgiveness in most of your remarks - only anger.
You are the same as me - "a man - like other men."
Manysummits
=======
“Human nature is consistent, and I see no forgiveness in most of your remarks - only anger. You are the same as me - "a man - like other men."
Well said Michael. I too am tired of the “piss on the white man” tone from some of the Native Americans here, as if they could have walked any better in our moccasins. (That having been said, I say to them both, the Spirit tells me plainly I could not do better if I were in your shoes.)
This generalized rebuttal to all American Indian posters is repugnant.
The Clovis people probably killed off the North American megafauna which disappeared shortly after their arrival 13,000 years ago. There is evidence of unsustainable "buffalo jump" hunts on the part of the original human inhabitants of this continent. Such incidents are consistent with wasteful European ignominy.
But while the rapaciousness of European culture kept growing by leaps and bounds, American Indians learned from their early mistakes, and managed a balanced relationship with the land they belonged to for thousands of years - in sharp contrast to the rapid Earth-rape of our industrial era.
Read "Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge" by Daniel Wildcat. There's a chance your self-satisfied bitterness is curable.
And we are learning from our mistakes Aleph.
Manysummits
=======
What do you mean "we," Kemosabe?
We - I mean we, homo sapiens sapiens.
The evidence is incontrovertible. There is variation of course - that is natures' way, but we are one biological people, and, like many teens, all trying to look a little different.
Manysummits
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Well then, when some homo sapiens stop trying to destroy the earth (that circle of life you live in), stop stealing the life giving it has for power and the others watching it all of tv, things will look a little different.
It doesn't really matter how incontrovertible your evidence is, look around you. Throw away(recycle) your artificial tree and take a good long look.
ShadowDancer - I rest my case - you are full of anger.
There is an interesting book - "One Native Life", by Richard Wagamese.
And a man does not give advice, which you are full of.
I bear no animosity towards native Americans, no matter your tribal affiliation.
I do resent ignorance which threatens our future - the type of ignorance which does not forgive - undirected anger -or rather anger that only cause more hurt.
Has there not been enough hurt in your life?
Do you think others are free of hurt?
Manysummits
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Well, we haven't watched a TV show for about five years now, perhaps more.
I was once more typical of the European you denigrate - that is true.
But then, as far as I know, neither myself, nor you, had much choice in the time and circumstance of our birth and subsequent life.
I've been blogging on climate change and the destruction of the natural world systems which support all of us for about four years now, or is it five? On the BBC - I blogged every day for two years - extensively and with the very best scientific information I could lay my hands on. My shelf space groans under the weight of papers from 'Nature', Science', the 'Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences', from the American Geophysical Union, and on occasion, from science institutes around the world.
I am a geologist by training, and I worked 18 years in the field - in the oilpatch of western Canada. I knew about CO2, but I didn't realize the consequences, which are not easy to understand. There is nothing trivial about climate science, ocean chemistry, studies of the deep-past, nuclear energy, etc etc etc...
Science alone does not guarantee wisdom. You, or any other person, may have a lock on that. It is difficult to know who is wise, and why - on what timeframe are they wise?
Loudly proclaiming that one is wise on the basis of tribal affiliation may sound good - but is it?
Actions have always spoken louder than words.
I impoverished myself climbing mountains for seven years full-time, all seasons- "for to admire an' for to see." Following my heart is the reason I now have a wife, Julia, and our son, Michael. Julia's blogging name was once 'Underacanoe', and Michael's 'Cloudrunner', just to fill you in.
I have devoted a great deal of time searching for wisdom outside of the 'western way', and for a time thought I might have found it. Undoubtedly there is much wisdom in your ways, for example, but distinguishing between the wisdom which worked in another time, veritably a different world, and what will work now is difficult.
Calling each other names on the basis of heritage is in my mind foolish, despite the horrendous wrongs which have been perpetrated by one against the other.
As I said in a comment a few down from here, we all have a job to do - to survive.
This will be very much like flying by feel, stick and rudder pilots are required. There is nothing familiar about the exit from the Holocene which is now occurring. Even our distant ancestors, both of ours, were familiar with only the Pleistocene ice ages, as they waxed and waned.
We are now moving rapidly into the early Cenozoic. It would be helpful if we all learn the lingo of science, at least until we establish some semblance of order again.
We are going to have to use artificial trees to remove CO2 from the atmosphere - I'll bet you a cup of coffee on that.
Manysummits - wishing you well -
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At the risk of getting pounded, which he did, Michael tried to point out that the only thing missing from most of your posts was screaming “cracker” as you habitually rail against whites. You see nothing good in your brothers? The ancestors of Europeans have cured diseases and put men on the moon. The distant future will see all of us crossing space as easily as we cross oceans today. We will meet face to face with races of other beings and can only hope that the united Humanbeings that they will called Earthmen will do better than we have so far.
What constructive problem solving do you offer except going back in time to having fleas and cutting our toenails with our teeth? You might just as well try to climb back in the womb as to turn back our past history. A tree does not return to being an acorn. The united species of humans is happening before our very eyes. It’s always been coming, but the internet has enabled our generation to be the first to actually see it happening in real time. It is a great time to live as you always say but don’t yet accept.
I’m sure the other animals of the forest thought your species of animal quite insane when you developed whole cultures around eating them and using their parts. Can you admit that cruel mistake? One day we’ll all be vegetarian, and when it happens, chalk up another one to the Europeans ancestors. Spew all you want, but every major culture has done some things right, which like it or not, includes the Caucasians.
Meanwhile, Michael (and I and many others on this site) truly admire native peoples of all the continents our forefathers self-righteously abused. We realize full well if they had had learned from you as the equals you are, instead of shunning your perspectives, (because we had better weapons but not better souls), we would have a much better world today. As Michael said to Aleph. He’s learning. Me too. You too. So please stop shitting on all white people. You are a racist is what Michael was trying to say. He’s right.
"Why Jumping Jehosaphat he's describing where most everyone lives without even being there at all. How does he do such a thing?"
When I relocated to Louisville from Charlotte, my daughter asked me "what is it like / what kind of stores, restaurants, etc do they have". I was a little astonished at the question and replied "Don't you know that anywhere is everywhere now?"
I suppose that it hurts at some level that you don't understand, Michael, but ShadowDancer is right. This world created by the "white" people is absofuknlutely insane! Don't take it so personally, neither you nor I for that matter, are "white" anyway. I guarantee you that you are way more beige in color than white. Resign from "whiteness"; it needs to go away. The 1% are WHITE. Then there about another 4 to 10% who have been fooled into believing that they, too are white. But, they aren't. Just useful tools / fools for the elite to cloak themselves with in order to hide while they destroy everyone and everything. You are a beige member of the remaining 99% and you need to cast the whiteness aside.
Thank you Dave for jumping in. It is much appreciated.
When someone is committed to a fundamental belief 'first', you have the seed of denialism, which can manifest itself as racism, for example. Of course, this is exactly the consistency in human nature that I spoke of earlier.
According to E.O. Wilson, one of our greatest natural historians, we are 'tribal carnivores.'
I find that description a little harsh, but it does make a point, especially given the author of that remark.
Luck to all of us,
Mike
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