No one left out

I assert that what matters most to all of us is the health and well-being of life: clean air, clean water, healthy food, comfortable shelter, healing medicine, and authentic connections with life (human and non-human) around us.*

We want ourselves and our families to have easy access to all of that, including great relationships. And if you're willing to authentically look, we want it for everyone else too.

Pathologies aside, we're all naturally compassionate and connected, and we have a fierce desire for fairness. These traits we can cultivate.

There is nothing I'd rather feel than my love for my kids. I'm pretty happy to see that I can actually begin to expand that raw love to my wife and our relationship in new ways. And now to my friends and students and colleagues and strangers.

We can actually grow our ability to feel compassion for and to authentically connect with others.

The survival instinct's pathological partner, greed, takes over sometimes. It's there too. It can be managed and cultivated as well. We live in an economic system that flourishes on the cultivation of this trait.

Compassion and authentic connection to life provide a greater level of fulfillment than material greed will ever provide.

We live inside of a political economy that values an entity's rights to financially prosper through the ownership and/or manipulation of the necessities of life to the detriment of most of us and in the end, all of us. We need governments willing to step up and smack the greedy hands of corporation shareholders, block their access to life-destroying resources, processes, and products. We need governments willing to stand for all people getting the necessities and most meaningful treasures of life (which really aren't material).

It's all we really want - clean air, clean water, healthy food, comfortable shelter, healing medicine, and authentic connections with life around us.

* "Fulfilling God's Will for us" comes to mind as a possible addition to this list. I don't currently believe in God, but I bet God's will for any of us has something to do with providing these 6 things to others and making sure we're using God's gifts justly.

A spoonful of sugar

Until watching Mary Poppins yesterday for the first time in decades, I never got that the "spoonful of sugar" song isn't really about medicine and sugar. It's about dealing with any drudgery that comes up - a spoonful of positive context is all it takes to transform work into a decent time. (Funny how when they actually do consume medicine in the film they don't take a spoonful of sugar with it.)

Humans' ability to create positive contexts is astonishing. It's finding the bright side of things. It's walking on the sunny side of the street. And so on.

That ability is perhaps linked to what at least one paleogeneticist calls the "madness gene." That's the possible gene that led us to explore new territory, reach new and great heights and distances, to justify all sorts of actions and their results in the name of progress. Yes there are some costs (slavery, mass species extinction, environmental degradation, atomic weapons, the Holocaust), but context generation is a gift...right?

As I grow and learn and aim to be an instrument in the creation of a brighter future for life, my main goal, I suppose, is to maintain balance: seeing a need and working to cause a different future while tooting a merry tune.

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"A Spoonful of Sugar" lyrics
[Spoken]
In ev'ry job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job's a game

[Sung]
And ev'ry task you undertake
Becomes a piece of cake
A lark! A spree! It's very clear to see that

A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way

A robin feathering his nest
Has very little time to rest
While gathering his bits of twine and twig
Though quite intent in his pursuit
He has a merry tune to toot
He knows a song will move the job along - for

A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way

[Interlude]

The honey bee that fetch the nectar
From the flowers to the comb
Never tire of ever buzzing to and fro
Because they take a little nip
From ev'ry flower that they sip
And hence (And hence),
They find (They find)
Their task is not a grind.

Ah-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h ah!

A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way

What they won't care about in 80 years

The following is an excerpt from Derrick Jensen's essay, "You Choose," that I have borrowed from a book of essays titled Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril. I chose where to break the paragraphs.

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"When most people in this culture ask, 'How can we stop global warming?' that's not really what they're asking. They're asking, 'How can we stop global warming, without significantly changing this lifestyle...that is causing global warming in the first place?'

The answer is that you can't...

Those who inherit whatever's left of the world once this culture has been stopped - whether through peak oil, economic collapse, ecological collapse, or the efforts of brave women and men fighting in alliance with the natural world - are going to judge us by the health of the land base, because that's what's going to support them, or not.

They're not going to care how we lived our lives.
They're not going to care how hard we tried.
They're not going to care whether we were nice.
They're not going to care whether we were nonviolent or violent.
They're not going to care whether we grieved the murder of the planet.
They're not going to care whether we were enlightened.
They're not going to care what sort of excuses we had not to act (e.g., 'I'm too stressed to think about it,' or 'It's too big and scary,' or 'I'm too busy,' or 'But those in power will kill us if we effectively act against them,' or 'If we fight back we run the risk of becoming like they are,' or 'But I recycled,' or any of a thousand other excuses we've all heard too many times).
They're not going to care how simply we lived.
They're not going to care how pure we were in thought or action.
They're not going to care if we became the change we wished to see.
They're not going to care whether we voted Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, or not at all.
They're not going to care if we wrote really big books about it.
They're not going to care whether we had 'compassion' for the CEOs and politicians running this deathly economy.

They're going care whether they can breathe the air and drink the water. They're going to care whether the land can support them. We can fantasize all we want about some great turning, and if the people (including the nonhuman people) can't breathe, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters but that we stop this culture from killing the planet...

Those who come after - presuming anyone survives - are going to wonder what the fuck was wrong with us that we didn't do whatever it takes - and I mean whatever it takes - to stop industrial capitalism from killing the planet...

It is long past time for us to be the miracle we've all been waiting for."