What world do we want?

Somewhere during the past several days, we came across a challenge to describe the world we want to live in. We've thought about that off and on since we read the challenge and have come to the conclusion that it's hard, despite having spent much of our working life doing just that kind of thing. Except, and it's a big except, when working, we often were critiquing someone else's proposal, or only dealing with a small segment of the world we live in. Here's the beginnings of what we've come up with so far:

what does the world you want look like? (image credit NASA)

• We want to see more, much more, emphasis on the creation of affordable local food systems.
• We hope to see many more wildflowers planted under the local solar gardens that are being built helter skelter around the county. Solar panels, by themselves, are not attractive. We'd also like to see more microgrids developed and linked.
• We would like to see the implementation of the solutions proposed in Project Drawdown, 100 solutions to reverse global warming.
• We'd like to see the restoration of democracy, elimination of gerrymandering and citizens united and the only politicians supported be those who focus on win-win solutions rather than treating politics as a zero sum game.
• Capitalism needs to be massively revised or eliminated so that we evolve to a circular economy consistent with the premises of donut economics.
• Governments should become grateful if the birth rate is less than replacement, since we now require more than one planet to meet the needs of existing populations.
• More and more people need to be educated about emergent, self-organizing, complex systems by teachers like Donella Meadows and Peter Senge.
• We'd like to live in a world that uses the best knowledge currently available in a more collaborative process. One example would be to see Minnesota develop its own version of Vermont's New Economy.
• Minnesota could also create public banks, true broadband statewide, and a single payer health system.
• Everyone should read, and enjoy, more poetry.
• Native American respect for Mother Earth and life based on reciprocity should become core values for all Americans.

There's obviously more that can be added to the list, For example, we should bring back the State Planning Agency and the Citizens Board that used to govern the Pollution Control Agency. Albert Einstein asserts that "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." Add to that R. Buckminster Fuller's observation that "We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody." I'd like to live in a world with everybody. How about you?

See what we mean about it's hard? This reminds us of the old saying about "Keep your eye on the ball, nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel. Now, let's see you work from that position!"

A Song on the End of the World

By Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Anthony Milosz

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

         

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet

Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

There will be no other end of the world,

There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

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