When the only tool you have is a hammer...

A long, long time ago, in fact, during the last millennium, I was taught to never confuse activity with accomplishment. Memory fails to inform whether it was a professor in college or a supervisor at work who instilled that lesson, although I'm inclined toward the latter. Despite being a New Englander, from the home territory of Emerson and Thoreau, I failed to generalize from the basic dictum. More's the pity these days.

It's possible that many of us, especially among liberals and progressives, are using the wrong tools to fix what's broken in our country. Maria Popova, in her inestimable Brain Pickings, alerts us to Thoreau's perspective on social reform:

"To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state of things, the political state can hardly be said to have any existence whatever. It is unreal, incredible, and insignificant to him, and for him to endeavor to extract the truth from such lean material is like making sugar from linen rags, when sugar-cane may be had. Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written to-day for the next ten years, with sufficient accuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend. Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate."

THIS IS "PLANET B"

I'm embarrassed to admit that I've reached codgerhood without having read A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. That's an oversight we'll correct this Summer, at the latest. It also makes us feel a little less threatened by the current state of politics in the US and much of the rest of the world. It looks suspiciously like we're experiencing widespread failure of political systems, accompanied by a world population that currently exceeds the earth's ability to support a basic standard of living under current economic and political systems, The end of a fossil fuel economy is upon us and those who would experience significant losses with the ending are fighting to extract as much profit as they can. We are, it seems, very unlikely to solve or resolve these issues through political means. But, that doesn't mean they're unsolvable.

Here's a few examples:

• DRAWDOWN: the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming.


• Doughnut Economics: thinking like a 21st century economist


• Re-thinking Progress: The Circular Economy

What seems sadly lacking so far is sufficient recognition that we're all in this together and either we all win or none of us win. Those who would argue otherwise would also argue that a vehicle tire is perfectly serviceable as is because it's only flat on one side. Our fossil fuel driven economy has become unsustainable for many reasons in addition to climate disruption. If we focus on real progress more that fleeting politics, we may attain the kind of cultural transformation needed to allow such children, grandchildren as we may have to lead a life that isn't hell on earth. Ironically, one of my favorite politicians, Robert Kennedy, warned us about these problems many years ago.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. 

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. 

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.   

If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world."

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
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

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