What do we want our emergent new system to look like?

AS near (or far) as I can tell, there are more and more folks consciously involved in creating their futures, rather than adjusting or adapting to a future created for them by others (1%'ers we're looking at you). More and more of us are behaving as if we realize we're part of a self-organizing complex emergent adaptive system, one that historically has treated biodiversity loss and habitat destruction as externalities. Now we're awakening to the reality that we are part of biodiversity, dependent on habitat, and not exempt from extermination as more of us are extirpated from our areas of origin. Funny thing to be happening to colonizing societies, losing shoreline developments to rising seas and more frequent flooding, while wildlands experience more frequent and intense wildfires, caught between the devil and the deep blue seas.

One challenge in living this way, at least for some of us, is that we have more of a vision of what we don't want than of what we desire most. Most of my conscious hours have been spent goal seeking, both personally and professionally. In a period dominated by climate weirding I know I want to see GHGs essentially eliminated by 2030 to 2050, replaced by renewable energy to the greatest extent possible. But what does that mean at a personal level? Our house is not extremely well insulated. That's a hindrance in replacing a gas furnace / air conditioner system with an air source heat pump. How sure could we be that we wouldn't need the gas system as a backup, only to get hit with outrageous bills because Texas and our local gas companies screwed up again? When much is new, much is untested.

The situation isn't helped, and is actually hindered, by the political divisiveness and the disinformation propagated by religious and political fundamentalists. It takes more time and energy than many of us have to try to separate a clear signal from the noise. Politicians, scientists and communicators all seem to be on different  pages, speaking different languages to attain sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, objectives. At one time I  had great hopes based on the Project Drawdown report. Over time, they've adjusted the definitions of several of their proposed solutions enough to make it difficult to follow and, perhaps more importantly, I know of no one who's following up on and making public the progress being made on each of the proposed solutions.

Who can we, who should we, believe these days? Most individuals and organizations have an ax of some kind to grind, even those like me, who are democrats at heart, but with a small "d" because the majority of the big "D" party is neither sufficiently progressive nor aggressive enough for our taste, although hell would be long frozen over before we'd support a Republican Koch sucker these days. Our current president is doing a good job, but I fear the results may end up being too little, too late. Meanwhile, others continue to deny our climate crisis and the continuing and evolving pandemic, so they push back against proposed solution frameworks like the Green New Deal, intentionally structured to allow for flexibility and accommodation to meet different needs and priorities.

time for each of us to make a new home for all of us

Photo by J. Harrington

As I've pondered what I hope for, I'd like my granddaughter to enjoy no less than I had as a child and teenager in the 1950's and '60's. The environment was less exploited; families could make it with just one breadwinner; Saulk's polio vaccine was received gratefully; and, we had leveraged a world war to reinvigorate an economy recovering from depression. Civil rights and women's liberation and the environmental movement that lay ahead made it clear that there was still much to be done to live up to the ideals espoused in our founding documents, but we thought we had left insurrection 100 years behind US and that our real enemies were external. Weren't those the good old days?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

By Gil Scott Heron

You will not be able to stay home, brother

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
And skip out for beer during commercials, because
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you
By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle
And leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams, and Spiro Agnew
To eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre
And will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because
The revolution will not be televised, brother

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae
Pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run
Or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not be able predict the winner
At 8:32 on report from twenty-nine districts
The revolution will not be televised

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young
Being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process
There will be no slow motion or still lifes of Roy Wilkins
Strolling through Watts in a red, black, and green liberation jumpsuit
That he has been saving for just the proper occasion

"Green Acres", "Beverly Hillbillies", and "Hooterville Junction"
Will no longer be so damn relevant
And women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane
On "Search for Tomorrow"
Because black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news
And no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists
And Jackie Onassis blowing her nose
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Keys
Nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash
Engelbert Humperdinck, or The Rare Earth
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be right back
After a message about a white tornado
White lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom
The tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat

The revolution will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run, brothers
The revolution will be live

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