Watch out for “Free Lunch” speeches

 Way back in the days, there was a tv program called “Welcome Back, Kotter.” Among other characters was a greaser named Vinnie Barbarino who was known for, among other things, exclaiming “I am so confused!” That’s how I’m feeling today. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading too much.

If, as some write, we can’t love what we don’t know, does that mean we have to know the whole Earth to love it? If, as some write, we can’t love what we don’t understand, must we “understand” the whole Earth to love it? Must we love the whole Earth to respect and honor her [Mother Earth]? I ask these questions because it daily becomes more clear to me that there’s more and more I don’t know, let alone understand, about our home planet and yet I’d like to believe I love Earth. At least I want to see a prompt cessation of the destruction of the Earth’s systems on which we all depend for oxygen to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat. I know, I left out shelter and I shouldn’t have. We depend on Earth as our home and for our homes. As long as any damage was in the back yard of someone else [NIMBY], we often failed to be concerned. As we’ve discovered in some detail over the past several decades, the Earth is essentially a closed system. Energy from the sun enters and provides energy to Earth’s systems, especially photosynthesis, and we rarely send an interstellar vehicle out, but that’s about it. We are living on a very large recycling system, more and more of us are living on it each year and we’ve been profligate and dissolute in our use of the resoures available.

was it “progress” to pave this?

Photo by J. Harrington

Now, here’s an even more tricky part. Each year we learn that the system is actually a bunch of interrelated systems, all and each of which affect the others and we don’t really know which are the more or less critical ones. As Aldo Leopold wisely noted: “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” I’m afraid we’re not doing very well with that either. As those living in Florida have recently learned only too well, with Mother Nature, we can pay her now or we can pay her later, but pay her we will. That brings us back to yesterday’s posting about an Honorable Harvest and, more generally, about Native American perspectives about living sustainably. I’m not sure how well we can adjust or adapt our economic systems to fit Native American principles, but it’s worked fairly well with our Constitution, much of which we “borrowed” from the Iroquois.

Over the next five weeks or so, many candidates will make promises to US. As we consider those promises, we should also consider what keeping those promises will cost US, because the candidates will not be writing personal checks to cover their promises. Even the politician I admire more than any other these days, AOC, admits that she and her staff depend on dollars provided by her supporters to accomplish much  of the good they do. Plus there’s the good accomplished through legislation and concepts such as the Green New Deal.

One of the reasons I’m waxing philosophical these days is we have, in too many past elections, allowed ourselves to be pandered to and conned that way. If we really believe that government is the way we can get a free lunch by beggaring our neighbor, then we deserve what we get, we’ll just end up paying for it later, or our kids will. Is that the kind of parent we want to be?

Once the World Was Perfect

By Joy Harjo

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.

Then we took it for granted.

Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.

Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.

And once Doubt ruptured the web,

All manner of demon thoughts

Jumped through—

We destroyed the world we had been given

For inspiration, for life—

Each stone of jealousy, each stone

Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.

No one was without a stone in his or her hand.

There we were,

Right back where we had started.

We were bumping into each other

In the dark.

And now we had no place to live, since we didn't know

How to live with each other.

Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another

And shared a blanket.

A spark of kindness made a light.

The light made an opening in the darkness.

Everyone worked together to make a ladder.

A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,

And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,

And their children, all the way through time—

To now, into this morning light to you.

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