We're all in/on this together

The world is full of good, or at least better, news, but we won't find it in main stream media's "if it bleeds, it leads" coverage. Try looking in books. I'm just finishing What If We Get It Right, Visions of Climate Futures. It's leaving me feeling encouraged despite yesterday's political assassination and shootings, allegedly by a christian nationalist right-wing police imitator.

For a recent birthday, I received a copy of Robert Macfarlane's Is a River Alive? Reading is underway and, so far, it's as good as I hoped it could be. If Ecuador can incorporate the rights of nature in its constitution, why not US?

Blue Marble
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

There's a couple or three old sayings you should be aware of: as a recovering planner, I learned quite well that "more of the same never solved a problem." That fits rather well, I think, with “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” And let's not forget, now that we find ourselves at the bottom of a deep hole, to stop digging.

When I was growing up, the future was presented as something objective out there that, over time, we entered. During the past few years I've learned that the future is actually like a garden. It's something we ourselves grow. If we do a good job and work together, we'll have stores to get US through the winter and early spring. If not, we're in serious, perhaps deadly, trouble. Too many of US seem too think going it alone is the solution. Survival and thriving are shared results unless you're the Donner party.

We have become hyper-individualistic to the point of selfdestruction. Let me share an example from the past week or so that, I think, helps make my case. My email inbox has been repeatedly filled by conservation organizations asking me to "Take Action" to change or eliminate one provision or another off the Reconciliation bill in the Senate. None of the requests suggested killing the whole damn POS. I responded that I would ask the members of Congress representing me to Kill the Bill, but not individual provisions. I remain deeply disappointed that there isn't a coalition of conservation interests working to totally defeat the House's crappy work.

Without

Joy Harjo    1951 –

 

The world will keep trudging through time without us

When we lift from the story contest to fly home

We will be as falling stars to those watching from the edge

Of grief and heartbreak

Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature 

And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters 

And the other half is nailing it all back together

Through the smoke of cooking fires, lovers’ trysts, and endless 

Human industry—

Maybe then, beloved rascal

We will find each other again in the timeless weave of breathing

We will sit under the trees in the shadow of earth sorrows 

Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.

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