Gaia's Grief

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

Moderators: Clemsy, Martin_Weyers, Cindy B.

How will humankind address the global environmental problem in this century?

a.) We will find a satisfactory way to address each environmental problem without too much trauma to the environment or to humankind.
6
16%
b.) We will fail miserably; war, famine, and pestilence will triumph in this century, causing not only the senseless destruction of the environment, but unnecessary suffering and deaths of billions of people.
15
41%
c.) Other
16
43%
 
Total votes: 37

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

I use the toes and base 20 is no help. Base 2 is a challenge now.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

I use the toes and base 20 is no help. Base 2 is a challenge now.-CB
Now that's my kind of humor. :lol:
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

Alley394
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Post by Alley394 »

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1DR8P5.DTL

California outlaws plastic bags. It's a step I guess but it's hard to feel optimistic when it took this long for just one state of one country in the world to reach this decision...

A J
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Post by A J »

Clemsy wrote:
I voted other because the answer will be in some, probably uncomfortable, place between the first two.

I'm pretty much with Clemsy on this one, but as I am one of Bear's
... older members of society seem to be so enmeshed within a variety of personal and social realities of an exceedingly complex nature...
I continue to hope that the uncomfortable part will be bearable and relatively brief. :)

AJ
"Sacred space and sacred time and something joyous to do is all we need. Almost anything then becomes a continuous and increasing joy."

A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Hey AJ, good to 'see' you!
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

We will fail miserably; war, famine, and pestilence will triumph in this century, causing not only the senseless destruction of the environment, but unnecessary suffering and deaths of billions of people.
Somehow, I think we've overcame this before. :wink:
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

Don’t you think that arsenic-metabolizing bacteria gives an idea how
Mother Nature can redefine everything? :)


Two new reports show that a bacterium, known as GFAJ-1, requires small amounts of
phosphate to grow—and that it cannot substitute arsenic for phosphorus to survive,
as a 2010 report in Science had suggested;
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2012/ ... enic.shtml
Last edited by Ercan2121 on Tue Jul 10, 2012 3:18 am, edited 2 times in total.

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

Don’t you think that arsenic-metabolizing bacteria gives an idea how
Mother Nature can redefine everything?
It's funny how there is a "poof" factor to life. Look in a place one would never think there would be life and "poof", there it is. 8)
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

CarmelaBear made a mistake and erased one of her previous posts here. The following quote was one of the paragraphs in that post (now marked with "x's", above).
As long as we, the people, keep electing those who are incapable of making a REAL and LASTING retreat from oil and coal, we are doomed. The planet will survive humanity, but if we don't make a 180 on the issue of environmental protection, humanity cannot survive what Mother Earth has in store for us.

--CB
Obama is now opening his campaign office in Chicago. This is not about electing one man any more. It's about being so taken by the immediate experience of life that we continue to take a back seat on the bus that is driving us gradually and inexorably toward a worldwide crisis of historically overarching proportions.

The brilliant and talented and accomplished Jews of Europe could not stop the holocaust juggernaut from happening. The brilliant and talented and accomplished Americans may not be able to save themselves and humanity from the juggernaut that is the world's fossil fuel-based economic system. The safety of our current way of life (which is supported by those who currently manage the industrial-based economy) is the primary concern and focus of the American electorate, who are now taking shelter under the systems that created their voting power in the first place.

Our American systems of financial and economic law and governance are preventing any significant progress toward the rescue of Gaia and Mother Earth and humanity and, ultimately, the American people and their precious Constitution.

As a daughter of Mother Earth, I am alarmed at the state of my nation and the world.

While the latest juggernaut is opening a Chicago office to raise money and create a "grass" roots campaign to keep the pretense of progress going, the New Holocaust is well under way. It is not a concerted effort to keep the world in the industrial age. It is a default setting on our systemic reality.

It's the system, stupid!

I am not arguing for socialism or communism over capitalism. I am arguing for a world where electing a Democrat or a Republican (with money that buys nasty commercials to beat up the competition) does not mean progress of any significant kind. It is a world where neither party in America has anything to say about anything important.

While the Jews were absorbed in their own private concerns, the Nazis moved forward to compensate for injuries suffered in the past. The Nazis felt compelled to deal a death blow to their designated demon of the day.

While the most powerful electorate in the world is absorbed with the minutiae of White House politics and Congressional wrangling and whether we have jobs and teachers and doctors, the system remains in place, entirely unquestioned. The system is not set up to address the issues of the planet's health and well-being. It is not the job of the current system to see the holocaust coming and avert the most serious crisis in history.

The current system, an industrial age set of Contracts with the World, is destroying humanity the way the Nazis destroyed the Jews. First, you hold Democratic elections. Then you preach to the converted on any subject other than the most pressing crisis.....subjects that preoccupy the emotionally weary people who actually vote.

Once properly elected, you create an organization that will carry out your transparent goals. The Nazis demonized the Jews in the same way that our current American system demonizes the lawbreaker. It is a "blind" justice that incarcerates millions of people who would rather feel good than be enslaved to rules that have nothing to do with the individual experience of real life. This color blind law kills more black men and poor people (both innocent and guilty) than all the lynch mobs in the Deep South, but it goes unquestioned by an African-American president who appears to be as powerless in the face of the system as the proverbial deer, standing in the road, frozen in place as the headlights before him grow larger and more intense.

Obama is the system. The news media are the system. The economy is the system. The military industrial culture is the system. The electorate is the system. We are the system.

Together, our massive social organizations are set on a course that will eventually lead to the holocaust of human life as we know it. Gaia, bless her heart, is fine. She survived the death of the dinosaur and many other holocausts. She can survive this, too. It is humanity and nature as we love her that is in mortal danger.

Our stewardship of the planet is the most pressing political issue of our time.

America and the world cannot buy their way out of this crisis. Bolstering the economy will not remove us from the danger we face. Health care is important, but all indications are that the vast majority manage to survive despite the lack of political resolve to effectively fix the current American system of health care.

Obama's campaign and the Republican response to it are not going to effectively address the issue of the rising temperatures and the melting ice caps and the swirling heaps of garbage on the surface of the ocean. Why? Because the campaign and the economy and the systemic, legal basis for the Status Quo is all dependent on the perpetuation of the same public and private and personal policies that created this crisis in the first place. Obama and the American people live are politically trapped.

The fundamental core values that underly the operation of a greenhouse juggernaut have not been identified and made the focus of our political discourse. Instead, we are distracted by a myriad of small, bright, shiny objects.

We are distracted by the latest faux pas of a wayward celebrity symbol or the latest shooting or the latest sneeze in the White House or the Congress or the Supreme Court.

The planet is too big for the New York Times or the governments of the world or the workers or the parents or the elders or the teachers and doctors and, yes, the scientists. It is the forest, and the trees are easier to see, easier to manage.

The American political attention needs to refocus our collective energies. We need to be all about questioning the system and addressing the issues that are truly the most urgent, not the ones dictated by a distracted public and self-serving mega-sized institutions. It would rescue not only the American people, but the whole of humanity. It would align the interests of the electorate with the most cherished values of a nation founded on the idea that we are free to achieve what is necessary to live and breathe.

America's voters need to question the system and the Constitution and the law.

We must concentrate our attention on the task at hand, the task of ushering in a new economy and a new political alignment that supports humanity's need for a healthy planet with healthy and happy people living in a rich and thriving world of nature and functionally integrated technology.

If there is a way to make this message of priorities "go viral" on the internet and leap out of forums such as this and into the hearts and minds of the most powerful electorate on the planet, then our culture must find a way. Balancing our current life with our plans for a whole new life is not taking us to the next level. The next level is the organization of a viable political movement with a focus that will keep us going while we change course to avert impending doom. We all have to do something bold and creative.

The contest between the rich Democrats and the rich Republicans is a distraction.

The real political battle is for the attention of the American voter, who is trapped in the Status Quo along with Obama, the New York Times, Wall Street, Congress, and so on down the line to the neighborhood cop on the beat. Like the German voter who needed Hitler's leadership, the American voter needs Obama.

The interests of humanity and the American people are not served by our well-meaning president. He is too invested in and co-dependent on the industrial economy that is destroying our environment.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

Neoplato wrote:
Don’t you think that arsenic-metabolizing bacteria gives an idea how
Mother Nature can redefine everything?
It's funny how there is a "poof" factor to life. Look in a place one would never think there would be life and "poof", there it is. 8)
He, he :-)
This should be a law of Nature!

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Check out this website. It's called Carbon Rally dot com. It's 8)

http://www.carbonrally.com/
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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Post by captsunshine »

We are living in a world that is a reflection of who we are.
I do not have to believe in an intelligent and ever watchful ,longsuffering Mother figure that is the Earth or Nature to realize this and to learn and change my ways
.
The problem is in the excesses that we commit in the name of accepted model of successful and 'we ve made it' lifestyle. And what we do to sustain it
The name of the game Is to exploit the Natural resources inorder to fuel a way of living that n exploits Nature even more. That is the irony of Macroeconomics and the supercharged,souped up Societal icons that it spawn.
No I'm not an anarchist nor a communist.
But when u live in a world which defines You in terms of your material possessions and not the spirit that makes you a wonderul creation to behold - One realizes that the burden of centuries of 'Modernization has left us so isolated from the very source of our being.
We still seem to have this evolutionary hangover that lead us to consume everything inorder to 'Know'-and eventually- To Know everything for the sake of Consuming it .
Tell me folks!- How different are we ,in that respect, from a puppy in the street or.a Shark sensing blood in his neighborhood?.
We have sucked blood from the Nipple that nourished us- and we remain Malnourished as a Humanity - and stunted spiritually.
inspite of all this I vote that we will change for the better- because that is our evolutionary destiny-now that we have created our edge of the precipice its Time to move forward.( Not over the cliff, I'm sure!)
A kind of Fait accompli
Non-violence ... requires greater heroism than of brave soldiers ... The world does not accept today the idea of loving the enemy. Even in Christian Europe the principle of non-violence is ridiculed ... Christians do not understand the message of Jesus. It is necessary to deliver it over again in the way we can understand ...

- Gandhi - speech -1925

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

The future belongs to the impatient and stubborn among us who will not settle for any more pragmatic and sensible resistance to getting off our hind quarters and turning our collective lives around by a good 180 degrees or so.

* Easy for me to say.....*

:roll:
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

captsunshine
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Post by captsunshine »

Hi Carmela,
I believe that a concerted effort- is in the making - All it requires is a trigger - or a jolt - to bring us to our senses.
Something similiar to what sparked the reform movement in the Arab world
Non-violence ... requires greater heroism than of brave soldiers ... The world does not accept today the idea of loving the enemy. Even in Christian Europe the principle of non-violence is ridiculed ... Christians do not understand the message of Jesus. It is necessary to deliver it over again in the way we can understand ...

- Gandhi - speech -1925

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Greetings, Captain.

Social and ecological issues have two interacting components. One is systemic and requires design initiative from those with the resources and will to take steps that make the real progress happen on the local level. That is where folks become conscious of their own role in the larger issues and the sparks fly.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

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