It is time for us to give up the idea of John Wane westerns, where the broad arc of the vast desert seems to go on forever. We have hit the wall as it were in terms of finite Earth. Even including the atmosphere, the entire part capable of being inhabited is perhaps the thickness of an apple skin relative to the planet. The biosphere has been pushed past the curve in terms of sustainability, and noi matter how hard we pray, we cannot exempt our species from the fallout, literally, that comes with that new territory. I take issue with anyone who thinks that we can reduce the poison coming out of our collective tailpipes by simply praying. To tell the truth, the pantheon that speaks to me would not accept those prayers in any case. We are past mistakes, these are decisions.
I cannot discern myself from the species as a whole, I understand that we are one, almost what I would call an organism and for that, I experience much confusion and distaste for much of what passes through or gets integrated into our collective beings. I believe that without collective responses to the current situation, we will continue feeding the many hands that bite us. It is my own experiences of homelessness, of helplessness and of dissolution that I can speak with first-hand authority, we are truly our brother's and sister's keeper. There are perhaps billions of ways to dismantle the current crop of Mother Earth Raping, tax avoiding, election buying forces at work across the land, but each of us still, often in insidious ways, support their blatant picking of our pockets, sometimes with a smile.
I was told by the many million dollar budget establishment that I work most often but furthest from my home, that I would have to park in the city ramp at $2 each day, but for this I would receive no compensation. This is a tax, paid directly to the city for the right to work in their town, nothing more. How many others pay the same amount and for that the City can't seem to ever make a smooth, flat street. It is hard to take aim at those responsible for the management of our towns and cities, but through collective action, we can make a significant difference. I have heard recently from three well-respected sources, that virtually all government actions are complaint based, especially now that things are getting computerized, they often run so smoothly that agents don't even notice, unless there is a complaint. I'm going to start complaining about the pot-holes and when the salt piles up in intersections because the truck driver has to stop, but continues pouring out his load, I'm gonna complain. When the street sweeper goes by three times in one night and I have to sweep up what they missed, someone is getting a call.
I'm already sending far too much money away (even having driven a 50 Mpg vehicle for over ten years) to buy fuel to get back and forth to my job. It also comes with a long term legacy of pollution, the cost of which is borne by all of us for many, many years. That money never comes back to our community, but the poisons stay. We all lose on both sides of the deal. The only way to put an end to this is to stand together, help one another overcome as many obstacles as possible to staying home, ride-sharing, carpooling and other forms of transit. The only way that I can justify my own use is by staying home most of the time, or at least leaving my car in the driveway. I always feel like it is getting infinite mileage as long as it is sitting still. I have come close to converting it to run waste cooling oil a couple of times, but every conversion I have seen had pretty creepy mess associated with the storage system and it sacrificed much of the trunk as well. I use my VW Jetta for hauling too often to lose that precious space. Short of that I walk, ride bike or just stay home.
As an individual, I can make my home my biggest investment, put time in around here and take care of the property that the bank owns well enough that if and when I ever get it paid off, it is still worth something. Contributing to the community that surrounds me is fast starting to feel the same way. A realtor asked me what kind of shop I would want to open in a specific commercial space that we were looking at...I said, the best idea would be to canvas the neighborhood and ask what folks nearby wanted to be within walking distance. NONE OF IT is about us in the end after all, it is not about the us that we usually think of. The greed and deceit of the few contaminate our way of thinking and far too often the old adage, "Screw the other guy before he screws you." becomes the prevailing wisdom, that takes us away from both proven fact and sustainability.
If I can do one thing with my writing, I would like to be able to tie securely our humanity to ecological awareness, for without that, our spirits may flag as we look out into the destruction that humankind has unleashed on Mother Earth for over a century. Human beings are foremost compassionate, we delight in the delight of others. Some say our energies "feed off each other" and I have seen enough instances where Earth and her creatures did the same with me and others, that I cannot deny that the entire biosphere is our brother and sister hood. The poisoning of a tundra swan is as despicable as it would be to poison another human being. To write off vast areas as unrecoverable, to not even have a plan for cleaning up your mess before you start a project is stunning to me. In essense, what we tell the corporados is that none of their endeavors will ever require responsible behavior. Once culpability is "discovered" lengthy expensive litigation will be required, but the people with standing in any case will be too poor for the good lawyers and big time corporate lawyers are adept at burying a small legal team in paperwork. If a decision is ever reached, it has to travel up through the courts and that could take years, during those years, you can pretty much continue your discharges act like you care a little bit and if you do get slapped in the end, it will be just a small portion of your revenues. I say, we need not waste any more time. I could make a list of things I do not buy, but it would tax the ability to comprehend in short order. Instead let me focus on what I do buy. Enough fuel to get me to jobs on some (occasional) days I need to. Food that comes from as locally as I can find, very occasionally, a book. This is where it gets ugly, mortgage(death note), insurance, utilities, taxes, and probably eating out (at the most locally owned and operated places we can find).
I like to challenge myself daily to conserve a bit more water, or pick up trash in the park, or along the park/river-way that runs past our place, or to plant trees in "waste" areas. Anything to reclaim a bit of the heavy handed treatment that man has reigned down upon the place. In fact, one way that I hope to help in doing this is to purchase land for a sacred pagan shrine. It will have better protection than National Forest land and will be kept unassailed in perpetuity. With luck, and a bit of persistent prodding that will give an anchor upon which to build a movement to reduce and eliminate toxic air emissions at some point in the near future. Coming around to protecting all land, not just our sacred space, or perhaps because all spaces are (were) truly sacred, all places need to be protected from toxic air emissions. That means that we need better systems for moving people. Electric motors have the lowest emissions and the highest efficiency. Why are we still talking about this. If we "got off" oil tomorrow nothing is "owed" to the mega oil giants. Even their militias will be defunct if they cannot pay them. There are very few buggy whip manufacturers left either, but that is not something the public got up in arm over, neither will be the passing of big oil into the history books. Perhaps oil will still be needed, but refining, and the massive energy waste and contamination hazard that refineries represent will be lessened considerably if we just stop using petrochemical fuel. Believe me, the minute I find a way to bring in an income and stay home, I'm doing it!
I cannot discern myself from the species as a whole, I understand that we are one, almost what I would call an organism and for that, I experience much confusion and distaste for much of what passes through or gets integrated into our collective beings. I believe that without collective responses to the current situation, we will continue feeding the many hands that bite us. It is my own experiences of homelessness, of helplessness and of dissolution that I can speak with first-hand authority, we are truly our brother's and sister's keeper. There are perhaps billions of ways to dismantle the current crop of Mother Earth Raping, tax avoiding, election buying forces at work across the land, but each of us still, often in insidious ways, support their blatant picking of our pockets, sometimes with a smile.
I was told by the many million dollar budget establishment that I work most often but furthest from my home, that I would have to park in the city ramp at $2 each day, but for this I would receive no compensation. This is a tax, paid directly to the city for the right to work in their town, nothing more. How many others pay the same amount and for that the City can't seem to ever make a smooth, flat street. It is hard to take aim at those responsible for the management of our towns and cities, but through collective action, we can make a significant difference. I have heard recently from three well-respected sources, that virtually all government actions are complaint based, especially now that things are getting computerized, they often run so smoothly that agents don't even notice, unless there is a complaint. I'm going to start complaining about the pot-holes and when the salt piles up in intersections because the truck driver has to stop, but continues pouring out his load, I'm gonna complain. When the street sweeper goes by three times in one night and I have to sweep up what they missed, someone is getting a call.
I'm already sending far too much money away (even having driven a 50 Mpg vehicle for over ten years) to buy fuel to get back and forth to my job. It also comes with a long term legacy of pollution, the cost of which is borne by all of us for many, many years. That money never comes back to our community, but the poisons stay. We all lose on both sides of the deal. The only way to put an end to this is to stand together, help one another overcome as many obstacles as possible to staying home, ride-sharing, carpooling and other forms of transit. The only way that I can justify my own use is by staying home most of the time, or at least leaving my car in the driveway. I always feel like it is getting infinite mileage as long as it is sitting still. I have come close to converting it to run waste cooling oil a couple of times, but every conversion I have seen had pretty creepy mess associated with the storage system and it sacrificed much of the trunk as well. I use my VW Jetta for hauling too often to lose that precious space. Short of that I walk, ride bike or just stay home.
As an individual, I can make my home my biggest investment, put time in around here and take care of the property that the bank owns well enough that if and when I ever get it paid off, it is still worth something. Contributing to the community that surrounds me is fast starting to feel the same way. A realtor asked me what kind of shop I would want to open in a specific commercial space that we were looking at...I said, the best idea would be to canvas the neighborhood and ask what folks nearby wanted to be within walking distance. NONE OF IT is about us in the end after all, it is not about the us that we usually think of. The greed and deceit of the few contaminate our way of thinking and far too often the old adage, "Screw the other guy before he screws you." becomes the prevailing wisdom, that takes us away from both proven fact and sustainability.
If I can do one thing with my writing, I would like to be able to tie securely our humanity to ecological awareness, for without that, our spirits may flag as we look out into the destruction that humankind has unleashed on Mother Earth for over a century. Human beings are foremost compassionate, we delight in the delight of others. Some say our energies "feed off each other" and I have seen enough instances where Earth and her creatures did the same with me and others, that I cannot deny that the entire biosphere is our brother and sister hood. The poisoning of a tundra swan is as despicable as it would be to poison another human being. To write off vast areas as unrecoverable, to not even have a plan for cleaning up your mess before you start a project is stunning to me. In essense, what we tell the corporados is that none of their endeavors will ever require responsible behavior. Once culpability is "discovered" lengthy expensive litigation will be required, but the people with standing in any case will be too poor for the good lawyers and big time corporate lawyers are adept at burying a small legal team in paperwork. If a decision is ever reached, it has to travel up through the courts and that could take years, during those years, you can pretty much continue your discharges act like you care a little bit and if you do get slapped in the end, it will be just a small portion of your revenues. I say, we need not waste any more time. I could make a list of things I do not buy, but it would tax the ability to comprehend in short order. Instead let me focus on what I do buy. Enough fuel to get me to jobs on some (occasional) days I need to. Food that comes from as locally as I can find, very occasionally, a book. This is where it gets ugly, mortgage(death note), insurance, utilities, taxes, and probably eating out (at the most locally owned and operated places we can find).
I like to challenge myself daily to conserve a bit more water, or pick up trash in the park, or along the park/river-way that runs past our place, or to plant trees in "waste" areas. Anything to reclaim a bit of the heavy handed treatment that man has reigned down upon the place. In fact, one way that I hope to help in doing this is to purchase land for a sacred pagan shrine. It will have better protection than National Forest land and will be kept unassailed in perpetuity. With luck, and a bit of persistent prodding that will give an anchor upon which to build a movement to reduce and eliminate toxic air emissions at some point in the near future. Coming around to protecting all land, not just our sacred space, or perhaps because all spaces are (were) truly sacred, all places need to be protected from toxic air emissions. That means that we need better systems for moving people. Electric motors have the lowest emissions and the highest efficiency. Why are we still talking about this. If we "got off" oil tomorrow nothing is "owed" to the mega oil giants. Even their militias will be defunct if they cannot pay them. There are very few buggy whip manufacturers left either, but that is not something the public got up in arm over, neither will be the passing of big oil into the history books. Perhaps oil will still be needed, but refining, and the massive energy waste and contamination hazard that refineries represent will be lessened considerably if we just stop using petrochemical fuel. Believe me, the minute I find a way to bring in an income and stay home, I'm doing it!
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