Karōshi

We all become food for a complex food web at some point, my intention in offering this here is that we may make out choices deliberately, not through being subsumed by an extractive system or exploitation. If we acquiesce in the face of our oppressors, nothing will be left for future generations. It is time to act as if the next seven generations matter.

In the course of watching a foreign film this moon (month), I was introduced to the concept of working one self to death. It came up in two other ways that didn't make much sense at first. The third time as they say was the charm. It brought with it a profound sense of awareness. Although we often hear about people in the United States of America who work 'til retirement and then keel over dead two weeks later, we do not have a word for people like them or, in fact, those who cross the veil while working. The irony of learning about karōshi now is that the whole threadbare sack of shit we have been handed is unraveling faster than the lying media bastards can patch it back up. The jig my most lethal friends is up! Corporate welfare pig, be advised. Your reign is coming quickly to a close. The age of the water bearers is upon us and from now on, truth will be your ration.

Remember the lying that has gone on about how we cannot more equitably distribute wealth because comfort would act as a dis-incentive to work? Listen up, Rethuglicans. Japan, where the difference between entry level wage earners and CEOs is miniscule compared to U.S. standards, workers are working themselves to death. Especially mid-level managers. True, and in such startling numbers that, the Japanese recognize it as a social health care threat. We continue to be fed a line of bull so thick with rumor and innuendo, class warfare and bigotry engendered by hatred, that those who profess to know how the economy works have to be either the best liars or most ignorant souls ever to walk upon the planet. Truth is that even when the differences between rich and poor are lessened, there are those that, with laser focus, seek to achieve wealth. This, in our culture, is code for "live beyond their means". Chasing dollars or yuan, whatever you call it, hardly matters

The mantra that equitable distribution of wealth would sap our productivity and undermine worker's motivation to earn has been repeated so often, it passes for truth amongst those of little conscience, those who would foist their reality on whoever they seek to oppress, those whose self-righteous indignation fills the media, buys the representatives and guides the debate in print, on the air-waves and in the digital realm. If you look into the facts behind wealth distribution, say through the CIA World Factbook, you will see a trend. The more equitably the wealth is spread, the more likely one would want to live there. Strangely, the U.S.of A. ranks forty-first worst, of the 136 countries on the list. Forty countries distribute their wealth more unequally than we do, but they include some of the least likely countries to want to emigrate to (unless you are relatively high on the income ladder already.) The one percent really stick together wherever they are.

I have written at length about Calvinism and the preoccupation with the lie that the poor deserve what they get. The time has come to create a new mythology that acknowledges that those lies were to placate the conscience of five century old oppressors. If you think that the whole world should be more like Botswana and Lesotho, or Namibia, just "keep on believing" as Journey said. See how that works for the next several decades. If life in Norway, Denmark and Sweden look better to you, then never let the sun set without adding your voice to the worldwide chorus that calls for more equitable distribution of wealth!

I mourn the familiar workaholics everywhere, especially those who pay the ultimate price. I have compassion for those who have lost loved ones to this disease. My own father pushed beyond the limits of health and sanity in his own employment and because he cared so much for others, he was willing to do anything to help the people he loved to get all that they wanted, not just what they needed. The blessings that come from moving up the financial ladder, when they also carry the curse of death, are not only hollow, but in the end, hardly worth the price we pay. Karōshi is the ultimate corporate welfare. No executive salary is worth having the stain of death on one's hands. We have to seriously question the entire system that subverts human life for no purpose other than generating wealth for the already wealthy beyond measure.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Spirit

Initially I wanted to write Earth week entries about each of these forces separately. Each deserves an entry this Spring, but for lack of time and the busy nature of my schedule, I am going to have to combine these elements into a single post. Much like in our own lives, we must balance and integrate forces like these daily.

Happily, the Earth is getting lots of attention this week, but we often allow our connection with Mother Earth to slide out of focus, or drop off our radar completely. As you may have noticed, my own focus, in life and blogs is on the Earth and her gifts, sustainable development and patterns that connect us with the planet, her resources and our relationship with Starship Earth, our fellow passengers on our flight around the Sun, and the island mentality that must come to light if we are to survive here without poisoning ourselves or tearing at the web of life that sustains us until it can no longer hold the weight of our species.

With gardening season upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere, many millions will be turning the soil, many for the first time. This simple act can grow within us new respect for creatures that share their space with us, as well as the life that goes on all around us on this miraculous planet. In a single tablespoon of healthy soil more organisms can live than the number of people we typically meet in a lifetime. Protecting the earth and her soils from the harsh effects of sun and rain are paramount in the gardener's world. Mulch your gardens to conserve moisture, retain fertility and protect soil life. If anyone has ever laid in the sun too long, or been stuck out in the rain with no shelter, they know that nature can be harsh. Single called critters and soil microbes are even less able to cope with sunburn or direct hits from raindrops. Protecting the Earth takes on a whole new meaning when you realize that soils are alive. Once sterilized, it is just dirt.

Air too must be integrated and available in healthy soils. when planting, be careful not to destroy soil tilth or texture. turning soils that are still wet, treading on planting beds, or killing off beneficial organisms can lead to difficult conditions for many plants. Even roots like to "breathe" and compaction rates as a number one cause of declining fertility in soils. Again, mulch can act as a shock absorber underfoot, protecting delicate structures that plants form to sustain their lives as well as our own. This invisible element swirls and flows around us all the time. The atmosphere is 1/6 as viscous as water, but has incredible power none the less.

Fire, we often forget is at the heart of all life forms that we know of.  The basis of metabolism as well as the formation of stars is all about the burning of one fuel or another. When we speak of the movers and shakers in our society, we often say that they have a burning fire inside them. So too, we often say that people are consumed by desire, giving themselves completely to their wants or needs. finding a clear path toward understanding or integrating this elemental force is not as easy as one might think, but through exploration, being aware and inquisitive and recognizing aspects of fire that are often forgotten, overlooked or ignored, we can develop a relationship with this elemental force as well. I learned an interesting tidbit about fire this week and have already begun to appreciate the weight of it's meaning in my life. Trapped within each gallon of gasoline, there is equivalent energy to three hundred people working for one hour. Understanding that we are able to command such power with the squeezing of a pump handle and the pressing of the gas pedal in our vehicles helps to transform our awareness of the world around us. Now, whenever I hop in the car, I ask myself "Is this worth the energy I am about to expend?" Learning to control, or adapt our use of fire is essential, if we are to learn to respect it, appreciate it and develop a more intimate relationship with it. A good friend, David Yarrow has several videos posted to You Tube and Vimeo demonstrating how to create boi-char. This is possible through the understanding and utilization of fire in creating sustainability.

Liquid water, as you probably know, covers roughly 2/3 of our planet. The atmosphere holds a smaller percentage as vapor and all life forms have some water trapped within their cell walls. The elegant combination of two hydrogen atoms and a single oxygen atom is both the most aggressive natural cleanser and one of the greatest vehicles for moving substances. It is both required for life, yet can snuff out life just as surely if it gets into places it does not belong. I have heard the just two tablespoons (about 30ml) can kill a human if it is aspirated into the lungs. Most of us have been taught to respect the water, but few of us learn to develop an intimate relationship with this powerful element. I have not read the actual passage, and as most of my regular readers know, I do not accept the Bible as the "Word of God", but even the Bible acknowledges that the next age will be that of the Water Bearers. There walk among us on the planet today, a tribe of people dedicated to protecting the water, defending the water and sharing the wisdom that lies in this element. If you are not one already, seek those in your community who understand the essential nature of this important fluid and study with them. sustainability depends on protecting this essential fluid.

Spirit is perhaps the most difficult element to speak of and in spite of this, or possibly because of it, there is little that can be said to explain it to the uninitiated. As with many important things in our lives, it is easier to say what it is not rather than what it is. When one allows themselves to be still and become aware of spirit, there is an undeniable force that accompanies all the elements, the trees, rocks and creatures that surround us. There is a spirit in our food, in fodder, even in the different sorts of weather that surround us. Specifying exactly what it is can be most difficult, but in the classic musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, the character of Jesus sings that "If every voice were still, the noise would still continue, the rocks and stones themselves would start to sing." The true irony is that they sing always and but for our distraction with so many other things, we often forget to listen. Spirit is, as yet, unmeasurable with any device, except for the organisms and entities that share space with it. The hippies used to say, "I got bad vibes from that guy." or "I dug her aura." Just because it is hard to describe, we know it when we "see", or feel it. Learning to understand and work with spirit can take a lifetime, but as with so many of the other elemental forces, there are some who are deftly attuned to it and like savants are able to see, feel and interact spiritually with everyone and everything they come in contact with. some of these folks are, as yet, unaware that they are shamen. Validating the powerful interactions of spirit within and among us and the physical reality we all create is a tall order for those who are unaware of this element is probably one of the greatest challenges we will face on our way to sustainability.

Learning to live a life that honors these elemental forces, developing an affinity for each in turn and the combined powers that express themselves through all of these elements simultaneously can only develop if we allow ourselves to listen to subtle cues that come from the elements themselves. Each and every one of us comes from a line of ancestors that did respect and honor these forces. It has not been that many generations since we were all in tune with the messages that each of these elements had to teach us. The old ways are coming back, not because they are tools of oppression, but rather because they are tools of liberation. In this season that many call the Equinox, Ostara, Easter or Spring, the male and female energies are in balance and at this time it is well to reflect on our relationships without the contaminating influence of power and control. Living our lives to the fullest require a deep understanding of the forces that allow us to grow in health and happiness. I always like to offer guidance to those who may not be as far along their path to enlightenment as they might want to be. My herbal wisdom and experience can help lead others to healthier lives, free from illness and disease. What I have learned about the environment guides me to living a full  life that is blessed with abundance. The true value of which comes from finding new ways to practice giving it away. If you have read my posts about the Give-away, you will know that frequently, as we learn the true nature of our blessings, we often begin to understand the importance of providing whatever we can to others so that their lives can be as blessed as our own.

Blessings to you this fine day and may you find it in your heart to open yourself to what really is all around us. It is the love for what truly surrounds us that has protected me in my own travels. I want to share this understanding with others so that their lives can demonstrate the same rich balance that has come to me simply by sharing what I have learned and living lives of quality that invite reciprocation. In the East, the feng-shui masters provide their clients a red envelope, into which they are encouraged to offer compensation for the master's time and insights. In our modern world, Paypal is the world-wide equivalent of a red envelope. If anything that I offer here has value, please consider making a donation. whatever money I raise through these writings is earmarked for planting more trees. Tens of thousands of trees have been planted already, but in my experience, there are many more acres that need to be protected and reforested. Peace.

Props To Nancy

Usually, during the course of a week, there are several things that get said that Nancy responds to by saying "That would be a good blog post." Often the quip or concept has been on our minds for quite some time. Nearly always, these statements are arrived at through a [peculiar insight and just the right tumbling out of words. These unique phrases or statements concisely sum up the angst and direction that can be taken to heal wounds and establish more just scenarios that both conserve resources and liberate talent, skills and attitudes from the shackles of slavery to the old ideal that we now recognize to be power and control. I try to heed her admonitions and dozens of posts come after her approval of my somewhat random distillation of ideas. Frequently it can be a struggle, trying to properly define terms or research current affairs to get to the nugget or core values that affect change.

A gift came to me today...it is a quote attributed to John Barrymore. "A person is not old until regrets take the place of dreams."

One of my dreams is to reforest much of the East River Watershed.

Precious few of us make it through the process of growing up without the horrible scars that result from abuse and neglect. Please, understand that this is not an attack of any or all parents, it is just a plain fact. I once met a woman who went through her life amassing an arsenal of masters degrees and doctorates to prove her worth. her formative experience that took days top find hidden deep within her psyche was that one day, when she was about six or seven years old, she remembered bringing some of her art home from school. She had been ebullient with pride at her creation, crafted with love for her father. Upon reaching home, she took her prize to be shown off to her papa and he dismissed her summarily, saying that he had important work to do and did not have time for her.

Some will scoff at this first world problem, but from that point forward, the rest of her life had been a race to show her father that she was not only capable, but worth his attention. None of the graduation days, or diplomas, not one of the professional organization memberships or even financial success felt good to her. In her heart, she just wanted her father to have time for her, traumatically, she wanted it as much in her late thirties as she had when she was a child. What child has not had a need unmet? Even when children have wanted for no physical comfort, they might feel shunned when parents or care-givers ignore them. sometimes, the only assault on a child is when someone squashes their dreams, or foists upon them unrealistic circumstances that only served to bind them in their own generation.

Somewhere, today, there is a young child who has worked at length to show a parent how much they love them. Let us all hope that their creative energy is rewarded by simply paying attention. Without an intact and functioning dream machine within each and every one of us, we will forever be handicapped. Why else would we be blessed with imagination and intellect? Most of the people I share these ideas with get a picture of what my meaning might be, but my joy lies in the fact that what I write about and speak of is universal, although our vocabulary is not. Like spokes on a wheel, we are each coming from our own direction and without each one working with all the others, the entire wheel of life would collapse. I am lucky to have such a sensitive and astute partner in life. she is often able to elicit from me a more clear or more fundamental understanding of the various issues that I ponder. If we were not so aware of potential and abundance, we would never expect or encourage change. It is immensely important for me to have someone so smart to help me to recognize when my words are clear enough and concise enough to share.

Epistemic Closure

Normally, I detest folks who kick others while they are down and understanding that aspect of my belief system is necessary to put this post in context. I frequently write about the dire consequences of abuse and neglect that taint our ideas, beliefs and actions throughout life, the unwitting damage we do to successive generations by not getting tot he root or healing our own pain. This is the crux of my message and I want to give the reader a chance to see that there is a pressure relief valve for whatever heat is generated by my words. Know that the pressure relief valve is love  before I elaborate further. I have compassion for those who have been lied to, those who have been told that there is no other way to meet the needs of a precariously teetering planet, on the verge of moral decrepitude. The my way or the highway mentality has wrought damage for several generations now and we must confront, aggressively the underlying assumptions that drive our leaders to misunderstand us and their responsibility to the future.
 Generations have come and gone understanding cognitive dissonance, the enigmatic process of holding two competing beliefs in our minds simultaneously. Epistemic closure is the act of defining falsehoods as real because they are expedient or prove us right. Against all odds, epistemic closure is like a great comfy blanket which soothes the raw nerves of an addled nation. Once you get on board with this delusion, all sins can be forgiven, because whatever you desire can be mandated predicated on your philosophical starting point.
Recently, Florida decided that drug testing public welfare recipients was essential to stop crack mammas and drug dealers from existing on the public dole. This approach sounds predictably mundane when viewed from the kaleidoscope of bigotry, hate, fear and entitlement that "conservatives" believe in. When the data came back, two percent (2%) of those tested were positive for drugs. Let us assume for one moment that the entire program was free and no money was needed to make this determination. Let us also assume that there were no false positives. Thirdly, let us imagine a world in which TWO PERCENT of the people receiving public assistance were collapsing the system by their sheer weight. Our internal combustion engines, like the ones we have in our automobiles are twenty to thirty percent efficient. If two percent of welfare recipients in Florida are mooching druggies, that is 98% efficiency. Even electric motors, which are between eighty-five and 90 % efficient pale in efficiency when compared to welfare in Florida's welfare expenditures.
Still, facing facts is not in the realm of those experiencing epistemic closure. Pay no heed to the fact that many extremely profitable industries are feeding at the public trough, ignore the fact that many ultra-wealthy welfare recipients are on dope, never to be tested. Turn a blind eye to the boatloads of cash that flow into private trust accounts and overseas tax havens for just one minute and spit another vehement insulting, bigoted curse out into the discussion, it is what Rethuglicans have been doing for more than a generation.


Again, I must return to the fact that I am trying to say this with as much love and compassion as possible. Things are not as we have been told. Political lies, even when believed cannot be made true.

 The same minority that dominate the discussion and control the terms of our debate are the ones who, for one reason or another, have enough time on their hands to run their collective mouths rather than have to make a living by their intellect or labor and often when we look more closely have the most to lose if we change things for the better for the majority of Americans. Heck, when I look more closely at any part of the world, the same can be said about their minorities and how they determine much of what the vast majority chooses from. Those who "already know" what to believe have no trouble dismissing certain truths, as long as they run contrary to their world view. It seems that even constraints of physics, economic limits and geology, some are willing to run off cliffs like the proverbial lemmings. When we truncate truth and claim to know it all, certain calamity will be the result. If we are lucky enough to attempt this flight of fancy alone, it might only hurt one person, but when our leaders tarry with the truth, the pain is shared amongst us all.

ECO-Tours

Posted on March 11, 2013 by otherfishwrap

ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. is adding another prong to our strategy for reclaiming forests. In light of the fact that downstream areas always fall victim to conditions, “development” and mis-use in headwaters, that feed down to them, we are creating a land trust. This legal status for land both exempts it from taxation, and protects it from development in perpetuity. Instead of just recovering lands that have been denuded and in many cases no longer support an integrated forest system, we will be branching out into protecting relatively pristine areas as well. As I have written about before, much of my adult life presented to me a subtle but pervasive quandary. The issue of ecological triage…

Welcome Home!

In my youth, I was violently opposed to this concept. Think, for a moment about saying straight out and forever, “We will cede this land, (or that,) to the dust bin of history.” This is what is being done far below the surface of the Earth to liberate “natural gas” through fracking. It is what has been done in many Superfund sites and is being done in hundreds of thousands of areas that have been toxified beyond recovery. Just like finding someone more dead than alive, occasions arise that we have to turn our attention to places that could potentially recover, if we carefully and strategically allocate our resources. As a young man, who realized that Mother Earth is sacred, each of her elemental forces and each of her creatures and plants are sacred as well, I could not accept writing off a single acre, perhaps not even a single square foot, (.09 square m) to mistreatment by humans. Sadly, we do not have that choice. Certain areas have been despoiled to the point that no life can inhabit them, only poisonous plants can grow in them and for centuries, they will continue to blossom with fruits of taint. Just as many of our brothers and sisters find, on the field of war, some will always be lost, with no hope of recovery. Mother Earth and her landscape share this eternal truth. Even though the proud young man that has strong ideas about ecological triage still lives within my aging skin, his views have been tempered by half a century of seeing blatant destruction across the face of the Earth.
I have lived, for moons on end within the concrete and steel gorges of NYC (New York City) I have breathed my fair share of petroleum distillates and carcinogenic substances. I know that my own body, more than likely, will fall victim to them some day. The value of triage is allocation of finite resources. Our efforts can be shifted to places where they do the most good.
In addition to planting trees, as we will continue to do, we are adding to our mission. We will purchase and protect relatively pristine areas, converting them to land trust status. We are targeting headwaters that have significant impact on downstream riparian (Stream-bank) ecology and will help, as all of the acres that we reclaim do, by protection and improvement of water quality. We ask everyone who reads this to share a link with others, because we spend no money on advertizing and none on administrative costs. All of our efforts are through volunteer time spent by those who are committed to our mission. Many of the ECO-Tourists who plant trees with us are paying to cover their own expenses and meals, as well as a bit extra to help our organization to buy more trees. Our Paypal account link is in the sidebar or you can use our street address and send checks snail mail to: 1445 Porlier street Green Bay, WI 54301-3334 USA. We have three distinct projects so let us know if you want your donations to go to trees, land or our capital program. This will be used creating our school of sustainability. Our visioning for the school this year is to create a place that is a hybrid between a summer camp and a spa, a resort that encompasses both retreat center and an eco-tourism destination. We will use several modalities to address the need for an integration between ourselves and nature. To find out more about our structure and process, it helps to read about The Natural Step, No Trace Camping, Transition Towns etc. We do encourage all of our guests to read both, How To Shit In The Woods and a little known book called Thinking Like A Mountain. Although they are not prerequisite for taking ECO-Tours with us, they will go a long way toward helping you understand where we are coming from. We are gardeners, cooks, healers, herbalists, fortune tellers, shamen, foresters and guides.  We work to unleash the magic in others by sharing the magic that we have found all around us.
It has taken nearly fifty generations to estrange the vast majority of us (humanity) from our true nature, but we have far less time to get things right. In the process of learning how to build sustainability into every aspect of our lives, massive dislocation and trauma will be felt all around the planet, but those who know how to plant and harvest a garden, heal the sick or care for a whole community will have the best chances for building the new culture. Saving as much land as possible, protecting it from the dangers of exploitation, oppression and desecration, is the only way to stem the tide of destruction and begin the recovery that we need to undertake. For the first time this year, we will be planting in the headwaters of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. We ask for donations to plant as many trees as possible. Appreciatively, Tony, Director ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc.

"Freedom" of Choice

Human beings have become estranged from their intuition and empathy for nature. I'm not sure how it happened. Some say we must be the descendents of alien life-forms inbreeding with native creatures, but certainly before the age of grain, we had found a way to exist much like all other animals on the planet, roving over areas that were capable of providing enough food for us to survive, living by the seasons and within a bio-region that was able to assimilate all that we cast off. Just as choices for cultures have been constrained, individuals face the same constricted limits to our own growth, development and choice. Over time, just as we have learned the mantras, "Man does not live by bread alone." and "To the victor go the spoils.", we have come of age accepting certain inalienable rules for behavior, socialized etiquette and a host of other limitations on our thoughts and actions. A great friend, and popular figures in literature and the arts have described a fallacy inherent in the idea of freedom of choice. The harder you look into it, the more true their position seems to be confirmed.

When we have the urge to reach out, there are phrases in our language that override free will. "Don't make eye contact." Whether we have heard it stated explicitly that succinctly or not depends on whether our parents or friends were completely honest about it, or whether we learned by example to furtively avert our eyes from those worthy of our compassion. I have seen people turn their heads with such a snap that you would think they had been slapped by an irate parent, to keep them from seeing what would cause a normal person to respond. Each of us in our own specific way, tailor our learning and use of language to a style, a vocabulary, a palette of understanding and experience that is unique, but often we adopt large regions of ideation from the predominant culture. What we think and say are often colored, to large extent by our peculiar past, but even so, we share similarities based on having similar experiences. Even though we experience being able to express ourselves because of the shared experiences as helpful, the definitions themselve act as limitations on experience and understanding.

Standardization has two effects. On one hand, functionality over a broad range of experiences is fostered, but often there is a swirl mixed in of functional fixation. This term is loosely translated from the field of psychology, but I like it because it describes so clearly, how many of us will limit our experiences based on prior experience and this is a good way of describing it. Take something as simple as a scissor. Two blades cutting against on another. Boom! Into your imagination pops an image...The infinite variety, types and styles of scissor are not in your head, banging around in a confounding cacophony of possibility. Be honest, you "saw" a specific one. It represented a best case scenario about what I had described. I know it, because it is what I do too. Sort, sift, winnow and in an instant, the ATM of meaning in my brain, fueled with the energy broaching synapses, informed by prior experience and only able to converse in the abstract has spit our the result of a conversation between infinite possibility and something I can use. This making of "choices", even in translating the minutia of life into meaning, or memory, is a drive, essentially to death. What flows from the dissected and generalized scissor in your mind might even limit how you "see" this device used. I have seen scissor collections that were designed to be art. I have seen scissors used to decorate cakes, to cut pizza and to make tiny plastic bags to contain illicit drugs. I have seen them used like tweezers, garden bed borders and to build sculptures for yard art. All of these possibilities can live within the image, depending on our experience, but none are inherent in the shared experience that we use the word to stand in for. When we slice and dice something down to a useable form, we often kill the life that had been in what we are describing.

Jung was the first person I "read" who posited a death drive, equivalent in power to the drive to life that all creatures exhibit. I had seen dozens, perhaps hundreds of people on their road to ruin before I read that statement. Could I have been a Jungian analyst prior to age seven? I knew plenty about the death drive described by Jung, even by age seven. After reading the words, I had a pigeon-hole to "fit" my experience into. Many years went by before I took that "bauble", the rough translation of an idea that filled that region of my experience, out of the pigeon-hole and examined it further. I know now that we must each wrestle the angel of death from time to time, I have learned that dancing with that angel can have profound influence on who we become later in life, both liberating and constraining our future choices (if we make it through the dance) and I have come to terms with the possibility that we must become intimate with that angel if we are to truly live the life that we are called to...all of these things are possible if we relinquish the hollow shell that contained meaning that Jung's words brought, once my own metamorphosis had been completed. Breaking containment in the realm of ideas can be as hard as escaping a fortress.

Let me return to the example of scissors. When I was a child, I grew up using right-handed ones. That was what was available to me. When I went to school, they had something called "left-handed scissors". Because it had been duly noted that I was left-handed, they gave me a left-handed scissor that was useless in my hands. To make them work, in my hands, it was awkward, different. I had adapted to the standard world already and to this day, using a lefty scissors feels alien to me. This same handicap can occur when we learn that "bread" is made from the staff of life, or that it is the staff of life. In standard practice, that may be true, but in a wider scheme, that we most often do not discuss, it is a covering, a husk of a shell that "protected" us centuries ago. Grain based agriculture is predated by a much more sustainable system, an infinitely more energy efficient one and one that we need to talk about if our species is to survive beyond the modern era.

Anthropologists have now found evidence of civilization before the advent of mono-crop grain production. The difficulty in finding it has been that there were no administrators, no records of the harvest, no large storage facilities, no police force and administrative cadre whose only work was not in production, but the protection, doling out and rationing of that "staff of life". One may claim that we are better off for our hoarding nature, or the standardization of carbohydrate sources, but science would lead one to question that. We have found a nearly infinite number of ways to divert our eyes from looking deeply into what the nugget we call "food" is, what it really means, and where it even comes from. Earlier, when I said scissor, what I had in my mind was one I saw once at a museum. It was ancient and came from a culture in which the elephant was revered. The one handle was fashioned to look like the head of an elephant, with jewels for eyes and tiny ivory tusks above the cutting part. The second handle nested inside the flawlessly sculpted ears, down "inside" the handle. When operated, the bottom shear looked like a rigid trunk, going up and down. The top blade was also fashioned and wrought to look like a trunk from the other side, so when not in use, the entire apparatus looked like a spectacular, miniature trophy, exuding the countenance of the great beast. Now take this description of the scissor and compare it to the minds-eye vision that the word conjured in your head.

This same difference lies in the word food. For many, the four letter word has become an expletive, bereft of subtlety, meaning, relationship, etc. When we are young, many of the constraints that we place on ourselves are based on survival. One typically stops doing certain things when they cause pain, or have impacts on our quality of life. Most often, we prune off thousands of possible behaviors by the time we reach kindergarten. Even when we begin to experience a standardized educational experience, our choices are being made from are a small fraction of possibility. In the end, who can claim true freedom of choice? When I went to college, I can say that I was free to choose between several institutions, but the idea that I had to go to college was so thoroughly ingrained in my experience that I did not make a choice about going. In the end, I didn't have a choice about the individual school that I ultimately went to. I already knew that coming out of school with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, was unacceptable, so the expensive schools were not an option. Like water, I flowed through points of least resistance. The eccentricities and other possible routes forward were reduced beyond recognition by the time I graduated high school. The sieve of what I believed thwarted primal drives and prevented big ideas from coming to the front of my mind, where I could focus on them. As sensitive as I was, when I did catch a glimpse of possibility, it would make my laugh simply because of the novelty of it. Even being trained as an artist, my creativity was guided and my freedom constrained by "projects". The further out we stretched, our realm of possibility, the more we were constrained by convention.

When we humans supplanted sustainable agriculture for large scale mono-crop grain production, it was touted as a way to avoid the vagaries of living off the land. In the end, it has spawned horrible greed and a googleplex of wasted calories. Whatever we wanted out of this sort of agriculture, whether we got it or not, was it truly worth what has come of it? This week I learned that the amount of energy contained in a gallon of gasoline is roughly equivalent to three hundred humans working for one hour. Can we begin to revise our experience in ways that we can appreciate the possibility of "scissor", or "food"? What about the possibility of turning our meaning of the word ethics into the bejeweled version of "scissor", or changing the meaning of "food" to something without empty calories and mega-doses of carbohydrates, sugar and oil? Please remember that the less we think about anything, even our manufactured meanings, the more likely we are to ignore what is truly needed at each moment. Just as averting your eyes from those who need our compassion, turning our heads away from global catastrophe assures that what we really need to do will remain undone. As the rock band, Rush said, If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. We need to become painfully aware of the limitations we place on our understanding. We may never be able to combat our severely protracted "freedom of choice", but we might benefit from getting more involved in defining the terms that work to limit our experiences and understanding.

My New Book

I am writing a modern mythology. It is vaguely cloaked in autobiography. My own existence, this time around, as a fractile set of forms, and relationship, swirling about a central message. As all good mythologies require, the end point is far more important than the origin part of the story. It is my belief that the beginning of the story is far less important than most people claim. I love the variety of native and Christian creation myths, but that alas, discussion about that will have to wait.

The new story ends, as all of ours do, with the Sun, finally passing into oblivion in its own way, engulfing "us" in a supernova. 'Til then, only love will get us by. Not to worry, after that much time we will evolve into creatures without a need for "body" as we know it. I have been there, like Vonnegut on Transfalmador or Taylor's Cay. The places of fiction... are lifeforms, taking up space, we just have not developed technological devices attuned to their resonant waves. Great scientists have theorized that there could be many more dimensions, but that idea is hard to grasp. to "see" this possibility in the world around us, think about how we get premonitions, deja vu' and feel our ancestors about us. Are these things not from a realm we just cannot quantify or measure yet? I claim the modern mythos as a birthright. If we are to survive, we must all realize that our fates are intimately intertwined. Many have known, but none as far as I have read or experienced have taken the time to delineate some of our fundamental "new" stories, the ones that bite, the ones that sting a little and the ones that have the power to help change us fundamentally. Stories of compassion, grace, being of help and relationship. Not that one might not find these stories in older creation myths or "holy books", but what I am talking about is a modern myth that conveys the elements and principles that both led to and those earlier lessons as well as teaching new ones that will help us solve our current crisis.

As far back as the Beatles, it was recognized that that the pop-music stars of our age were more popular than Jesus Christ. How we  grow into our new mythology depends on how successfully we usher it in, how deftly we negotiate the new landscape. We all need to usher in the age of the water bearers and these stories will inevitably help keep our species afloat. In great tummult, having some sort of life preserver on is always prudent. Those at the helm of ships of state around the globe have turned a blind eye to the punitive, oppressive and exploitative ways of multi-national corporations, turning whole regions into slave states. can we not come together with one voice and say that it is wrong? The new myth involves holding up each of our inherent worth, out value and the realization that to harm one is to harm all finally begins to take root when, we share the myth amongst us all. As buckminster Fuller said so eloquently, "There are no passengers on Starship Earth, we are all crew."

The most rapidly growing segment of "religion" is called non-denominational or "spiritual, not religious". New myth must acknowledge our distrust of institutional religious and secular practice. We have seen organization after organization refuse to die when their approach becomes eclipsed by the truth of new awareness. There are still some living who remember doctors on tee vee who touted cigarettes as healthy. This new myth takes stock in what we know to be real, invests in our ability to solve pressing personal and societal difficulties and ultimately "unbinds the feet" of each individual. Rather than trying to smash each of our belief systems, our potential and perceptual apparatus into a cookie-cutter mold, the new mythology accepts that evolution is required if we are to meet challenges and invest our spirit in our lives in such ways as to adapt to our changing world.

As much as I wish the different creation stories were real, They are not. The function of shared myth is to assure that there is a basic understanding of the shared starting point and "rules" of our civilization. Today, it seems to splinter us and for that reason alone, we need to revise it or just create a new perspective that acknowledges that every flavor of religion is based on old-way thinking that keeps us from having meaningful discussions about now. Perhaps the strongest reason to subscribe to a new mythology is to accept the fact that the beginnings of the Universe, and human-kind it self are, perhaps less important than the inevitable end. If we are trying to save our children from bad dreams, it is still not a good reason to lie to them. If we want to be trusted, we have to remain trustworthy. The new myth is concerned with the future of human life on our planet. subscribers understand that it is time to stop lying to the adults as well. As I have been known to write about in the past, bigger is not always better...we have folk tales about that already. Just review the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Perhaps more truth resides in the pages of fantasy than we often allow. We have the story of King Midas to remind us that there are more precious things than money. The problem is that we see with our own eyes that the various "churches" cannot protect us from bad actors within their midst. When there begins to be more truth conveyed with folk tales than you can get from the pulpit, something needs to change.

Many years ago, and perhaps forever into the future, people will speak of a new age dawning. Let us hope that this time we can find our way, in whatever we want to call this "new age". Not with the feeble lanterns of the past, not with the flickering flames of ancient texts, but with the blindingly bright clarity of up to the minute information about what is working around us and what has fallen into disuse, what has been corrupted and poses a threat to us and to what has become inconsequential. Once observed and described for the very first time, it can take time for new awareness to develop. that is to be expected, but those who need to be pulled kicking and screaming into the future will just have to take their lumps. Good parents do not coddle and the people throwing a tantrum today are most often the spoiled brats of old way thinking that bred privilege and propagated power and control. We have new eyes and new lights with which to examine our world. The undeniable truths are that there is no free lunch, there is no away. We must learn to get along on Spaceship Earth, or perish. I wanted, at first to have  my own "version" of a well-known "holy book", but certainly do not want to do a derivative work loosely associated with such a text. One that has been used for centuries to subjugate, divide, exploit and conquer cultures worldwide. This would be like trying to soothe someone with a garotte. Our collective wounds have to be understood before they can be healed and one thing that helps to grow beyond our current difficulties is to refine a treatise on desperation and fear. We need to give them their rightful place on the scrap heap of history and finally understand the power of nature to give us tools for our own salvation.

It is a wrong-headed story that we all believe in that needs to be scrutinized. If it is a dog-eat dog world, why then would the ages pass down to us DNA that creates us as helpful, compassionate and trusting? If bigger is always better, why then were the banks too big to fail? If rich men around the world decide that we need austerity, is it for their sake or ours that they make us live with less? If the old ways were working so well, why in the world did we need to protect pedophile priests from prosecution? Why can I not eat a fish that swims in the waters around my house without fearing for my own health? Why are there millions of tons of toxic compounds being released into the atmosphere? Money and power are tolos that we can either pick up or put down as a civilization depending on whether they serve our purposes. The billionaire plutocrats like being at the helm best, but there is no reason that the rest of us have to let them stay there. In order to see through some of the lies that have been perpetrated upon humanity, we occasionally have to have more light or better discernment to better see what it is that we are looking at. Occasionally, we have to change position and perspective. The new myth is completely up front in saying that we need a variety of views to determine what, in fact, we are looking at. Our future depends on change. Specific changes lead to specific results. For the most part, we know what these are and no matter how much money the rich and powerful spend telling us that they have our best interests in mind, we all need to realize, in their myth, their rightful place is to wield their power over us and to continue the exploitation that they hold holy.

If you want to know more, donate what you can to help fund this treatise, I will be in touch. Be the first to order your digi-copy. Paypal account: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com If you just want to help fund change, or create it locally, try ECO-Tours.