With all the shouting and enflamed/ing speech going on in the public discourse these days, I feel the need to put out into the universe a few thoughts.
I believe in discourse. I believe in compassion. I believe in foresight. I believe in speaking rationally about one’s emotions. I believe that shouting has rarely, if ever, changed another person’s mind. I believe that certain basic ethical standards exist outside of any religion. I believe that the best we, as human beings, can do for ourselves in the present, for our future generations and the long-term continuation of our species, is to behave in an ethical manner-- that is, to be Good to one another, to be as understanding as we can, and to act with a positive vision for the future. I believe that doing the best that we can for ourselves and our future generations by acting in an ethical manner necessarily corresponds with doing the best for the health of the planet and all of its ecosystems and creatures, because we are part of that whole big conglomeration of cultures, critters and ecosystems, and to separate priorities of our health and continuation from priorities of ecological health and continuation would be beyond foolishness; in actuality, it is impossible. I believe, in short, in some sort of amalgamation of thoughts put forth in essays by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Ethics for the New Millennium) and by Aldo Leopold, with a dusting of Walt Whitman, my parents, and my own ponderings on top.
I will freely admit that nothing in this world makes me more enflamed with anger than to see injustice flagrantly embraced. In situations where I see an injustice uncorrected, I find it difficult to act with the self-same levels of restraint, reasonableness, and compassion that I believe to be so central to being Good in the world. It is in part because of this that I started a blog at this moment in time.
There is so much violence-- both physical and in speech-- taking place in our world. There is so much greed and injustice. None of it makes me angrier than the willful, self-centered, head-in-sand, greed-motivated lack of foresight in practice at this moment by so many of the people in positions of power (be they economic or political, if the two can even be separated). I believe that the reason this particular brand of injustice makes me more angry than any other is because it is not just injustice willfully and knowingly perpetrated on the current few, or even the current many; it is injustice willfully and knowingly perpetrated on the entire fate and future of the human race as a whole; it s, in effect, playing a very bad version of god for the entire world. Decisions made at the level of current corporate self-interest are not decisions made in the interest of the whole planet’s future, and yet, on so many occasions, those decisions do in fact have repercussions upon the whole planet’s future. Oil and water use, emissions standards, global warming denial, forest harvesting standards, mineral extraction, outsourcing manufacturing and its ties with clean water and clean air standards worldwide, genetic modification of seed and concurrent decreases in genetic diversity, destruction of the Amazonian rainforest for cattle, sugar cane, and soy production, and so many more agenda items are issues which have, can, and will affect everyone everywhere. But we have allowed moneyed interest to rule our interests, and our government’s decisions.
I would not call myself a raging liberal, and half of my nature has no desire to fight. But I was born with passion paired with an eye for detail and connections, and into a world that promised me everything, only to reveal that everything had been squandered through a combination of centuries of foolishness and willful ignorance and injustice. I don’t mean to be dark, or dramatic, and I am not a pessimist. I do, however, see a world that does not live up to my expectations of foresight and ethical comportment. Instead, I see a world into which I am honestly not sure I want to bring children. I want children, but that is, in a way, beside the point. What world will my generation’s children inherit? If those in positions of power now continue their current patterns of behavior, nothing substantial will be done to curb global warming, and in my lifetime, significant changes will be seen. In the lifetime of my generation’s children…? Will they inherit a world despoiled, flooding, frequented by unpredictedable fluctuations in weather patterns? Will it look like this, but wetter and milder in climate? Will the gulf stream “conveyor belt” stop? Switch directions? In a matter of decades (link 1, link 2, link 3, etc.), not centuries, will the earth be plunged into another ice age? What would any of this look like for my future children, raised to live off the land in Vermont?
And so I struggle between desperate fury and day-to-day concerns. I see a direct and striking connection between the current evidence of self-serving financial greed in this country (and elsewhere), and frustrations and concerns of those people thinking about our future in the global environment. I wonder where we as a country, and as a species, are headed. And I wish fervently that a vision of foresight and compassion overcomes the current paradigm of self-serving short-sightedness, for all of our sakes. I do not know how to bring this about, considering my aforementioned belief that shouting does not change minds. I do not, however, believe that everyone in government or in power is bad, or corrupted, and, so, perhaps the hope is for something like the uprising and thoughts of the Occupy/99% movement to start discussions and changes in behavior, as, perhaps, it already has. I don’t know. Let us pray for the best-- for compassion, rational discourse, and foresight, and for a future for all of us.
