I hope you can stick with me on this. While I had planned to move book topics to a separate page and leave them off my blogging I think this is quite enlightening in light of the social, economic and political world that we live in today. It provides hope that through the “occupy everywhere movement” that we can bring the change that we being called as a species to make in order to make the evolution of life on this planet sustainable. It may have to take a revolution for this to happen. Remember, revolutions don’t always involve guns and that “the pen is mighter than the sword”. Consider that this movement is called “occupy everywhere” it seems to mean be present everywhere, talk to one another quit withholding information. The implications of this provide the potential for amazing change that could lead to evolutionary leaps and bounds. This is based on Chapter Five from Reading the Rocks by Bjornerud and its implications for me seem to speak directly to what I see going on in the world today, the message seems to come from our ancestral history and the life of the earth, may it provide inspiration for us in awakening our potential and embracing the evolutionary opportunities being offered to us as a species.
I know I tend to be a bit of a romanticist and that the ideas I present may seem romantic, yet they speak of a need we need to fulfill to sustain our lives and continue to be present on planet earth for any length of time. It speaks of shaking up current systems, challenging over-populated areas, conserving the resources each area holds and so forth. I hope you follow along, maybe pick up a copy of the book read the chapter and deepen my understanding of this chapter. Discussion is open for all of us to discuss our ideas and dreams. While this movement is inspired by the young adults of this time, we all need to look at the bigger picture and participate in helping them find the wisdom to create a world that will have the highest outcomes for the future of life on this planet. I invite you at the very least to contemplate these things and post your visions here, invite others to post theirs, discuss them, develop them and help create a vision that will bring out the highest natures in us all. Now to my discussion from the chapter and how I see it.
Its interesting that I have struggled to complete this chapter and bring the core of its meaning into my being and then finish it as I have contemplated this “Occupy Everywhere” movement that is going on and how I can contribute. I’d like to go to Phoenix to participate but given life events at this time if I do the earliest will be when I return to see the doctor the end of the month. However, I don’t think that would be a real contribution at this time to the overall movement, yet by the end of the month maybe it will be. What I really think I can offer to what I see as a youth seeking a revolutionary change so we can evolve, that they realize if we do not change then our branch on the evolutionary tree might soon end. Life that survives has to be willing to change, to evolve in a way that adapts to the environment in which they live. The irony in this I suppose is it seems as a species rather than evolving ourselves we have spent much time evolving our environment and this is having heavy reprecussions on us today as a collective when we look at the environmental concerns we face on the planet today. To evolve we must change not only the way we interact with the environment but our entire economic, political and social systems- it does not take long looking at the current system to see how it does not work. It is broken to a point it is threatening our lives because of the limitations these systems have put on our way of evolving.
Bjornerd speaks about how we story the memories of the past ummm knowledge, learning experiences of our species in our DNA and some of it is turned off so that others can be turned on. However, it is all there in case we need it. I think this is an important first lesson to look at. We have the wisdom of our ancestors available to us if we just turn it on. This lesson has become apparent to me as I spend more and more time in nature away from the machine. Nature after all is after all the best teacher. If nature wants to survive if something doesn’t work it has to be willing to change it, somehow it appears until now we have forgotten this lesson and plugged ourselves in to moving forward without considering how it will effect the overall sustainability of life on this planet. In our arrogance we have not been willing to fully enter the dilemna of how our egocentric behavior has threatened the diversity of life on this planet. As a species we’ve engaged in a number of behaviors that has wreaked environmental havoc on this planet. Most of those disasters when we look deep most of us in the western world benefit from. Yet our view is narrow-minded we’re not considering the rest of life and the importance of diversity for life not only to thrive but to survive. I think the young people are waking up and knowing this is wrong and that things must change and I think that is what we are seeing going on in the world. This chapter came at an extremely synchronosis moment for me, its as if its meaning evaded me until I could tie these two together. Its also interesting how many related conversations I’ve had related to the material here, so I feel its important I tie the two together.
Looking at how advances follow environmental crises. It shakes things up- it makes sense as this planet is the space where we live. Consider that in this year 2011 we have faced more environmental crises than in any other year in history- some man made, some not, some both. Either way, we face some very series environmental issues. At the same time the social, political and economic scene of mankind is being shaken up as well. It is as if the collective have had enough of being plugged in to the systems that limit their evolutionary growth and only support that of the few. By limiting the support of diversity and supporting only a few the survival of the current system is threatened. Hence, the 99% that is revolting against the one percent. For survival depends on diversity and in that way the one percent has limited their own sustainability as the rest tries to restore balance so the diversity can continue to thrive. If we look at nature it is seemingly the natural order of things, when one environment does not support all within it the brave pioneers move out and break new ground so to speak, adapting to a new environment creating a new species suited to living in the new environment. I think this is also expressed in mankinds spreading out across the globe. What can be learned here, well if we turn on the ancestral DNA, listen to the wisdom of the ancestors we might hear the call to return to the land, to move out of the cities that is not sustainable.
The insight I have gained is that maybe this is not everyone’s vision. Not everyone cares about nature or not deeply enough to consider the survival of the rest of life on the planet as well as their own. In the western world most of us first think of the survival of our species first- ourselves, our friends, our families and so on it is a long way from us to take a global view and consider how our actions effect the planet at large. It means we must recognize our own greed, our own egocentricness in the whole thing and it then leads us to the rabbit hole. If we choose to go down the rabbit hole and ask how we can best help sustain the diversity of life on this planet then we may find we have to give up much of our ego-centric behavior. I suggest connecting with nature will help us to do this and shift from the capitalistic, consumeristic mind set that has landed us where we are. Our consumption is like other invasive species taking over not caring if other life can survive, yet this consumption limits the sustainability of our own life. Yet as Bjornerud points out life seems to develop a nature system of checks and balances when one preys to much on another then challenges arise limiting the predators growth, too much imbalance leads to a lack of resources and then we begin to die. Yet there seems to be a point where you offered the chance to evolve to grow and to better suit your environment before the scales are completely tipped.
The scary part of being willing to evolve- radically if needed and evolution usually occurs in leaps in bounds. If it is for the good of the collective and not the individual (person or species) we must realize that evolution often tells us that the trait we need to develop may lead to the extinction of what we once were. Yet a willingness to change is what brings our ability to survive and to thrive. Its written in the rocks, the record holders for this planet- earth. If we don’t change- change our way of being something will come, that can check us, life in general will survive even if its radically different from what we know today. I suppose as far as life is concerned it really may not matter if humans survive and perhaps that is determined by how we want to participate in the collective whole of life. Do we want to consume until there is very little left for the rest of life? Or like the insects, the birds and the rest of life do we want to find our niche in the grand cycle of life and continue to thrive? If we do, we may need to dramatically evolve in the way we live our lives. Revolution doesn’t always leave room for a sustainable environment for those who instigate it as sometimes the evolution it brings is something they cannot adapt to. This is part of what I see going on social, political and economic systems of today are facing a revolution because they couldn’t evolve to support the rest of life and once the rest of life evolves it may well be in an environment that these current systems have no life. Or at least no life at its current scale- for some anaerobic descendents were offered an alternate environment in which to thrive that was similar to their past one is in the bottom of swamps and in the ruminants of cows stomaches not out roaming freely on the earth so to speak. They were offered a limited environment in which to exist yet they no longer were out all over- the size of the out of control organism that in the end created an oxygen rich environment that eventually lead to our evolution on this planet. Certainly it speaks to how we are just one possible manifestation of any number of equally good manifestations possible on this earth. Yet this is true of most things… if you look at the collective not individuals (whether beings or species).
It would do us well to learn this lesson from nature “In times of crises, the most successful and versatile innovations can come from symbiotic cooperation, creative synthesis of acquired skills, and free exchange of information.” For me this ties into what I see in this “occupy everywhere movement”. These are things we need to know if we want to successfully change things. We also need to see that the organism is too big. I think we would be wise to look at communal and tribal living systems of our ancestors, they worked for hundreds of thousands of years until communal become to big to imagine and today that is often global. While we need to remember we are part of a global community I think we would do well to consider making life more local. In truly occupying everywhere we utilize our resources where we are, we don’t still them from other places. We work as a community, while trade is okay we need to start taking care of ourselves and our communities and enter in symbiotic relationship with them and then perhaps them with others but we really need to go back and break it down- growing our own food, taking care of those in our communities- human and nonhuman. We need to know it doesn’t really matter who thought of it, if it is something that allows us to enter into symbiotic relationship we need to be willing to enter into that as revolution requires evolution for their to be sustainability in the whole. It also helps us develop individual ideas with the input of the whole to create evolutionary advances that are in harmony with our evolving world. Then again maybe its more about development- devoloping who we are as a species and how we will participate in the symbiotic whole.
Perhaps, we entered the world curious exploring- the earth, ideas all that we could which lead to our mindless consumption and now we’ve merely reached a point where we need to find our niche to be successful in creating our line in evolutionary history. We need to figure out how we can enter in a true symbiotic relationship with the rest of life. Maybe the real revolution is waking up to this purpose for our species to have further advancement on the evolutionary records of life. Otherwise, maybe we’re just a failed experiment in the life process. I think its the capacity to change in big ways that we’re facing today and by looking at the bigger picture perhaps we can gain understanding of where to go. Those who are intolerant gain control, yet there are all kinds of things we can be intolerant of as a species I think its time to become intolerant of a system that does not seek to support the diversity of life in a way that respects the diversity of life and doesn’t drain one part to ensure the growth of another.
Everything I see points to the fact we hold the information we need, we just need to “turn it on” to tap into it. I think this linkage is available to us by connecting with our ancestral past- looking at what worked and what didn’t and then moving forward from there seeking a harmonious relationship with the rest of life. It is to step out of our role as an egocentric species and to look at what we can do to support the diversity of life so life itself continues to thrive. Everything we need exists we just need to learn to tap into it and to use it.
