Bare Bones Biology 307 – I Didn’t Do That

Yesterday was not good for me. First I had two doctors’ appointments; second, they were both 100 miles away; third, I drove from my mountaintop to theirs and back, all in one day, stopping for medication on the way back, and then zonked out under my electric blanket by 6 pm. Just before midnight I woke up, went out to my little travel-trailer workshop, turned on the electric space heater, and all the lights went out in our entire subdivision.

I didn’t do that.
Did I?

So, using battery power, I checked my emails, which consisted of about 50 political flyers, one of which I read because it did not have any fantastical, tremendous, horrendous, unbelievable, hyperflagulous words in the title.

While I do not write about politics, I do write about how systems function, and these words from Bernie Sanders could have been me – talking about naturally evolved systems that have nothing to do with politics.: “. . . the American people understand that you cannot change a corrupt political system by taking its money.”

And this is my version of essentially the same reality: “When I say that we may not succeed in implementing your mission, I am not referring to what you can do today to help other people who are caught in the system – what I mean is that what you can do today will not accomplish your long-term heart’s desire and frustration, which I believe is to move up one level of systemic organization — from helping individuals, to changing the system that creates these victims — and in fact what you do today could, unawares, enable the system’s creation of victims. “ Bernie said it better, but that’s the way I talk.

About two hours later, the lights came back on and I went out to the little workspace and turned the heater on again. Nothing bad happened, so I plugged in the DVD player to continued my study of “complex adaptive systems” of which naturally evolved systems are evidently a subset – Subset? That doesn’t make sense. How can a factual natural reality be a subset of a human conceptualization???? Ahhh, I get it. If your head is in the Biosystem world view, the naturally evolved complex adaptive systems are a subset of the Biosystem. On the contrary, if your head is in the corposystem world view, you are required to behave as though all of the natural world is a subset of human conceptualization.

Not long now, we will have to choose sides or lose the field of play.

I did that. One day in 2006 I sat at the end of my driveway in my old white Ford pickup and realized that we cannot solve our human problems from inside our corposystem worldview that created the problems. I decided then and there, ten years ago, that I would approach my life from that time forward trying to think like a system. As though I were a system. And it has been difficult even for me, with all the background that I have in my life as a scientist and a human person, to get my human head around some of the Biosystem needs for its survival.

So it’s hard, but that is an entirely different subject that has nothing to do with the fact that we will soon have to choos. In fact, we are choosing every day — with everything we do. What do we want more – compassionate recognition of the effect our behaviors have on other people and all sentient beings? Or, like a child, do we want what we want — no matter what?

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com.

A copy of this podcast can be downloaded at:http://traffic.libsyn.com/fff/Bare_Bones_Biology_307_-_I_Didnt_Do_That.mp3

 

 

Bare Bones Biology 271 – Wise Choices

Letter to DV – I printed and read your series of comments on Facebook, because I can see a lot of good food for thought in there, and I even read the article by your poor naïve horror-struck author. I say naïve and horror struck because it seems to me that he (and nearly everyone on the web) somehow grew up believing life is supposed to be neat and easy and on track, just the way we want it to be, just because we are humans. This of course is what the corposystem wants us to believe and is basic to its propaganda.

Humans do not, can not, and should not control the Biosystem. However, there is NEVER nothing that we can do. What we can do now is to conform our world view to the needs of a nurturing Biosystem, rather than nurturing the corposystem lie.

I think our human problem on earth is that we are mostly doing the wrong things, because we are thinking the wrong things, because the corposystem has seized control over and is using our media and our politics to brainwash us. That is hard on those who recognize the problem. But nevertheless, just because someone else is doing nothing, or doing the wrong things, is not a good reason for me to do nothing, or to do the wrong things. That’s not the hardest question; the hardest question is how to live, surrounded by toxic propaganda, so that we do more good than harm to the welfare of the Biosystem.

As you pointed out, it is, indeed, too late for the perfect solution. The reality is that there never was a perfect solution. People are not in charge here; we never were, and the “human question” will surely be resolved long before 60 years. The solution for us will depend largely upon our choices during that time. What goes around comes around. That is not a tragedy, it is a fact of life. We caused our own tragedy by ignoring the reality. We have no responsibility to control the Biosystem, because that is not how the universe functions. Our human responsibilities are first to do as little harm as possible and second do the best we can within the reality that we find ourselves in right now, because now is the only time when we have the possibility to make wise choices.

I believe the most important thing we can do right now is to avoid believing the corposystem propaganda, to identify the reality, and to discuss among ourselves what the world looks like from outside the corposystem paradigm. Not to submit to the arrogance of the current corposystem world view, which is essentially growth for profit by domination. I refuse to be dominated, and increasingly larger numbers of people are doing the same.

What concerns me most is whether these increasing numbers of people will choose viable, sustainable alternatives to the corposystem paradigm, or if they have swallowed the corposystem myth of human omnipotence and will try to create something that satisfies a different set of human values but is equally as harmful to the Life of our Biosystem. The Biosystem does not have human values or needs, only Biosystem needs.

We do need models for our choices. Lots of them. We especially need models that demonstrate the corposystem lie — the failure of the corposystem paradigm — so that we can stop killing the Biosystem and begin to heal. Discussion and publication of negative models is not failure – it is wisdom.

Do you see how the corposystem domination has prevented you recognizing the value of your work?

It does the same to me. That is our challenge. Because whatever happens, not you nor I nor the corposystem have the option to dictate outcomes for the whole world. If that is your goal, then failure is a certainty, for the same reason that failure of the corposystem is a certainty. Humans cannot control the Biosystem. We must learn to conform to its needs or we will be replaced by some other species that will do a better job.

The corposystem has taught us that we must be winners or losers. I reject that concept; I think winners is a losing paradigm. What we can do in this biological crisis is make a success of our individual opportunities by making decisions that benefit the Biosystem, based on good factual research and wise human compassion. And to discuss these decisions with other people who understand the problem and have expertise outside our own in the areas of Biosystem facts and wise compassion.

Our choice in now time is whether to contribute to the welfare of the corposystem or of the Biosystem, because we can’t do both at the same time. If your goal is to save the corposystem you are right – you have no chance — and you would do more good by just giving up. My goal is to benefit the future welfare of the Biosystem.

What we do not and cannot know is when and how the corposystem will crash, and whether or not you and I can help to develop a new system out of the ashes that can support the factual needs of the Biosystem.

So – are we to pout because we are not omnipotent and omniscient Gods? Or are we to accept that as wisdom, and do the best we can to make good choices based in hard biological facts and wise human compassion

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com and KEOS 89.1 FM in Bryan, Texas.

A copy of this podcast can be downloaded at:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/fff/Bare_Bones_Biology_271_-_Wise_Choices.mp3

Sections in green were omitted from the podcast because of time constraints.

Diary 131109 – Holly Trucker

“Now the view was obscured by clouds and sleet, but on the usual day Chee knew the (window) glass overlooked immense space – across the Laguna and Acoma Indian reservations to the south and east, southward across the forty-mile sea of cooled lava called the Malpais toward the Zuni mountains, and eastward toward the Canoncito reservation to the great blue hump of the Sandia mountains behind Albuquerque.”

Tony Hillerman published that in 1980, in People of Darkness.  I remember then; Iused to love driving these roads.

All that’s behind me today, but I spent most of yesterday driving along from Albuquerque, just slightly south of the area he described.  On a normal day in 2013.  There were no clouds, no dust storm, no wind, visibility only about five miles, mostly obscured by a yellow chemical haze.  The sun shines through it at lunchtime with the amber glow of  late afternoon, and the glowing health that my body grew breathing the clean air of the canyon is melting around me like a the muddy air itself.  My ears are ringing, sinuses filled up, the floaters are back in my eyes and I’m working up to a nosebleed for the first time since leaving Bryan.  But worst for driving, is the difficulty of focusing on what I’m doing.  The contrast, from two days ago, is enough to inform a large number of decisions.

Anyhow – this time the brakes are really fixed.

And it was fun meeting Holly, who actually believes she is personally in charge of this monster semi.

Most likely tomorrow I’ll make it to California.

Don’t go Away – Dog Park Diary 120911

In a far off time we learned to understand “I-Thou” relationships. This sounds to me very much like Buddhist enlightenment. An experience that is available to humans and very likely represents a relationship with whatever we see as our God. Cheri Maples explains the implications of that kind of relationship with life in Buddhist terms: “It’s not about me, but I can make a difference.” In fact, everything that we do all day every day does make a difference, whether or not we are aware of it. So i think the most important point of human life is to understand what we are doing and what difference it is likely to make. We cannot do this by following only our emotions or only our opinions. It requires study. Study of how we affect people, and also study of how we affect the whole giant biosystem/ecosystem, because — we do. The Dalai Lama calls that “wise compassion,” and everyone can do it. It is so very much more important than a life spent only playing in the dog park — I mean human park. I think Bitsy probably doesn’t understand this, but a human life spent in wise compassion is almost like a human gift to God.

Bare Bones Biology 117 – Los Alamos

Santa Fe is an excellent place to get lost in, because it is so illogical in the beginning and such an accomplishment in the end. Learning by getting lost, around the small issues, is something we need to do more of, if we want ever to grow a population of people who can think around the big issues. First you go to one place that turns out not to be where you thought it was, then another place, then another, until eventually your brain makes a leap of understanding of its own and realizes that all the places are connected with each other in a pattern that does make sense.

I went to the meeting last night, of a coalition of organizations that are working together to recognize the use of nuclear weapons in WWII, here, where the weapons were created. I’m not sure who spearheaded this action, but it was an excellent meeting, very well attended, that walked an admirable line between organization and self-expression. I did not express myself, but if I had — I would have said:

“People are looking to help people without regard to helping the ecosystem that brings us our air, water, earth and fire. Helping people is good, but only if we remember that EVERYTHING is connected to the ecosystem, so we can at the same time be working to avoid human impoverishment by helping the ecosystem to function normally, or at least not getting in the way.”

The action will be launched on Monday, July 16, with a hunger strike to protest continued development of weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

On August 3, the weekend activities will begin with an art exhibit at El Mseo in Santa Fe, and a workshop on non-violent action. On Saturday the several sponsoring groups, which range from Quakers to Occupy, have lined up an impressive array of speakers, from politicians to those with personal experiences, to speak at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe. I hope they will record these talks for people who can’t come. Maybe the new independent radio station, KCEI that is opening in Taos will be able to put up some podcasts for us. I’ll let you know if they become available.

On Sunday, August 5th, the activity moves to Ashley Pond Park in Los Alamos, with teach-ins, speakers and an audio link to the sounding of the Peace Bell in Hiroshima to recognize the anniversary of the American atom bombs dropped on Japan.

I remember one of these anniversaries, about 8 years ago, when I was staying in a Japanese youth hostel on Sado Island. One morning, the residents were all sitting around watching TV, of course in Japanese, so I asked what was on. When they told me –

But I think I’ll finish that story some other time, because you know, unlike most Americans (or Japanese), I remember these events and they are not nearly as simplistic as we now make them out to be.

That’s why we need people who understand that everything is connected and are willing to discuss the connections rather than only debate the simplistic interpretations. Also it’s another reason to not do it again — and especially to not privatize nuclear weaponry. Imagine Blackwater Nuclear. Or you might want to watch the best war movie ever made – one of the best movies of any kind ever made – Grave of the Fireflies. It’s available at the Peach Clubhouse and on Amazon.

I bow to my Japanese friends, and I’m all for serious non-violent actions around human values. As many as possible. And I will be there with camera in hand, reminding people we also need a viable ecosystem.

Then on Monday, August 6th, there will be a full day of non-violent demonstrations in Los Alamos . Bitsy and I possibly might stay over on Saturday night, and photograph the events. In fact, I think this might be a fine opportunity to make a little picture book on the subject, if I had the money, the energy, the time and a collaborator. (hint)

And oh yes, after the meeting I found I had gotten lost again. I drove about 16 miles to find the meeting, and in the end discovered I was less than a mile away from “home.”

Everything is connected in the living earth. Wisdom never forgets this fact.

Bare Bones Biology 117 – Los Alamos
Podcast may be downloaded here
Or at http://www.BareBonesBiology.org

Recommended References:
Nukefreenow.org – http://nukefreenow.org
Los Alamos National Laboratory – http://www.lanl.gov/
El Museo – http://www.elmuseocultural.org/
CCA – http://www.ccasantafe.org/
KCEI – http://culturalenergy.org
Green Village Youth Hostel – http://hotels.lonelyplanet.com/japan/sado-ga-shima-r1973959/green-village-youth-hostel-p1002920/
Grave of the Fireflies – http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies

Bare Bones Biology 114 – Great Aridness

Formula books, I have called them; I don’t read them. Sometimes I buy them, if I think the cause is worthy, and I skim through, or even give them to other people, but I do not sit down and read, like I would with a serious book, written well to illustrate factually and emotionally accurate truths.

Formula books may not lie, but they do not tell you the whole circle of truth, and of course that’s one reason they are so popular. Just like the rest of the corposystem, they tell you something that you want to hear, and try not to think about the parts you would rather believe don’t exist. For example there are formula books about organic farming that pretend we could save ourselves, very simply, if everyone would turn his or her hand to a backyard organic garden. Very simply, that is not true. And even though I believe strongly in organic gardening, and I do wish everyone would turn his or her hand and pocket book and political will to promoting organic gardening – I also think we need to hear the whole sorry truth about our human tragedy and our current biological dilemma. Otherwise, how can we deal with it?

The solutions are not simple, and even though the modern formula book may be meticulously honest and accurate, it cannot tell the true story if it is so closely focused on setting down facts in simple, precise, decisive, linear outline, in words of few syllables, that it fails to discuss background, repercussions, and long-term implications from the point of view both of human realities, comparative emotional perspectives, and of unchangeable facts. If I could do that – I can see it, but I can’t say it — but I don’t need to do it for this case study, nor could I do it as well as it has been done by William deBuys.

Recently I told you of a book that I have read cover to cover (or at least I will have by the time you read this. If all goes well.). A Great Aridness, by William deBuys.

Wm deBuys is an author and historian who addresses the reality of climate change without rancor, bias or hyperbole, as though it were just what it is, a complex story of human kind. A sad story of human compassion and frailty as well as heroism, dedication and responsibility. A story that has much to teach us. I heard his excellent talk at Upaya, and I thought: “This guy really gets it.” I mean both the human and the biological dilemmas.

And so, a few days later – I’m telling you a true story here — Bitsy and I really did climb into our old pickup to chug to the top of one of the highest occupied places in North America, and I really did take the above picture along the way, to interview Wm duBuys.

Following is an excerpt from our conversation. Someone else should interview this man, someone who has more than five minutes for talking. Oh, yes, fortunately Mrs. Green has done that, and the podcast is available. In Mrs. Green’s opinion:

“When you put (climate change) in the political arena I don’t understand why it polarizes people. It’s the one thing that could unite our country to focus on the planet and the health of the earth. There’s no down side to that, and it’s not political. Why are we fighting about this?” (www.MrsGreensWorld podcast 05-12-12_DuBuysMiraval.mp3)

I hope Alise will also catch Bill for an interview on Rethinking Green KEOS FM, 98.1 before he leaves the country to begin research on his next book. Here is Bare Bones Biology’s KEOS interview:

“(LL) The research in your book shows that there’s evidence of the impact of humans on the ecosystem for thousands of years in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. People have been influencing the climate for as long as we know about. So now we have a big deal about climate change. My question is, what’s the big deal?

“(WD) Well the big deal is that civilization has only known one climate, and that’s the climate that we’re losing now. The amount of temperature change predicted for this century is roughly equal to the temperature changes between the ice ages and the present. But when the transition from the ice ages took thousands of years to accomplish, we’re now embarking into a century that’s going to see the same amount of change in a tiny period of time. Basically, human civilization has only known the climate of the Holocene, the climate that has nourished earth for the past several thousand years. We’re on the verge of losing that bracket of conditions, and plunging into a new epoch which many geologists have termed the anthropocene because it is man shaped. So that’s a very, very scary prospect, if you value our way of life today, if you value the dependence of human society on existing agriculture and the systems that keep us going.

“(LL) Why is it scary?

“(WD) Well if you rachet up the heat, basically if people in Texas, say, didn’t feel that the intense heat wave and drought of last summer, if they didn’t feel that was a wakeup call, then they’re really not paying attention. What we’re talking about with climate change is moving into a period of time when that kind of heat wave, that kind of drought, becomes normal, and additional heat waves and additional droughts are superimposed on it. The drought in Texas and Oklahoma last summer was unprecedentedly severe. Climate scientists are now saying that drought, because it doesn’t have in its intensity, clear precedents in recent centuries, that drought was by all indications caused by anthropogenic climate change. So if you don’t mind living under those conditions, and watching what those conditions do to the landscape around you, climate change shouldn’t be scary for you, but if you didn’t like it that way, you should be concerned. The Texas Department of Forestry estimates that between 2% and 10% of all the trees in Texas died last summer. The range is pretty wide because the count is imprecise, but if dry conditions persist through this year, the cumulative effect of the drought will probably lead to an even greater die-off. So this is a very large portion of the ecosystem of the State of Texas that died off in one year.

“(LL) So what should be our take-away message if we want to react positively to this serious situation?

“(WD) Well, the take-away message is that we need to begin, with all the energy we can muster, to shift from a carbon based, fossil fuel economy. We probably need to have a carbon tax. Although that’s politically a very, very tall order, and we need to change how we structure the use of energy in our society. This will be a great transformation, and actually encompasses a lot of economic opportunities. It could be a positive thing. It would be a positive thing for the United States, and for the rest of the world.”

That’s the end of the transcript. Five minutes is so short, at least two questions remain to be explained. First, what has the carbon tax and the carbon-based economy got to do with climate change? If you want to understand why carbon is important, you will need to understand some basic biology that you might find in previous editions of Bare Bones Biology. You can read them by flipping back on this blog, or listen to them at http://www.BareBonesBiology.com. The climate change series begins with Bare Bones Biology 093 and ends at Bare Bones Biology 100. Or for a small donation to cover costs I will send you a CD containing both the podcasts and the blog posts for each of these BBBs.

If you don’t want to do that, here’s the shortest possible version of the carbon message to all of life on earth. We can’t live without energy, because energy is the ability to do work. Work is basically anything that moves, and without that, of course, there would be no life and no us. On this earth, all of our energy for food and everything else that living things use to stay alive comes from burning organic molecules such as proteins, carbohydrates, and all those organic molecules found in foods. Organic molecules are made on a base of carbon atoms. The plants make them using energy from the sun, we can’t do this, so we eat plants to get the energy for life. The energy for life on earth comes from eating plants. Or something else that ate plants. Then we burn (metabolize) the organic molecules, and the organic molecules release their metabolic energy in a form our bodies can use — and so we stay alive. When we burn anything (including in our metabolism) the organic molecules are taken apart, the energy is released, and the carbon (and other atoms) are released as waste products of the burning process. The whole earth ecosystem is a living thing, and to stay alive it needs to stay balanced. So it recycles the waste products (carbon dioxide in this case) by using them as ingredients to make more carbon-based organic molecules. The plants can do this, we cannot. Life has been doing this for millenia – life is based on this cycle staying in balance – but today we have unbalanced the life of the whole earth by burning more organic molecules than it can recycle.

The living earth is trying to rebalance, but we are also reducing the plants it needs to do this, so the earth is unbalanced. There is too much carbon dioxide in the air (and other places). Everything in the ecosystem is connected, so this imbalance has some effect on the other processes of life. In this case the effect is to raise the temperature by changing the interaction between the sun and our earth atmosphere.

The result is that the more people are breathing out carbon dioxide and the more machines also are breathing out more carbon dioxide as a waste product of burning carbon-based fuel – the harder the living earth must work to try to stay in balance. Now, after all these centuries – it has come to the time that it can’t keep up.

That’s the basic link between climate change and carbon compounds. As is true of everything it is a lot more complicated than that, but I do think it’s important to understand that there is an unchangeable, life-giving link, so we don’t fall for corposystem propaganda to the contrary. Check my facts – please.

The second question is about people who do NOT care what the climate change does to the environment because they live in cities and they honestly believe that the corposystem is providing everything they need to stay cool, well fed and clothed. This is just too sad to be real, but I think it is real. These people do not know that everything we need to stay alive comes from the healthy ecosystem. The corposystem cannot make earth, air, water or food for us without destroying the energy cycle of the ecosystem. The miracle behind life on earth is that it CAN do this process. People cannot. Not without using more energy than they generate and throwing us more out of balance. And there is no other source for life in the whole universe so far as we know.

If God made this beautiful living earth ecosystem, then he made it here. Not on the moon or Mars or anyplace else that we can reach. And he expected us to fulfill our responsibilities to not trash His Creation.

But we are trashing it, and so the outlook does look very grim. Here’s what Wm deBuys has to say about that.

“The outlook may be grim but the sunrise is always beautiful, and if you think about this blessed planet that we’re on – – – it is heartbreakingly beautiful, and there is so much beauty in the planet itself and in its creatures, and among its creatures are human beings, and our fellow human beings, that there is always and there will always be beauty to protect and defend, and the defense of beauty is a very high calling, and it’s great work, and great work is inherently optimistic. And so as long as there is that work to do, I think we should all be inspired to do it and all derive a lot of meaning for our lives from the act of doing it.” Wm deBuys, spoken at Upaya. (Look under dharma talks dp642_debuys_great-aridness-perspectives-on-environment_may-2012_dt.mp3)

Please read the book. It’s a good read and interesting, and it helps to answer the most common questions about what we can do to help ourselves and the living earth. The most important thing that we can do is to learn more about how the ecosystem functions to stay alive — including all the interacting stories that make up “A Great Aridness” — so we can discuss solutions that make good sense, and so that we will not be fooled by self-serving money-making schemers, who always abound in every crisis.

Bare Bones Biology 114 – A Great Aridness
KEOS FM 89.1, Bryan, Texas
You can download the audio portion of this post here
Or at http://www.BareBonesBiology.com

Recommended References:
A Great Aridness, Wm. deBuys: http://www.williamdebuys.com/a_great_aridness_110931.htm
Upaya Zen Center: http://www.upaya.org
Mrs. Green’s World: http://www.MrsGreensWorld podcast 05-12-12_DuBuysMiraval.mp3

Bare Bones Biology 111 – Ritual II

What we all require from our rituals is guidance about “what we should do and what we should not do.” (As Thich Nhat Hanh says in Touching Peace)

We need to understand who we are and how to fit our lives into the big Life without causing harm to ourselves or to it. At the Peach Clubhouse we will have a copy of Joanna Macy’s very fine talk at The Economics of Happiness conference. She started out saying “We are really blessed by the straight talk here.” That got my attention. Or keep watching all the good talks at http://vimeo.com/channels/262024 where it will eventually be posted.

Understanding how to fit our lives into the big Life without causing harm is a complicated task for which well-tested knowledge and positive rituals will help us a great deal more than any other kind of power. We are not more powerful than the big Life that is all life, and our attempts to provide for ourselves by destroying that Life will fail because our modern corposystem rituals are built in the sand of denial and based on the myth of omnipotence.

Ritual is a method of communication within and between populations. If the conditions are right, the rituals of a culture evolve with the needs of the culture. In our so-called modern cultures we have so many unmet needs, and so many ritualistic heritages, that they tend to be confused and misused by intent or by ignorance. That does not mean that rituals are wrong. If your language means nothing to me, then your rituals probably will also not inform me very well because there is no way for me to understand our common roots. That does not mean that you are fundamentally different from me or that your new discoveries are new to me. Yes, you have rituals that are special to you. We all do. Some of these are more useful than others. All of them can be misused.

So let’s not permit our favored rituals to lead us away from our deep reverence for the Source of everything that we need to stay alive and well. You’ve been studying your discipline for 10, 20, 30, even 40 years. I can top that, but why bother? At the root of the Source there is no metaphor, but only pure reality that cannot be denied, no matter how powerful our technology – no matter how bright we are.

Let’s stop growing cultures of denial in which the positive rituals of others cannot bear fruit: a) because we are not listening, so we don’t understand; or b) because we believe our own way is “special.” Maybe our way is not so very different, only we have different rituals and metaphors for the same old human problems. Maybe there are some better answers than what we know today.

Let’s not continue to ritualize our fears into the aggressive or passive-aggressive expressions of the need to win, or to be “right,” or to know more than others about how we proceed to the next evolutionary step in our human lives. We do not know how the earth will evolve. Evolution has way too many variables for us to predict. But we do have something previous generations did not have. In addition to the ritual warnings, we also have fact-based warnings about what we should not do as humans who love life.

For only one example, NASA Director James Hansen and other climatologists predicted climate change more than 50 years ago, based on over-growth of human technologies and population. We weren’t listening. That was a mistake.

If we choose to study only one source or sort of information about what we should do — or not do – our work tends to cancel the efforts of the other at a time when we could be doubling our impact by listening to authoritative sources of both sorts of information .

When I was involuntarily working for women’s liberation, I had no vision or image of women learning to be more powerful than they already were. I imagined women and men growing the rituals for our sustainable future, based in the subtler, more effective “Powers of the Weak” so that we together could grow a subtler, more effective more enduring and sustainable culture for human kind.

Maybe I succeeded and it took a couple of generations. Maybe that is what’s happening now. If so, I wish we would call it for what it is and work it for its full potential so that fully informed people of various traditions, rather than always trying to “teach” the other, are willing to listen hard and well together, and together discuss viable solutions.

For that to succeed, we must include valid scientific data in all our deliberations. Good basic biological science (not technology but holistic science) tells us a lot about what we should not try to do. Actually, so do most of the technologies we are using in our fatal effort to subdue the earth.

Bare Bones Biology 111 – Ritual II
KEOS 98.1 FM
The audio podcast can be downloaded here
Or at http://www.BareBonesBiology.com

Recommended References
Thich Nhat Hahn – http://www.parallax.org/
Elizabeth Janeway – Powers of the Weak
Joanna Macy – http://www.tricycle.com/feature/allegiance-life
James Hansen – http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html
Paul Woodruff – Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue

Bare Bones Biology 069 – What to Do 03

In this third episode I want to focus on local actions. Of primary importance, right now today, is to focus on preventing the corposystem from taking ownership over or destroying our major survival requirements. That’s our soil, good farming dirt, our food, our water, and our air. Because once they have finished, either damaging or taking ownership of these basic survival needs, we will not have anywhere near as many choices for building a better future as we do have, today.

Here in the Brazos Valley the smog is almost as bad as Los Angeles on some days, and the oil companies are coming in now to do heavy-duty fracking operations that will certainly affect our water supplies, because millions of gallons of water are made unusuable with each well that they frack. It will contribute tons of diesel fumes to our air, from all the trucks and equipment, and not to mention the fumes that come out of the wells.

Certainly it is possible to regulate these activities locally. It was done in Flower Mound, and anyone can make a local impact. It’s not like trying to deal with the Federal Government. I don’t know that anyone is, at this moment, making that effort.

Also in the Brazos Valley I think it’s important to understand what is happening relative to genetically modified foods, because the amount of Roundup©, which is a plant poison that is spread on genetically modified foods, increases every year, so that the air we breath is damaged, the soil is definitely damaged. Soil is an ecosystem of its own, and really good soils may have more than 50 percent of living organisms. Spreading poisons on the living organisms that make up the soil is not good for the soil any more than it’s good for our air. We’re just beginning to understand the harmful effects that this may have, and at the Peach Clubhouse we’re trying to tabulate that information now.

Another thing you can do is try your very best not to allow anyone to threaten you out of your rights. I’m thinking now mostly of people who do fracking. Sometimes we have to give in to intimidation, but before giving in, try to get help to discuss the issues. Or, if you have expertise in that area, help someone to find alternatives to whatever situation they are in.

If you’re good at assessing cost/benefit ratios, that would be another good thing you could do to contribute to the decisions we are making in the Brazos Valley. Use whatever is your best skill to put whatever pressure you can against the root problems. And of course recycle. Of course. Recycle. And if it’s at all possible you will want to provide for yourself a source of energy that is not controlled by the corposystem.

But the bottom-line understanding, while you’re doing all this, the most important bottom line understanding is that whatever you do must take into account the cause of all these myriad problems that we are facing. We will not succeed in making a better future, if we spend all of our time and energy dealing with the symptoms, while still ignoring the cause. The bottom line cause of those symptoms is our continuing growth on a Mother Earth that is already overgrazed, maxed out, and can not provide any more food energy for us to continue to grow.

Bare Bones Biology 069 – What to Do 03
KEOS radio 89.1 FM, Bryan, Texas
Transcript at FactFictionFancy.wordpress.com
Audio later this week at http://www.BareBonesBiology.com

Damn

Damn!

I was loading up my web page with my standard stories about power, preparatory to being away from the web for only overnight, and I missed a gorgeous sunrise.

I could think all day, and there will be more storms in the Gulf, but there will never be another sunrise just like this one, and I’ve been waiting and waiting every morning to see it. Rule number one of the story of power. Recognize whoever is bigger than you are. Sunrises are way up there. The ecosystem has a power far greater than I can hope to control. Even the computer has a power greater than I can hope to control. You will have to turn your head if you want to see the picture.

So, you say, I could get hold of Airport and take my computer out on the front porch to do both at the same time. And I still would have missed it, wouldn’t I.

More World View

Even if it were true (and clearly it is not)
That everyone in all of history
Lived inside a dog-eat-dog world view.

That is not a reason for me to suffer
Inside their heads.

——————————

“If we always do what we always did;
We’ll always get what we always got.”