"I Know We're in a Mess; What Can I Do to Make a Real Difference?"
Friday, July 20, 2012 at 9:25AM
Lee Van Ham in From Lee, paradigm shift, personal transformation

Some of you who read this One Earth Project blog will be impatient for meaningful actions. “I know we’re in a terrible mess,” you may well say, “just tell me what I can do.” That impatience is in me too.

So here’s what I urge as our starting point. The first thing to do is to go deep with the question: “How am I a Multi Earther?” To do that with any traction and fun, you must know your own ecological footprint. If you know it, proceed. If you don’t, go to the most scientific calculator available on the web and do it now.

Unless our doing aligns us with One Earth living, we will expend our energy and time on a goal too small. Every election cycle we hear Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and liberals all acting with fervor. But despite their fervor for winning, both the winners and losers continue to advance the goals of Multi Earth living. We need to reframe our actions at the level of a One Earth consciousness and paradigm. Unless what we do embraces our one planet’s embedded wisdom, we will not get to where we now need to go. 

To telegraph the direction of this blog, we’re heading for entrees that delve deeper into why shaking Multi Earth living is devilishly hard. Understanding that better increases our percentages for choosing actions that truly make a difference instead of spinning our wheels. Shortly, this blog is heading into a bend on the power of myth to hold us in Multi Earth ways. Beyond the bend we’ll travel into five Earth-destroying patterns that we can change:

  1. Multi Earth economics functions as religion, receiving tremendous devotion.
  2. Corporations, more than governments, rule the world.
  3. You know the frustrations of not being treated like a human being in the Multi Earth way of doing things? It’s not just personal. It’s purposeful.
  4. Despite all the praise for democracy, there can never be robust, full participation style democracy under a Multi Earth economy.
  5. Our human species has tripled since 1940 to 7,000,000,000. In addition, we are the most aggressive species on the planet. Despite our intelligence, the Multi Earth paradigm seems impotent to address this life-destroying imbalance.

Stay tuned.

Article originally appeared on OneEarth sustainability amid climate change (http://www.theoneearthproject.org/).
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