Some Ruminations Before a Wonderful Gathering of Family Down in Devine, Texas (5/12/2018): Anticipating Encounters Folk with Various Values and Politics to the Right, Left and Nearer the Center
1.There once was a natural world (Nature) with biotic members (including no to few Homo sapiens) battling to exploit and utilize daily solar radiation, available water, minerals in the soil and CO2, O2, N2 & other molecules in the air, and associated biota.
2.As Homo evolved into humans, as its numbers more recently increased, and as it developed culturally, it became more and more effective at: appropriation of net primary productivity (amount of carbon uptake after subtracting plant respiration), and exploitation of solar radiation, water, minerals, and associated biota; disrupting & polluting; and changing the climate and Earth to Eaarth, especially after development of conventional agriculture and War, the industrial revolution, neoliberal capitalism, and the current electronic/computer/information age. … During this period humans of “good”, or “some ‘goodliness'” also proposed sophisticated paradigms (at levels of individuals/populations/ … even ecological-communities) of values, morals, and ethics for respecting other humans, and even other biota and the whole of Earth. However, such ethics of reciprocity, or holistic, comprehensive, profound Golden Rules, … are not largely practiced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaarth
3.As a christian-raised white heterosexual male citizen of the U.S.A. whose parents had land, no debt, and were fairly-well educated, I benefited greatly through the power I had available to me to exploit (directly or indirectly) the natural resource base and relatively powerless humans. However, this advantage of power bothered me considerably from early on. Through studies of ecological systems and contemplations I began to recognize that: in what is essentially a zero-sum/limited ecosphere, the realization of an ethic of reciprocity means we Haves need to reduce our ecological footprint and share our power over resources with Havenots, including other species.
4.Therefore, in trying to make this world a healthier place for all biota, I eventually saw the false-hope in ideas for strategies, tactics, policy, and actions which only tweaked the currently very-broken system with supposedly-appropriate technologies and practices such as photovoltaics, windtricity, batteries/fuel cells, hybrid & electric cars, …, LEED-certification, conventional organic agriculture, …, walls, drone-warfare, … . I began to see that we need to radically change the paradigms of living and of our livelihoods toward one which educates toward “positively ethical applied community ecology*/PEACE” across all human organizational entities, or living what I call the 6 Ss, i.e., living Sabiamente (wisely), Simply, Smally, Slowly, Sharingly, Sustainably … in humility and by abiding by the Precautionary Principle. We need to work toward opening borders. We should set aside one-half the Earth (currently Eaarth) to to Nature as proposed by E.O. Wilson et al.. Appropriate applied agroecology as proposed by Miguel Altieri et al. needs to be realized. Armaments, weapons, and War need to become terrible things from our past! file:///M:/Users/pbain/Downloads/27803-71527-1-PB%20(1).pdf https://eowilsonfoundation.org/half-earth-our-planet-s-fight-for-life/ https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/blog/agroecology-week-with
5.We should continue bandaiding the about-to-crash flying-ship-Eaarth with the “appropriate technologies and practices” listed in “4” above until we can get on a track of living the 6 Ss and lives of PEACE. However, in order to significantly sustain quality life, we do need to robustly begin to educate, advocate, critically think, and morally & ethically take action toward changing Eaarth to more of an Earth! The change must be radical, but hopefully we can realize a relatively smooth transition.
6.In terms of support and action toward PEACE–or the 6 Ss, in today’s world, I would score (100=excellent, 1=extremely poor) current political parties in the U.S in terms of support of PEACE as: Green Party, 50; Progressive sector of the Democratic Party, 45; Socialist sector of the Democratic Party, 35; Democratic Party, 25; Republican Party, 20; Libertarian Party, 11; Tea-party movement of Republican Party, 10; Trumpian sector of the Republican Party, 3. In the U.S. in particular, but in all regions of the world we are generally not on track toward PEACE.
7.My napkin calculations are that morally & ethically we Haves (and this includes Trump and the 1%; former statespersons Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush; Warren Buffett, Bill Gates; and family and friends) should reduce (or bring up toward equity) our consumption and power by about 2/3rds to ca. 60,000 kilocalories used/capita per day, an ecological footprint of 7-global-acres, and in today’s- (2018-) world in the U.S. to ca. $50,000/capita per annum. [I do hope all goes well for Trump’s effort at reduction of the >15,000 nuclear arms on Eaarth. It would be great to rid the world of the ca. <16 nuclear arms of Kim Jong-un. However, we need particular focus on the 14,270 nuclear arms about equally divided by two great powers led by unethical men & followed by other unethical men—the U.S.A. and Russia.]
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*My definition of ecology can be found at: http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2016/09/24/summary-reportphotos-of-my-2400-mile-ride-for-regeneratingconserving-resilient-sustainable-community/ (I have posted in the past at this blog site, some of my strong beliefs about ecology and respect for others: http://www.paulpeaceparables.com/2015/07/01/respect-including-for-the-lbgtq-community/ .)
