Healing Our World

We Are More the Same than Different

2011-12-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth
find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
There is something infinitely healing in the
repeated refrains of nature— the assurance
that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter."
-- Rachel Carson

"Time is Too slow for those who wait,
Too swift for those who fear,
Too long for those who grieve,
Too short for those who rejoice.
But for those who love, time is not."
-- Henry Van Dyke

"There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven -A time to give birth, and a time to die;A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.”
-- Ecclesiastes, 3:1-2.

While politicians, hate groups, and religious zealots try to convince the world that cultural differences irreparably separate us from one another and, in fact, are grounds for war, the Earth has quietly, as it has done for billions of years, passed into a Solstice. This important time, when the night is the longest in the Northern Hemisphere and the day is the longest in the Southern Hemisphere, has been recognized and celebrated by every culture on Earth since the dawn of time.

On Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 9:30 pm PST, the Winter Solstice will occur. At this time, the Sun will be the farthest from the celestial equator, the imaginary projection of the Earth’s equator on the heavens above, and the northern hemispere will experience the longest night of the year.

This has been a powerful time throughout the ages. Known as Yule in the pagan cultures of old Europe, the Winter Solstice has been a time of contemplation and celebration for religions and cultures of the world.

Because the Earth is tilted on its axis in space, this is the time when the Sun is the farthest south in the sky that it gets during the year in the North. The day is very short, and the beginning of Winter is upon us. In an age not so long passed, when we were intimately aware of our connections to this planet and our dependence upon the Sun for light and life, this time of year was recognized for its power.

How many of you in the Northern Hemisphere have noticed that since the Summer Solstice on June 21, the Sun has, each day, risen a little farther to the south of east and has remained in the sky a few minutes less? The days have been getting shorter and shorter until on Yule, the Winter Solstice, we experience the shortest day of the year.Recognition of this time of year can be a powerful healing and unifying tool for us. Imagine how the ancient peoples of the Earth felt as they observed that the Sun, the orb that gives us heat and light, kept getting lower and lower in the sky and the days kept getting shorter and shorter.

The fear must have arisen that the night would get longer and longer and that the Sun would eventually disappear completely. What could they do but surrender to this fear and prepare themselves for the Winter. They gathered food, they made their families as safe and warm as they possibly could, and reflected on the bounty of the past harvest and the joys that might be taken away.

These people must have felt that they were receiving the incredible gift of life when the Sun began journeying higher and higher and the days got longer and longer as Winter faded. Eventually, this time of year became a part of the Wheel of the Year, the earthly representation of the cycle of life, a time to slow down, reflect, appreciate the bounty of the harvest, and to appreciate the need for death - the darkness - as well as life.

While the dominant holiday offered by the media appears to be the Christian celebration of Christmas, this season is not just defined by the birth of Jesus. There are a wide variety of faiths and cultures who celebrate also around this time of year. In fact, the day for the birth of Christ was chosen to be around this time of year because of the pagan and Roman celebrations of rebirth. Some historical records indicate that Jesus' birth may have occurred in the year 4 or 6 B.C., but the exact date is unknown. Although historians cannot provide the date, they are certain it was not during the winter solstice. This is a powerful time of year to reflect on the assumptions that pervade and define our lives.

Jews celebrate Chanukah at this time of year. While it is not a major holiday in the Jewish tradition, this eight day festival commemorates the recapture of the sacred Temple in Jerusalem in 165 B.C. by a small band of warriors led by Judah the Maccabee. The temple had been taken by Syrian Greeks who were using it for their own rituals. Inside the temple, a flame was supposed to eternally burn, but the Syrians had desecrated the temple and used all but a one-day supply of oil for the flame by the time it was recaptured. By some miracle, the flame burned for eight days on that oil, until a new supply could be found. The eight-candle menorah symbolizes those eight days, the triumph of light over darkness - which is what the winter solstice is all about.

The holiest period in the Islamic year occurs around this time. It honors the lunar month in which the Qur’an was revealed by God to humanity. According to the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at the University of Southern California, the Qur'an ("Qor-Ann") is a message from Allah to humanity. According to the MSA, the Qur’an “was transmitted to us in a chain starting from the Almighty Himself to the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. This message was given to the Prophet in pieces over a period spanning approximately 23 years (610 CE to 622 CE). The Prophet was 40 years old when the Qur'an began to be revealed to him, and he was 63 when the revelation was completed. The language of the original message was Arabic, but it has been translated into many other languages.” God decreed that this Book would be the last Book.

Ramadan is the “host month for the inauguration of the final revelation” of the Qur’an. While not tied directly to the solstice, it is interesting that this holiest of months occurs around the time of year when the balance of darkness and light are examined on Earth because of our journey around the Sun.

The ancient Celts worshiped evergreen trees as symbols of the universe. The trees were considered sacred because they did not die from year to year as other (deciduous) trees did. Their lush greenery was a symbol for the hope that the Sun would return to green the Earth once again. They decorated the trees with all the images of the things they hoped the coming year would bring. It is believed that trees and wreaths have been part of this season’s celebrations for at least 4, 000 years.

The stories of many Native American tribes contain a number of references to solstice celebrations.

Buddhists celebrate Bodhi Day this time of year, a time honoring the day in 596 BCE, when the Buddha achieved enlightenment, escaping the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth through reincarnation.

These themes, observed in many religions during this time of year, all relate to the balance of light and darkness in our lives. It may be no coincidence that these holy days from religions that, on the surface, seem so different, all occur around the time of the solstice.

Feasting was part of the many solstice celebrations, but only after a time of fasting and prayer. In the gluttonous celebrations so popular today, we seemed to have forgotten the fasting and praying.

The celebrations many of us get wrapped up in have little to do with honoring the Earth or our culture. Rather, the holidays present a huge challenge to the environment, our pocketbooks, and our health. The city of Raleigh, North Carlolina reported at their website that, "In the U.S. annual trash from gift-wrap and shopping bags totals 4 million tons. More than 38,000 miles of ribbon is thrown out each year. That is enough to tie a bow around the Earth and have 7,000 miles of ribbon leftover for streamers."

They go on to report that "Americans send 1.9 billion Christmas cards. The amount of cards sold during the holiday season would fill a football field 10 stories high and requires the harvesting of nearly 300,000 trees."

It feels so hard to decide what is right and what is wrong, what is death and what is life, and whether or not to worry about global warming or deforestation. I think it feels so difficult because for generations, we have been taught not to feel, taught instead to feel apart from the cycles of the Earth. Maybe it's not so hard after all. Maybe it's as simple as noticing the shortest day and night of the year - and knowing that the day will get longer and the darkness will recede.

Following the seasonal cycles, the rhythms of the Earth, and the web of life can be powerful medicine. Whatever culture you are from and whatever religion you practice, reflect upon its relationship to the Earth and celebrate the common themes we all share.

Happy holidays.

RESOURCES

1. Get tips on how to simplify the holiday season from the Center for a New American Dream at: http://www.newdream.org/

2. Familiarize yourself with the Wheel of the Year and see the intimate connections that all faiths and cultures have a: http://www.wheeloftheyear.com/

3. Get help changing your dietary habits from EarthSave: http://www.earthsave.org/

4. Check out Food Not Bombs at: http://home.earthlink.net/~foodnotbombs/ and learn how to feed the hungry in your community.

5. Visit the Muslim Students Association (MSA) of the University of Southern California at: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/

6. Find out who your elected representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them that wanting peace is not being unpatriotic. You can find them at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html

7. Dig deep into the things you think you know or the things you want to know more about. Type the ideas that interest you into an Internet search engine and see where it leads you.

GIve Thanks - But Acknowledge The Truth . . .

2010-11-24T21:41:00.000-08:00

"The Europeans were able to conquer America not
because of their military genius, or their religious
motivation, or their ambition, or their greed. They
conquered it by waging unpremeditated biological
warfare." -- Howard Simpson

"Considering that virtually none of the standard fare
surrounding Thanksgiving contains an ounce of
authenticity, historical accuracy, or cross-cultural
perception, why is it so apparently ingrained? Is it
necessary to the American psyche to perpetually
exploit and debase its victims in order to justify
its history?" -- Michael Dorris

"European explorers and invaders discovered an
inhabited land. Had it been pristine wilderness then, it
would possibly be so still, for neither the technology nor
the social organization of Europe in the 16th and 17th
centuries had the capacity to maintain, of its own
resources, outpost colonies thousands of miles from
home." -- Francis Jennings

What Thanksgiving story are you telling your children or talking about with your guests during this holiday? Most Americans speak of remembering the Pilgrims who, in 1620, chose the land around Plymouth Harbor, Massachusetts for their settlement. You might remember from your elementary school days that since they arrived in the winter, they were unprepared for the harsh climate. Fortunately, they were aided by some friendly Indians who gave them food and showed them how to grow corn. When the warm weather came, the colonists planted crops, fished, hunted and became much better prepared for next winter. And when they harvested their first crop, they invited their Indian friends to celebrate with them what was to become the first Thanksgiving.

This story is taught today in thousands of classrooms across the nation, and around the world, and is ingrained in most people’s consciousness. Just yesterday, I heard some elementary school teachers telling the story on National Pubic Radio. Unfortunately, the entire story, from start to finish, is a complete lie.

You are going to have to push aside your turkey (or tofu) leftovers if you are going to learn what really happened at the time of the first Thanksgiving in America. In fact, you may not be able to stomach any food for a while after you learn the truth.

The story actually begins after 1492 as Europeans came in significant numbers to the newly found Americas.

When people began moving, the microbes that they evolved with moved along with them. Before the arrival of Europeans, the inhabitants of North and South America were remarkably healthy. But along with the Europeans came their illnesses and their livestock and the native inhabitants were now exposed to the many diseases that can be passed back and forth between those animals and humans - anthrax, tuberculosis, cholera, streptococcus, ringworm and various poxes.

The British and French had fished in Southern New England for some time before the Pilgrims landed in 1620. It is likely that they came in contact with the Indians at that time. The native inhabitants had no resistance to the diseases brought by the Europeans and within three years, a plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England! This death rate was unknown in all previous human experience. For comparison, the Black Plague in the 1300s killed about 30 percent of Europe’s population.

This piece of history is usually omitted from most textbooks, yet these plagues, which ravaged the Indian population for the next 15 years, set the tone for the relationship of the European settlers with the indigenous people of America.

The English settlers inferred from the plague that God was on their side in taking over the land. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, wrote that the plague was "miraculous." He said "God hath thereby cleared out title to this place..." Is it any wonder that our political leaders of today ask for God’s blessing and protection as they go to war to kill?

Between 1520 and 1918, there were 93 epidemics among Native Americans.

The affect that these plagues had on the native populations reached into their psyches as well. They felt that God had abandoned them. Some survivors of the Cherokee lost all confidence in their gods and priests and destroyed the sacred objects of the tribe. Indian healers could do nothing and their religion provided no cause. But the Whites usually survived and their religion seemed to save them. Many Indians turned to alcohol, Christianity or simply committed suicide. So it was a psychologically and physically devastated people that for the first 50 years of European occupation presented no real opposition to the invaders.

Pilgrims as they are shown in America today (Graphic courtesy Valerie)
Prior to the arrival of European invaders, the native population of North and South American was 100 million in 1492. The entire population of Europe at the time was 70 million. If colonists had not been able to take over lands that the Indians had already cleared and cultivated, and if the Indian population had not been devastated by disease, there might not have been any colonization at all.

By 1880, the Indian population was 250,000, a drop of 98 percent.

It is quite likely that the Pilgrims knew well of these plagues. In fact, pretty much everyone knew about them. Ziner, in the book “Squanto,” wrote that before the Mayflower sailed, King James of England gave thanks to “Almighty God in his great goodness and bounty towards us” for sending “this wonderful plague among the savages.”

Few Americans know that the Pilgrims numbered only about 35 of the 102 settlers aboard the Mayflower, which was headed for the new Virginia colony. It is believed by some historians that it is possible that the Pilgrims bribed the Mayflower captain to drop them off in Massachusetts. Some say they may have even hijacked the ship. In any case, the non-Pilgrim majority, who had joined the ship because of the economic opportunity afforded by the Virginia tobacco plantations, were quite upset at being taken someplace else.

Historians, in their search for a story that told the mythical beginnings of American culture, probably chose to omit facts about the Pilgrims story rather than tell the tale of Virginia. In Virginia, the British took the Native Americans prisoner and forced them to show the colonists how to farm. James W. Loewen, in his revealing book “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” says, “in 1623, the British indulged in the first use of chemical warfare in the colonies when negotiating a treaty with the tribes near the Potomac River, headed by Chiskiack. The British offered a toast ‘symbolizing eternal friendship,’ whereupon the chief, his family, advisors, and two hundred followers dropped dead of poison.”

The Pilgrims choose their site at Plymouth because it had beautifully cleared fields, recently planted corn, and excellent water supplies. The Pilgrims did not start from scratch in the wildness, but used a common practice of the European invaders of appropriating Indian cornfields for their initial settlements. This is why so many of the names of East Coast towns end in “field.”

The Indians who created and lived in this new Plymouth were mostly dead from the plagues, so they provided little opposition.

The Pilgrims robbed graves, stole what they could find in abandoned Indian homes, and filled their larder with the harvest of a dying culture’s labors.

The reasons for the lies about the origins of Thanksgiving go deep into culture, psyche, and religion and is covered in depth in Loewen’s book. But one thing is for sure: the true history of Thanksgiving reveals some very embarrassing facts, to say the least.

The most remarkable part of the story may be that the Pilgrims did not even introduce the tradition of Thanksgiving in America. It wasn’t until 1863 that President Lincoln proclaimed it a national holiday. The fabricated story of the Pilgrims was not even included in the holiday until the 1890’s. The term “Pilgrim” was not even used until the 1870’s.

This environmental and social devastation wrought by the European invaders of North America continues today. Oil company explorers, miners and loggers continue to introduce disease to the isolated cultures of Brazil and Venezuela, where one fourth of their population was killed in 1991.

The myth of Thanksgiving has created a false sense of self in Americans that has done great damage throughout the world. It has resulted in children being planted with the seeds of racial hatred and white superiority. It is an insult to us all, especially since most Americans are ignorant of the truth, even though the facts about the grave robbing, Indian enslavement and murder, and the plagues, were common knowledge among the settlers of New England.

Loewen gives us excellent reasons why we should seek out the truth of American history. If the conflicts of the true story were revealed, he says, then “students might discover that the knowledge they gain has implications for their lives today. Correctly taught, the issues of the era of the first Thanksgiving could help Americans grow more thoughtful and more tolerant, rather than more ethnocentric.”

We can redefine Thanksgiving for ourselves and our family. We can make it a day when we not only give thanks for the bounty we have received, but a day when we acknowledge the injustices that have been and are being perpetrated on so many people and animals in the world. After feasting, we could choose a way for our families to help lessen the suffering of some creature somewhere in the world, animal or human.

We must remember these tragedies as we shape the new millennium. With genetically engineered bacteria, crops and animals being created every day, are we risking a biological devastation like the Indians experienced?

We must examine how we are using this stolen gift of a nation. As life support systems crumble and species become extinct every day, can we really say we have learned anything in the last 500 years?

Happy Thanksgiving.

RESOURCES

1.Read "Lies My Teacher Told Me," by James W. Loewen to learn about moresurprises in American history. Buy a few copies and give them toelementary school teachers in your community. If you have children,make sure your child’s teacher has one. Visit a website devoted to thisbook at:

2.Read the Indian Country Newspaper at: http://indiancountry.com/

3.Read about the Indigenous Peoples Earth Science Project at http://www.purdue.edu/eas/iesp/project_description.shtml

4.Visit http://www.nativeamerican.net/and http://nativeamericannetroots.net/

5.Read about the largest forced relocation in the U.S. since theinternment of Japanese American citizens in World War II at http://www.diatribune.com/video-mccain-amp-forced-relocation-navajo-update.

Olympics may not be something to be proud of . . .

2010-02-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

Nearly 2000 people were in the streets outside the opening ceremony for the 2010 winter Olympics in Canada on Friday night, yet few media outlets around the world even mentioned it. Knowing what I know about how all of North America was stolen from its native inhabitants, I found it nauseating to see the obviously contrived welcome from Canada’s native peoples that was part of the ceremonies. Clearly, huge amounts of money was spent on the stadium and the ceremony. “Wow,” I remember commenting to my partner as we were watching the ceremony, “I am glad that Canada seems to have housed and fed all their people to have all this money left over.”

Well, it seems that Canada spent huge amounts of public money on the overly glitzy ceremonies while native peoples continue to be disenfranchised and millions go without shelter, food, or heath care. Their Olympic budget was over $6 billion!

Over 2 million people have been displaced by olympic-related construction in various host cities since the 1980's . Since Canada won the bid for the 2010 games in 2003, Vancouver's homeless rate is up 370 percent.

Olympic sports have long since ceased being a monument to human achievement. They have become examples of corporate greed and propaganda. Here is a good overview discussion of why it makes sense to protest the Olympics by The Dominion, News From The Grassroots, formed in 2003 by independent Canadian journalists. See a video about the impact of the 2010 games on poverty and homelessness.

A number of organizations and private citizens have joined to protest. Here are some of them:

No 2010 Olympics on Stolen Native Land

No 2010 Victoria

2010 Watch

The Anti Poverty Committee

Olympic Resistance Network

Learn about the issues and decide what is important to you. Follow the actions of those deeply involved and remember, taking care of each other, feeding those who don’t have enough, and providing shelter for those without is what all the world’s businesses should be about. Anything else is about greed and selfishness. Haven’t we had enough of that?

Watch this video that will reveal little known truths about the Olympics throughout modern history. You will be forever changed.

Resist 2010: Eight Reasons to Oppose the 2010 Winter Olympics. (LOW RES) from BurningFist Media on Vimeo.

Let's use our power

2009-12-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

it feels like a challenge to be happy and
to want more at the same time.
but it really isn’t.
doesn’t it make sense that there is
plenty of space in our minds and hearts
to be happy and grateful in the moment and,
at the same time,
want more
dream more
have many ways that you want
your passion to be satisfied?
we have so much capability,
so much power to perceive whatever we want.
let’s use it!

Some of Us Are Too Afraid for Peace and Compassion

2009-08-31T06:11:00.000-07:00

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

" Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

" There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.”

“The Birth of a New Nation,” Sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 7 April 1957, Montgomery, Alabama.

To embrace the idea of peace and compassion, you have to open your arms and your heart to others. You have to welcome difference, cherish diversity, and be comfortable with uncertainty. To many people who have adopted the basic tenants of Western civilization and have become irrevocably attached to modern technology, those who are different from the mainstream media’s idea of normal, those who are not white, or not human, and that which is not certain are conditions to be feared and avoided at all cost.

Nuclear waste piling up in South Korea
(AP Photo)

To be afraid of that which is different is a paralyzing and numbing experience that shuts out all reason. Gabrielle Roth, movement teacher and one who has mapped out human emotions and our responses to them in a deep and profound way, said, “Fear writes its signature all over the body, but we are all so used to it we've become desensitized to the loud and clear message of our body language. And this pervasive fear simply compounds itself; it paralyzes our life energy, seizes up our feelings. We're so afraid of what we are going to lose, so painfully attached to what we have, that we numb ourselves into a living death to shield us from the pain of real living. By clinging to life as we have it, we deny ourselves a vibrant present and future."

So many of the choices being made in the world today seem to be driven by a fear of losing what we have. But is what we have really worth so much suffering? Is what we have worth the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Sadly, I am not just referring to the consequences of war. The daily activities of individuals, industries, and politicians cause worldwide deaths that rival the atrocities of war.

In 2003 in Tacoma, Washington, health officials revealed that arsenic contaminated the soil in Pierce County at levels 50 times higher than allowed by the state. A copper smelter that closed down in 1986 after polluting for nearly a century was the cause. Because they were afraid of facing the truth, officials decided that the pollution is not a public health emergency. Instead, they are recommending that people limit their contact with the soil, wash their hands, wear gloves, clean dirt from their shoes, vacuum, and mop often!
Of course, regulating and limiting the copper plant during its lifetime was out of the question. Copper is an integral part of just about every piece of technology on the planet and there may be no greater fear that most of us have than to be without our technology. But there are consequences to our ultra-dependence on technology and that technology often bites back.

The real problem may not ultimately be what we do to each other, says Edward Tenner in his book, “Why Things Bite Back, Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences,” but the tendency of the world around us to get even and “to twist our cleverness against us.”

Tenner says, “wherever we turn we face the ironic unintended consequences of mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical ingenuity – revenge effects, they might be called.” But technology alone usually doesn’t produce a revenge effect. “Only when we anchor it in laws, regulations, customs, and habits,” says Tenner, “does an irony reach its full potential.

Another way that so many show their fear is through sport hunting. Some people are so afraid of the natural world and its wonderful uncertainty and unpredictability that they must exert the ultimate form of control – to kill something.

Animals hunted for trophies suffer much more than any animal killed for food. Since the hunters wants intact heads for display, they will not kill the animal quickly by shooting it in the head. Instead, they use arrows or bullets aimed at the body of the animal, usually resulting in a wounded animal staggering, limping, and panicked while the killer continues to shoot. Death is often slow and painful. But the hunter has his or her trophy head to show friends and to brag about bravery and courage in the fight. Acts like this are repeated every day around the world.

Until we stop treating animals as slaves and exhibits - animals that have proven time and time again that they are thinking, feeling, reasoning beings - we will have no chance of healing the isolation we feel from the world and from each other.

Of course, what chance do animals have when, according to the World Health Organization, more than 200,000 people are killed by pesticide poisons worldwide every year. That means 547 men, women, and children die every day from pesticide poisoning.

We are all afraid of losing something. Schools are afraid of losing money, so they collect millions of dollars from soft drink and junk food companies to display advertisements on school grounds that encourage our children to fill their bodies with mind numbing sweets that create learning and physical disabilities for thousands every year.

Fear of Iraq has had many consequences. The U.S. war may be responsible for over 100,000 documented civilian deaths. By comparison, the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima killed 300,000 people. In Iraq today, the most serious weapon of mass destruction is a bottle of water - water tainted with disease because of the sanctions. Without medicine, diarrhea means death to many children and elderly.

The U.S. is the world leader in the manufacture, sale, and use of weapons of mass destruction. In fact, in the 1970s, a company in Maryland sold Iraq the "seed stock" for its chemical warfare program.

Author Franz Kafka told us, "You can hold yourself back from the suffering of the world: this is something you are free to do ... but perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid."

We have got to find our way through the fear to peace. We must stop the endless war we wage against not only our fellow humans, but against the natural world.

Nearly all of sculptor, painter, and writer Michelangelo’s art expressed the idea, says Wayne Dyer, “that love helps human beings in their struggles to ascend to the divine. This was true in some three hundred sonnets that he wrote and it showed itself in his depiction of spiritual themes in his painting, sculpting, and architectural design.”

One of Michelangelo's poems may sum up our challenge in these troubled times:

“The greater danger
for most of us
is not that our aim is
too high
and we miss it,
but that it is
too low
and we reach it.”
-- Michelangelo

Cast off your fear, aim high, and crave peace.

RESOURCES

1. See “Recipes for Creating Peace.”

2. Visit the Creators of Peace website.

3. The International Peace Museum was started by the students in the second grade at Indian Hill Primary School in Cincinnati, Ohio. Each student drew a picture and wrote a few words about what peace meant to them.

4. Reprinted in 73 countries and 7 languages, “Thoughts in the Presence of Fear,” a powerful essay by Wendell Berry, has been made available in print by Orion” magazine.

5. Visit the Non-Violence Network.

Who's the real radical?

2009-08-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

"To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice."
-- Confucius

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
-- John Morley

"I support the bigot's right to speak out,
as if I start limiting them, they may start limiting me.
I also support my right to ignore them."
-- Laura Packer

"The question is not whether we will be extremists,
but what kind of extremists we will be.
The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
-- Rev. Martin Luther King

The mainstream media often calls the efforts of those who oppose the threats of seemingly endless consumerism and industrial expansion as "radical" and "extremist." They attempt to portray those who want to stop some defenseless animal from being killed or who want to end the destruction of the Earth's forests and oceans as weak minded, ignorant obstructionists who are anti-technology.

This rhetoric only serves to cloud and confuse the issues, making it appear to those who are against such destruction that they are in the minority and, in these days and times, even unpatriotic.

Plane sprays to control western corn rootworms feeding on and laying eggs in these soybeans. (Photo courtesy USDA)

Call me weak and ignorant if you must, but to my way of thinking, the systematic destruction of the Earth's oceans, forests, and atmosphere, the killing of animals to obtain furs for the rich, the attempts to sneak genetically engineered foods into the marketplace without labels identifying them, the claims that it is OK to douse our food supply with billions of tons of deadly pesticides, and the sanctioning of the deaths of children who starve in the midst of vast abundance because profit for few is the top priority are the radical and extreme behaviors.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language defines the word radical to mean, "departing markedly from the usual or customary" and "favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions."

It is tragic that toxic pollution, the suffering of children, the poisoning of hundreds of thousands of people world wide by pesticides, and wonton cruelty are defined by so many as being "the usual and customary."

Believing in the health of the Earth’s life support systems and the importance of every life, human or animal, cannot be considered the views of a special interest group. Those beliefs must be the ONLY interest.

One of the most repulsive examples of the acceptance of suffering as mainstream may be in the area of workplace safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that more than 32 million workers are exposed to harmful substances from more than 3.5 million workplaces. But over the last 30 years, OSHA has issued only 170 citations to employers for not having proper procedures to protect against toxic substances leaving the workplace.

Unfortunately, businesses with fewer than 10 employees are exempt from OSHA inspections, even though it is believed that these small companies may be the source of many of the problems.

Auto shop with paint spray booth (Photo credit unknown)

Solvents such as benzene, carbon disulfide, methylene chloride, and ketone are a few of the names of the 49 million tons of solvents that are produced annually in the U.S. and 9.8 million workers are exposed to them daily. They are in nail polish, paint, plastics, rubber cement, furniture and thousands of other products. They are absorbed through the skin or ingested. This is not a new problem. People have been suffering from working in toxic industries for a long time.

Hundreds of years ago, madness spread among the mirror makers of Venice, Italy and the hat makers of London. Eventually, the disease was linked to inhaling mercury vapors. The phrase "mad as a hatter" comes from these troubled times, since mercury was used in the manufacture of felt for hats, and many of the workers eventually went mad from mercury poisoning.

Yet industries continue to deny their impact, both on the Earth and on their workers. It is much cheaper for them to pay out the few wrongful death lawsuits that are brought against them than to clean up their acts and treat their workers with dignity and respect.

Ever wonder about that phony butter used on popcorn in theaters and in those microwaveable packets? Its strange smell and aftertaste have made many of us wonder what it is. It has been recently revealed that this chemical is quite dangerous and has already killed.

In 2002, the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" newspaper reported that over the last few decades, more than 30 workers have contracted the fatal lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, at the Glister-Mary Lee Popcorn plant in St. Louis, Missouri. This disease destroys the lungs and all these people will suffocate without complete lung transplants. Investigators found workers at the plant had 3.3 times the rate of lung obstruction in the general population.

Federal officials believe the workers contracted the disease by breathing the fumes of the chemical that makes that fake butter flavor in popcorn and other foods! The flavoring contains the chemical diacetyl.

The company claims that it has begun taking precautions by having employees in some areas of the plant wear respirators. One has to wonder why they weren’t doing this all along.

On the chemical’s "Material Safety Data Sheet," required by law and readily available on the Internet, inhalation hazards are clearly listed as being very serious. The data sheet says, "If inhaled, remove person to fresh air. If not breathing give artificial respiration. If breathing is difficult, give oxygen ... Do not breathe vapors. Mechanical exhaust required. In confined or poorly ventilated areas, the use of an appropriate respiratory protection may be required."

Unfortunately, it is usual and customary to cut corners wherever possible in protecting one’s workers. It is considered radical to suggest that everyone deserves protection from the start.

Protest rally of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), August 24, 2001 while the Taliban were still in power. (Photo courtesy RAWA)

Tens of thousands of people every day protest the ideals portrayed as normal by the mainstream media and by our political and business leaders. Across the nation and across the globe, thousands more are living in intentional communities, farming sustainably, boycotting products of companies that generate toxic waste or sell poisons to children, and many thousands more make their views known to their elected representatives.

All together, these numbers add up to unreported millions. It is no surprise that you will rarely hear about these people in the corporate controlled media. You won't see these activist leaders chronicled on network or even public television talk shows. But you will see them in the supermarket, on the playground with their children and at many jobs across the land.

Don’t believe the rhetoric, don’t accept that it is unpatriotic to want peace, and don’t succumb to the constant insults and demeaning comments that suggest those who care for the future and for the Earth rather than for shareholder profit are somehow weak and misguided.

The earth, the air, and the water are the values that matter, not the stock market index. If that idea is considered radical, then so be it.

RESOURCES

1. "Radical." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

2. See a comprehensive reporting of toxic substances in the workplace by "USA Today."

3. For a list of problem industries with cancer risks, visit Toxic Torts.

4. Take action with the help of CoOp America.

5. See all the risks of diacetyl at the US Department of Labor.

Trespassers Keep Out: The Loss of Public Access to Nature

2009-07-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

Summer is in full swing here in the Northwestern United States. Seattle is in bloom, the skies are clear, the sun is shining, and with the 4th of July weekend coming up, people all over are flocking to the waterfronts. Unfortunately, there are very few places the public can go to enjoy the waters of Puget Sound. Except for a few parks, one of which is a toxic waste dump, there are few places one can go. Nearly all the waterfront property is privately owned with no public access.

Let the words of my mouth,
the meditations of my heart
and the actions of my life be as one,
that I may live each day in harmony
with Mother Earth. Amen
-- Jennie Frost Butler

Every day, children are born onto this Earth into dynamic participation with the natural world. The air, the water, and the ground beneath their feet are all innately understood to be parts of their lives. They know nothing of political or private property boundaries.

Yet these children will never get to visit many parts of their world as the affluent homeowners, businesses and industries are allowed to buy up the access to lakes, rivers, and beaches.

Private ownership of our forests, meadows, beaches, riverbanks and lakefronts has reached epidemic proportions in some states. Access to these natural areas has nearly been eliminated in many communities and "No Trespassing" signs are the new badges of achievement for the affluent.

The United Nations has recognized this as a worldwide problem for some time. In 1976, the first UN Conference on Human Settlements was held. Although there have been many such conferences since, the first one described in its final report the conflicting values of property ownership versus public rights to access.

"Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human settlements, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market," the UN report said. "Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes."

But in our market driven society, the affluent get the pick of the land. Parks and recreation departments at the city, state or federal level cannot compete with the skyrocketing land values.
Discussions of private property rights often go astray with talk of the Founding Fathers and the intention of the U.S. Constitution. Organizations like the Property Rights Congress list the words of James Madison and John Adams at their website and claim, "America's founding fathers understood that without the individual's right to own and control property, no other rights can be protected from government tyranny."

Some analysts of the motivations of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, however, suggest that the language of our Constitution and Bill of Rights was not crafted to be egalitarian. Because those documents forbade government interference in private property, the wealthiest citizens of the new nation had free rein to use their wealth to acquire large tracts of land.

Steven Hill, director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, writes that because the government could not prevent privatization of lands, the richest citizens, including the Founding Fathers themselves, could now "buy, manipulate and otherwise gain control over the democratic process and government itself. This had the net effect of protecting the privileged minority who already owned property, wealth, speech, and the press from the clamoring of the majority who were trying to acquire these same rights and freedoms."

Carkeek Park in Seattle, one of the few remaining coastal access points. (Photo © Jackie Giuliano)

Today, those decisions have resulted in situations where hundreds of miles of coastland and huge tracts of potential parkland are owned by wealthy individuals who deny access to everyone.
Critics of the practice of leaving some land in the public trust often claim that a community's tax base is increased by developing property, not preserving it. But development projects usually result in an increase in infrastructure and public service requirements. Very quickly, the cost of providing these services often outweighs any additional tax revenue. Environmental costs mount as our rivers, lakes, and oceans are used as waste dumps by many of those who live adjacent to them.

Owners of million dollar homes perched precariously on coastal bluffs will usually deny any access to the splendid views. However, the same landowners will be quick to claim public funds to repair or rebuild their homes when erosion or other geologic forces make them tumble down the hill.

The Surfrider Foundation said in a 1998 article in their publication "Making Waves, "Property rights advocates tend to be conservatives who demand that individuals be held responsible for their actions. Yet they shirk accountability when faced by a dilemma brought on their own poor land management practices."

Lack of contiguous access to natural areas affects much more than recreational needs. The forests and ecosystems of the world are becoming increasingly fragmented. Private property purchases are creating tiny islands of nature that often cannot exist on their own.

Wildlife biologists fear that the breakup of habitats into small, isolated patches are often too limited to maintain a species. Fragmentation also results in more edges to the property and these edge habitats are often unhealthy for life. These edges expose an area to weather that the ecosystem was not designed for and the additional sun, wind, and rain is often detrimental.

In Seattle, it is very difficult to find open stretches of beach or forestland. Choice views of Puget Sound, Lake Union, and Lake Washington are available from only a few parks in town. But since 1907, hundreds of acres of forest have been off limits in a gated community known as The Highlands. Located about 15 minutes north of the city, The Highlands has been the home of families with old money such as the Boeings and the Nordstroms. Designed in 1907 by the Olmstead brothers, who also designed other parks in town, it is off limits to all but residents.

Gatehouse, The Highlands (Photo © Jackie Giuliano)

When we first moved to Seattle, my family and I thought we would drive to The Highlands. The map we had only showed the vast forest and coastal vistas of the region. When we arrived - the entrance is only 10 minutes from my house - the armed guard at the gate changed our plans.

But there can be no finer example of how the public gets the leftovers than Gasworks Park in Seattle. The site of an old coal gasification plant that turned coal into natural gas, the site, located on the shore of Lake Union, is a recongnized toxic site where the contamination in the soil from years of toxic dumping is well known. But since it is nearly the only public access left around the lake, thousands of people picnic there each year. The city periodically puts new soil on top of the toxic layers and then looks the other way as children roll an play on the poisonous ground.The

The Wyoming Wildlife Federation says that in their home state, some private landowners intentionally buy up private lands surrounding vast tracks of public land, and then deny access to the public. There have been cases where the public land is then turned into a private hunting preserve and marketed by boasting of its remoteness and lack of other hunters or hikers.

The Texas Water Resources Institute reports that few people can get to its many rivers, since most of the riverbank property is under private ownership.

Private organizations like the Nature Conservancy will use donated funds to purchase unique tracts of land and protect them from development. The public is often given access to these lands, but the Conservancy can only afford to protect the truly special and unique.

California has aggressively addressed this issue with the California Coastal Act. The Coastal Act mandates that development not interfere with the public's right of access to the coastline. Yet homeowners still try to claim the beaches for their own.

The U.S. government began to address this issue years ago. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management that addresses public access. They say that over 180 million Americans visit the coast each year, many of whom can't find access.

Some property owners attempt to provide access, but most do not. These affluent property owners are powerful, often commanding the ear of local government officials. Many have banded together in organizations, such as the now defunct United Property Owners and Defenders of Property Rights, specifically to find legal ways to deny public access. They are very clever at teaching their members how to manipulate the Constitution and lobby Congress.

The time may have arrived where we need to reexamine the idea that access to lands that belong to all of us is controlled by whoever lives in front of them. Riverbanks, beaches, and lakefronts should be public property, and land owners should have to live back a few hundred yards. With recreation sites becoming overcrowded, local governments should follow California's lead and remove the stranglehold that has been placed on our most beautiful lands.

RESOURCES

1. Visit the UN Centre for Human Settlements.

2. The Wyoming Wildlife Federation.

3. The Conservation Fund is trying to create Greenways that connect our fragmented lands.

4. The NOAA Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management.

Now We Have the Facts – So Now What Do We Do?

2009-06-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

May those whose lives are gripped in the palm of suffering
open even now to the Wonder of Life.
May they let go of the hurt and Meet the True Self beyond pain,
the Uncarved Block that is our joyous Unity with Holiness.
May they discover through pain and torment
the strength to live with grace and humor.
May they discover through doubt and anguish
the strength to live with dignity and holiness.
May they discover through suffering and fear
the strength to move toward healing.
-- Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro

"Information is not knowledge.
You can mass produce raw data and incredible quantities of facts and figures.
You cannot mass produce knowledge, which is created by individual minds,
separating the significant from the irrelevant, making value judgments."
-- Theodore Roszak

More and more people are aware of environmental abuses, social atrocities, and deaths due to chemical hazards than ever before. Combine this awareness with the worldwide fears of terrorist attack following the September 11th tragedies, and you have a population filled with fear and apprehension who are being told by their leaders to go on with their lives.

Yet we know that our mail could be contaminated with anthrax, our workplaces are filled with harmful chemicals that could be shortening our lives, our children are at risk from toxic chemicals in the toys they chew or the playgrounds they use, and the very food we eat could contain harmful drugs, pesticides, and other questionable ingredients.

What to do with all this disturbing news may be as important as the news itself. People everywhere are asking the same questions including, “How can I protect myself and my family,” and “How can I change the direction this world is taking?”

Educator and psychologist Joanna Macy has, over the years, offered many ideas that can help transform the pain, confusion, guilt, and anger that so many people feel into a sense of empowerment.

Macy believes that public apathy does not stem from indifference or callousness or even ignorance, but from a fear of pain. She says that pain itself stems from an innate capacity to suffer with our world. The very fact that we can experience fear and pain for our world is actually wonderful evidence that we all share common bonds, feelings, and desires.

Gathering at the beach to reflect on the issues (Photo © J.A. Giuliano )

Most importantly, Macy reminds us that it is not the responsibility of any one person to save the world by themselves. Instead, we must take responsibility for our own actions and to try to live a life of compassion. There are many millions of people in this world who are trying to live mindfully. All these actions together are changing the direction of our world. You won’t hear about them on the evening news, but they are happening.

Another important activity that will help you cope with the disturbing information is to broaden your concept of self. Try to see yourself as more than just you, your job, and your family. Expand the idea of who you are to include the Earth, the air, the water, and the people around you. What course of action you need to take will become much more evident if you acknowledge the deep, personal connection every life form has to the Earth’s resources and ecosystems.
Macy reminds us of the importance of dropping any unnecessary baggage. She said, “What do I mean by baggage? The need to have a pre-formulated solution, the need to be right or enlightened, the need to win an argument, or the need for hope.”

It is not so much the idea of hope that is the problem, but the way we often do it. Hoping for a specific event to occur or a specific outcome in our lives can limit the possibilities. If we don’t hang on to preconceived ideas of the way things should be - if we let go of the blinders of expectations - we will be open for what can be.

Another important factor to consider as we try to decide what to do with all the information is to remember that information is not knowledge. Theodore Roszak reminded us of this in his 1986 book, “The Cult of Information,” when he said we must be wary of the assumption that “information will empower the citizenry and save democracy.”

This idea is a trap since it suggests that thinking is a form of simple information processing, which it is not. More data will not, by itself, produce a better understanding of the issues. For that understanding, we must look inward.

We must continue to gather high quality information, to be sure. But we have to surround that information with a solid value system from within.

Most of us have not figured out how to create values that are totally consistent in our lives nor have we explored the complete ramifications of the idea that we are all deeply interconnected. Few have even taken the time to understand what their own personal core values are.

Depression, confusion, and feelings that they are living double lives are rampant among people who are trying to be socially responsible. Every part of mainstream society works hard to make them feel alone, outcast, weak, and wrong.

By challenging assumptions and carefully managing the amount of information we take in, we can create consistency in our lives, see that it is OK to believe in what may not be popular, create ideas about what our core values could be, see that it is OK to be angry when injustice is done, believe that having a respect for all life is not an extreme point of view, and believe that our individual voices matter and that millions of people are trying to do these things every day.

The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right name.

Yes, the news of the harm being done to our Earth is disturbing and we can choose to turn it off. But there is danger in that course of action. Franz Kafka told us of the consequences of looking away when he said, “You can hold yourself back from the suffering of the world: this is something you are free to do ... but perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.”

Don’t hold back. Look at the pain. And choose to do something about it.

RESOURCES

1. Give really meaningful gifts that go lightly on the Earth this year with the help of the Green Gift Giving Guide from the Natural Resources Defense Council at: http://www.nrdc.org/cities/living/ggift.asp#

2. Better yet, give the gift that could safe a life with the help of the Seva Foundation. By giving contributions through their “Gifts of Service” catalog, you could restore someone’s eyesight or even help buy a buffalo for a Native American herd. Check them out at: http://www.seva.org/

3. Explore a “Healing Our World” commentary from a few years ago about steps you can take to heal at: http://drjackie.freeservers.com/articles/aug16-1997g.html

4. Learn more about what to do with information with the help of the Communication Project at: http://www.tcpnow.com/index.html

Who Are The Real Extremists?

2008-12-26T21:01:00.000-08:00

"The question is not whether we will be extremists,
but what kind of extremists we will be . . .
The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
-- Reverend Martin Luther King

To live content with small means,
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion,
to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy,
not rich,to study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
act frankly,to listen to stars and birds,
babes and sages, with open heart,
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasions, hurry never - in a word,
to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
-- William Ellery Channing

Mainstream media stories, and many members of the public, will often refer to the efforts of small bands of people who want to stop some defenseless animal from being killed or who want to end the destruction of the Earth's forests and oceans as being "extreme."

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ship, the "Steve Irwin." (Photo courtesy SSCS)

To me, the systematic destruction of the Earth's oceans, forests, and atmosphere to increase the profit of a few shareholders, the killing of animals to obtain furs for the rich, the butchering of majestic whales in high-tech Japanese ships in protected waters, and children who starve and die in the midst of vast abundance because profit for few is the top priority is extreme.

Think about your own reactions for a moment to the events listed below. What is your gut feeling? Do they seem extreme?

Many activists, environmentalists, and scientists recommend that fish not be consumed at all due to the high levels of mercury that has been found in so many species.

Every year in Seattle, the Northwest Animal Rights Network sponsors a demonstration against the Ringling Brothers circus when it comes to town. The circus train is met with banners, a protest march, and speeches decrying the cruelty of the circus.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ship, the "Steve Irwin," with volunteers and Captain Paul Watson aboard, sailed to the icy waters of Antarctica to attempt to stop the slaughter of whales in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. Their plan is to physically stop the whaling boats by thrusting their vessel between the whale and the pursuing ship. Their efforts are being broadcast around the world by the Animal Planet network on the show “Whale Wars.”

Watson says these whalers broke laws that govern whaling by the International Whaling Commission, International Laws of the Sea, Antarctic Environmental Protection Act, The Convention of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, and The World Charter for Nature. Some people call the Sea Shepherd activists terrorists.

Now look at the activities below that are triggering the above actions. What is your gut reaction to them? Do they seem extreme? Or do they seem to be just the consequences of progress?

International standards for mercury in seafood continues to allow a dangerous mercury exposure level that is particularly threatening to infant children whose developing brains may be exposed to twice the amount of mercury that the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. EPA consider safe.

Mercury pollution comes from many sources, but especially from burning coal to produce power in plants that pollute oceans and contaminate seafood. The Environment Working Group has repeatedly warned over the years that the Food and Drug Administration fails to protect consumers by not adequately informing the public to avoid certain contaminated fish species, including canned tuna, which are especially risky for children and pregnant women.

Ringling Brothers is regularly accused by animal welfare groups of engaging in unlawful activities by routinely beating elephants to 'train' them, 'discipline' them, and keep them under control, by chaining them for long periods of time, by hitting them with sharp bull hooks, by 'breaking' baby elephants with force to make them submissive, and by forcibly removing nursing baby elephants from their mothers before they are weaned, with the use of ropes and chains." A former Ringling Bros. elephant trainer has joined the most recent lawsuit.

The BBC reported a few years ago that schoolchildren in the western coastal district of Wakayama, Japan were being offered an unusual addition to their lunch menus - whale. The Wakayama education board was supplying whale meat to around 280 schools to increase the interest in whale meat around the country. All of the whale meat used in Japan comes from whales collected during “research” hunting.

As of November, 2008, Japan had 2,000 tons of whale meat in frozen storage and has been trying to reduce their stockpiles by offering the meat to schools, nursery schools, and even the pet food industry. Why are they still hunting?

According to Captain Watson, "Here we have Japan claiming that there is a subsistence need for whale meat in Japanese communities and at the same time they are directing a surplus from their illegal activities in Antarctica into pet food."

The Sea Shepherd website says, "Whale and dolphin meat contain high levels of heavy metals, especially mercury. The level of toxicity in whale and dolphin meat has discouraged many Japanese consumers and is causing a surplus. This surplus is being processed into pet food. There are no other vessels, no governments, no other organizations that are stopping the illegal whaling activities of the Japanese, or enforcing the International Laws and Regulations that are made to help protect and preserve these endangered species. "

Circus elephant in chains (PETA)

Many people classify the activist actions in the first list as extreme while the second list just represents progress and the quest for a better life.

This is not a natural, instinctive classification. It is one that has been carefully developed in us for the last 200 years in the United States by those who are interested only in short term gain.
Could anyone interested in a humane, sustainable future with abundance for all support the second list? Why are those who fight for the life support systems of the Earth and its people and animals considered extreme? Are those who fight those who would destroy our world terrorists because they refuse to honor rules made to support greedy industries?

The fundamental assumptions that we grew up with and live with today may ALL need to be thrown out. We need new assumptions, values, and ethics.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines the word extreme to mean "extending far beyond the norm." It is shocking to me that some people can define toxic pollution and the resulting suffering and cruelty to be the norm.

Think about all the things we do each day that we call normal and routine. All the driving, consuming, wasting, and throwing away we do are just a part of just another day. Look at what a routine day in the United States brings:

200,000 tons of edible food is thrown out
313 million gallons of fuel, enough to drain 26 tractor-trailer trucks every minute, is used
18 million tons of raw materials are taken from the Earth

6.8 billion gallons of drinking water is used to flush toilets

1 million bushels of litter is thrown out of car windows

10,000 minks are added to the closets and coat racks of the wealthy

$200 million is spent on advertising

100 million board feet of wood is sawed

250,000 tons of steel is used

187,000 tons of paper is used

What if we all decide that we will work hard to define a new norm for us all? What if a normal day became driving as little as we can, buying nothing other than what we need to survive, not watching TV, not throwing anything out, and doing something to help someone who has nothing?

What's so extreme about that?

RESOURCES
1. Learn of the efforts of the Sea Shepherd at: http://www.seashepherd.org/.

2. The Northwest Animal Rights Network can be found at: http://www.narn.org/.

3. BBC whale meat stories: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4106688.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7735355.stm.

Who's Selling What?

2008-11-28T12:12:00.000-08:00

During a visit to a doctor’s office, I was witness to an incredible phenomenon that reminded me of all the layers of assumptions we make every day about how our world works. I was in the office waiting for a friend for nearly 2 hours. On the table with the magazines, I noticed a tissue box that looked odd. Upon closer examination, I realized that the box was covered with advertisements from a drug company! That was just the beginning of an eye opening experience.

While sitting in the waiting room, working on my laptop computer, no less than 8 people representing 6 pharmaceutical companies came into the office. Every 15-20 minutes, a gift was given to the staff and armloads of free prescription drugs were given away.
When I asked about these visits, the receptionist confirmed that this happens all through the day, every day! I could not believe what I was seeing. During my short stay in the office, I observed:

1. Elaborate, polite bantering by one rep as she introduced her new replacement. “Oh, you’ll have to come visit us again,” the reception said to the woman who had been the rep assigned to the office. Then, the new rep got out her datebook and set up a time when she could take the staff out to lunch, “you know, like we did for you last Thanksgiving.” Then, they handed over four or five cartons of drugs.

2. Another rep walked up to the counter, very business-like, and handed a brightly colored plastic box containing candy to the receptionist. There were no words exchanged, no greetings. It was a ritual, acted out every week by this rep and the doctor’s staff. While the box was passed around, the rep handed over boxes and boxes of free drugs.

3. The next rep’s ritual involved cookies and she handed over a large tray, brightly wrapped with multi-colored cellophane. It was so odd to see such an elaborate gift given with no words exchanged, no “oh, I brought something for you” or “thanks!” Each was simply doing what was expected of them. Then, after handing over the boxes of her company’s drugs (at least 100 small boxes), the rep left the office to visit the next office, brightly colored cellophane trailing behind.
When I left the waiting room to use the restroom, I saw this gaggle of reps moving from doctor’s office to doctor’s office. They were running into each other in the hall, greeting each other warmly, then moving on to their next office.

This was simply business. All the reps were counting on a sacred truth of the pharmaceutical industry: the doctor with the most free drugs on hand is more likely to prescribe those drugs to their patients. But what about the TV commercial that proclaims “More doctors prescribe ______ over any other drug.” Sadly, they probably do so because that company is more effective at marketing (and has good gifts) than the others.

All this got me thinking about the pervasive influence that our corporate culture has on our lives. That influence is dramatic and insidious and interferes with our ability to make reasoned decisions, support effective legislation, and just live our lives according to the values we select. I think about this more and more as our environmental problems seem to get more complex and our leaders seem less likely to take action.

How many decisions and choices that we make are our own or actually the result of subliminal, repetitive, and constant advertising we have been exposed to from an early age? In fact, drug companies are now advertising in major newspapers and magazines and elaborate TV commercials with the banner “Ask your doctor about ______________.” Did you ever count the number of commercials you are exposed to? By age 5, most children in the U.S. see hundreds of thousands of commercials. We live in a culture which has 260,000 billboards, 17,000 newspapers, 12,000 periodicals, 27,000 video outlets, 400 million television sets, and well over 500 million radios (not including those in cars). We are awash with social conditioning that is virtually inseparable from our true self. Yet in order to fully comprehend our planetary (and personal) crises, we must learn to separate ourselves from the conditioning.

Our resistance to learning how to follow our heart may start early in school. Richard Heckler in Anatomy of Change offers a clue to the failings of our educational system:

Traditional education encourages us to live society’s image and discourages us from awakening to our deeper and more energetic impulses. We are not taught how to use ourselves in the learning process. Without knowing that, we lose our individuality by following the images that society and the media systematically place in front of us. We bury the intelligence of our body in order to be uniformly responsive and predictable, which marks the death of preverbal, preliterate wisdom.

The traditional, Western way of educating, particularly in science, by teaching facts and concepts and “scientific truths” results in a static and fixed sense of what is real. We grow up with the idea that there are absolute truths and that it is everyone’s goal to obtain a “stable” lifestyle that is free of change. How can a person so educated possibly feel a part of a universe that is based on constant change and upheaval? How can such a person ever feel comfortable identifying with the natural world? “We are never educated,” says Heckler, “into the how of living through change.”
We can only learn to be in connection with the natural world, and with our fellows on this world, by being fully present in our bodies, following our energy, and trusting our perceptions. Yet we have been taught that learning occurs by sitting still in an uncomfortable chair (or in a comfortable chair in front of the TV) and having someone lecture to us about someone else’s perceptions of the universe. Heckler says:

We become swallowers of history, language, and mathematics but are rarely encouraged to let go of that which is not meaningful or relevant. We also need to be taught how to sit so we may better receive; and how to appreciate the actual process of writing and drawing; and how to participate in the joy of flourish when the name we write is connected to who we are; and how to follow the interest generated by our deeper levels of excitement. True learning, receiving the transmission of experience, happens at a level much deeper than cognition. It is in the experience of the lived body that we have the opportunity to contact and learn from the process of being alive.

There is a deep conditioning that we have experienced since the Scientific Revolution. This conditioning takes many forms, but the most common in the West may be our ability to intellectualize as a form of diversion and evasion, a way to circumvent feeling. Heckler says that “becoming overinvolved in our thoughts is a way to avoid the emotions, gestures, and expressions that were at some time in the past responded to unfavorably or with disapproval.” In addition to being told that the natural world was wild and unsafe, most of us were told that we were awkward in our movements, that we couldn’t draw or be creative, and that you risk ridicule and censure if you do those things. Hence, there are many resistances to thinking on our own and trusting our judgement.

The conditioning we experience is a powerful obstacle to learning and opening up to the connections that exist in the natural world. This conditioning is a complex web that has been woven for a number of generations. It has a solid foundation of faulty assumptions created in a post-war environment, particularly in the United States, where the world was taught that the most powerful people are those who consume the most and who shelter themselves the most completely from the natural world. Climate controlled, insulated homes filled with all the modern “conveniences” became the symbols of power and affluence.

These values became the foundational teachings of our educational system, a system built upon the premise that farmers had to be trained to be the factory workers required to churn out the goods that we all needed to consume. This conditioning is heavily influenced by our media saturation that begins at birth (some would say even before birth) as our parents create gender roles and participate in the stereotyping that insidiously exists at every turn of the head. Our definitions of what it is to be safe and secure are fixed at an early age as we are taught to shelter ourselves from even the mildest temperatures and protect ourselves from nasty bugs and dirt. Revulsion to insects, rodents, and soil (called “dirt”), begins at an early age. We are taught from an early age that we need the latest vacuum cleaner to get every last bit of “dirt” out of our homes. Things that our culture reviles are called “dirt-y.”

Moving less in order to be more efficient and productive is part of our early training as well. We are on a constant quest for “labor-saving” devices that give us more time to do things. We want cars so we don’t have to walk places and we design our homes so that everything is “at our fingertips.” Minimizing movement is emphasized – even our chairs have wheels so that we can move around in our office without having to move our bodies.

This trend toward virtual immobility as a goal in our Western culture has had profound implications on our ability to feel, not only a connection to the natural world, but a connection to each other and ourselves as well. Bringing movement back into our lives can have a profound effect on our well-being. Heckler says that

When we place our attention in our body, we begin to feel, and our feeling connects us to our energy. Our energy then informs us of our direction and meaning in life. If we respond from our energy, we are responding from that part of ourselves that is least conditioned. If we act from our energy, and not from our ideas, social images, or what others expect, we feel enriched with genuine expression and life.

Our “conditioning,” which varies from individual to individual in content and intensity, may be the greatest obstacle we face. Awakening a relationship to our bodies and our senses is a way around much of that conditioning. In movement therapy classes I have taken, people from all walks of life moved and felt together as if they knew each other. Often, however, we knew nothing in the traditional sense about each other. Rarely did I know where the other people lived or where they worked or what their interests, prejudices, or politics were. Yet in these sessions, through dance movements alone, with a partner, or in groups, issues such as trust, love, fear, giving, receiving, and other profound emotions and states of being were explored.

Words have been so abused in our world. Definitions of such fundamental concepts as trust, safety, and security have been so co-opted by political forces that we cannot rely on language as the sole communicator of awareness. The U.S. Department of Defense doesn’t like to use the term “peace” in their documentation. Instead, they say “permanent pre-hostility.” Instead of the word bullet, they prefer “kinetic energy penetrator.” The invasion of Panama was called a “pre-dawn vertical insertion” and instead of saying soldiers were killed, they say they were “arbitrarily deprived of life.” Wrongly amputated legs in military hospitals are referred to as “therapeutic mis-adventures.” I wish I were joking, but these are real examples.

Even in our common, everyday language, assumptions abound about the way the world and society work and phrases abound that have terrible origins. We will often casually say that we have given someone the “third degree” when referring to questioning someone for information. Few realize, however, that this phrase comes from the 300 years of horror when 9 to 20 million women (and some men) were burned at the stake for witchcraft. The third degree was the final, and most horrible, level of torture when any victim said what their tormentor wanted them to say.

We will say that some idea is a “rule of thumb.” Yet this phrase refers to the time in old England when it was legal, and recommended, to beat your wife. You simply had to use a stick that was no wider than the width of your thumb. That was the “Rule of Thumb.”

Ever call someone a “stool pigeon?” This phrase comes from the days of the passenger pigeon, an amazing bird whose flocks, in the 1850s, would darken the U.S. skies for four hours as a 240 mile long by 1 mile wide flock passed overhead. Such a flock contained over 2 billion birds. By 1914, the last passenger pigeon, Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo, the species driven to extinction by relentless hunting and a complete lack of understanding of the population dynamics of this bird. It seems that the reason why there were so many of them was because they, for some reason, needed huge communities of birds to be present for successful mating and reproduction. They were extremely social birds and it wasn’t long before someone noticed that a live bird could be used as bait. A living passenger pigeon would be tied to a stool which was put out into a field. Within minutes, hundreds of birds would gather, to be shot or clubbed. This was the stool pigeon.

The energy of these origins lingers on in us all. The witch burning times lasted for 300 years. Six generations of children watched their mothers burn. How can we come to terms with that horror? Gay men are stilled called “faggots” to this day. How many know that this term comes from the times of the witch burning as well? Gay men were often collected together, tied in bundles, and burned in the witches’ fire. The term for a burning bundle of wood is a faggot.

Many of the scientific tools developed during the Scientific Revolution came directly from the inquisition’s tools for torture. Few know this grisly origin of much scientific methodology. Special interest groups have crafted how people perceive science. How often do we wait for “scientific proof” of the health impact of a toxic exposure when many have already died? One sick child or one dead person should be enough to suggest caution, yet thousands of chemicals that are known carcinogens are on the market today for political and economic reasons. We must find another language while we redefine common terms and erase other terms of horror from common usage.
We may need some quiet to make some sense out of all the conflicting information. We may need to turn off our TV’s, close the newspaper, and look inward. Heckler says that

There is a time to quiet ourself so that we may look at and listen to who we are. There is also a time, and a need, to go with our desires and urges. This is the path of passion. It is the making of a seasoned and rich soup that we call our process, the all of who we are.

Maybe that is it: finding out who we are - or at least realizing that we need to. The only way to do that may be to stop listening to the voices on the outside – and listen to our hearts. Then it won’t matter whose selling what.

We look with uncertainty

Beyond the old choices for

Clear-cut answers

To a softer, more permeable aliveness

Which is every moment

At the brink of death;

For something new is being born in us

If we but let it.

We stand at a new doorway;

Awaiting that which comes . . .

Daring to be human creatures.

Vulnerable to the beauty of existence.

Learning to love.

-- Anne Hillman

RESOURCES
1. Learn more about the U.S. military from those in the business from the Center for Defense Information. Their video, “The Language of War,” discusses the abuse of language by the military.

2. Learn about society’s campaign against women and the Earth that began long ago. Learn of the times of the witch burnings when the Catholic Church tried to extinguish the last vestige of our connections with the Earth. The film, the Burning Times (National Film Board of Canada) will open your eyes. Learn about it at http://www.amazon.com/Women-Spirituality-Burning-Times/dp/158350026X.

3. If you live in the Los Angeles area, experience the power of movement with Eve Athey Ray, MA, MFCC through her Movement Expression classes. She can be reached at http://www.evearay.com/. You can take a 2 hour introductory session or an intensive 9-week program. It will change your life.

4. Learn how to curb consumerism from the Media Foundation at http://www.adbusters.org/

5. Follow those who watch the media for abuses. One group is Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Visit them at http://www.fair.org/.

Give Thanks – and Acknowledge the Truth

2008-11-14T08:18:00.000-08:00

Reflections From a New Public Transportation Convert

2008-11-06T07:51:00.000-08:00

For all of my adult life, I have supported the concept of public transportation as a viable and important way to conserve resources. But its actual use was for someone else, not me. For all of my adult life since I was 18 (some 36 years), I have been content with my excuses for why I never rode the bus: my schedule is too complicated; I must have immediate access to my car to do all the things I want to do; what if there was an emergency; it takes too long to get to my destinations. Of course, there is one excuse that we don't want to readily admit to: buses are where the "other" people go - it's not safe for me. I lived contently with these excuses for three decades and I thought they served me.

A few weeks ago, my options ran out and my excuses were no longer relevant. My car died, rather dramatically in the middle of a bridge. I could not afford the $1,000 repair, so the bus became my only option to get to my work. My journey was a mere 17 miles as the crow flies, but it was across a bridge designed for traffic patterns of 75 years ago. By car it took about 20 minutes when the freeway was clear and up to 2 hours when it was rush hour. That distance was going to take as many as three buses and 2 hours to traverse.

I always knew there was a bus stop right at the corner of my street, about a 3 minute walk from my house. I would often look at the buses go by and feel a bit of envy that those folks were being driven to their destinations. But of course, that couldn't work for me.

So at 5:45 am, I made my way there and waited for the 28 bus to take me to the 48 where I would get off at the entrance to the bridge freeway to catch the final bus, the 242. Turns out the 242 drops me off right in front of my office. The process took about an hour and 15 minutes. It was not what I had assumed it would be for 36 years nor was it what I expected.

It was actually rather pleasant. The bus wasn't filled with shady characters - rather, it was filled with sleepy professional people, sleepy workers from all walks of life, and on the route to a local medical center, lots of nurses and disabled folks. But everyone had one thing in common: they were all quite pleasant, all said "thank you" to the driver as they left, and all seemed to sense that no matter who we were, we were all connected with this bond that comes from taking the bus. We were the no-car people. And now I was one, too.

In the month I have been doing this, I have seen some amazing sights. I have seen people automatically get up to let a blind person sit down. I have seen an average working guy with a hard hat dangling from his tattered back pack get up and rush to give 50 cents to a woman who didn't have enough change. I saw an average looking man get up without hesitation to unhook the safety belts on a wheelchair-bound person at their stop. I have seen bus drivers let folks on who couldn't pay. I have seen little random acts of kindness, acceptance, and generosity regularly on the bus.

My car is working now, but still needs work. I use the fact that it runs roughly as my excuse to continue taking the bus. I have driven to the Park-and-Ride a couple of miles from my house, since I can then take just one bus to get me to work. But I find that I would rather leave the car at home completely and take the three buses so I can walk from my house. It is amazing how much my world, my attitudes, and my demeanor have changed.

There are negatives, of course. I get less sleep and my breathing has been affected by the daily intake of diesel fumes, reminding me of the "smog cough" I had while living in Los Angeles for 34 years. You get bounced around a lot and sometimes, especially on rainy days, the smell isn't all that great. But you know, those things don't seem to matter much. I am saving over $70 per week in gas, I am burning nearly zero fossil fuels in a week, and I am not sitting for 2 hours in rush hour traffic.

In my environmental studies teaching and writing, I always pondered how people get so shut off from the natural world and have documented the consequences of that distance. This morning at 5:45am, I was standing at the bus stop in the dark, under my umbrella while it rained pretty hard. It was a very peaceful, enjoyable experience.

I still wonder why buses don't have seat belts, though.

You might want to try the bus sometime, just to see how it is. You might be surprised and find that you actually could work it into your life after all.

A New President - But The Power Is Still With The People

2008-11-05T10:53:00.000-08:00

"And a merchant said,
Speak to us of Buying and Selling,
And he answered and said:
To you the earth yields her fruit,and you shall not want
if you but know how to fill your hands.
It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that
you shall find abundance and be satisfied.
Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice,
it will lead some to greed and others to hunger."

-- Kahlil Gibran from "The Prophet"

It is wonderful news that Barak Obama will soon be in the White House. I wept, too, last night during his acceptance speech, but not for the same reasons as most others. I wept because I am not sure it is going to make any difference.

I don't mean to be cynical. It is just that I have a list of planetary priorities, no part of which was ever mentioned in any debate or speech by the major party's candidates. Here is my list for the United States that no president will EVER address as long as his/her job description includes caring for the U.S. economic system:

Stop throwing out 200,000 tons of edible food every day

Stop using use 313 million gallons of fuel - enough to drain 26 tractor -trailer trucks every minute

Stop allowing cigarettes to be made, which kills 1,233 people in the U.S. alone every day

Stop taking 18 million tons of raw materials from the Earth every day

Stop using 6.8 billion gallons of fresh drinking water to flush toilets every day

Stop people from throwing over 1 million bushels of litter out of car windows every day

Stop people from adding 10,000 mink coats to their closets and coat racks every day

Stop the $200 million spent every day on advertising in the U.S. alone

Stop sawing up 100 million board feet of wood a day

Stop using 250,000 tons of steel every day

Stop using 187,000 tons of paper every day

And my global list is even more chilling:

Stop 120,000 children worldwide from dying each day from diarrhea from polluted drinking water.

Stop pesticide poisoning, which kills over 265,000 people worldwide every year

Stop 180 sq. miles of tropical forests from being cleared every day

Stop 73 tons of topsoil from being eroded every day

Stop eliminating 10 to 100 species every day

Stop the 78 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that is emitted every day

Stop the 1,800 tons of ozone-depleting chloroflorocarbons that are added to the atmosphere every day.

No president has or ever will address these issues without a fundamental restructuring of their job. As long as they are tasked with keeping the U.S. economy going as currently designed, these will continue to be the consequences of doing business to support that system.

People have to understand that the true power lies with us and our choices - food choices, transportation choices, purchasing choices. No matter who sits in the White House, we can change the world tomorrow - if we wanted to.

How Do We Decide on Which Leader? Does the President Matter?

2008-11-02T12:31:00.000-08:00

This earth spun of soil and sun,

Water and air for all to share,

Lives or dies by the work and play

Of every creature, every day.

From a Filipino Creation Story (Author Unknown)

Most people hate elections. With all the rhetoric, lies, misinformation and mountains of issues among candidates who look like they came from the same mold, how do you decide? I think it may be easier than you think.

C.A. Bowers in his book Education, Cultural Myths, and the Ecological Crisis (State University of New York Press, 1993), states that the condition of our Earthly habitats should be the prime concern of our culture that should frame how we think about everything we do. I take this idea one step further - how a candidate expresses his or her concern for our environmental crisis will tell me how to vote.

Time may be running out for many of the life support systems of our planet. We may no longer have the luxury of examining the details of a candidate's spending plan or how they stand on tax reform. If they are not sensitive to the need to have environmental protection and restoration be the basic priority from which all others are measured, then they cannot have my vote.

This may seem an extreme position to many who have been brought up to view the environment as just another societal factor to be considered along with road construction, health care or tax reform. This is no surprise and such folks cannot be criticized for their perceptions. Most of us have grown up in a culture that works hard to disconnect us from the web of life. Precious earth is called dirt and has to be washed off. Most animals are considered pests if they enter our homes and must be killed. The natural world is considered unsafe and we are taught that the wild is to be feared. Cleared land is considered more valuable than a rich, vibrant forest.

We have been relentlessly raping the Earth for centuries and we are near the end of the line in many areas. Rapid industrialization and resource consumption on a scale never before seen in history has been taking place since the Industrial Revolution in the 1700's. The buildup of toxic materials in our air and water and soil used in the endless drive to industrialize has deeply invaded our bodies. Many ecosystems and species cannot sustain even another 4 - 8 years of the kind of abuse that a conservative regime will impose.

Up until now in history, humans have believed that everything will work itself out given enough time. In the past, although people died, there has been the fundamental assumption that humans and the Earth would live on. This may have been true for a long time in human history, but the Industrial Revolution eliminated this as an option. Machines can work exponentially faster at chewing up our Earth than a human with a plow. The last 300 years has seen a level of environmental, ecosystem and species destruction that it would have taken many more centuries for a less technical society to achieve.

It is hard to imagine that it is ever possible to run out of time. But with only 5 percent of our rainforests left and 95 percent of the forests in the lower 48 states having been logged at least once, time is a serious issue. Large areas of our oceans are poisoned and lifeless and in some parts of the world, birth defects are a way of life.

Since the debacles of James Watt during the Reagan Administration when this Secretary of the Interior openly showed his contempt for environmental issues and captured massive media attention, conservative forces have gotten really good at keeping their environmental destruction below the level of most media attention. I preferred Watt - at least you could keep an eye on him and know where the battle lines were.

The conservative of today knows how to talk the lingo and distract us from what they are doing with promises of fairness.

This must end (photo by Abram Brown from http://www.igc.org/psr/airpol.html)

We are in an unprecedented era in human history, one where ecosystems and planetary life-support systems upon which the future depends are being destroyed. Therefore, the condition of our planet is the concern that should frame all others.

Sadly, this is a relatively new concern for Westerners since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Recognition that cultural practices are not independent from a concern for the well-being of the planet is a relatively new awareness in politics and goes back a mere 50 years or so to the work of Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner, to name a few.

Although you may not see destroyed ecosystems like those in popular science fiction movies like Blade Runner and Soylent Green when you drive down the street, the constant spread of toxic chemicals into our world for the last 300 years has seriously affected the life-sustaining capabilities of habitats worldwide.

Television coverage of environmental disasters are so common that ozone holes, oil spills and species extinctions have lost their power to capture the public's attention.

A candidate who recognizes the fundamental role that the environment plays in our lives may be more likely to apply that awareness to other issues. A candidate, regardless of his or her party, who promises economic prosperity for the people while promoting an agenda of continued resource extraction at all costs cannot be taken seriously. All the tax benefits in the world, whatever your income level, will be meaningless if we have no clean air to breath, safe water to drink, or soil in which to grow food.

Now after you make the right presidential choice and cast your vote, forget about it! The office of the President may be the lease important one in the nation. Sound crazy? Think about it. The President sets the tone, and appoints lots of people, but a President, regarless of what party they are from, must uphold the economic system of the United States above all else.

That means that he or she much do everything in their power to keep the nation making things so that people can buy them. He CANNOT, by definition, be that concerned with the environment because true environmental management and preservation would require that many industries shut down and that people stop buying so many things. These actions are fundamentally at odds with a President’s fundamental duty to the economy.

So get real and don’t expect profound change from ANY president. The only true, lasting, and meaningful change must come from a fundamental change in the attitudes of the individual. We must all take it upon ourselves to consume less, drive less, and to make peace and feeding the world our number one priority.

Time is running out for us all - especially the politicians.

RESOURCES

Be reminded of the routine destruction of our oceans at http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/peril_oil_pollution.html
Read about the coming end of petroleum at http://dieoff.com/page140.htm
Read about acts of murder by oil companies in developing nations at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Boycotts/ShellNigeria_boycott.html and http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Transnational_corps/DrillingKilling_OilNigeria.html
Read about the destruction of native cultures by U.S. oil companies at http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/beyond_oil/index.html
See air pollution from around the world at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3589/airpollutionaix.html
See what the next President could do about climate change at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080623/hertsgaard2
The League of Conservation Voters is a good source: http://www.lcv.org/

The Cycles of Life Continue

2008-11-02T01:05:00.000-07:00

At some ideas you stand perplexed,

especially at the sight of human sins,

uncertain whether to combat it by force or by human love.

Always decide, "I will combat it with human love."

If you make up your mind about that once and for all,

you can conquer the whole world.

Loving humility is a terrible force;

it is the strongest of all things

and there is nothing like it."

Feodor Dostoyevsky

All the people of Earth have, since the dawn of time, experienced these rhythms of the planet of our birth. Those rhythms, if made a part of our lives, create an ebb and flow that can regulate the pace of our daily lives. Through the connection with the Earth that our seasonal cycles foster, we don't get caught up in the trap of our technology and current events that keeps us moving, nonstop, between events, separated from the natural world.

As Winter approaches in the north (and our friends in the Southern Hemisphere are experiencing the coming of Spring and Summer), cycles of life are brought to our attention as the leaves change colors and death covers the landscape. The systems of the Earth, which include us, are designed to periodically pause. It is a time to reflect, to take stock in what you have received in the harvest and to prepare for the darker days ahead.

For at least the last 12,000 years, people all over the world have celebrated the passage of time, the journey of the Earth around the Sun, in ways that have connected their lives to the life of our planet. How might our lives be changed, our environmental problems be helped, and our ability to look beyond race or color or religious preference enhanced if we took more time to recognize the seasons and the wisdom they bring?

As the Earth in its journey around the Sun takes us toward Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the days will get shorter and shorter. The darkness will increase until we reach the Winter Solstice in December. From there, the darkness recedes and the days lengthen.

We participants in the modern world won’t notice it – our streetlights and headlights and indoor lighting have long since dulled our notice of the differences between light and dark. But to people who are more connected to the natural world, these are powerful times. It is a time to make peace with the dark and to consider it as part of the light, not to be feared but to be embraced.

Seasonal cycles are celebrated around the world by every faith. For example, in China, the first day of Fall - the Autumnal Equinox or Mabon as the pagans called it - marks the end of the rice harvest and is known as Chung Ch'’u. Jews celebrate Succoth near that time, a harvest holiday with roots in pagan culture. In old Rome, the time was celebrated with a party that went on for many days marking the Festival of Dionysus, the God of Wine.

In Winter, leaves die and Nature withers, spent after giving forth her abundance of life giving foods. She must rest so that the cycle can begin again. For those that came before us and those that strive today to be part of the natural world, it is naturally a time to reflect upon death, its meaning and importance. Darkness will soon overtake the light. It is an important time of regeneration, not a time of evil.

We also let parts of ourselves die each year, leaving behind behaviors and experiences that we no longer wish to be part of our lives, our hopes, and our dreams. This year, we might want to focus on leaving behind the blindness that comes from being overloaded with images and awareness of terrible events we are bombarded with every day.

This self-imposed blindness has created an epidemic of bad decisions, faulty reasoning, and false beliefs about how things work on our world.

For example, from the 1940’s until 1972 when it was banned, DDT was used for insect control all over the world. Millions of tons were used and the chemical can still be found worldwide in our lakes, streams, oceans, and soil. While it breaks down quickly when exposed to sunlight, it doesn’t break down well in soil and lasts a long time in water.

Proven to cause terrible neurological and reproductive damage and a suspected carcinogen in humans, DDT is still used worldwide even though it is illegal to use in the United States. It is passed to infants through breastmilk.

It was even used to sterilize hospital instruments, spray foods, and prevent insect infestations in museum objects. Our nation’s museum employees, normally not considered at great risk, are exposed to DDT if they handle museum specimens that have been around since the 1940’s.

In an effort to find out how much DDT is in our nation’s waterways, the Environmental Protection Agency began collecting fish samples in the late 1990’s from hundreds of lakes and streams. In 1999, five small trout were gathered from Lake Chelan in central Washington State. They were gathered near where a creek empties into the lake that has been known to carry pesticide laden runoff over the years.

So far, 143 lakes have been tested in the program and it has taken a few years to get around to the Lake Chelan samples. But what was found should be alarming officials enough to close the lake to all fishing immediately. Instead, they are saying all is well – for now.

The EPA found 1,481 parts per billion of DDT in the Lake Chelan fish tested. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set a human ingestion limit of 5 parts per million in fish. If the problem found in those 5 fish is representative of fish in the rest of the lake, which is quite likely, then people who consume fish multiple times per week could approach the FDA’s limit.

What do the Washington State authorities have to say about this? The “Seattle Post-Intelligencer,” reported some of their comments on October 19, 2002.

“The number of fish sampled is extremely small and the body of water so large we don’t feel like we have enough information to issue an advisory,” said Dr. Jude Van Buren, the state Health Department’s director of environmental health assessment. Yet the same health department issued an advisory to not eat more than one meal a week of all bottom fish because of DDT contamination in Washington’s Yakima River. The Yakima’s DDT level was measured at 840 parts per billion, less than half of what Lake Chelan trout contained.

Patricia Cirone, program manager of the EPA’s Seattle-based “Region 10” office, said, “All of us are thinking we should go back to that lake and test more fish.” She went on to say “I’m not surprised to find DDT. With such a tiny fish . . . it makes me suspect the sample. There’s something not quite right to me.” She ended her comments by saying that based on the one test “I wouldn’t cut my trout diet down. I would eat trout.”

Their blinders are fully in place.

It will take decisive action to eliminate the blinders we have put on to ward off the truth. It will take letters to elected representatives, boycotts, protests, and changes in behaviors for all of us. But we need energy and motivation for those actions, fuel for our hearts and our souls. The celebration of seasonal cycles can be an easy and meaningful way to create the energy we all need for action.

And we need to act now.

RESOURCES

1. Now more than ever is the time to write your Congressional representatives. Tell them how you feel and what you want. You can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

2. See a fact sheet on the toxic effects of DDT and its byproducts at: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts35.html

3. Read about the seasons at: http://www.equinox-and-solstice.com/index.html

4. Find alternative sources for information to understand the complexity of world events. Visit:

· Peace Brigades International at: http://www.peacebrigades.org/index.php

· Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at: http://www.napf.org/

· Perspectives from around the world on the terrorist attacks at: http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/terrorism/introduction.htm

· Peace News at: http://www.peacenews.info/

· War Resistors League at: http://www.warresisters.org/

· The Nonviolence Web at: http://www.nonviolence.org/

See your earth anytime of the day or night at: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth/action?opt=-p&img=learth.evif