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Living within a living, loving planet
Archive for August, 2016
Life on Earth is not all about Humans
Aug 26th
No, this you will not do!
“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources,” Roosevelt acknowledged in 1908, before adding, rather presciently: “But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.” Theodore Roosevelt
I’ve known for years that it was just a matter of time before the government set about pillaging citizen assets in the name of the God of profits for the few. I’m deeply saddened to realise that this is truly an eventuality. Even sadder is the knowing that this eventuality will become reality. When will the hundreds of thousands of people who love Nature speak out and proclaim “No, this you will not do!”
An analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP) https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2016/04/11/135044/the-rise-to-power-of-the-congressional-anti-parks-caucus/
has found that between January 2013 and March 2016, rightwing members of Congress filed at least 44 bills or amendments designed to undermine or water down protections for national parks.
A core group of 20 members of Congress, many of them Tea Party members, are part of what CAP calls an “anti-parks caucus” gripped by an implacable hostility to public lands.
The wider Republican party is receptive to this position – its official 2016 platform states: “Congress should reconsider whether parts of the federal government’s enormous landholdings and control of water in the west could be better used for ranching, mining or forestry through private ownership.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/23/national-parks-100th-birthday-political-threats
Warding off Despair
Aug 14th
Warding off Despair
“The Power That Preserves” Book Three of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by
Stephen R. Donaldson October, 1978
“Further, I tell you that there is no blame for us in the wisdom or folly, victory or defeat, of the way we have elected to defend the Land. We are not the Creators of the Earth. Its final end is not on our heads. We are creations, like the Land itself. We are accountable for nothing but the purity of our service. When we have given our best wisdom and our utterest strength to the defence of the Land, then no voice can raise accusation against us. Life or death, good or ill – victory or destruction – we are not required to solve these riddles. Let the Creator answer for the doom of his creation.”
Pg. 48
The feeling of helplessness, reinforced by almost daily reports of another ecological disaster, can easily result in despair. Despair can also be the result of suppressed rage against those who cruelly and wantonly destroy our Earthly life support systems. A lot of us suppress rage over the knowledge and helplessness as we encounter more and more exploitation, especially economic. All too often, this suppressed rage descends into a deep despair and we find ourselves just adding power to the very dark spirits that we rage against. These dark forces, Vadim Zeland calls them “pendulums”, suck up our anguish and feed on it making the pendulum even stronger.
I think the quote above can assist us in realizing that we do not need to take on the blame and responsibility for saving the Earth. The burden is too heavy and will sink us into oblivion or what Christians call hell. Earth, as a living, loving and intelligent being needs our support and loving energy but does not and cannot expect us to carry the weight of guilt in not “fixing” the damaging attitudes arrayed against her. We cannot and need not take on the responsibility of a planet being.