Time to Think Boldly

Coming of age in the 60’s, I had great hopes.  We had marched for civil rights and to end all wars and the Age of Aquarius was right around the corner.  I knew that the same aspirations occur about every fifty years, but this time was different!  As I weathered on through the 70’s, the 80’s, the 90’s and right on into the 21st century, I began to suspect that out time had not yet come.  Fifty years later and we have yet to turn the corner.  Although there have been some areas with progress, it seems now that we have painted ourselves into a corner and the paint brush will not get us out.  I realize now that the current state, in which inordinate wealth and power reside with the upper 1%,  has been the norm over the long run and that the period of shared prosperity in the 50’s and 60’s was one of those anomalies that appear from time to time.  I had mostly kept my feelings under wraps because it was apparent that a lot of people thought things were pretty good.  After all, we vanquished the Soviet Union and everybody in the world now wears blue jeans, so who wants to listen to a whiner?  All I had was a hunch, and I really couldn’t put a finger on what was wrong.  Certainly, a big part of it was me.  Had I been more successful in achieving what is considered success in this country, I would probably have overlooked the shortcomings as most of us have.

I think things have now gotten to the point where we really have to talk about it.  We have the wealthiest economy in the history of the world, yet almost all of us have less and less.  Our medical system is beyond compare, but we can’t afford to access it.  The internet has created an information revolution that no futurist that I’ve read ever predicted, but public education is floundering and higher education is unaffordable. People go homeless and hungry while stored food and empty houses rot.   We desperately need to end our use of fossil fuels yet we feverishly search for and burn more and more.

International relations would be comical if people were not suffering and dying.  Let’s take a look at the Syria debacle.  I don’t think Mark Twain could have written a better satire.  In WWII we had Axis and Allies.  In the Middle East, we have a dozen or more players and the same number of sides:  Assad, Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, USA, Russia, to name the major ones.   Each has aspirations that really can’t be realized without trampling on those of any number of others.  Now, out of the turmoil of a hundred years of colonial meddling, ISIL arises like Shiva the Destroyer and lights the fuse.  Does anybody have any idea how this is all going to shake out?  I don’t think there is any way to undo this mess, but we all can do whatever we can to be resilient in the face of whatever it brings.  We have to realize that international chaos will make it extremely difficult to move forward with a better way of conducting ourselves.

The paradigm has got to change.  The current paradigm, based on oil, racism, and greed, has evolved to the ridiculous.  Profit and ideology have become irrevocably divorced from general happiness and well-being.  What’s more, we never seriously took into account the general well being of our one and only planet and all the other life upon which we are utterly dependent.  Changing to something better should be like deciding to quit stomping on our left foot and poking ourselves in the eye!  We can do a whole lot better.

This isn’t about better recycling, using organic products, or any other adjustments around the edges of our current life.  It isn’t about relying on the experts, or the financiers, or the major corporations taking the lead.  I think the characteristics of a new, sustainable economy would be more diverse, locally sourced goods, services, jobs, and financing, a far more even distribution of wealth, cooperatives and worker owned businesses, rebuilding the commons, and self reliance.  We don’t need to ask politicians to give us any of these things.  I know it is a daunting task, but we can start by taking the first steps.  We can start planning and building toward that economy right now.  

Try to simplify your life and lower your overhead.  Learn new skills and take up new hobbies.  Do it yourself.  Start a business.  Get to know your neighbors and the skills and resources you have to share.  Get involved in designing the infrastructure that we will need here on our islands to support this new way of living.  It’s time to think boldly and this is what I will be thinking about as the VMICC launches into the new planning cycle for Vashon.  I hope you will join in the discussion.