We had another Zoom session with our friends Ken and Trish Lewchuk who live in Houston. We eagerly agreed to meet this way on a regular basis. We have lots of new friends here but old friends with a long shared past are special.

On May 5th I posted the following in three facebook groups that I am a member of.

The last few days were rough but I am okay now. I was triggered, badly triggered in psychological terms. My thoughts were racing and my efforts to control them were unsuccessful. I was still awake three hours past my normal time. I was hyper-sensitive, irritated and angry. The trigger had nothing to do with the coronavirus crisis and everything to do with conflict with neighbors.

Episodes like this are discouraging for those of us on a spiritual journey. At such times any spiritual practice seems like a waste of time and personal transformation seems like an impossible quest. Where is the path to peace of mind?

What to do? Get up, get going, keep trying, that is all I can think of doing. A few bad days is a small price to pay for a mostly good life. I also see value in building resiliency during the good times, well worth the effort. The more reserves we have in our emotional bank, the better.

This is quite a story to be told but this is not the time. I will add only one detail now. The conflict is widespread within our condominio association and these type of problems are much too common in the Lakeside community.

On May 6th my brother Peter posted on facebook Michael Moore's May 4th facebook rant. I was already aware of the stir Moore had created. What he wrote resonated with me.

We are in a planetary emergency.

And I’m not talking about the coronavirus. Viruses are part of nature. This is their planet, too. They are a form of life. And like another species I know well, they are killers. The current pandemic is simply acting as a gentle warning from Mother Nature. Gentle?? Over 3 million infected worldwide, and a quarter million dead? Gentle?

Yes, it is truly awful. But take it as the Earth’s slap on our collective face: nature telling our species to back off, slow down and change your ways.

For many years, we have been in the middle of what scientists call the world’s Sixth Extinction Event. This planet can remove us all in a snap of its fingers. Thank god it doesn’t have fingers. Nonetheless, if you think Covid-19 has been a bummer, well, trust me, you literally can’t imagine just how awful Earth’s revenge is going to be against us for trying to choke it to fucking death.

Yes, we are in a serious, multi-level planetary emergency - and it involves climate, water, food, topsoil, overconsumption, missing species, ocean life and humans. Mostly humans, and our various nonsensical greed-induced behaviors and systems.

Now for the bad news. Many of the people and organizations who are working hard to save us, aren’t. It’s not that they haven’t tried. They have. And we are proud of them and ourselves and all the the work we’ve done in the environmental movement. We are very grateful to our environmental leaders. Brilliant research, writings, protests, successes.

Except it hasn’t worked. The climate battle has been lost or it’s being lost. We all know that we are WORSE off since the first Earth Day 50 years ago. Here’s what’s been achieved since 1970:

•90% of the large fish (cod, halibut, salmon, etc) in the oceans are gone. We ate them.

•60% of all the mammals are gone - and 95% of the mammals that are left are either humans, our pets, or our dinner.

•Somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 species are going extinct every year;

•We have lost HALF of all our topsoil. Some predict it will all be gone in 60 years. It takes 1,000 years to regenerate just three centimeters of new topsoil;

•Of the Earth’s 37 main aquifer systems (our underground fresh water), 21 of them are at near-collapse.

•We lost 1.2 billion acres of rainforest in 2018. In just one year.

•We were not supposed to go above 350 parts per million of the carbon we spew into our atmosphere. We are now at 415. Which means we are beyond the point of no return.

We will have no chance of even coming close to halting the coming collapse if we cannot first admit we have failed. We can no longer solar panel and windmill our way out of this disaster. I’m so sorry I have to say this, but friends, we are no longer on the right road. And if we don’t change course immediately, if we’re too proud to ask for directions, new directions, to start a bold new discussion of what must be done - and do so without “green” hedge fund managers at the table - then we might as well keep driving this electric Buick off the cliff.

I cannot remain silent about this any longer. I’ve devoted myself to the environmental movement since I was a teenager. I was part of the first Earth Day. I was 15 and had just made my first documentary with the exciting title, “Pollution in My Hometown.” It was my Eagle Scout project where I showed all the businesses that were poisoning our air and water. It deeply upset the local Chamber of Commerce and they tried to stop me from showing it around town at the churches and schools and Kiwanis clubs. Six years later I started my own alternative newspaper, “The Flint Voice.” One of our first cover stories was entitled, “Here Comes the Sun,” my full-fledged effort to get Michigan — a state in which only one in four days each year is considered “sunny” — to go solar. The next year I founded the Huron Alliance, a Flint-based anti-nuclear group. We organized massive demonstrations to block the building of the Dow Nuclear plant in Midland, Michigan. Remarkably we were successful in its cancellation.

All of that took place before I was 23-years old. I’ve spent the rest of my adult life trying to figure out how to stop those who are hell-bent on destroying our home, the Earth. I also came to sadly see that some of the Earth’s worst enemies were the people who claimed to be on our side but couldn’t resist taking corporate money, thinking this would help the cause. It hurt the cause. I began to believe little of what we were being fed. I subscribed to the motto of investigative journalist I. F. Stone: “All governments (and corporations) are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” But soon after I started my newspaper, I had to confront some awful truths that I truly didn’t want to acknowledge: that some activist groups I supported, and some liberals who were my good friends and allies, were not always doing good for the people. Often they were well-intentioned, or occasionally misguided, or just simply wrong. And a few were up to no good. I saw unions hop into bed with management. I covered Democrats who were really Republicans. In my last film I called out Barack Obama for going to Flint and pretending to drink Flint water and telling people that their tainted water was safe — when it wasn’t. I love Obama. But there’s the rub of my quasi-lonely life as a citizen and filmmaker: I will never, ever cover for anyone who’s not doing right by the people, who is harming the least among us, who, even with good intentions, has contributed to the eventual death of this planet.

And now, 50 years after that first Earth Day, I have to stand here and tell you, with my support of Jeff Gibbs’ film, that we must ask the difficult questions of the people we love on our side of the political divide: Is “green” capitalism really our savior? Are we being manipulated with fear and forced anxiety so that we will buy more, more, more? To what ends? When the pandemic is over, do you want to go back to the old way of being wage-slaves, no real power over your own lives, accepting that the democracy is probably over, that you’re no longer citizens, you’re simply consumers, and that your contribution to the Earth’s decline is to continually feed the beast.

It is amazing that we have all put up with this for so long, and that we have been afraid to admit our losing record on our precious environment. Something has to change. And it has to change now.

Planet of the Humans has no personal bone to pick with anyone. We’ve all messed up and we’ve all been on the wrong road. What’s our way out? Besides planting a billion trees (yes!), ending capitalism/greed/the 1%, nationalizing the energy companies as a matter of national security, bring back teaching civics in our schools, instituting a guaranteed annual income, universal health care, and free child care — and how about we apologize to our children, our students, our young adults under 40 for the Destroyed Earth we’ve handed them and then let them lead us out of this madness. The youth have already risen up to create the new movements we desperately need. We, the adults, the lifelong environmentalists, have failed to stop climate change. The Western world uses too much crap, too much energy and eats too many cows and chickens. As Greta rightfully, angrily said to us adults: “You have stolen our future! You have stolen our youth!” Indeed we have. I’ve admitted it. I want the rest of the movement to admit it, too.

I am most heartened and encouraged by the bull’s-eye focus of youth-led movements on the real target. I totally agree with Greta’s condemnation, "People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosytems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

I think that she was not just directing that at the oil, gas and coal industry. I believe she’s aiming it, rightly so, at all of us. Many on our side have told us that capitalism is the solution to the problem it created. That strategy has failed. While decimating the planet is “good business,” it is bad for the people and all the living creatures on it.

I urge you to join me in committing to support and fight alongside the Student Strike for Climate, Sunrise Movement, Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives, Women’s March, Extinction Rebellion, etc. to change this world immediately. We need new blood! Fresh ideas! People who won’t be co-opted! We must commit to following their lead. Some of our beloved environmental leaders may have to step aside and help in other ways. We need these young people to do what we haven't had the guts to do: Slam the door shut on the “green capitalism” that funds and poisons the movement. The youth will refuse to participate in the eco-industrial complex. Let them lead!

That’s not a lot to ask for if it means that Mother Nature gives us one last chance to get it right. I’m hoping she sees, as I do, that the kids are all right.

Moore captures the growing impatience with reform and the growing appetite for revolution. I feel it inside me as well. That is a big change for me as I believed in incremental progress until last year.

Last year Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben was an Ajijic Book Club selection.

I was not pleased by the very public spat between Moore and McKibben. Both men have big egoes and I did not want to be drawn into their very personal conflict. None of us can know the "true" intentions of either of them, or of any human for that matter. We do well if we gain some insight into our own intentions. What would impress me is if they both realized their own need for personal transformation but that seems unlikely.

I finished reading Santander: Rambling on Borrowed Time by David Ellison and published my review. I shared the book with the Ajijic Book Club as a possible selection. There was a good response and it will be the focus of our next meeting. 

My recent new friend Linda Joy Stone sent me a link to an article that resonated with me, Is the Virus our Vaccine?. I was not familiar with The Re-Generation website but it looks very interesting to me. I sent Linda the following email which I also shared with our Lakeside Pathfinders group.

Greetings Linda,

Thank you for this article. Yes, it is long but I read it all and I was on the verge of tears, but not because of the content. However, the content is very good and I will comment on it.

It was the fact that you sent me this article. Let me explain. Deep down in our soul every human being wants to be understood. This article captures how I now understand the world and current situation. It is not easy to come to this understanding and for me it has been a long journey. But now I know that at least one other human being that I know personally, understands this article and therefore understands me.

By the third paragraph, this article began resonating strongly with me and I knew I would read it to the end. John Vervaeke and Zachary Stein have become familiar names to me since I discovered them last year. Very few people have ever heard of them.

A few paragraphs later Iain McGilchrist pops up. I have not read his book but I am familiar with the broad outline of his thinking. Intuitively, I think he has deep insights.

When I launched the Lakeside Pathfinders I was interested in exploring spiritual teachers. Eckhart Tolle and Ram Dass were not a waste of time. But I have been disappointed in what the spiritual teachers have been saying since the current crisis began. They have been saying much the same things and much of it is very good. But it seems to me they are not rising to the level of what is needed at this time. Most political leaders and business leaders have been a waste of time for many years. Where should we look for guidance?

I found it and you found it in the same place. It is those who understand Chaos and Complexity Theory who are emerging as thinkers in whom we can have some confidence. Not all of them, of course, but those amongst them who also understand spirituality, as this article demonstrates.

James Lovelock’s Gaia Theory has been around since the 1970s. But it had about as much impact on me as Earth Day. Knowing that helps me to understand that I have been part of the problem.

The article mentions Jim Rutt, and the Santa Fe Institute, both familiar to me but unknown by most people.

And then the article mentions Charles Eisenstein. It was only a short while ago that David Bryen brought him to my attention and I shared that with our group. Charles Eisenstein, David Bryen, John Stokdijk, Lakeside Pathfinders and Linda Joy Stone coming together like this is what David Bryen would call synchronicity.

Daniel Schmactenberger is another name that I encounter quite often and I would like to explore his thinking, if only I had the time.

What the article says about conspiracy theory is extremely important. These ideas are impacting my brother and my sister-in-law as they look for answers. There are posts in facebook groups here in Lakeside by people who are clearly True Believers in conspiracy theories and I think such posts will be confusing and disturbing for some people.

I will watch the Russell Brand video for sure. Is he a madman or a genius? Both, I think. I have enjoyed him occasionally for several years and would love to read his book.

I was not familiar with The Re-Generation so I had a look. I see that Charles Eisenstein, Russell Brand and Rupert Sheldrake are supports which is good enough for me to be interested. I will take a closer look when I have time.

I am sharing this email with the Lakeside Pathfinders. Most won't read such a long article and that is okay. But I am looking forward to what else may emerge.

Using Zoom, I connected with an old friend, Frank Racicot.

I phoned my mother via Skype and we had a nice chat. It has become more challenging to talk to her because she does not initiate conversation. Therefore, I mentally prepare by having something ready to talk about. I asked her if she remembered what book she was reading when I visited her last year. She did not. I reminded her that it was Dutch Girl - Audrey Hepburn and World War II. I told her that Nikki brought me a copy as a gift last February. Mom said she gave her copy to my brother Bill. He and I are probably interested in the book for the same reason, to learn more about the life of our mother during the war years.

 

 

 

Readings

A Liberal East Coast Science Writer Talks to a Pro-Trump Texan Strength Coach about COVID-19

So where does my interaction with a pro-Trump, Texan libertarian leave me? Rippetoe has made me more aware of my biases. From now on, I’ll try harder not to let my political views distort my view of the pandemic.

Four Coronavirus Lessons That We Will (or Won’t) Learn

Lesson #1: There is an optimal balance in response to a pandemic that is somewhere between the two extremes of “total lockdown” and “totally open society.”

Lesson #2: Putting the recommendations of scientists, public health officials and academics into practice often clashes with other geopolitical realities.

Lesson #3: The general public must face the price of life-or-death trade-offs. 

Lesson #4: The global supply chain requires redundancies because interdependence is not enough. 

How to Escape Coronavirus

How do I get out of this coronavirus world?

There is no right way out of this that I can find. The only way seems not to try to get out of it, but to let myself get more into it. I find myself having the desire to be seen and to connect. To be intimate with my experience, yes, but also with you. To tell other people what life is like right now. To tell you what it is like. To share. And to hear and understand your life, right now, in return.