carrots, not sticks

Non-violent communication has taught for decades that compassion works so much better than judging, bullying, intimidating, and coercing.  The former is a we-based or win-win way of communicating, while the latter is me, self-interest and win-lose based.  

Charles Eisenstein just released a very short essay on why our approach to environmental protection and activism in general, and the Amazon forest decimation in particular, has not worked too well thus far.  Our present approach has been to threaten us with the dire consequences of our inactions, but people just don’t respond well to that.  Fear-based communication results in cowering in protection, anxiety, freezing into inaction because it’s all so overwhelming, and not understanding how an individual could even make a difference in the face of the immensity of our problems. 

Remember when your kids would jump around on your bed in sheer joy, and you’d say something like “Don’t do that” with a stern voice, and then would try again more insistently “Stop it immediately, or else!” Your kids probably kept happily jumping once you left the room.  Adults are no different.  We respond better when someone appeals to our cooperation with compassion.  Eisenstein writes, “Nobody can be scared into falling in love.”  

He makes a case for a shift to a life affirming vision of a beautiful healthy planet instead, one that is also service and community based.  There are many breathtaking nature documentaries out there (I like those without ominous narrative and music) that show our planet’s grandeur and sheer unending beauty, and which move my heart to tears and love for this amazing jewel in the universe we live on and are privileged to experience.  If you have travelled, you may even have been to such awesome places yourself.  That is the vision from which to heal our planet.  While it is something we need to envision and enact together, it needs to come from within each of our hearts.   Your heart.

When you begin to tread carefully to avoid stepping on a slug, not because someone said so but because it feels natural, when you begin to save all your trash for the trash can, when you are awed by an unfolding leaf or dew drop on the grass, when a waterfall’s scintillating magnificence makes you smile, when you can truly see how exquisite this planet is, your energy will shift to life affirming causes.  That’s home, that’s the place from which to start healing our planet and yourself.

the case for perfection

Why do we so relentlessly question nature’s perfection?  In general, we seem to want to improve nature because we don’t think it’s perfect.  We see the bugs on the lettuce as a pest to be eradicated rather than asking why.  When the climate goes haywire or a virus affects the entire planet many see it as an aberration of nature instead of asking how it happened. Who is the culprit, we ask.

Nature is perfect - resilient, beautiful, abundant, grand, powerful, adaptable, magical, and a mirror of our beliefs and actions. When we can’t see that because we’re disconnected from it and interfere with it in order to bend it to our own distorted interpretation of what should be, that’s when the trouble starts. The trouble can manifest as climate change, Covid-19, Japanese beetle infestation, bee colony collapse syndrome, drought, and so many other environmental issues.  It also manifests in ourselves as disease or psychological issues.  As a species, we live in a permanent state of discontent and want to improve everything around us, yet have lost the key to seeing where to start.  

When we reconnect with the spiritual nature of nature, and that of our own imbeddedness in it, when we begin to search for that potentially bigger picture we just can’t see as yet, when we learn to trust that there’s rhyme and reason behind life instead of uncontrollable randomness, it all becomes more reassuring.  The key is actually inside each one of us, not out there.  This is an invitation to go inward and reconnect with ourselves and the bigger picture, that we are one with nature, not apart from it, and that when we’re out of balance, nature as a consequence suffers that imbalance and shows it to us like a mirror.  

Each one of us, hence, has the tremendous and awesome task to reconnect,  inward and outward, with our own true nature from which everything springs.  When you shift, it shifts.  When I shift, it shifts.  

on reconnecting with nature

Lots of Japanese beetles are happily frolicking on my roses this year, making a bit of a mess along the way, and some other pest, probably a moth caterpillar, has been laying eggs in our pussy willow and mauling its leaves.

Whether Climate Change, Covid-19, the garden pests, or so many other things – we tend to think that nature is out of balance.  But the more consequential conclusion is that we are out of sync with nature. We look to the outside for the culprit, a symptom based approach with little interest for the underlying cause.  Having become our planet’s biggest monoculture with the greatest impact on shaping the environment, the responsibility squarely falls on each one of us to make amends in rebalancing our relationship with it.  

Without a true understanding of the myriad elements that make up an ecosystem, each one of them contributing something that feeds back into the regenerative cycle, we tend to interfere in a reactionary way without being able to anticipate the consequences.  Used to the idea of getting rid of bugs with a spray can, we are learning the hard way that Monsanto has been making a worldwide mess of the environment and our health with their glyphosate that’s now showing up everywhere, including inside our bodies.

So, I won’t add insult to injury, and add more poison to a fragile planet that needs healing.  Maybe the bats that are living in our cliff can use this new food source of beetles and pests, or maybe the pests will promote the multiplication of the bats, which is a good thing. Whichever way around it is, nature is far wiser than I am, and I will leave it to the bats and birds to eat the excess bugs in my garden, instead of pulling out the spray.  A wonderful documentary about the 7-year rehabilitation of an abandoned farm into a sustainable and thriving orchard, The Biggest Little Farm, shows how intricate a balanced ecosystem truly is, how many elements contribute to a thriving environment, and that we can regenerate and rebuild by making an effort to reconnect with nature in a deeper way.  

pandemic gardening

Out in meadows and fields, woods and swamps, plants just grow however they do. Dead wood decays and contributes to new humus, flowers bloom and wilt, color combinations are not planned, instead self-seeding nilly willy, and nobody cleans up to make it all look “pretty” to our human eye.  Nature is wild and unkempt, which has its own beauty, but it lacks a human sense of order.  

During these out-of-the-ordinary times many, including us, have resorted to gardening, a small attempt at controlling something in our lives when so much in the world is out of our control.  I feel in charge when I deadhead roses, prune, compose vignettes with different plants that bloom sequentially or follow a color scheme, in order to make our garden beautiful.

There is indeed something controlling about the sense of order and beauty we impose on our gardens.  French Gardens may be the most controlled of all landscapes with their geometrically shaped hedges, linear beds, fountains, and pebbled walkways and expanses, although Japanese Gardens are highly stylized as well.  An English Garden, on the other hand, is much more free flowing and natural looking.  

Loss of control, or even just the perception of it, promotes depression, while control over our life  promotes longevity.  Control over something, even just our garden, can thus give us a sense of balance and purpose. Have you found activities during this pandemic that give you a sense of control?

hold on to your seat!

When people get murdered, or even discriminated against, because of their skin color;  when I have to think twice about a medical procedure, and more than ½ million people go bankrupt every year because they can’t pay their medical bills; when people work two or three jobs and still barely get by; when sick leave is not encouraged and sick meat workers go to work because they can’t afford not to; when education is discouraged by way of its astronomical cost, and the educational level of the country as a whole stays behind other developed countries; when pollution and deforestation are encouraged through profit oriented policies and we all get sicker;  then I cannot live deeply.  

This country is convulsing as we are experiencing the flip side and unravelling of a profit-above-all value system that no longer works for the majority of people,  and favors an ever slimmer percentage of the population.  The American Empire is crumbling because its values are rotten at the core. Racism, the cultural trauma this country is still carrying even after slavery has been long abolished, is still simmering under the surface and has broken out again, and again, and again, because it’s never been healed.  And so many other socio-cultural issues are broken as well.  

The tectonic shift I referenced in an earlier post is happening in real time.  We are experiencing an epic scream for awakening and change on all levels.  Inclusivity, togetherness, cooperation, trust, and sustainability are all values that are bigger than racism and social inequality.  Moving from Me to We is what we must do to resolve the biggest challenges in the history of humanity.  Leaving the myth of separation, as Charles Eisenstein calls it in his recent essay The Conspiracy Myth, behind, and uniting for a common cause, that of a better, more sustainable, life for all inhabitants of this earth, is a consciousness revolution, a shift in perception and thinking.  

When that shift happens for a critical mass among us, we will be able to tackle climate change, racism, hunger, and all the other challenges we brought upon ourselves because we believe we’re separate from each other and from nature. Revolutions are often messy because we fear the unknown and thus resist change. But the status quo is no longer acceptable, and neither is going back to whence we came, pre-corona, because we have already moved too far into the space in between. The best thing you can do is embrace the change and imagine a more beautiful new world (actually an Eisenstein book title).

a healing crisis - silver lining #9

In the last few days we’ve seen so many robins in our backyard that I actually looked up this red breasted bird’s symbolism.  

In homeopathy they speak of a healing crisis when symptoms briefly intensify before abating and disappearing.  I have been pondering if this worldwide crisis, a health pandemic with ensuing economic collapse we are all trudging through so painfully, is triggering a cultural healing crisis of sorts?  

Several symptoms of our cultural dysfunction have indeed intensified during this crisis, all of a socio-economic nature (see silver lining #5) because they are a result of our form of extreme capitalism, which is exploitative in nature, of people and of the environment.  At the same time, we have watched as nature has caught its breath and showed us how fast it can heal if extreme human activity is curtailed (see silver lining #2).  

Are we now able to see the connection between environmental deterioration and extreme capitalism? Are we now able to see the connection between a comprehensive social safety net and a robust economy?  

Lo and behold, the symbolism of the robin is “stimulation of new growth, renewal and hope.” 

we are One - silver lining #8

When pollution levels sink drastically in Beijing, Delhi, Detroit and Los Angeles as a consequence of the worldwide shutdown of human activity, we know we are One.

When our federal government hordes ventilators instead of distributing them to those states that need them the most, where you or I might need one, we know we are One.

When fear of a virus shuts down economic life on the entire planet in an effort to prevent it from spreading and overwhelming the hospitals where you or I might need to get treated, we know we are One.

When we experience that the virus cannot be prevented by a wall, but is invisible and can lurk in you and me, infect you and me, we know we are One.

When money can’t buy restaurant visits or travel because everything is shut down, when money can’t buy cleaning or nanny or hair or nail services for fear of contagion, the affluent may understand that we are One.

When the recession hits everyone, we know we’re One.

When toilet paper is unavailable to everyone, we know we are One.

When the virus makes the rich and famous as sick as everyone else, we know we’re One. 

When we see how fast nature can heal if given the chance, and how fast we can act when we must, we know we’re capable of healing our planet and our broken profit-over-people culture if we want.

environmental wake-up - silver lining #2

As a result of the world’s cessation of polluting activities in reaction to the Coronavirus pandemic, Beijing’s pollution levels have drastically dropped and the waters in Venice’s canals are markedly cleaner.  

Along those lines is a post from climate activist Greta Thunberg’s Facebook page about the unintended proof to ourselves that we, as inhabitants of one planet, are capable of coming together in a massive effort  when the motivation and will are there.  

from Greta Thunberg’s Facebook page

Could a shake-up out of our inertia towards climate change and all the other related environmental quagmires become an unintended but much needed side effect of the worldwide virus pandemic?   

moving mountains - silver lining #1

This is the first of several posts examining the silver lining underneath the worldwide Corona virus crisis, and there are many as you will see over the next posts.  

This virus, came out of nowhere - they call it a black swan event. in December it appeared in China and barely three months later it has engulfed the entire world. The public’s reaction, and the many governments’ actions, demonstrate what an enormous motivator fear is.  But the effects and repercussions demonstrate the enormity of what we can achieve when we all come together as a human species with one common goal.   

We have been paralyzed by the sheer size of the many problems our planet and species is currently experiencing. The specter of climate change with its innumerable subproblems has been around for how long??????????????   Somehow we have to be hit over the head by nature in order to spring into action.  Well, this virus clearly did that, and this crisis is showing us all how fast we can act when we come together as inhabitants of one planet with one common goal.  No mountain is too high, no crisis too complex.  

Let’s tackle climate change next.  

the biggest movement you never heard of

Renewable energies have become very common, everyone talks about organics and goes shopping at farmers markets, and Andrew Yang’s thing was a universal basic income.  If you’re no vegan yourself you surely have several friends who are, and the MeToo Movement and the Weinberg trial are bringing about  a truer conversation about what women’s equality actually means.  But did you know that they all belong to the same bigger conversation, an actual cultural and consciousness shift that bakes them all together under a huge umbrella?

It may be the biggest movement you never heard of.  Ray and Anderson, authors of the 2000 book The Cultural Creatives, called it the “emergence of an entire subculture of Americans (and Europeans, and Japanese, as they point out).  “Because Cultural Creatives are not yet aware of themselves as a collective body, they do not recognize how powerful their voices could be.”  That was 20 years ago, and it seems that they/we are still not aware of how big of a body of change agents they/we collectively are.

Where do you think the sudden rise of a social-democratic movement in this country came from, and Bernie Sanders’ appeal in 2016 and now again?  The self-awareness and passion of this younger generation, other than the young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg who already has plenty,  still needs to mature into true activism for change out of self-awareness.  But it’s bubbling up everywhere. It’s encouraging,  but it also rattles an older, more conservative generation that’s apprehensive about change.  

See more posts on this cultural shift – on the incoming Aquarian energy, on Modern Monetary Theory, on new right brain culture, and on the crack in the story, among many more you’ll find in my blog archive.

May you see this new story emerging with excitement, and may you be as inspired as I am.