A colleague of mine, John Scotland, drew my attention to this series of videos by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett.
Please look at these 8 videos in order - click on each of the links below to watch - please persist – they are more important than you can imgaine. Then ponder and share your well considered solutions.
We hear about the word “Abundance” on the one hand, then talk of “Lack” or “finite resources” or “diminishing availability” on the other hand. I’m not sure what we’ve got, or got left.
What I am sure about is this – we have a global culture of “Get as much of the abundance as you can!” That’s the problem isn’t it – more of this and that and profit and fun and stuff! Together with more people it doesn’t add up.
Solution – start practicing the culture /paradigm of SUFFICIENCY FROM THE ABUNDANCE – Examples 1. Our family doesn’t need any more than two cars – maybe even one. 2. As CEO of X Corporation I can thrive and take care of my family and future on $500,000.00 per annum, not $10 million. 3. If I get to keep the $10 million I’ll give $9.5 million to those causes that I believe can help the higher good of us all. 4. As a corporation we need to make $X profit to take care of our people, products and future – we don’t need to make $X + Y this year, so let’s adjust to achieve $X. 5. As a corporation, if we do make more than our targeted $X profit, we’ll not just give it to our shareholders as dividends or retain in, we’ll share it amongst those who are working for the higher good of us all.
Imagine this – there are two massive elephants stuck in your room and no-one wants to deal with them, or knows how to deal with them, because they are just too big!
The whole of humanity has an identical problem. Are you ready to contemplate this?
It’s not terrorism, nor threat of nuclear weapons, not even the current global financial crisis - even though they are pressing. But they are related.
No, these two ‘elephants’ are bigger, because if we solve the aforementioned threats, these two elephants are still there.
The first elephant is the unsustainable human population growth. But can you imagine any government asking us to willingly ‘cull’ our herd?
To get an idea of this problem go here FO3020630104
Or take a look at this
The second elephant is the unsustainable pursuit of profit growth. How long would a CEO, or entire board of directors last, if they asked their shareholders to agree to limit profits to ’sufficiency’ levels instead of ‘maximum’?
Consider this – nature runs the show right? Some of you will say your God does, or the Universe does – well, to me that’s nature.
Nature’s got two laws that we ignore at our peril. There are more, but these two in particular, we seem to pretend don’t matter. They are the law of equal exchange and the law of cause and effect. We can’t keep taking profit, resources, space or water without nature seeking to create a balance or a correction. Whatever we do (cause) results in an outcome (effect). We’ve being passing the buck to our future generations, who may not be able to exist in the mess we might be creating. Yet, despite this, we are capable of amazing developments and we are the best at adapting and changing.
Now think about this – just imagine this – on June 13th 2008, 144 people representing all the religions, all the cultures and socio-economic groups met to try and plan a way foward that respected all of humanity and indeed all of life. They did not simply want to restate the problem or beat it up or deny it, but address it and see if solutions were available.
These people weren’t all famous, but they were all wise and they were all concerned that the two elephants needed to be addressed.
Trouble is they had no more ability to to make a difference than the governments of the planet.
They realised that it will require ALL of us – humans that is – to make a difference and we better start discussing it now.
Imagine that they (the 144) wish to remain anonymous, in order to encourage all others who are interested, or feel responsible and passionate to speak up.
There is a domain name registered for a future web site – it is www.4usallnow.com .
The aim is to encourage as many people as possible to offer well thought out and respectful conversation, ideas and solutions.
This is not about money, money won’t solve this. There are no fees or charges for participating. Just ideas that might or will work and that are pro-life.
IT people can suggest an open source platform that they could work on to facilitate the many inputs from many people and enable ease of management and ease of following streams of conversation, and search and key word identification to help all those who feel responsible and passionate about these issues to contribute and learn.
There are only two rules: -
1. Each comment is limited to 500 characters – links to longer information held elsewhere is OK.
2. All comments are to be respectful of and to all humanity and life in general.
This may well become a social media platform focussed on the issues.
When it gets big enough green ‘adsense’ type marketing could support the conversation, with all surplus going to the study and implementation of solutions.
This could be largely self-organising – like an on-line Open Space Technology meeting – read about OST here wiki.cgi?AboutOpenSpace
Just to let you know, I’m Daviji (my username) and I’m kicking this off on behalf of us all.
Whilst I’m a baby-boomer, I’ve got an 11 year old daughter and I don’t want my legacy to be slavery, toxic or a dead-end.
Well, that’s about it for now. Let’s hear from you who are interested or feel passionate and responsible.
Posted by daviji 
Posted by daviji 
Posted by daviji 