We can no longer afford to think of the environment as something separate, outside of us. We need an awareness of the “oneness of being” of which we are all a part, and actions that come from this awareness. This awareness of unity is one of the most important contributions of the mystic at this moment in time.
New research shows that our feelings are more important to our health than we ever thought. An expert explains
Forget meadows. The city’s new park will be filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking.
President Obama has blamed tensions with Iran as the reason behind rising oil prices in the US causing the US to buy oil at above peak oil prices and use its reserves.
The concept of endless economic growth, accepted as sacrosanct by both U.S. mainstream political parties, and internalized as the dominant mode of mind by the general population of the corporate/consumer state is mirrored in the exponential mathematics of a malignancy. Cancer, if given voice, would proclaim itself to be a believer in “free market values”…devoted to the principle of endless growth…until, of course, it would silence its own voice by killing its host. Likewise, all life seeks limits or prematurely dooms itself.
We can agree that the modern industrial age has certainly severed our sense of connection to nature, and even to ourselves. Cheap fossil fuels gave us the illusion we could dominate, subjugate and use the natural world for our own ends, and in the process we forgot that we are a part of the world, not above it. It cut us off from our sense of our own natural selves and our sense of community with our neighbors. After 150 years of fossil fuel driven growth we have forgotten what this sense of connectedness feels like. Perhaps my dream says, “Prepare the ground for its return, build the bridges of connection. In the future this energy will flow again.”
What is critical in determining how people react is often how safe it is to respond openly and with the full range of affect. When politicians and global corporations fail to take responsibility or offer mixed messages about the seriousness of the problem, this may produce states of confusion or increase the indifferent and apathetic defences in the population as a whole. Psychotherapists talk about the need for ‘containment’ – some sense of safety and trust – if difficult subjects are to be thought about. The absence of such containment produces confusion, defensiveness and a retreat into irrationality. People become unable to solve problems creatively. In the privacy of the consulting room this containment is provided by the therapist. In the public sphere it is more likely to result from leadership, the narratives used, the realism of the solutions suggested and the opportunities for genuine citizen involvement in shaping them. If people can’t express, share and symbolise these difficult experiences the long-term effect is likely to be an increase in irrationality, apocalyptic thinking, denial or self-destructive activities, none of which are good for anyone’s mental health.
As the world economy crashes against debt and resource limits, more and more countries are responding by attempting to salvage what are actually their most expendable features—corrupt, insolvent banks and bloated militaries—while leaving the majority of their people to languish in “austerity.” The result, predictably, is a global uprising. This current set of conditions and responses will lead, sooner or later, to social as well as economic upheaval—and a collapse of the support infrastructure on which billions depend for their very survival.
Economic Collapse: A planet on the verge of a nervous breakdown
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That the real, physical world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise. Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all social or economic systems are dependent upon a living planet.