Tuesday, April 22, 2008
one earth and one me - Tuesday Apr. 22, 2008
today’s Musing written and published from south Calgary, near Fish Creek Park
walk report: -9C/16F, light snow again – just enough to shovel, just enough to cause falls – Gusta strained to meet a tall dark hued Border Collie who was much better behaved (perhaps neutered) than my rambunctious blonde exhibiting primary urges
on the schoolyard, at work or in a family we learn early on that we have to pick our battles; sometimes that is about timing, sometimes it is about the issue, sometimes we are too early, sometimes too late, sometimes we misread the situation
innovation does not usually come from a place like the office of an obscure U.S. Senator, but that is where the germs of the idea for an Earth Day began; but I am sure there are countless people the world over who had the same thoughts in the sixties but most of them were too stoned to do much beyond admiring the buzz they got saying ‘save the planet man!’ or something to that affect
on many fronts, simultaneously, the cleverest of minds have dedicated themselves to gauging which way the parade is going, then sprint to get out in front of it so they might pretend to lead the way because greed and green are so similar these days; information pools are everywhere – sliced, diced, sorted, re-sorted – trends measured like markets and polls that do not accurately measure anything but someone’s guess of what might happen if a set of facts were true at one moment; we swim, perhaps drown, in this ocean of compelling data, rhetoric and marketing that comes in only one flavor - green
the enemy is not P&G (pick your favorite corporate foe), those greedy opportunistic marketers driven by shareholders who want profits; the enemy is not main street or Wall Street because these terms all relate to a struggle against a foe, a battle against and enemy which is being fought without an exit strategy from the war (sorry George W, I couldn’t pass up the analogy) or a definition of what success looks like
so many sell us something better, new, improved, dynamic and – today at least – green, sustainable, bio-degradable and conserving something but we’ll not change the world; whether global warming is real, whether humans caused it or can reverse it, or ought to try, is a fundamental discussion that does not happen across breakfast tables or airwaves; VHS beat Beta – not because it was better or right but because powerful marketers convinced us it was better; VHS is history now, Beta still has its vital places; Al Gore has his Nobel Prize but he’s no more (or less) a prize than anyone else wrapping themselves in green; Earth day = the politics of distraction
Walt Kelly, cartoonist who created Pogo said it: ‘We have met the enemy and he is us.”
a definition found online rings beautifully true: green - hue, portion of visible spectrum between yellow and blue, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 490 to 570 nanometers; any of a group of colors that may vary in lightness and saturation whose hue is that of the emerald or somewhat less yellow than that of growing grass; one of the additive or light primaries; one of the psychological primary hues
if we collectively think green, turn off a light, or ‘waste one less’ of anything we CAN stop the price of anything from going up or down or the number of particles per million in our air; the making of green, the saving of green - growing greener every day - soon we’ll all be green, factory smoke-stacks will spill sunshine, tailpipes extinct, water plentiful, air sweet, oceans full of fish, plates piled high with safe food, 6 billion happy non-warring healthy people – sure; OK, time to wake up, that was a fantastic dream
changing the world ‘one earth day at a time’ won’t work one day a year; tides and winds and the spinning of the earth don’t take an hour off let alone a day; sustainability, sustained effort, continuous unrelenting effort is what is needed to make change; a day, a decade, a century - don’t mean much measured against forces at work for thousands of millions of years of water wearing holes in rock, mountains rising up - that sort of thing - if it had a brain would think of earthlings (us) as short term visitors who don’t clean up after themselves, skip without paying and steal the towels to boot
the world’s population is neither passive or ignorant – we’re just busy with other things, like eating, fighting, fleeing or stretching to make ends meet; a world of change will not happen because any one person wants it to be or wills it so; the European Union can’t do it, the United States cannot do it, Bill Gates cannot do it, the hapless United Nations cannot do it and neither can any one of us acting alone but that is all we can do
a silver bullet would be nice, grass greener on the other side of a great breakthrough; I’ve considered political parties called GREEN, considered the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and others where one can join a group, get a newsletter, make a donation and contribute to a group that purports to foster change as if a few thousand good people are battling 6 billion bad people; that does not frame the issue or a strategy for solution in my view
for me there seems to be a clearer, albeit smaller, picture of whether 6 billion can win any battle with the planet – I doubt we can wage any such war that collectively would equal any force of nature or which could reverse it; we’ve only been camping here a short while and, to listen to all the talking heads, it seems we’ve nearly wrecked the place
I don’t think it is too late, I don’t think the battle is very well defined; on Earth Day or any other day the rhetoric is about politics and commerce, about a battle waged by a collective ‘those’ who care against ‘those who pollute and harm the environment’ (sounds like self destructive self-loathing to me) who struggle against those whose actions change the weather as if there is some evil bully we should confront in the alley after school
whether or not I pollute or conserve, waste or desecrate, there is but one earth and one me; I’m overmatched if I consider it a battle with it or with anyone; but, if I consider joining the earth like I am its friend, not so much as a squatter but as a tenant with a life-estate to be here, then I’ll have a better chance of making any difference worth noting or leaving behind; every day can be the ‘first day of_____’ so why can’t this be the first day of that?
Mark Kolke
338,560
199.4
... with your voice, teach in order to learn
What do you think? Join the discussion - comments are welcomed - please write.
To subscribe to Mark's Musings daily email distribution, write to mark@markmusing.com
©2008 MaxComm Communications
walk report: -9C/16F, light snow again – just enough to shovel, just enough to cause falls – Gusta strained to meet a tall dark hued Border Collie who was much better behaved (perhaps neutered) than my rambunctious blonde exhibiting primary urges
on the schoolyard, at work or in a family we learn early on that we have to pick our battles; sometimes that is about timing, sometimes it is about the issue, sometimes we are too early, sometimes too late, sometimes we misread the situation
innovation does not usually come from a place like the office of an obscure U.S. Senator, but that is where the germs of the idea for an Earth Day began; but I am sure there are countless people the world over who had the same thoughts in the sixties but most of them were too stoned to do much beyond admiring the buzz they got saying ‘save the planet man!’ or something to that affect
on many fronts, simultaneously, the cleverest of minds have dedicated themselves to gauging which way the parade is going, then sprint to get out in front of it so they might pretend to lead the way because greed and green are so similar these days; information pools are everywhere – sliced, diced, sorted, re-sorted – trends measured like markets and polls that do not accurately measure anything but someone’s guess of what might happen if a set of facts were true at one moment; we swim, perhaps drown, in this ocean of compelling data, rhetoric and marketing that comes in only one flavor - green
the enemy is not P&G (pick your favorite corporate foe), those greedy opportunistic marketers driven by shareholders who want profits; the enemy is not main street or Wall Street because these terms all relate to a struggle against a foe, a battle against and enemy which is being fought without an exit strategy from the war (sorry George W, I couldn’t pass up the analogy) or a definition of what success looks like
so many sell us something better, new, improved, dynamic and – today at least – green, sustainable, bio-degradable and conserving something but we’ll not change the world; whether global warming is real, whether humans caused it or can reverse it, or ought to try, is a fundamental discussion that does not happen across breakfast tables or airwaves; VHS beat Beta – not because it was better or right but because powerful marketers convinced us it was better; VHS is history now, Beta still has its vital places; Al Gore has his Nobel Prize but he’s no more (or less) a prize than anyone else wrapping themselves in green; Earth day = the politics of distraction
Walt Kelly, cartoonist who created Pogo said it: ‘We have met the enemy and he is us.”
a definition found online rings beautifully true: green - hue, portion of visible spectrum between yellow and blue, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 490 to 570 nanometers; any of a group of colors that may vary in lightness and saturation whose hue is that of the emerald or somewhat less yellow than that of growing grass; one of the additive or light primaries; one of the psychological primary hues
if we collectively think green, turn off a light, or ‘waste one less’ of anything we CAN stop the price of anything from going up or down or the number of particles per million in our air; the making of green, the saving of green - growing greener every day - soon we’ll all be green, factory smoke-stacks will spill sunshine, tailpipes extinct, water plentiful, air sweet, oceans full of fish, plates piled high with safe food, 6 billion happy non-warring healthy people – sure; OK, time to wake up, that was a fantastic dream
changing the world ‘one earth day at a time’ won’t work one day a year; tides and winds and the spinning of the earth don’t take an hour off let alone a day; sustainability, sustained effort, continuous unrelenting effort is what is needed to make change; a day, a decade, a century - don’t mean much measured against forces at work for thousands of millions of years of water wearing holes in rock, mountains rising up - that sort of thing - if it had a brain would think of earthlings (us) as short term visitors who don’t clean up after themselves, skip without paying and steal the towels to boot
the world’s population is neither passive or ignorant – we’re just busy with other things, like eating, fighting, fleeing or stretching to make ends meet; a world of change will not happen because any one person wants it to be or wills it so; the European Union can’t do it, the United States cannot do it, Bill Gates cannot do it, the hapless United Nations cannot do it and neither can any one of us acting alone but that is all we can do
a silver bullet would be nice, grass greener on the other side of a great breakthrough; I’ve considered political parties called GREEN, considered the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and others where one can join a group, get a newsletter, make a donation and contribute to a group that purports to foster change as if a few thousand good people are battling 6 billion bad people; that does not frame the issue or a strategy for solution in my view
for me there seems to be a clearer, albeit smaller, picture of whether 6 billion can win any battle with the planet – I doubt we can wage any such war that collectively would equal any force of nature or which could reverse it; we’ve only been camping here a short while and, to listen to all the talking heads, it seems we’ve nearly wrecked the place
I don’t think it is too late, I don’t think the battle is very well defined; on Earth Day or any other day the rhetoric is about politics and commerce, about a battle waged by a collective ‘those’ who care against ‘those who pollute and harm the environment’ (sounds like self destructive self-loathing to me) who struggle against those whose actions change the weather as if there is some evil bully we should confront in the alley after school
whether or not I pollute or conserve, waste or desecrate, there is but one earth and one me; I’m overmatched if I consider it a battle with it or with anyone; but, if I consider joining the earth like I am its friend, not so much as a squatter but as a tenant with a life-estate to be here, then I’ll have a better chance of making any difference worth noting or leaving behind; every day can be the ‘first day of_____’ so why can’t this be the first day of that?
Mark Kolke
338,560
199.4
... with your voice, teach in order to learn
What do you think? Join the discussion - comments are welcomed - please write.
To subscribe to Mark's Musings daily email distribution, write to mark@markmusing.com
©2008 MaxComm Communications
