What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day? Blog Action Day is one day, thousands of voices, one issue -- the environment.
If we can create problems, we can create solutions. Until very recently in human history, we didn't even know we had an environment.
Our awareness that we have an environment and that human actions can affect it represent an evolution of consciousness. This is the first time that a living entity threatened with extinction has been aware of that danger. Every other extinct being on this planet had no idea the threat was there or the end was coming; and had they known, they couldn't have done anything about it.
There is a unique, massive amount of hope associated with humanity's threat of extinction -- the very fact that we know that we contribute to the environmental degradation of our planet shows us proof that we can affect it.
So, knowing we can affect the biosphere negatively -- that we can affect it at all -- means we have the power to positively impact it as well.
That's huge.
Our impact didn't happen overnight, it didn't result from the actions of an isolated few, it accumulated. The way forward, the way out, will come from cumulative actions as well.
Technology is Evil?
Please. That is an absolutely ignorant statement -- it's also a cop out. People label things as evil so they don't have to feel responsible for them. It transfers the power elsewhere, says it can't be your fault.
You need consciousness and motivation and intention for evil. The tools themselves do not have this consciousness. If that were the case then sticks would be evil -- stones, verbal grunts, symbols painted on cave walls, fire pits.
To return to some state prior to this evil, we'd have to go back before homo sapiens and erase all development. Yes, maybe that is the Story of the Fall -- Adam and Eve, ignorant in the Garden, wandering around hunting and gathering with their bare hands. Yes, with Knowledge comes responsibility -- to wield it properly, to be accountable for the actions taken.
We get it. We know what we screwed up -- it is our technology that reveals this to us. Our emerging universal awareness is collective, connected, dispersed like a hologram across all human consciousness. All together we make messes; all together we fix them.
Try a cooking metaphor -- what happens to the kitchen when you prepare a large meal? You make an enormous mess. Nobody's running around like Chicken Little calling food preparation evil. Grow up. Clean up.
Problems bear their own solutions. The accumulated knowledge, technology, and actions of human beings made a mess in the kitchen. The same tools that created the problems will produce the solutions.
The tools are not the problem.
- How to fire a gun can be used to murder someone or feed your family.
- How to split the atom can be applied to making bombs or to harness zero-point energy.
- How to take the earth apart and put it back together allow strip-mining or nanotechnology.
We have plenty of gloom-and-doom stories -- via our technological advances, these horrors reach everyone. So what happens when we use our evolved awareness and connectivity to spread stories of hope and brilliant solutions?
The unconscious actions that created the mess required a certain amount of ignorance and lack of collective focus. The actions and awareness of the individual ended with the individual, even as the cumulative effects continued to grow. Now, an 11-year-old kid with a great idea can share it with a blog and it becomes available to the world.
What will the world look like when every brilliant idea can be initiated, shared, and worked on by all of us? We already know -- it's called open source technology. The coded wisdom behind this page, the reason you can read this, is one tiny, incredible example of what we can make simply because we want to and because we can. Someone had a great idea, and it evolved through collective action.
Doesn't that make you incredibly hopeful?
Now that we know...
We know what the problem is -- what's the solution? Find it, share it, lend your voice to the future. Everything we make starts with an idea.
We need a vision -- an inkling, a conversation -- about how to create the world in which we want to live.
Seek Wisdom -- Practice Love