I've been a closet economic anthropologist since my days at University. I assert that we humans are our own worst enemy, because we blithely and greedily engage in economic behaviors without examining the import or the impact of such behaviors. Our economic behaviors have become more important and more influential than ALL of our other behaviors, comprising the framework within which we do all things political or spiritual. Please note that I mean WE as in our entire species.

Humans are now a systems-stressing economic resource, yet we seem incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. All other economic resources are being taxed beyond the system's capacity, yet we sustain a rhetoric that smacks of the blame and shame game (warring with one another, blaming others without examining our own roles, etc...), when we should be seeking ways to fix the problem.

A great philosopher once predicted that capitalism would eventually collapse, and that economic behavior would evolve into a more egalitarian, cooperative means of production. Capitalists, politicians, and others with a vested interest in maintaining an oppressive status quo promoted a pejorative meme that taints this great man's scholarship to this very day. We should take note of the enormous energy expended to denigrate this man's collected works.

We too can attack Karl Marx on the strength of his detractors' red herring meme, or we can emulate his courageous endeavor to examine human economic behavior as it exists today and envision the changes that MUST occur if we are to progress as a species. Do we have to throw out the baby (capitalism) with the bath water (Corporate Megalomaniacs)? Is communism the inevitable alternative to capitalism, and would that really be a bad thing? Can we continue to subsume our spiritual selves in servitude to the almighty dollar?

Change is often a big scary barrier to personal growth, isn't it?...

Still, as another great philosopher said, "We MUST be the change we wish to see in the world."

So, this starts with me. My awareness of the core issues described herein above shapes and informs my activism every day. I refuse to buy into the divisiveness that the Corporate Megalomaniacs promote to keep us from examining these real issues, and that includes divisiveness predicated by education, status, or any other hierarchical measure. We The People are on the verge of a major change--perhaps cataclysmic--and we have the intellectual capacity and the spiritual framework within which to propel ourselves into an amazing future.

Despite all that has happened in the last seven years, I anticipate success. I remember how We The People responded after 9/11 and after Katrina and after the BIG Tsunami (etc...). We rolled up our shirt sleeves and got to work (well, sans the Corporatists, who seem to view such events as handy ways to thin the masses...) I believe that The Human Spirit evident in our times of crisis will prevail. I've only just realized that I always have.

Journal

I read Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING when I was fourteen. This profoundly changed my life. I knew upon finishing this book that I would never bear a child. How could I bring another child into a world already overpopulated? How could I bear a child when there were so many already born who needed homes, who needed love? Little did I know that this decision would give me a unique opportunity to advocate for myriad children--free from the taint of the ubiquitous power over/powerlessness parental paradigm. Young people love me, and I them.

This--choosing to remain childless--was the extent of my empowerment at that point in my development. I had no sense of personal power; thus, I could only admire Ms. Carson's activism and wish I had some measure of her courage. I knew she had unleashed the Hounds of Fury by calling attention to the dangers of DDT and other pesticides. But hers was the classic case of killing the messenger. Her readers worldwide took up the gauntlet and soon DDT was banned, at least in the US. And, the environmental movement was born. This was huge.

Now, at 51, I recall this event because I've just watched AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Now that I have--for the past twenty-five years--been an advocate and an activist, I contemplate my potential to play a significant role in the efforts being made to educate our world about the imminent climate changes made inevitable by our species' hedonism.

How can I devote my time and my energy to this movement and still put food on the table? Well, I haven't yet thought of a way to make this particular industry fruitful enough to pay my bills, but I will. Activism has been, and must continue to be, what I do best. Meanwhile, I must journal my thoughts, so that I can record herein the evolution of my continued activism.