By a Solari Report Subscriber
I am assuming that divestment means getting rid of a lot of the trappings of modern life as a drive towards simplicity and less consumption. This is something that the elite would like to see. The majority living as peasants while they have control of the latest technologies and the ability to mine this earth and other planets.
Let me make the following comment.
There is a lot of talk about sustainability. But very few people have a definition that makes sense to me – or a plan for how to achieve it. As hunter gatherers, without advanced technologies, mankind could exist on earth indefinitely – because there is a balance achieved between the use of resources and the replenishment of those resources. This is one definition of sustainability – that we don’t use stuff faster than it can be replenished.
Agriculture came along some 11,000 to 13000 years ago and changed everything. This allowed for the formation of cities and in turn the centralization of populations and power. It also meant that not everyone had to be involved with the acquisition and preparation of food. Others could concentrate on R&D – in the arts, sciences, philosophy, etc. To a large extent, that is when our problems involving our relationship with our planet began to develop. Agriculture remains an unproven experiment and one of the greatest ongoing disrupters the earth has witnessed. Mono-culture agriculture is totally unnatural and I would argue unsustainable – because of the energy inputs required and also because of the degradation of air, water and soil. Which brings up another definition of sustainability that I like the most – a process is sustainable only if it has a benign or beneficial effect on the quality of the soil, water and air.
A form of agriculture that is sustainable is the edible forest or eco-ecological approaches like those endorsed by Miguel Altieri. http://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people_profiles/miguel-altieri/ It is a subset of permaculture. This respects the complexity inherent in individual environments and doesn’t try to force solutions down nature’s throat. It’s primary focus also is soil health. And the best practices do not involve mining the sea or the earth to provide fertility.
There is still a question of how many folks can be supported on earth by this approach. Right now mono-culture and GMO driven agriculture is experiencing a bubble of success – which is in the process of bursting. The ultimate goal of agri-tech is to have the masses dependent on their proprietary, fully-synthetic food, derived from elemental inorganic, organic (as in organic chemistry not organic farming) and biological components that are “assembled” using advanced chemical and biological engineering technologies.
But we need to look at the whole situation in a much larger context. It is clear to me that there are those with a lot of power on this earth who are shaping things in ways we do not know, understand or would endorse. These folks are hidden, unknown and also have the ability to kill with impunity. And do. So basically, until we find out what is really going on behind the scenes (who is really in control and what their agenda really is), we are shooting in the dark.
When you take a look at the structures that have been “built” – how the earth has been organized institutionally, socially, militarily and politically – you quickly get the sense that most folks are dispensable – and that part of “the plan” is depopulation. So another way to say this is that the world is very sub-optimized. It is not being run for the benefit of the many but rather for the benefit of the few. And the wealth statistics show this.
So what if the world were run to optimize the power of the individual vs. the few? To this end it is useful to ask, what technologies have been suppressed – and by that I mean what technologies are controlled by the few to the detriment of the many? It is hard for me to believe that there are not potent alternatives that are known that would make the mining and burning of fossil fuels unnecessary. Just imagine a world where each individual is energy independent (and resource independent). A world of sustainable abundance.
Which brings me to my last point. Perhaps the most significant model for sustainability is an energetic one – one that takes into account energy on a thermodynamic level (how life acquires energy to sustain life) but also on what one might call a vibrational or informational level. If we view the universe as information at its foundation, and conscious beings as having the ability to tap into the information of the universe in ways that most folks are ignorant of, then it totally changes the game. What would happen if the individual conscious being on this planet were able to connect with all the sources of information that are available to him in the universe?
So on the one hand, we are being directed on earth by those in power who believe that human intelligence trumps natural intelligence. Nature is to be “conquered and manipulated”. Ironically, in its ultimate form, this is a drive towards dehumanization – to the replacement of humans with machines (Kurzweil’s singularity). The opposite view, which one might describe as the indigenous paradigm, is that natural (universal) intelligence trumps human intelligence. The first team (the manipulators) have developed the tools that have allowed them to dominate and enslave. The second have almost been completely wiped out from the earth. But implicit in the second team’s cosmology is a unique blend of confidence and humility. Because by coming from a paradigm of respect for what is possible, man begins to understand how his own possibilities are severely limited, in an unsustainable way, by our current way of life – but more importantly by our current way of thinking.
So the true root of unsustainability is our unsustainable thinking – about ourselves, our role, our potential, our relationships with the universe, our power and our responsibilities. The first thing we need to be clear about is who we are and what we are capable of – and why that is so. And that we have the power to shape our world by shaping ourselves in a way that is informed – that is in sync with the information that is accessible to us if we are open to it. This approach totally redefines the argument about sustainability – which as it is framed, is limiting and misdirected – because it totally redefines what is possible.
