The Need for This Blog, and 3 Ways It Addresses that Need

A few weeks ago I completed a “Submission Proposal” to Berrett-Koehler Publishing that followed their guidelines. They have a wonderfully helpful AND challenging set of questions that need to be answered for them to look at a manuscript. Right off they ask, “What is the need for this book and how does it meet that need?” Since this blog has a lot of modified excerpts from the manuscript, my answer tells you what need I feel I’m addressing with this blog. Quoting from the proposal:

When it is obvious that we have only one Earth to live on, but continue to use the resources of more than one, we need to figure out what is going on. Why are our leaders and culture gridlocked, unable to solve this complex problem even when we know it can lead to our extinction? What is the nature of the grip that Multi Earth living has on us? And how can we be released from that grip in order to practice One Earth living more fully? Changing our Earth-destroying habits to life-enhancing ones will persist as the most demanding challenge for our species during upcoming decades. Therefore, interest in the themes of my book [this blog] will increase, not decline, for the foreseeable future.

My book [this blog] addresses the above need by

1. showing how Multi Earth living mesmerizes us despite the inevitable consequences of failure and death that come with  this worldview, 
2. emphasizing how we humans have the capacity to choose the One Earth worldview over the Multi Earth worldview, and 
3. disclosing my own struggle to reshape my life to One Earth living after having come under the spell of Multi Earth ways. I believe that as readers ponder the contrasting worldviews, consider the information I give, and follow my personal story, they will engage in self-reflection on their own Multi Earth vs. One Earth tensions. 

Today (8-7-12) I received a most pleasant phone call from Berrett-Koehler explaining that they would NOT be publishing my manuscript because they were preparing another with similar content for release in the spring. She encouraged me to submit it to other publishers because “you’ve done a lot of good work and it’s a very hot topic.”

"I Know We're in a Mess; What Can I Do to Make a Real Difference?"

Some of you who read this One Earth Project blog will be impatient for meaningful actions. “I know we’re in a terrible mess,” you may well say, “just tell me what I can do.” That impatience is in me too.

So here’s what I urge as our starting point. The first thing to do is to go deep with the question: “How am I a Multi Earther?” To do that with any traction and fun, you must know your own ecological footprint. If you know it, proceed. If you don’t, go to the most scientific calculator available on the web and do it now.

Unless our doing aligns us with One Earth living, we will expend our energy and time on a goal too small. Every election cycle we hear Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and liberals all acting with fervor. But despite their fervor for winning, both the winners and losers continue to advance the goals of Multi Earth living. We need to reframe our actions at the level of a One Earth consciousness and paradigm. Unless what we do embraces our one planet’s embedded wisdom, we will not get to where we now need to go. 

To telegraph the direction of this blog, we’re heading for entrees that delve deeper into why shaking Multi Earth living is devilishly hard. Understanding that better increases our percentages for choosing actions that truly make a difference instead of spinning our wheels. Shortly, this blog is heading into a bend on the power of myth to hold us in Multi Earth ways. Beyond the bend we’ll travel into five Earth-destroying patterns that we can change:

1. Multi Earth economics functions as religion, receiving tremendous devotion.
2. Corporations, more than governments, rule the world.
3. You know the frustrations of not being treated like a human being in the Multi Earth way of doing things? It’s not just personal. It’s purposeful.
4. Despite all the praise for democracy, there can never be robust, full participation style democracy under a Multi Earth economy.
5. Our human species has tripled since 1940 to 7,000,000,000. In addition, we are the most aggressive species on the planet. Despite our intelligence, the Multi Earth paradigm seems impotent to address this life-destroying imbalance.

Stay tuned.

A Money Autobiography — Have You Written Yours?

If you’ve never written a money autobiography, you’re missing a strong experience of better self-understanding. I’ve written several over the years. Each helped me look at my relationship with money and its deity powers over our world. Me included. Reading aloud my autobiography to a small group and inviting conversation (not critique) adds even more value. It’s part of getting freer from the economic clutches of More.

Our exodus from empire and civilization’s Multi Earths economy cannot be accomplished if we do no more than stop using empire’s socio-economic structures, big as that is. To truly leave empire ways behind and change out of the civilization story to another requires a more holistic exodus.  That exodus must also happen within us, in our relationships, and in all organizations where we have influence.

—From my upcoming book, The Eden We Can Choose, to be released in 2012

Writing a money autobiography will help get empire-think out of you. So how does one start? There’s an excellent guide in Faith and Money Study Guide, an eight session manual for groups put out by Faith and Money Network, Washington, D.C. Getting people to write a money autobiography is just one of the really important contributions F&MN has made to many lives.