Our New Story Has the Sacred in It

Some ecological economists have quit trying to justify their ecological perspective to other economists and turned to telling a new story instead. That story is a OneEarth story and has interactive components of ecology, economics, science, and spirituality. David Korten is one of these, as shown in his excellent essay, A New Story for a New Economy: To Find Our Human Place in a Living Universe, which he delivered to a group of ecological economists. In the new story we no longer see ourselves outside of nature, ordering and ruling it as if we are half-human, half-godlike creatures—a highly unnatural being that we’re not nearly as good at as we pretend.

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Agribusiness' Biggest Yield? Sorrows

photo credit: Michael Gäbler (CC BY-SA 3.0)Given food shortages, what’s not to like about big crop yields? Turns out that the model of production ruling farms today is doing a better job of yielding a big crop of sorrows than of feeding the world. Nor is it focused on healthy produce. That’s because the model focuses on what most benefits the half dozen or so corporations that now control U.S. farm production. The model looks at efficiencies that reduce costs and increase profits in the short term, not at producing the healthiest crops or stewarding the health of land, water, and well-balanced ecoregions.

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Urbanization—Another Word for MultiEarth Cities and Farms

In a mere three pages in my book (pages 152-155), I speak of how modern urbanization, an intensely industrialized process, implements MultiEarth values and views instead of seeking a rural-city link that would better express the natural communal inclinations of our species. Those inclinations, when expressed, follow the balance of life found in health bioregions and fit with a OneEarth synergy of cities and rural life.

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Al Gore: We're at the "Turning Point"

Al Gore’s recent article in Rolling Stone magazine (June 18, 2014) certainly provides a turning point away from any who despair that we’ve passed the point of no return for Earth’s inhabitability. Does he also correctly diagnose that the turning point he sees will get us into a revised equilibrium with the planet sometime in the doable future? That’s the question I’m asking myself as I delight in all the informative positives Gore is seeing (1) in sustainable technologies, (2) in businesses running toward green strategies, (3) in economics searching for alternatives to capitalism, and (4) in the politics of nations tweaking their policies.

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"Civilization" Is a Human Project; Not THE Only Possible Human Story

It may have been the gorilla, Ishmael, (Dan Quinn’s book Ishmael) who first burst open the container in my mind that equated “civilization” and “human history.” Separating them sent me exploring like an animal first released from an enclosure. My mind began to laugh; my heart elevated. I am ready to speak loudly through the megaphone: “We humans contribute our best capacities to Earth through our wild, full, and loving humanness, not through the rules of the civilization project underway since 10,000 BCE.”

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A Story about Low-Profile Folks Helping One Another—Especially Writers, Booklovers

Here’s a story about how people who do not have name recognition can help one another—especially when it comes to reading and reviewing books we like. This story praises the services of Midwest Book Review.

“Established in 1976, the Midwest Book Review is … committed to promoting literacy, library use, and small press publishing.” With that simple, descriptive, opening sentence to the organization’s website, the Midwest Book Review (MBR) tells us they publish no less than NINE magazines each month filled with reviews of books. These magazines go to librarians (both community and academic), booksellers, and the general reading public.

My experience with James Cox, editor-in-chief, has been cordial and helpful.

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Can We Overcome Greed?

from Wikipedia: Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, main character of Wall Street and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps“I just don’t see how we can overcome greed,” he said pensively, reluctantly. He wanted to believe it was possible, but evidence stacked up to the contrary during his years of attorney work with people running corporations.

He has plenty of company.

Startling (and popular?) as it may have been in the movie, “Wall Street,” to hear Gordon Gecko declare that “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” it’s more interesting to me how often I have heard people with religious affiliations bow to greed’s tight grip over us. No matter that religious institutions around the globe profess God’s power to transform us so that we need not be conformed to this world, when it comes to greed, lots of people doubt that we can create an economy or society that is not shaped by greed.

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