On Waking Up!
In my article Waking Up! I said: The only way humanity will have a positive future is if we change the rules. To do this, we could change our minds. We could make the decision to work together. We could go out into our neighborhoods and introduce ourselves. We could start projects where we work together. The word community is a contraction of the two words common and unity. Or as I like to spell it, CommUnity. We could begin to restructure our lives based on working together, and we could embrace sustainability.
That means we would have to stop driving cars. Not immediately, but soon. We could move information instead of people. With our powerful internet communication technology, we really don't need automobiles, or airplanes. Eventually, we won't even need mass transit.
Daan Joubert from South Africa asked: If we all get to work together, love each other, stop using cars or even mass transit etc. etc., how will that prevent the dieoff of 75% of the global population? I fail to see how becoming a CommUnity (even overnight, tonight) will solve the energy problems, the consequent food problems and the global warming problems that between them will IMHO inevitably progress over the next 50 years or so until only 1 person in 4 remains alive and with a 90% probability working on the land in near subsistence mode.
My answer: You are right. The problems are not small. We humans have really made a mess. But, as a synergic scientist my field of study is on working together. There are no separate solutions. We share the same air, the same water, and the same planet. Many on the energy lists have envisioned the Mad Max scenarios. Of course we could choose that path before extinction. But, there is a better way. Life has had this type of crisis before. We humans are a form of life. We could learn from Life that we can be much more powerful working together than we can be working separately.
As I said Life has faced this problem before. Evolutionary biologist Elizabet Sahtouris explaines this in her article the Evolution of Governance .
Daan Joubert: Will you or the average person still love their neighbours and work together in a spirit of harmony if the neighbour has some food and your own children are starving to death? And here an answer that sharing the available food will solve the problem does not apply - not when there is only enough food for 25 people out of a hundred. Equal sharing will simply mean all 100 will die.
Another reader on the list, Bill Ellis responded to Daan's question:
Bill Ellis: There is as much evidence of the opposite in the real world. When resources are low people share what little they have. The Holocaust was a good example. Everyone helped everyone.
There is ample evidence that "belonging" is THE most primary human need. There are few mothers who eat their children when starving. 9/11 gave us innumerable examples of people giving their lives to save even strangers. No military unit would be a success if members were not expected to give their lives for one another. Elsewhere I have written:
All that is -- is a webs of being
We belong to the webs-of-being -- to Gaia. Belonging is the protovalue from which all other values derive.
We belong to the physiosphere, to the biosphere, to the noosphere. We belong to Gaia. As the aboriginals said it we are the ownees of the land not the owners of the land. As Chief Seattle said it, "we can not own the land, we are part of the land." We belong to and are inseparable from our culture -- from one another -- from Gaia. We are interdependent with all.
Belonging is scientific fact; and, belonging is more than scientific fact.
Belonging is not merely "being a member of", but it is being subject to -- being in partnership with -- being responsible for. We belong to -- are responsible for -- the web of being -- to the universe -- to Gaia. Belonging-to-Gaia means recognizing that we are enmeshed in the webs-of-being and that our well-being is dependent on the well-being of Gaia. If we destroy Gaia, we destroy ourselves.
Belonging implies "cooperation" -- working with what is -- with Gaia--the w-o-b. Belonging implies "community." In our face-to-face relationships with people we form community -- we belong to community. Belonging implies "responsibility." We are responsible for Gaia. We are responsible for one another. Belonging implies "Love." We can not separate love (agape) from the fact that we belong to Gaia. We love because we must love to preserve Gaia -- to preserve ourselves -- to preserve the w-o-b.
Cultures built on values other than belonging are doomed to self-destruct. A culture built on "domination of the earth, and all the animals therein" is doomed to disappear. A culture based on "self-interest" is doomed to disintegrate. A culture based on competition will destroy itself.
To be stable and sustainable a culture must be based on cooperation, community, responsibility, love, honesty, caregiving, and the other values which are implied by and intertwined with one another and with belonging.
We can no more separate ourselves from belonging -- from Gaia, and remain a viable culture; than an oxygen atom can separate itself from hydrogen atoms and retain the qualities of water.
Reader Arthur Noll responds to Bill's comment, :
Arthur Noll writes: Bill, I agree that we need to belong. But the problem Timothy gives here is not solved so easily. Belonging to the group of 100 with only food for 25 means everyone dies. Either the food supply must be increased, or the number of people must decrease. If we increase the food supply, which is the solution of the past, that means that more of nature dies, with the result that you might be able to feed the 100 for a short time, and then be able to feed only 10. You actually have made the situation worse.
I see the answer as being made of both belonging, and separation. The current problem has come about because people have acted semi- independently of each other and of nature. As Timothy puts it, we have acted neutrally. If those in the group who wish to act as belonging to a group, and belonging to nature, separate from the rest, and find their own sources of food, taking those sources in a sustainable manner, keeping their population in balance, then they are not so likely to suffer the same consequences of the original, more loosely bound group, that doesn't consider nature or each other as being so important.
I look at my neighbors, and shake my head at the prospect of approaching most of them about the problem. Across the street, for example, there is a man who spends all his spare time working on his car, tinkering with the engine, the suspension, flames painted on the front, washes it frequently. Obviously he loves the car, and I am very doubtful I would be well received, to suggest to him that it would be better to live without it. Next door is a man with power tools, that he uses frequently. All up and down the street, I think I would find people like this. Still, if I had a group of people that intended to live as belonging to each other and to the rest of nature, I would ask, at the very least, and give them all the option of joining. Right now, all I have is talk, I have no group for anyone to join, and without that, I see no point in approaching people. I talk to people who are interested in talking about it, who have come together on various lists on the Internet, but if the people who are interested in talking about belonging to each other and nature, will not form an actual group, how can I expect others, who spend their time lovingly caring for their machinery, to join? --Arthur Noll
Arthur, raises some good points. Building commUnity requires common unity. We must be together. We will have to find those groups of humans who share our concerns and our vision for a positive future. They will have wake up. They will have grow up. Mature humans must act with responsibility.
"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." I Cor. xiii. 11.
Thanks to everyone who is reading and thinking about my posts. And thanks to Daan, Bill and Arthur for writing.
12:19:35 AM 
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