Ch 6:

From the heart, stuff to feel …  Especially your dream!

Think “Community Making” for the Earth.  The social way to

sustainability is a release for the passion you feel … which has

potentially limitless benefit for ecological sustainability. 

So, reach out to others … it takes a bit of courage ... but suck it up,

do the work, say g’day, be bigger than shy. 

Prepare a wee “over the fence” chat about how you feel – your concern,

your passion … and your big, positive and optimistic dream. 

Especially your dream!

The Oscar Award winning film, “If You Love This Planet” was created in the 1980s by Australia’s Dr. Helen Caldicott.  Helen has forever been a tireless anti-nuclear camapigner speaking of the medical consequences of nuclear war.  At the time of her film, the “doomsday clock” was at one minute to midnight!  The world was on the edge, at the height of the nuclear weapons annihalation threat.  In trying to convey the enormity of the nuclear age,  Caldicott speaks eloquently of her difficulty, as a pediatrician, in telling parents that their child had a terminal illness, or otherwise poor prognosis.  She felt that she would “question the sanity” of any parent who did not show emotion upon being told such news.

So much of the news we are receiving about the Earth is as serious as any news we’re likely to hear in our lifetime.  Emotion and passion are an absolutely sane response to the Earth’s plight.  Passion is first base for clear, optimistic, practical and, ironically, given the seriousness of the news, joyful decisions about our lives and community.  Emotion then connects us with our higher order human capacities such as empathy, intuition and sense of justice.  This potent mix can then lead to great local social action, planning and pragmatic movement forward.

 
Above all, we have permission to “feel in our hearts” that this is the most correct thing to do.   Historians will review this time, our time and declare it to be the “social turning point” which saved the planet.  The future is now

Deep down, we absolutely know that our culture and  the future must change from being driven by the careening behemoth of Stuff•Dollar•Consumption•More Stuff•Shallowness.  Of course jobs, the economy, things and maybe even a tiny bit of special stuff, will be a part of that future.  However, the extent to which they are shaped by ecological sustainability, will be the extent to which we can “live” with them.

 
This new economy, society and culture are already shaping up to be sublime and exciting.  There is so much optimism, so many clever, practical and very real initiatives already underway!  They promise prosperity and abundance, of the authentic, sustainable variety.  Go google Blessed Unrest, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1fiubmOqH4) BioMimicry and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.