About
I look around and everything just seems wrong. This hasn't been a sudden realisation, more a developing awareness of all that is around me. Everywhere I turn I keep saying the same thing "this isn't right."Perhaps it's an age thing, the simple equation that more time spent on this earth equals more knowledge gained. All I know is that I have this feeling that we're being cheated, I'm angry, sad, disillusioned and bewildered that things are the way they are. That's really been the foundation for where I find myself today. I'm an ex-teacher, chewed up and spat out by the system even though I was very good at what I did. Now, after some time spent around the block of life, I'm embarking on the scariest of the scariest ... a career change. Soon I embark on an MSc in Sustainability & Adaptation and this blog will serve as my storage space for ideas, information and inspiration. If you are reading this dear reader, I welcome you and invite you to stay tuned and see where this might lead. As someone from a humanities background jumping the fence into the enemy territory of the sciences, I'm wondering if I might bring something new to the table?
I've reached this point because, like most of us, I desire to work in an area that interests me and to hopefully make a difference in this world. Right now there is nothing more important to me than learning how to live here on planet Earth in the best possible way I can. To achieve this goal I have found myself wandering in the pastures of yoga, meditation, hiking, permaculture and sustainability. Each has fascinated me and as every day passes I feel myself growing spiritually and intellectually. Really, that's just academic speak for "this feels good ... this feels right!" It's this growing awareness that has made me realise that this isn't a fluke, or something specific to me. The knowledge, skills and awareness I'm developing are making me feel this way because they are inherently good. There is no darkside to these areas, just positivity. They are roads that lead to an awareness that we (humans, animals and nature) are all connected. One cannot be healthy and thrive if it is using and exploiting the other to do so. This seems such a simple realisation so why does it feel like an epithany? Why isn't it happening in abundance and why is it the last thing we seem to be doing here?
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number;
fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the
birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the
ground." (Genesis 1:28)
I've never been religious but I found myself reading Genesis while sitting in a dentists waiting room. And if there is anything more scarier than waiting to have a drill in your mouth, it is the steady realisation that this very book might be the beginning of our end, and yes, I can see the irony in that too. Here we have on the very first page of the most widely read book in history, a statement that I feel could explain why we as a species act the way we do. We humans are amazingly proficient in increasing our number and ruthless in our exploitation (dominion) over every creature and our subjugation of the planet. In other words, we have done exactly what god asked us to do, and we did it well. So why is the planet f**ked? Is it because there is no god? Is it because we have somehow misinterpreted the message? We will all answer differently to those questions but the fact remains that subjugating the planet, dominating it's inhabitants and multiplying exponentially hasn't exactly worked out to plan. As the right honorable Bill Hicks once said "lets sort out this food air deal."
I personaly think we got it wrong the very moment we fooled ourselves into believing we are special. Call it a god complex if you will. Whether we see ourselves as the chosen ones, or as god manifest, we made a huge error. We removed ourselves from nature and then tried to control it. Inadvertedly we have become both a cancer and a virus, exceptionally ruthless in our execution of killing our host. And we show no signs of stopping.
That's a pretty bleak outlook I know. But it does highlight the resounding problems of our time. Either there are too many people on the planet, or our systems for sustaining life are wrong, or both. As it would be pretty terrible to enact a population cull I tend to focus on the systems we use. That is where real change is possible. And this will be the focus of this blog from here on in. How can we modify what we already have to make it more sustainable, efficient and in harmony with nature? If we can achieve those goals we will radically alter our impact on the planet, more than likely live a better existence and hopefully make the world a better place for each and every one of us.
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