Paul Simon re EO Wilson’s Half-Earth | Paradise Guardian or Destroyer? Our Choice

“Esteemed naturalist and biologist E.O. Wilson and co-founder of the Half-Earth Project appeared at the 2021 Global Live Concert at Central Park, NY as the guest of legendary singer-songwriter Paul Simon

Simon, who is also a Member of the Board of Directors of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, also performed at the Global Live Concert, a 24-hour live event broadcast across six continents, features activists and internationally recognized musicians in a global event to unite the world, defend the planet and defeat poverty.”

Yes, we actually live in a potential paradise, but our heads are submerged in an oil slick; worshipping the military industrialized, oil-driven processes that dominate our natural world. Running the machinery of BIG agriculture, fishing, animal livestock, combustion engines, lawn mowers, blowers…all lubricate our idolatry of objectifying and wishing to dominate everything. Banks and Big business love our mass consumerism. We are completely disconnected from one another and from the natural world. In the meantime, we compete and compare and continue to manufacture and build with full negligence – disinterest about what we’re destroying and the species that we’re wiping off the face of the planet – in our anthropocentric process for our own convenience.

We could stop being wage-slaves and servants to an economy run by a government bribed and beholden to lobbyists of the Oiligarchy, Big Pharma, Insurance, Defense…We could stop deluding ourselves that anything is going to change, as long as the GDP eclipses the value of life – regardless of its cost to the lives of other living creatures. Presently, the Democrats are already fumbling on their promises. Follow the money.

We could start caring and sharing information and working together in our communities to conserve and own our own resources in shared commons. We could act together, to change our destructive patterns and engage with each other and the natural world, rather than incessantly trying to control and wipe out nature in oblivious distraction. We can instead focus on being guardians and protectors of our planet and wild places. 

Guarding Half-Earth (half of the most biodiverse regions of the earth and seas) to ensure the survival of species who are increasingly threatened, will only happen when all of us get involved. We are of the earth. We need to value it for what it is, alive, respect it and take actions together through love and appreciation for the wonders of the world and each living species. 

The only way. is to step away from the Me First, My Country First, My Town First, My Team First, White People First mentality; when we genuinely let these Barriers and Walls fall.  We can create a culture rich in spirituality and meaning through being our best selves and having full care, to insure that all people exist together in harmony together with all other life forms. We can extend our own individual power and hearts, as we extend ourselves beyond our own immediate families and our front doors. 

I believe that the patriotic cries of ‘America First’ are a demonstration of complete insanity, and the religious right are the most beguiled (as the concept is irreverently non-Christian). Just as well if they reject vaccines and their population numbers decline. The misguided, who value Dumph and think he is a savior on the working man’s side, are fully deluded by the far-right narratives pumping out fear and hate-driven disinformation.

Robert Reich wrote on 8/31/21 to MoveOn Members:

“Erik Prince, a private military contractor (and Betsy DeVos’s brother), was just caught charging Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban $6,500 a seat for flights out of the country. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned his despicable actions, saying, “I don’t think any human being who has a heart and soul would support efforts to profit off of people’s agony and pain.” And she’s right. While the war in Afghanistan was a disastrous failure on many fronts, for weapons manufacturers and other warmongering corporations—many of which wield massive influence over U.S. foreign policy—it was an extraordinarily profitable success.”

Tom Dispatch: William Astore Military Strength is Our National Religion

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/20/2053311/-Tomgram-William-Astore-A-Bright-Future-for-Weapons-and-War

Promises of ‘jobs’, and elevating the ‘economy’ to the primary purpose of life and its value, without any consideration of the affect on the natural world, is a hoax. How do you measure the worth of Paradise? This capitalism-based economy, with its requisite need to continually manufacture more and more and continually bent towards making quarterly profits, is not sustainable in a finite world. We are slaves to Big Business Robber Barons who have bought out our collective psyches, precisely what the Oiligarchy wants. We are fucked, unless some charismatic figure who is aware and genuinely heartful , appears, who can powerfully engage the populace and convince us emotionally, to begin together taking a new path. Global warming, mass extinction, mass violence, mass addiction and mass immigration, is not a hoax. Those profiting from our incognizance of what to prioritize in our short and unique time spent on this earth, don’t want you to be conscious of the fact that if we, the people, demonstrably act in unison to take back our lives and devote our time to resuscitating the Natural World, we will have a peaceful, loving, connected paradise of clean air, water, nutritious soil….once we’ve cut the source of the poisons out of the equation.

 Hafez (حافظ, Ḥāfeẓ, ‘the memorizer; the (safe) keeper’; 1315-1390) and as “Hafiz”, was a Persian poet whose collected works are regarded by many Iranians as a pinnacle of Persian literature. 

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition

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Systemic Failure of Consumer-driven Corporate Capitalism births a New Economy

“This economic revolution isn’t being consciously driven, yet, however it’s an option that could prevail”, says Gar Alperovitz. It is spawning and evolving from the discontent and pains that our current system and its failures and lack of alternatives, is giving birth to. We’re at the pre-history, of something quite historic!

I sat among the choir. A note about Annie Leonard speaking in Baltimore, an environmental activist whose Story of Stuff first sparked my attention, arrived in my inbox. We attended the “People and Planet First” IPS conference to educate ourselves, exchange information and spread the word. It was hosted at the University of Baltimore, September 19th, 2015. The final session was moderated by ‘Institute for Policy Studies’ Director, John Cavanagh.

The conference looked at our current challenges from a wider perspective; seeing the various systemic problems ensuing from our current corporate capitalism model, as quite interdependent. The environmental problems of mass extinction, pollution and rising carbon dioxide levels along with the social problems of inequality and injustice, are all tied to the current economic model; which maintains and concentrates its wealth by funneling it back to the source (the 1%), instead of redistributing wealth and power (and empowerment) among the citizens and the community. And spoke of an emerging business model from community gardens, composting, water run-off and waste management to setting up local business alliances, local banks, farmer cooperatives and student civic actions that join the local alliances to promote investments in local businesses.

Annie Leonard, US Greenpeace director of ‘Story of Stuff’ fame, presented her more recent informational video “Story of Solutions”. It points to the fact that we need to completely step out of what is driving the capitalism machine of quantity, to an entirely different game which seeks quality of life – equality and freedom for people and quality of life for all creation. A model beyond merely consumption.

Historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz presented his ideas amassed in the preparation for his latest book, “What Then Must We Do by Gar Alperovitz?”, talking of alternatives to Corporate Capitalism and Socialism, as clearly the American empire is in decay. On almost every indicator, there’s a deeper trend over the past decades which reveals that there’s a systemic crisis in the United States. The systemic design that we’ve lived with for a long time, in which corporations control the capital, reveal that the surplus is not being returned to benefit the communities and the people, but siphoned off to make the 1% who are the owners, more and more wealthy. This trend of increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, of increasing inequality, increasing sickness within populations due to pollutants, decreasing prosperity among the 99%.

Corporate Capitalism and the American Empire as we know it, is giving birth to something new, which innovative Americans are creating all over the country. Gar Alperovitz mentions that this certainly isn’t anything the media is covering. In fact, many don’t believe that alternatives exist, until they see examples of what other groups and communities have accomplished. “Often we don’t know what our neighbors are doing”, says Gar. “Systems typically revolve around ‘who has control of the wealth’. The rule of royalty in the feudalism of the middle ages, in the present day manifests itself as ‘Corporate Capitalism’, of which the extreme is fascism, control by authoritarian rule.”

Sometimes noisily, but often times quietly, communities around the country – of which Maryland is an example of being ahead of the wave – are transforming our culture by decentralizing ownership. By democratizing the wealth through becoming owners of their own goods and services, they are able to maintain a number of things; circulating surplus back into their own operations and communities (rather than it being syphoned off to the 1%), empowering themselves, making conscious decisions to ensure that all aspects of operations have the lightest ecological footprint possible and generating freedom through participation in ownership and production and wealth.

We currently have a system of enormous waste, in which we continue to manufacture and create more stuff, because that is a NEED embedded in capitalism. Capitalism must produce more, to ensure profit.

Examples of alternatives are in cooperative enterprises, worker-owned companies, credit unions, 25% of American electricity is socialist in structure, social enterprises like CREDO (using profits for social and political purposes), neighborhood corporations, land-trusts that are socialized (to control land inflation and gentrification).

Following examples of success such as Mondragón in the Basque region of Spain. Mondragon Corporation networked democratized ownership where capital is being decentralized to empower and enrich the communities by circulating surplus back into local communities. Consciously making decisions to connect to all other suppliers and parts connected to the whole system, with conscientious efforts to localize and work within a ‘green’ system. It is just the beginning.

I apologize for any grammatical errors or gaps in information, however I must now leave to hitch to Washington D.C. to attend the People for Climate Justice Climate Rally in Washington D.C., coinciding with Pope Francis’ delivering his tenets of wisdom to the White House.