A Theory of Diminishing Consumption

I have observed that as the content of ordinary things reduces so does our consumption of those things. Clearly, except for many of the 1%, it holds as the jelly or nut butter get closer to the bottom of the jar, and as the ice cream nears the bottom of the container. But what interrupts that process is almost complete denial that some things–things we can’t readily see or notice–are diminishing, like fossil fuel, and clean air, and potable water, and the ozone layer, and ice at the north and south poles, and fish. This unwillingness to face reality has led to a plethora of problems of which we are all aware but many do not want to make the hard choices to find sustainable solutions. So we continue to use resources unabated, even when the planet shows obvious signs of abuse and degradation. Reactionary elements disdain scientific evidence and extoll folklore and fundamentalist religion. For example, in Louisiana, schools are required to present an alternative theory of evolution which asserts that 5,700 years ago an aging deity created the heavens and earth and all life on it in six days. Eventually, God didn’t like his handiwork and sent a flood to drown everyone except 600-year old Noah and his family and two of every species on Earth, including microbes. Somehow, Noah forgot the dinosaurs…

Yes, it’s true. They really are required to state all this in Louisiana’s schools, giving it equal billing to evolutionary theory, which is based on everything we know about biology. This is a very weird country indeed. Believers in this theory are called

The Golden Rule

I am struggling with my second cold in as many months, and I am not a happy camper. It is beautiful outside, yet my energy level comes nowhere near the elemental energies calling me. The time has just changed and with it the functional arising of fall. The leaves are braced against the cinnamon dusk sky, full of clouds that hold the remaining light of the day as if were an infant pressed against its mother’s bosom. There was an early morning rain that doused the trees and brush by our creek, Brush Creek, leaving a moist patina on the pathway we now walk. A quick twenty minutes at day’s end, we agree to. Despite my cold I march along trying to match Ruth’s pace. My body sweats, a good thing, but, of course, I worry about worsening my illness. Chalk it up to my Jewish upbringing when the matriarchs would feel my head with their head or their hand, pronouncing me well, or, more often, feverish. Oi vey, and it’s off to bed with me, too sick to play, yet not sick enough to watch TV. I would miss school, yes, but what good was it? I couldn’t go out and join my friends. The good old days? No. These, this day, is much better. Even with a cold I could go out and play.

The trees in the neighborhood were in fabulous fall array, even now in December. On the east coast, they’d be brown by now, beaten down by cold and storm and wind, stripped of their party dresses, and made all muddy by November and her nasty manners. There was no salvation in this month, no gentleness, no subtlety to its harsh message: Winter is nigh. Stock the shelves. Gather wood. Chop it and stack. Dig out the shovels and hats and gloves and boots. Clean the chimney.

In the coastal plains of California, December is more a beauty in her 60s, like the blushing rose of my wife’s cheek rather than in New England, the pasty shriek of a crone. Oh, give me California any day, where my soul can spread out like the Mayten tree whose leaves hang like cormorant wings in the breeze. Oh, give me California where the ocean stretches out like a silver bedspread, bejeweled and bedecked with the creases and crevices of a master quilt. Oh, give me California where a human being can be outside just about every day, facing the elements not with fear but with anticipation. Oh, give me California where the great Redwood stands as living history for all to touch and feel and learn from.

It is Christmas Day. The sun is bright and constant. The temperature is rising. The world is warming, I know, but on this day I take respite in considering that bleak fact. I reflect back to a year of pain and facing the pain, to a year of fear and facing the fear, to a year of beginning to see a world of injustice unravel in protest that collectively said. “We want freedom.”

I think of the one law which will change this world now and forever: the one law which will change the way human beings relate to their world with justice, compassion, freedom, wisdom, consciousness, and love. That law is simply this: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Nothing else is needed. Others include the planet itself, animal, vegetable, and mineral. The Golden Rule is the only law we need to heal this Earth we all share. The practice of that rule would bring about a revolution in consciousness on personal and national levels. We need that revolution desperately.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah on this Sunday in December 2011. May you all live in peace and kindness, love and consciousness, care and consideration of others.

River of Life

From the air, of all the features on the ground, it is the river we see first. Not roads or ranches or restaurants, but the river, wild and snaking along gravity’s lowest flow. We often lose sight of the river when we travel on the ground. Roads bully their way through the shortest route between two points. You miss much of the river so you have to get out of the car to really see it, to touch it, and feel its bank with your feet. The essence of the river cannot be glimpsed: It must be experienced, first hand, first foot, first eye, first soul, first spirit.  You must speak with the river as you would a friend, face-to-face, belly-to-belly. You cannot email the river.

Ideally, you must float on the river as the ancients did the Petaluma: in Tule reed boats and rafts. Every day, they rode the river and felt its silky surface, studied its ways, and knew its every inhabitant and plant. The villager didn’t ask the fisherman, “How was the river today?” There was no need to ask such a question. The answer lay near the surface of her consciousness. She knew the answer as she knew how to breathe. She knew the answer as she knew when spring had arrived.  She knew the answer as she knew the nape of her husband’s neck.  The river was a source of their sustenance—full, clean, cold, ripe.  The fish he offered for dinner were a blessing from the earth, from the abundant waters.

After the Native Americans were gone, the Petaluma River became, for years, almost solely an avenue for commerce. But now, local people see it again for what it is: a river of life and spirit that needs to be seen, needs to be experienced, needs to be treasured and loved.

Our Walking Ancestors

The latest  research shows that one of the earliest ancestors of humans descended from trees and walked upright. A foot bone, some 3 million years old was found that indicates this ancestor, Australopithecus afarensis, had feet similar to modern human beings. The bone was discovered in Ethiopia, and even predates Lucy, her footprint and bones showing that our early ancestors came down from the trees and walked upright. No foot bones were found with Lucy’s fossils though, which left a gaping hole in the history of walking and how it defined humanness. Now scientists know that Lucy and her ancestors “were fully humanlike and committed to life on the ground,” said Carol Ward, a professor of integrative anatomy at the University of Missouri, who was part of the team that discovered the fossil. The foot bone shows their feet were arched distinguishing them from apes whose feet are flexible to be able to live in trees.”Now that we know Lucy and her relatives had arches in their feet, this affects much of what we know about them, from where they lived to what they ate and how they avoided predators.” The development of arched feet, Dr. Ward continued in an interview with the Associated Press, “was a fundamental shift toward the human condition, because it gives you the ability to use the big toe for grasping branches, signaling that our ancestors had finally abandoned life in the trees in favor of life on the ground.”

Walking then was the first characteristic to define what it means to be human, something you may want to

I’m Just Saying…

So, if we need jobs and people don’t have the money to buy things or services, then why would a company, restaurant, computer firm , create jobs? If the demand is not there, then there is no incentive to create jobs. Now the government needs money to create jobs, fix bridges, build roads, protect it’s citizens, so it makes sense to raise some taxes to pay for these things. But the people are like adolescents saying  I want this and that, and Oh, don’t take away that, no not that, but don’t want to pay for that and this that they can’t do without. So the Tea Party people say cut, cut, and cut some more, until we have no basic protections ala police and fire, social security and Medicare, homeland security, regulatory agencies to protect us against E coli and smokestacks and stuff. They don’t even want crazy subsidies or loopholes cut for fear it’ll look like a tax increase even though it brings in much needed income to government coffers from people or companies who can afford it. Even Warren Buffett said his income tax rate is less than his secretary’s! They want “small” government to leave them alone until they want or need something like FEMA, for example, and then want government to come in and fix it without any resources or manpower to do so. Are you following me so far?

Now as a mental health professional for the past 40 years, I would diagnose this as a country suffering from borderline personality disorder.  It’s teetering on the borderline of psychosis and neurosis, and can be a real pain in the ass at times. Manipulative. Contrary. Demanding. Irrational. Even suicidal, but only to get attention. Hard to have a conversation with because some of us know they’re right even though they know their ideas have been wrong in the past, like small government and trickle down economics that didn’t work in the 20^th century and are more wrong in the 21^st.

The answer then, as the economy continues to feebly recover, is for everyone to share the burden and raise one of the lowest tax rates in the world to a level that will help us increase production and create jobs to do so. It’s the only reason a business will take the chance and create jobs: to increase production to meet increased demand. It’s not that difficult. We can do this, but only if we agree to increased taxes and fees in this time of economic world war. And not to worry: It’s not permanent. When the engines of industry get rolling again and jobs are abundant, taxes and fees can be lowered to more palatable rates. Or a whole new tax code can be developed, much fairer and efficient than the current one. Retired Republican Senator Alan Simpson, from conservative Wyoming, said just this the other day.

So let’s grow up, America. We’ve bitten the bullet before and we need to it again. Shame on Tea Party legislators for their adolescent (almost unpatriotic) ways.

And what about the environment? Are we facing reality? Have we acknowledged that the planet, our home planet, is on the verge of collapse? Can we not see the polar ice cap melting? Can we not see Antarctica ice shelves cracking and raising sea levels around the world? Can we not see the disappearance of food fish, other marine life, and the trashing of our life-giving oceans? Can we not see glaciers disappearing in a matter of 50 years? Can we not see the effects of using fossil fuels? And what are we doing about these and other threats to Planet Earth? How about spending millions on NASA’s Killer Asteroid Project? Sorry, but we’re already killing the planet with our addictive ways and ignorant decisions. Other more advanced civilizations light years away must be shocked by our primitive approach to living on this precious planet.

Again, grow up, America, and do what needs to be done. With guts and brains and heart and soul, we can be an shining example for the rest of the world, as perhaps our Founders intended. Happy Fourth!

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 14 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 139 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 66mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was March 1st with 79 views. The most popular post that day

A New Year’s Message…and Plea

Latest research shows that present day humans are between one and four percent Neanderthal. Seems like there was some interbreeding going on in the Middle East between very early (Neanderthal) and later (Cro-Magnon) beings moving out of Africa, a critical fact recently uncovered. I say beings because these species were not fully human, in that their consciousness was not fully developed. They lacked traits that make us human, like compassion, empathy, emotinal sensitivity, love, cognitive reasoning, understanding, and a full language set. Early theories had Neanderthals going extinct before there was any contact with Cro-Magnons. That means since Cro-Magnons were a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens (that’s us), we have some Neanderthal in our gene pool. The Neanderthal was a brutish, muscular fellow, with little or no language, who resorted to cannibalism and stripping the skin off the nearby dead, who lived in caves and hunted the mammoth with very sharp stone spears. He had fire, and could control it to a degree, and there is limited evidence that he lived within nuclear families. His lifespan was about 30 years. His torso was that of a present-day weight lifter, with powerful arms that hung down close to his kness. He was a dull witted fellow but there is evidence that he traded with others. And now we think that he interbred with genetically more advanced species in the Middle East before the Neanderthals went west to Europe and another group east to Asia. So to have Neanderthal genes might explain a certain coarseness, a certain predatory instinct, and

Of Bears and Salmon and Lake Tahoe

Did you know that landlocked Kokanee salmon spawn up a creek at Lake Tahoe after spending most of their lives feeding in the freshwater lake? I didn’t until we happened upon a crowd we thought had stopped to see the bright October foliage. Below us the creek was red with salmon, vying for spawning ground, some within an arms reach away. And a short way up the creek was a cinnamon colored black bear gorging herself on the fish (a fairly rare occurence since these bears are mostly vegetarians), while her cub hid in the brush, somewhat afraid of all the human activity near her mama. It was one of those wildlife events

Whales and Other Miracles

I was watching whales from my perch at Bodega Head the other day, and thinking that we may well be the only planet in the universe that supports advanced life. There may be bacteria elsewhere but the kind of abundance that we have may be unique. I was also thinking that I suspect angels exist in the universe and that they keep a close eye on the show. The idea of one old bearded guy at the top would imply a monarchy and how could this amazing universe be run by a monarch–and sometimes a not so benevolent monarch. It has to be a democratic process, for democracy encourages diversity and, if nothing else, diversity rules. Angels. Why not? An entire universe manifested out of the Big Bang. Why not angels? I’m not talking about women with wings,

The Mother of All Wildflowers: Found!

Ruth and I had been searching for ten years, as long as we’ve known each other, for this flower. Every year we would investigate the internet and guide books and talk to people who seemed like they’d know about such things. We would go on distant excursions–to Oregon’s Cascade Range, to a forest area above Mendocino, to Yosemite. We went to the wildflower show in Oakland to see a wild cutting hoping its aura would rub off on our psyches and guide us in our incessant search. Personally, I never thought we’d find it in this lifetime. I’d given up ever finding a Washington Lily, aka Shasta Lily, aka Cascade Lily, in the wild. Well, last weekend, we not only found one, but 20 some plants, near Lake Tahoe.

Ruth was the first to see it, upright and elegant in a forest clearing that