A Trip to the Mall

Eco-fiction by Jan Spencer

"My fellow Americans, I come to you this evening with a message that is simple and of great historical importance. As you all know, we are experiencing rapid changes in the world and at home. We are tracking events as well as we can at the Federal level.

"You elected me to be your leader five years ago on a platform to contain these changes, to keep the price of food reasonable, to insure supplies of gasoline, to maintain order and our prosperous way of life

"To be honest is critical at this time. We have failed in our promises. We have failed to understand and respond to global forces beyond our control. Admittedly, there were voices warning of these kinds of circumstances. We didn't listen very well. In hindsight, if we had made better choices and policies thirty, forty, even fifty years ago, much of this could have been avoided. Truthfully, the premise of an entire culture structured around buying, selling, and consuming to the degree we did--and leading the world to do the same--was a mistake."

Hundreds of millions, likely billions of people all over the world were tuned in on radio, TV, internet. What we were hearing was as definitive a political/historical declaration as had ever happened in history. An entire era of human experience was asking for forgiveness. An entire era was honestly being described, from the apex of the structure that promoted it for so long, as being a massive, misguided, mismanaged mistake.

I had an ironic sense of satisfaction. But somehow "I told you so" didn't seem to fit. Many listeners had already known the score, but after this speech no one was in doubt. The changes that had been happening at an alarming and accelerating rate since the 1960s up until the year of the Proclamation, 2013, were finally officially recognized.

"So my fellow Americans, we must adjust as we can. My advisors have crafted a set of recommendations.

"First, the Federal Government will do all it can to be of service. As you are well aware, our resources are limited. Still, we are here to advise and mediate as well as we can. We can best act as a source of information and advice.

"After months of debate, review, and analysis, we have come to the conclusion that the States can best respond to their own needs for management, policy, and decision-making. The Federal Government will continue to help provide for the common defense and to coordinate communications. We ask the States to contribute to maintaining a useful central structure. All other responsibilities and functions of government are to be transferred as smoothly and rapidly as possible to the States. We strongly urge the States to work together in a spirit of cooperation and trust for the well-being of their people."

* * *

We were approaching the Tenth Anniversary of the Proclamation. A lot had happened since 2013. Who would have believed these changes? Finally, we were starting to resemble the "sustainable future" I had imagined thirty years before. I looked around my living space. The dome was fifteen feet high, thirty feet in diameter. There was plenty of ventilation for summertime and those warmer spring and fall days. That had been good planning, since our average annual temperatures had risen over the past twenty-five years by nearly four degrees.

Even now, we still had those occasional wet spells in the winter. The dome was a great place to be dry but still be near the outside. It was the focal point of four houses. Inside, we had a small fish pond, several dwarf citrus trees, stone walkways, and herb beds. Fences had been removed and the dome was located on what had been parts of four different properties. This was Riverside Coop.

My friend Paul stuck his head through the open doorway.

"There's a combined neighborhood meeting at the Mall today. We need to talk about the parking lot conversion, security out East, and remodeling the inside of the Mall. You know, people are worn out with cutting up acres of asphalt. Anyway, I'm leaving. Will you meet me at the bike barn?"
"Sure, see you there in a few minutes."

Our coop made a lot of sense. It was more economical than living alone, and had an extended-family feeling. We generated all of our own electricity and were off the grid. We used composting biogas toilets--units that had been controversial, but were now required. They provided gas for cooking and compost for raising veggies while using very little water.

Eugene's population was nearly 175,000 now. The Willamette Valley had adapted to the changes comparatively well. Portland remained the center of economic activity in Oregon. Many changes were happening as transportation patterns and trade continued to adjust to a very different reality. Who could have thought that the Soviet Union was so fragile and would disintegrate along with all its associates back in the 1980s? In its own way, the United States and the economic system that was its gift to the world experienced a similar shocking rearrangement. Many, especially after the Proclamation, still referred to the United States as the US, but the US now stood for the Untied States.

Just what events caused this historic change? Much of the country had suffered and still suffered tremendously. Ecological and economic refugees numbered in the tens of millions. The breakdowns that many warned of came to pass in a fashion no one could have predicted exactly, but containing elements that many foresaw.

The shift began to accelerate in the late twentieth century. Global warming, once labeled "irresponsible science and scare-mongering," soon inspired top level damage control policies. Seven of the warmest years on record had occurred in the 1990s. Some were blamed on El Nino, but where did El Nino come from? The changes in global climates wrought havoc with agriculture, causing the world's combined grain output to fall by fifteen percent from 2002 to 2010.

Oblivious to the trends, China and much of the developing world continued with their economic expansion. Their policies favoring industrial and urban development at the expense of agriculture turned out to be unfortunate choices. Dropping water tables, salinized irrigation, and resource-intensive changes in diet all combined to make them ever more dependent on food imports.

When the droughts became increasingly frequent from the '90s into the new century, the global price of grain rose to levels unaffordable in many countries, if the grain was available at all. Food riots became the norm all over the world, even in wealthy countries. Regional wars broke out over access to water. Famine of epic proportions left a toll of tens, then hundreds of millions. Foreign markets, upon which the global economy depended, collapsed. Starving people don't make good customers. A global restructuring based on regional and local needs became the order of the day. In the United States, the primary effect was drastic rises in food costs. As a result, backyard gardens proliferated. Diets changed dramatically. Meat became an item beyond the reach of many who had taken it for granted their entire lives. Black market home-processed meat killed thousands through food poisoning. Unprecedented increases in energy costs and erratic supply affected everyone.

* * *
It was three o'clock. I needed to make it over to the mall. At 75, I was still up and active. I had agreed to meet Paul at the bike corral.

Riverside Coop had its own bike shed. Our twenty-five members shared a typical assortment of bikes and trailers. There were three wheelers for odd loads, recumbents, bikes for two or three people. We even had a covered quad: two bikes for two forming a square with storage and a canvas top for wet weather. Eugene was really lucky for its local bike industry. Now bicycles were an important part of trade with towns all along the west coast.

"Hey Paul, let's go!"

The ride through the neighborhood was a joy. It was something like Village Homes in Davis, California thirty years before--highly vegetated with food plants as landscaping. Our neighborhood, Whiteaker, had begun removing driveways and backyard fences fifteen years before, the first area of Eugene to make those changes. Most people in our neighborhood were living in some type of cooperative. The cost of living was just too high for one or two people to be the sole occupants of what used to be a medium-sized three-bedroom house.

Some coops were created purely out of economic necessity; others formed for a variety of social, spiritual, or personal reasons. Coops with similar interests forged coop associations, and groups with years of experience acted as mentors for newer groups. The need to share resources and avoid costly duplication affected nearly everyone. After all, with a loaf of bread costing four times in real terms what it did at the turn of the century and a bicycle tire six times, major adjustments were called for.

Our street had its own small community center with day care, wood shop, small library, tea house, and food pickup. The local electric shuttle stopped there. One could go all over Eugene and Springfield on the shuttle, just like the trolley 80 years before. Cars were no longer accommodated in this part of town.

Other neighborhoods adjusted as they were able. Some of the "country club" areas had converted golf courses into community gardens. Some were even reshaping their neighborhoods like Whiteaker. The old strip malls and shopping centers were being converted into parks and new housing, their parking lots removed. In the central part of Eugene, additional residential floors were added to one and two story buildings. Streets were also narrowed, since few cars remained. Most people used the shuttle or bikes, sharing the roadways with a modest number of small electric cars similar to golf carts.

Some neighborhoods were not so able to transform. People living in the surrounding hills became local immigrants. Without ready access to cheap and available gasoline, few were able to maintain living up there. One enterprising fellow constructed something like a ski lift to transport residents up the hill. From there, they would coast by bike or a "soap box derby" to their homes. It worked for a while but broke down and without spare parts fell into disuse. His former clients moved elsewhere.

New housing became necessary in the flatter areas of town. The abandoned hillside areas became known as "Hillside Lumber and Hardware." Eugene boasted a new, growing industry, salvaging the hill houses and reusing them in more accessible locations.

* * *
"Hey Paul, check out the kids!"

We were riding through the nearby gardens. School children paraded by in colorful costumes. Small rituals like this were becoming increasingly common. Education, now much more holistic, emphasized the value of Nature. This class of second graders was learning about where their food came from.

Attitudes and approaches to children and infants--who had been neglected for decades in the last half of the twentieth century--had changed a great deal. Mothers and fathers spent far more time with their children, and community, coop, and family helped with child care as well. Changes in lifestyle and values meant far more nurturing and attention for kids.

All along the river were gardens. This area had been a peach orchard in the '50s, used for dumping construction debris in the '70s, reclaimed as a park in the '80s, and now was an essential part of Eugene's urban agriculture. Individuals, coops, and businesses rented plots. Some of the harvest was donated to people unable to garden. Windmills pumped water up from the Willamette even as far as the former golf courses over a mile away.

Locally produced food comprised the majority of our diets now. The former grass seed farms up and down the Valley now grew wheat, corn, flax, and hemp. The Willamette Valley had proved to be far more able to adapt to the changes than practically any other part of the country.

Riding through the urban gardens reminded me of just how essential local food production had become. Several geothermally heated greenhouses in Eugene also now supplied food in the winter. Still, wintertime diets had become a bit simpler than in the days of cheap, readily-available California citrus. But that was already showing signs of changing. Several people had left potted oranges out all winter for several years in a row without damage. I had even seen a few local satsumas for sale at the farmers' market. What was next, papayas?

* * *
"Look at that parking lot, I haven't seen it for months!" Paul was amazed. The Mall Project was an ambitious plan to remove the pavement of the parking lot, convert the recovered land to food production and housing, and create multi-use interior space. Several schools, a community center, small manufacturing and food value-added businesses were planned. Whiteaker, River Road, and Spyglass Neighborhoods were working on this project.

The Mall's parking lot was a scene in transition. Areas closest to the River had been reclaimed first, several years earlier. Four acres were already "cleared" and producing vigorous crops. Ironically, thirty years under pavement had safeguarded the soil's fertility and protected it from ambient contamination. With several years of work, this was once again prime land for crops.

The parking lot project was the inverse of typical roadwork. Human power did most of the work, but this was one of the few places good old fashioned gasoline was also used. Machines manufactured in Portland cut the pavement into manageable chunks. We grew food in exchange for tools we could not produce ourselves. The work was hard. Today's meeting would consider increasing the number of credits for doing this work, making it more attractive. Vast acres remained to be liberated both at the Mall and all over town.

Ten years before, city policy had come around completely. Even those who, for the previous ten years, could not accept what was happening, were now totally on board. Reports from around the country and the world, combined with the local effects of the changes, left no room for doubt. The Proclamation was the icing on the cake. The community had to respond at all levels. The City now helped to coordinate this type of plan.

Inside, the scene was surreal. Remnants of the consumer culture remained, mingling with the Mall's makeover. A store filled with obsolete home appliances from the earlier part of the century sat across from a business offering low-tech alternatives to practically everything in the appliance store. A popular idea was to assemble various artifacts from the previous era still found at the Mall and create a museum.In what used to be a jewelry store, the meeting was about to begin.

* * *
"Meeting coming to order, places everyone. We have an agenda so let's get started."

Another meeting, I thought. It reminded me of all those meetings going back ten, twenty, thirty years before. Many of the networks, public educational events, and resources developed then were of great value now. Practically all of the ideas we had advocated thirty years before had been given lip service or ignored at the time. Even when most people had indicated support, those in control had been slow to accept change. Now, so many of those ideas were a part of everyday life. Cars were used by only a few, trucks for special needs. Smaller political units like neighborhoods were far more powerful and effective than larger ones. People lived much closer to work and play. Old complaints at times became new opportunities. The Mall Project was Eugene's most ambitious conversion plan yet for a single building complex. It would be a model incorporating community control and intelligent use of resources.

The meeting was in session.

A representative from Spyglass, a former stockbroker, was speaking. "We are behind in the five year plan. If we intend to remove ninety-five percent of the parking lot in two years, we need to pick up the pace. Agriculture is one of our most important commodities of exchange. The parking lot conversion deserves greater attention. It is very important to our plans."

To acquire the manufactured goods we needed, we had to grow food. We traded mostly with Portland, Salem, on occasion Seattle and even San Francisco. Frequently, trade meant barter. An entire new industry was developing, that of Transaction Facilitation. These were businesses that negotiated and managed barter transactions. Some were honest, some were not.

Portland was the most important city in Oregon. The solar and wind industries had taken off in the years after 2000. The timing was perfect. Since then, new policies and incentives encouraged off-grid electricity. Bonneville Power was decreasingly able to produce. A number of generators were already out of use, the huge dams in decline. Several key large users continued to receive dam-generated electricity--ironically, several of them photovoltaic factories.

Efforts to upgrade and encourage rail were paying off tremendously now, especially the switch to electric trains. Rail was vitalãthe primary means of transport for people and goods from Vancouver to San Francisco. Part of Seattle's once famous aerospace industry now produced electric locomotives.

Trains were so important that towns prospered or declined depending upon their access or lack of access to trains. Nodal development on a regional scale was a direct result of where the train was located. Meanwhile, the Interstate Corridor was well into decline. Though much of it remained usable, it was little used, because of limited resources. The massive amounts of money and materials that had gone into automobile infrastructure had been a monumentally poor choice. So much of that infrastructure was now either useless or in the way.

The meeting continued. Also under discussion was the ongoing mall conversion. The desired outcome was for the mall to become almost like a new town with new housing and farming replacing what was still parking lot. New business, manufacturing, schools, and cultural places were under construction inside.

* * *
With that part of the agenda finished, we moved on to defense. Whiteaker, River Road, and Spyglass were now joined by representatives from several other neighborhoods for a discussion about how to better coordinate Eugene's responsibilities towards the maintenance of the Border area.

Closing the border ten years before had been very difficult and was still an uncomfortable topic to talk about. With the deterioration of living conditions practically coast to coast, hundreds of thousands and then millions of people created a new version of westward and at times northward migration.

Some regions of the country had become uninhabitable even before the Proclamation. Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Phoenix, and many other Sun Belt cities had become reservoirs of human suffering and tragedy. The energy and food infrastructures they so depended upon were no longer able to provide even the basics. There was too much heat, not enough water.

By 2010, environmental refugees were flooding the more northerly States. At first, they were welcomed, but that didn't last long. In California, what had been agricultural inspection stations were now updated versions of frontier forts from the wild west. Oregon and Washington had constructed similar defensive positions. Northern California was considering such protection from the South. In accord with the Proclamation of nearly ten years before, States were now behaving as virtual sovereign powers.

The toll of human suffering and disappointment became legendary. Tens of thousands died. Fraud was rampant. Self proclaimed "guides" promised safe passage, even documents to enter Oregon or Washington. Betrayal on the road was a constant possibility. Bandits preyed upon many.

Some people actually made it as far as Eastern Oregon. Attitudes toward these unfortunate refugees were similar to, if not more severe than those once reserved by some towards foreigners coming into the former United States in the late twentieth century. At first, the decision to close the border had been met with widespread opposition. It was delayed several times but as the reality of potential millions making Oregon, Washington, and California their desperate destination, with the stress of already thousands allowed in, there was finally agreement. There was just not enough room to accommodate everyone.

Volunteers from Eugene were part of the Border Defense Militia. The neighborhood militia representatives were discussing how to improve the function of providing for defense. A strictly volunteer force was not adequate. The idea of conscription was very controversial.

Similar regional defenses were common worldwide. Global adjustments took their own forms, particular to local history, geography, and culture. Few people could have imagined how fragile the New World Order would prove to be. Its rise was in inverse proportion to the well-being of the natural world upon which it depended. All over the world, cities built in the desert or cold were abandoned. Ill-conceived industries that employed millions went out of business. Countless opportunities for new goods and services took their place. A new culture, way of life, and economics were in the making.

* * *
One of the most unusual examples of social renewal occurred between the years 2010 to 2012. In quick succession, like giant steroid inflated dominos, professional sports as we knew them came to an end. Resources for lavish new stadiums were memories. Ever fewer fans were able to afford the extortionate prices for tickets. The corporate sponsors were no longer able to pay the cost of advertising. Tires, beer, gasoline, and cars were just not selling.

Marx could not have imagined this. Pro sports had become an anachronism. This icon of alchemy, creating something out of nothing, had withered and died from disinterest and irrelevance, if not ill regard. Tens of millions of ex-fans were left with empty Sunday afternoons. Savvy sociologists in the public interest were quick to recognize the trend and opportunity. Millions of newly available sports refugees were recruited for the public good. It was called "Bubba Power."

In a parallel way, millions of kids left the video game screens. Untold examples of the "Diversion Industry" were fading into history. As an idle pastime, television itself became a relic, its entire corporate message no longer of interest. Its decades-long drone of better living through consuming became ever more visibly at odds with community, healthy individuals, and a healthy environment. The culture that it created no longer listened, had ceased to exist.

Meanwhile, local broadcasting exploded. Each neighborhood had its own micro broadcasting stations. Community TV was an essential resource for helping the public adapt to the changes. Public service became desirable. Millions of people were discovering their own unique talents and potentials. Art and culture became everyday experience.

Eugene benefited immensely. These new volunteers helped remove acres, if not square miles of over-built streets and parking lots. There were massive expansions of urban gardens. Schools and public places were upgraded at an unprecedented rate. Kids had mentors and parents, environmental restoration projects attracted young and old, seniors programs flourished. In fact, many seniors became leaders in this community renaissance.

Pensions and IRAs from earlier times had little value. Many seniors had to work. Most agreed they felt far more fulfilled with community service than with what retirement used to be. Their experience and wisdom were invaluable.

Reflecting on all these changes, I found myself wishing more people, years before, could have realized their capacity to bring them about. So much suffering could have been avoided.

* * *
Paul and I made a quick visit to the rooftop wind farm and started home. It was late afternoon. Dozens of people were out in their gardens. It was a pleasant sight: families, coops, individuals. Some were chatting, some just enjoying the warm late afternoon breeze. We were the lucky ones.

In retrospect, it's hard to imagine why so many were so unable to accept that an entire way of life was at its sunset. Although some people idealized the changes, some of those changes had been brutal. We now had a fortified border with Idaho. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide had perished. Fundamentally, most of us were responding to need and self-interest. But the new opportunities included possibilities for fuller human relationships and experience. Many people were discovering talents and ways to contribute that were truly wonderful. We didn't really have that many choices. Is there virtue in necessity or can necessity create virtue?

At least here along the River, with gardens, windmills, people closer to each other and the source of their needs, I felt a sense of gratitude. We are the lucky ones. I closed my eyes to focus on the gentle sound of the breeze in the leaves. In the distance I heard someone shout they saw a salmon in the river.

Jan Spencer, an activist and resident of Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood, is a volunteer with several public interest groups in Eugene and is also a mural artist. Jan has played a key role in creating the annual Green Eugene celebration. He can be reached at [email protected].

An Ecological Future: How Does It Feel?

Thanks to the generosity of Double Tee Promotions and an employee named Sage, this reporter managed to gain free admittance to a sold-out $45-a-ticket concert at MacArthur Court in Eugene, September 24, after offering to write something about it in Talking Leaves. In this unconventional concert review, I'm going to attempt to answer the obvious but easily neglected question that emerged as I assembled the Music Reviews for this issue: not "What does an ecological future look like?" nor even "What does it sound like?," but "What does it feel like?" This concept may not fly, but please fasten your seatbelts and stay with me to see if or where it crashes. At the very least, I've gotten a great concert experience and a spectacularly flawed essay out of it. Once safely aloft, you are welcome to move around in the cabin, except during periods of turbulence, but please: no smoking.

The object of my musical fascination on this evening was neither the opening act--Lucinda Williams--nor the closing act--Van Morrison--though portions of both of their sets were definitely more than passable. No, it seemed that I and a horde of others had converged on this basketball court/concert hall for one main reason: to see Nobel-prize-in-literature nominee Robert Zimmerman, a.k.a. Bob Dylan, bring his brand of poetry to the stage.

My first observation was that lots of people will pay lots of money to see a living legend. My second observation was that the natural abundance of the universe was also at work: anyone who arrived at the concert site, it seemed, could find a way to get a ticket. I witnessed people with extra tickets giving them away free to total strangers, and I discovered that I myself had been given two free tickets instead of the one I'd requested. Resisting the temptation to sell it and donate the proceeds to the Global Anti-Golfing Society, I kept the flow of abundance going by giving it to another ticketless fan.

Inside the arena, the only serious blockage to energy flow (besides the concession stands in the hallways) were the security guards, who constituted a minor annoyance as they attempted to prevent people from dancing on the open floor space (which they called "fire lanes"). Finally, by bonding together, strategizing, and utilizing their power in numbers, the masses were victorious. As a determined river of bodies spilled uncontrollably down all the fire lanes, including the one in front of the stage, the security guards conceded defeat, and let the dancing proceed without further harassment.

A large portion of the crowd stayed on its feet the entire time Dylan was on stage. The atmosphere was electric, as was Dylan's four-person band, which backed him on every number. Alternating between electric and acoustic guitar, sounding as good vocally as he has in years, Dylan covered material spanning four decades, from the early '60s to his latest, Grammy-winning album, Time Out of Mind. Highlights of his long set and extended encore included "Everything Is Broken," "It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," "Masters of War," "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35," "Highway 61 Revisited," and a sublime "Tangled Up in Blue." More than I'd ever experienced before, his arrangements during this concert made the lines dividing blues, folk, and rock become transparent, and ultimately disappear.

But it was Dylan, himself, who in a sense disappeared at this concert. With all eyes on him, he put on a show, never missing a lyric or guitar lick, and obviously playing to the audience. But he seemed to be serving some power outside of himself, channeling the same muse that has possessed him for over 35 years, being a lightning rod, and doing it for us. In the face of the overwhelming adoration of the crowd, part of him seemed to be saying "It ain't me...." Obviously happy with his music, he still did not seem happy as a person. With fans all around him worshipping him (one of the most prolific, influential, and widely-covered songwriters of the century), he still seemed not particularly content within himself, but to be playing his music--as he always has--as a means of emotional survival against a backdrop of personal pain.

Professor Aidan Day of Edinburgh University (quoted in the September 24 Eugene Weekly) has observed that "above all, Dylan's work has over 35 years fearlessly and uniquely engaged and defined a culture in a state of permanent anxiety and crisis." Dylan's demeanor, his body language, his stage presence express this state of alienation, anxiety, and basic unhappiness almost as eloquently as his songs do. Music and his unparalleled creativity are what keep him going--not any inherent groundedness or feeling of wholeness. As John Hawkins writes in the same issue, Dylan "expresses 20th century humanity crucified to the cross beams of our endless doubts and desires," his songs capturing our "yearning for redemption in a technologized world."

The crowd poured out its love for Dylan at the top of its lungs, perhaps hoping he could take it in. If his playing and singing were any indications, he seemed to feel appreciated--but I'd be surprised if he returned to his hotel room that night feeling truly satisfied with his life. Except in his songwriting, he gives the impression of being a man of few words and many misgivings; except in his guitar-playing, he gives the impression of being a person who rarely smiles. But, I wondered, are any of us coming from a place of significantly greater wholeness than Dylan? Why are some of us so willing to worship him?--or worship Ani Di Franco? Or Ralph Nader? Or worship just about anyone other than ourselves? Why do we find redemption in a CD, or in something else that someone else made, and that we have to buy? Why do I want to appreciate art or artists, outside of myself, so much?

And why am I seeming to doubt that appreciation of other people and their art is appropriate? Probably because the maelstrom of endless doubts can be contagious and all-enveloping--at least until the walls come tumbling down.

Suffice it to say that I left the concert feeling excited and thrilled by the experience, but not particularly whole, not particularly grounded, and not particularly connected with other people. I didn't feel as if I'd spent the evening getting to know someone I could now talk with easily. Instead, Dylan the person was still an enigmatic, brilliant, eccentric, haunted mystery. The crowd had been united in its exuberant, dancing frenzy, but, come to think of it, had we actually sung together audibly, except on a few of the choruses? Many of us had indeed sung along, but the amplified music was too loud for us to hear ourselves singing together. Had we spent the evening learning about one another, or ourselves? Conversation and quiet reflection were next to impossible. We had, ultimately, engaged in an evening of ecstatic celebration of alienation. And it was so reassuringly familiar, even with those thrilling new counter-chords on "Tangled Up in Blue." It was exuberantly familiar.

***

The captain has turned the seatbelt lights on, and we ask that you return to your seats, as we are experiencing some turbulence. At this altitude, our route is cloudy and unclear: How does a review of a Bob Dylan concert become an essay about how an ecological future feels? To be honest, I don't know, but I have a couple hunches:

1. "Y2K," the millennium computer bug, has introduced potentially catastrophic uncertainties into the very near future. If that particular crisis doesn't manage to seriously disable our current ways of life, we still have the depletion and/or exhaustion of petroleum reserves, topsoil, aquifers, and ozone layer to look forward to. As we contemplate the frightening, unknown dimensions of the future, the (slightly modified) words of "Like a Rolling Stone" (1965) ask an essential question:

How does it feel
To be on [our] own
With no direction home
[Facing the] complete unknown...?

However it feels to us is legitimate. But we need to let ourselves feel it. We've had enough weather reports by now to be fairly certain that, in some way or other, a hard rain's going to fall on our civilization. As we work to make our leaky boats seaworthy, those "buckets of rain" will, by their nature, bring "buckets of tears."

In contemplating Y2K and other potential crises, I'm sometimes afraid, particularly when I think about far-off relatives and friends attempting to cope with disruptions to food and power supplies. Alternately, I'm excited about the opportunity to reinvent our lives and our culture to be more ecologically and socially sustainable. Individually and collectively, we'll probably all feel like rolling stones for a while, once the changing times catch up with us. But I'm hopeful that, working together, we can convert the fire lanes of fear into dance floors of joy just as successfully as the MacArthur Court crowd did.

In any case, what Dylan described 33 years ago on a personal level, we now face on a societal level. The sooner we accept our condition--the sooner we see that, like Napoleon in rags, we have nothing, and nothing to lose--the more gracefully we'll accept our rightful places as coinhabitants with, not tyrants over, all other peoples and creatures on this planet.

2. No matter what the transition looks like, I am confident that an ecological future will evolve--there is no other long-term choice. Of more lasting importance than how it feels to contemplate the unknown transition, then, is how it feels to be living in that future once we're in it. In several significant respects, it does not feel like that Bob Dylan concert. Rituals which allow for dancing with abandon and the temporary loss of self are probably necessary elements of any healthy ecological society--and they're timeless and magical whenever they happen. But they're not sufficient for creating that society.

Despite our most fervent wishes, a culture "in a state of permanent anxiety and crisis" will never manifest a truly ecological future, no matter how exalted a pedestal we place our heroes on, no matter how loudly we cheer, nor how successfully we can be transported temporarily out of our own individual identities. No amount of nifty alternative technology can create that future either, nor can the latest permacultural techniques or wonder plants--not even bamboo, Red Russian Kale, or hemp.

An ecological future is grounded in a feeling about ourselves, and our lives--a feeling of wholeness and connection, not fragmentation and alienation. Music in an ecological future will be not a commodity we have to buy, but instead something we all create daily--as we work, as we play, as we gather in circles and give thanks, as we march in front of the local eco-newsweekly office demanding better press coverage for aquatic invertebrates. At concerts in the ecological future I imagine, audience members will drown out performers when they sing alongÄand they'll be singing about feeling at home on the earth, not lost in cities, mind-mazes, and the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.

***

I recently experienced what I expect an ecological future will feel like, during a five-day course called The Practice (short for "The Practice of Honesty," a follow-up to the Naka-Ima workshop) held here at Lost Valley. Without going into all the details, I will say that, if my experience is any indication, this future will feel like:

• Being present in the moment
  
• Being held in an embrace
  
• Holding others in that same embrace
  
• Being willing to risk doing things that are outside of our narrow self-definitions
  
• Being able to say anything to anybody, if it is what is in our heart or on our mind
  
• Being alert to all possibilities, to the miracles that can happen at any moment
  
• Going for walks in the woods
  
• Forgetting to check our email
  
• Being glad that we're not workaholics
  
• Slowing down
  
• Harvesting vegetables
  
• Gathering in circles to sing
  
• Being really happy
  
• Being sad
  
• Being vulnerable
  
• Falling in love with life
  
• Connecting with other people
  
• Taking naps by the river
  
• Loving someone more, the more we get to know them
  
• Loving where we are
  
• Loving what we do
  
• Allowing others to love us
  
• Dancing beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea
  
• Staying in love with life
  
• Knowing that everything about the earth is perfect
  
• Knowing that even difficult things (like impermanence, suffering, and geographical errors like the placement of British Columbia, Oregon, Ohio, California, Arizona, and New York at such great distances from one another) can become grist for whatever creative outlets we have--like writing magazine articles.

It's a lot more difficult to describe exactly how this ecological future feels than it is to write about a Bob Dylan concert. It's less familiar, and maybe it can't be put into words or captured on paper. How does it feel to be fully in the present moment? In some ways, English prose (or at least my English prose) can't even approach describing it. To quote another famous poet (please excuse the gender-non-neutral language):

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

If "How does it feel?" continues to be the key question, the answer is: It feels how it feels. Maybe it feels like being in love. I might draw a picture of it, but that wouldn't be it. I might write an essay about it, but that wouldn't be it. I might sing a song about it, but even that wouldn't be it. I definitely cannot buy it from a catalog. I will not find it on MacArthur Court. But I will find it in receiving and giving away free tickets. And maybe I will find it in someone else's eyes, in someone else's touch, and in the faith that this essay will say whatever it needs to say, go wherever it needs to go, even without a map. As someone once said (describing today and tomorrow as accurately as he described the '60s): the old road is rapidly aging, and the order is rapidly fading...

***

We have landed--I think. But please keep your seatbelts on until we finish taxiing. On behalf of our crew (the Tambourine Man, the Jester, Mr. Jones, Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts), remember to leave your baggage at the gate (you won't need it), please continue to refrain from smoking, and thank you for joining us in this essay. It was a bumpy ride, but getting to the future can be like that, especially when we're blowing in the wind.

Chris Roth is managing editor of Talking Leaves; an organic gardener, gardening teacher and writer; son and sibling to professional musicians; a mediocre pianist obsessed with Mozart; and, despite all the moss he gathers, a rolling stone.

©1998 Talking Leaves
Winter 1999
Volume 8, Number 3
Visions of an Ecological Future

Ecotopia: Looking Back (and Forward)

The novel Ecotopia appeared in 1975, its "prequel" Ecotopia Emerging in 1981. The considerable success of Ecotopia (it has now sold about 700,000 copies in nine languages) seemed to me then, and still seems to me now, an optimistic sign. But I must confess that the book was written partly out of despair. Even in the early seventies, when it was clear that the new ecological thinking being deployed in Co-Evolution Quarterly, Science, and a host of other serious publications was becoming enormously sophisticated and intellectually impressive, there were plenty of reasons to believe that the jig was up: the unchecked power of industrial society to destroy the natural order had been so magnified by surging population and consumption growth and more powerful technology that the prospects for saving more than tiny remnants of undisturbed areas were dim. Air and water pollution were staggering. Forestry, agriculture, and fisheries--the basic life-support systems that make human life possible despite our ever-growing population burden--were being operated on nonsustainable bases. Fundamentally, we were eating oil, since the food system required far more petroleum calories of input (fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, equipment fuel, processing, transportation) than we got out of it in food calories.

In the years since, as Barry Commoner once put it, the combined might of the environmental movement, although it successfully defended many precious areas from development, had only two large-scale achievements relevant to long-term sustainability: the removal of toxic lead from gasoline and the shutting down of DDT use in the US. To these we might wish to add the (still incomplete) phasing out of CFC manufacture--we still can't bear to eliminate the even more intensely global-warming methyl bromide. But we need to stop adding to the ecosphere thousands of other toxic substances. We need to get mining and grazing out of parks. We need to rebuild our cities for minimal ecological impact, not for the convenience of cars. There is a century or more of work desperately needing to be done.

Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging are stories (they include love stories) with happy endings. But at bottom they are dramatizations of what life in a sustainable society might be like. Both were very carefully researched, and aside from a few details they remain scientifically and socially valid today. Indeed, in a sense they are the only game in town: everybody who looks honestly and realistically at the long-term prospects for human survival, whatever their political convictions, will come out with some Ecotopia-like projections. In the long run, it is "Ecotopia or Bust." The novels, then, are "thought-experiments" designed to help us think about where we ought to be going. Politics-fiction, perhaps, rather than science-fiction. Over the years, though they have hardly changed the course of history, they have inspired a lot of people to live differently, to choose different work lives, to see the world in Ecotopian ways.

The secessionist metaphor of Ecotopia is aimed at making us think of how we would run the world immediately around us if we were not subject to the vagaries of distant power in Washington or in corporate headquarters. It still makes me feel good to re-read Ecotopia: yes, I say to myself, we could live like that! Paradoxically, the competing "vision" of greed operating within unfettered market capitalism as a satisfactory engine for human happiness and survival is not really taken seriously by anybody, yet attempts to discuss our destiny in any other terms are derided as naive, silly, irrelevant. Trapped in the futile and self-destroying ideology of "free trade," "globalization," and "let the market rule," we are self-blinded from seeing that when the market rules, it brings devastation. ("Surely the theory must be right," we tell ourselves. "It sounds so reasonable!" Well, we all need to take a look at Jerry Mander's The Case Against Globalization.)

As we know, the wholesome Ecotopian vision having obviously by no means turned the tide toward sustainability, the world as a whole, with the US in the forefront, rushes on toward unimaginable ecological catastrophes, heedless of the underlying biological realities that support human life, and also constrain it. We live as if we were indeed "masters of the universe," when we are only peculiarly prolific mammals. And we hardly grasp the direness of the future that lies ahead of us--that indeed is taking form all around us--because of the wastage of our forests, the destruction of our fisheries, the mining of our once-rich agricultural lands, the distortion of our city and suburban lives by automobilization. We cling to technological hopes that we can somehow immunize ourselves against ecological realities. This is a main reason why I recently spent three years writing Ecology: A Pocket Guide, a compact, reader-friendly treatment of ecological terminology and thinking--so that we should all be able at least to talk about these things, and thus hopefully see what we should do about them. (Once we have a shared vocabulary, we should be able to have productive arguments.)

It's always hard to keep in mind that changes, good or bad, mostly happen in small increments. Another bill subsidizing mining or sugar companies passes, greased by suitable campaign contributions to key legislators. An oil company, after being sued for 20 years by environmental organizations, finally agrees to stop dumping toxic refinery discharges into San Francisco Bay. What we have to do, besides fighting on all the battlefronts we have time and energy for, is keep an eye on trends (through such publications as the Worldwatch Institute's annual Vital Signs and such devices as Sustainable Seattle's indexes) and use them as guidance in finding struggles we can hope to win.

On the whole, of course, enormous losses to human welfare and the natural order have characterized the years since Ecotopia was written. We live increasingly in an ecological dark age, and sometimes can only cling to the certainty that Nature Bats Last. In the end, human disruptions of the ecosphere will be overwhelmed in catastrophes of our own making. But in the short run, where we live, it is psychologically far healthier to live as a possibly foolish optimist than a knowing but suicidal pessimist. We can never really enjoy the luxury of pessimism. As Joan Dunning reminds us in From the Redwood Forests, her moving and informative book about the Headwaters Forest struggle, "Action is the antidote to despair."

And so we must fight. We must organize Green parties and other organizations to "speak truth to power." We must seek to sow seeds of change in the communities and companies and universities where we spend our lives. We must find corners of the earth that can be saved, and save them. We must help each other to be joyful and to live well--which is always the best revenge and takes far less money than the advertisers try to persuade us.

Moreover, in the long run bioregions "tell": they will influence, in Cascadia as in the others all over the planet, how people can successfully survive. We need to nurture our bioregional wisdom, explore how "to live in place," learn the plants and animals and microorganisms that share our place with us. In the long run, societies that permit or encourage the obscene inequalities in wealth that we have now in the US will be overturned by desperate and revengeful populations. In the long run, oil-based technologies that destroy underlying resources while seeming to produce plenty (our fisheries, our forestry, our agriculture) are doomed, and the billions who depend on them will pass away. In the long run, our curiously suicidal abdication of power to corporations, which we have allowed to claim more than human rights and powers, must be replaced by new and as yet unimagined means of curtailing and regulating them, before they do us all in.

In our small or large ways, we can help, even in the perilous circumstances we face, to prepare the way for a better Ecotopian future. As people said in the early days of the successful struggle to end an immoral and unjust war in Vietnam, "It isn't going to be an easy job." Nor can we, I think, put our hopes in the possibility that things like the celebrated Y2K problem will lead in Ecotopian directions. For one thing, technological society is astonishingly resilient when it has to be--whenever money-making is threatened. For another, serious change doesn't happen randomly or suddenly. It is planned, organized, and worked for over a long period. There are really no "revolutions"; what seem to be revolutionary changes are always the products of long-continued underlying shifts in economic and power relationships. Human agency counts, of course: the current drift toward the right and ever-accelerating environmental destruction has been contemplated and striven for by a whole generation of amply financed right-wingers. Many subterranean trends will push us in Ecotopian directions for mere survival. But if we wish society to move toward Ecotopian sustainability with some grace, it will come only through the mobilizing of people, not through some concatenation of circumstances like computers malfunctioning for a while.

The only real long-term good I can envision coming out of the Y2K situation is that it is leading a fair number of people to reconsider their technophilia--their belief that technology can always save us. For beyond Y2K lie many other challenges to the brave new technological era. We're running out of phone numbers--and rebuilding and reprogramming the communications system to use Tokyo-style longer numbers will also be enormously expensive and troublesome. Europe will go through huge convulsions converting to a common currency. License plates, Social Security numbers, and other identification systems will go through painful expansions. Date-sensitive programming problems will also turn up in the Global Positioning System and other technological interconnections.

But these are all details. What's really going on is far more profound: in the grip of a lunatic economic dogma, we are destroying the biological substrate that human populations depend on. Moreover, we are creating explosive tensions within human societies by systematically destroying both informal (family and community) and governmental security nets. We're expecting ourselves and others to live as if Homo economicus were more than a mad fantasy.

But we are anthropoid mammals. We like to play and joke, to hang around together, to work intermittently and cooperatively, to sing and dance and make music and make love. At some point, we must realize that our fundamental task is to reorganize society so that we can live like the delightful animals we are, not like machines for profit-making. When we finally see that clearly, Ecotopia will be within reach at last.

Ernest Callenbach's new book, Ecology: A Pocket Guide (Univ. of California Press, $9.95), a compact, reader-friendly introduction to sixty basic ecological concepts, has been described as "what every would-be Ecotopian needs to know about ecology." His other books include Bring Back the Buffalo, Ecotopia, and Ecotopia Emerging.

©1998 Talking Leaves
Winter 1999
Volume 8, Number 3
Visions of an Ecological Future

Introduction to This Issue

Propitiously, the assembly of this issue about "Visions of an Ecological Future" coincided with a number of events that shed new light on this theme for the editors. Most recently, Lost Valley Educational Center completed its visioning process for 1999. We're excited about the programs we'll be offering (see inside front cover) as we participate in the evolution of the ecological culture that this magazine focuses on.

A growing awareness of Y2K, the Millenium computer bug/bomb, also influenced the development of this issue. We attended gatherings in Eugene in which local government, utility, health-care, and emergency agency officials made it clear that they consider Y2K a substantial threat to "business as usual." Knowledge of this impending event (whatever its magnitude) may stimulate us to take advantage of some of the exciting opportunities described herein for creating more sustainable, cooperative ways of living. Future issues of Talking Leaves will incorporate more Y2K preparedness information and thoughts.

Contemplating the theme "Visions of an Ecological Future," I noticed some inherent paradoxes and contradictions. First, as you'll read in the introduction to the music reviews, I wondered if what an ecological future "looks like" is really the most important question. Maybe what it "sounds like" and what it "feels like" are more fruitful avenues to explore--and we've tried to make room for those in these pages.

I also saw that considering an abstract "future" is a useful but limited tool. Over the last few months, I had several reasons to conclude that only by living fully in the present can we resume our place in the ecological/spiritual/cosmological order of things. My most powerful--one might say riveting--recent experiences, including both the painful (a kidney stone) and the exhilarating (post-surgery euphoria and post-post-surgery euphoria), brought me fully into the now. I sense that if we don't live now in the spirit of the future we imagine, the future we desire will never arrive. Ultimately, the ecological future we are working towards may be right in front of our noses.

And hopefully right under our noses, too. We're happy to be able to feature in this issue contributions from a wide variety of people, respected "visionaries" who (using all of their senses, not just vision) have learned important experiential lessons about how the future could be. In our first section, The Big Picture, Helena Norberg-Hodge examines the traditional culture of Ladakh, finding models of social harmony and environmental sustainability that can inspire our own cultural evolution. Roxanne Swentzell, Christopher Peters, Jack Forbes, and Carlos Cordero reflect on contemporary Native American experience, asserting that, despite the loss of some traditions, "we can have new visions." In a Talking Leaves "scoop," Ernest Callenbach revisits Ecotopia twenty-three years after his groundbreaking visionary novel (and seventeen years after its prequel, Ecotopia Emerging). By taking part in a Vision Quest, Charlie Tilt discovers "a vision that encompasses a lifetime of work." Dianne Brause reflects on that failure of vision that may soon cause some major disruptions in our familiar routines: the Year 2000 computer glitch--and finds reason for hope. And in another Talking Leaves first, Bob Dylan did not write an article for this section, but nevertheless exerts an unmistakable influence on the story/essay, "An Ecological Future: How Does It Feel?"

In Section Two, Close-Ups, Jan VanderTuin describes the educational work of the Center for Appropriate Transport, urging us to "include youth or we have no eco future." Lynne Hindle and Reinhold Huber portray the evolution of Otamatea Eco-village in New Zealand--"a permaculture community in the making." At Network for a New Culture's Summer Camp, Teryani Riggs finds that "the heart holds the power." Finally, Ted Butchart offers his reflections on "building as if the future mattered."

Section Three, Previews, includes two original pieces of Ecofiction. Jan Spencer's "A Trip to the Mall" imagines a very-changed Eugene, Oregon in the year 2023; converting a parking lot to agriculture is the order of the day. Jesse Wolf Hardin's "Abel's Vision" posits a wilder, more Luddite future in which people live and meet and pray in circles, "loving each other and the sacred Earth."

Section Four, Reviews, listens for "the sounds of an ecological future" in a diverse selection of music albums, and searches some of the best books around for other clues. This section is especially jam-packed this issue, in hopes that it will remind us all of the value of keeping our ears and eyes open, whatever the future may hold.

Rounding out these pages are poetry, artwork, letters, announcements, and advertisements from a select group of people and companies who forgot to become multinational corporations, labor-exploiters, and/or eco-destroyers. (By patronizing them, you can reinforce their memory loss.)

Thanks for joining us in this issue of Talking Leaves! We appreciate the enthusiasm of our growing readership, and invite you to share Talking Leaves with your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, etc. If you're not a subscriber, please consider subscribing, and/or giving gift subscriptions--we depend on you for the material support to keep Talking Leaves publishing. Next year marks our tenth anniversary, and we look forward to many more years in print. You can "vote with your dollars" for that to happen.

©1998 Talking Leaves Winter 1999
Volume 8, Number 3
Visions of an Ecological Future

Ladakh: Lessons for the Future

Trained as a linguist speaking seven languages, Helena Norberg-Hodge was one of the first foreigners to learn the ancient language of Ladakh or Little Tibet. She has spent much of the last 23 years living and working with the people of Ladakh, observing the contrast between their nature-based culture and the impact of the global economy on the spiritual, psychological, and cultural values of Ladakh. She has helped to found institutions that are searching for an alternative to conventional development. For this work she and the Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG) were awarded the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in 1986.

 

Towards An Ecological Vision
During my time in Ladakh, it became clear to me that this traditional, nature-based society was far more sustainable, both socially and environmentally, than the Western consumer society I had been living in. The old culture reflected fundamental human needs while respecting natural limits. And it worked. It worked for nature, and it worked for people. The various connecting relationships in the traditional system were mutually reinforcing, encouraging harmony and stability. Most importantly, I am convinced that Ladakhis were significantly happier before the arrival of western development in the mid-1970s than they are today. And what criteria for judging a society could be more important: in social terms, the well-being of people; in environmental terms, sustainability? If we are to work towards an ecological vision of the future, we can learn valuable lessons of social harmony and environmental sustainability from traditional cultures like Ladakh.

Learning From Ladakh
Over the centuries, the Ladakhis succeeded in creating an ecologically benign society in an extremely demanding environment. Scorched by the sun in summer, the Tibetan plateau freezes solid for eight months in winter, when temperatures drop as low as minus forty degrees. This is the fiercest of climates: winds whip up tornadoes along the empty corridors of desert; rain is so rare that it is easy to forget that it exists.

The vast majority of Ladakhis were self-supporting farmers, living in small scattered settlements in the high desert; the principle crop was barley. Natural resources were scarce and hard to obtain. Soon after I arrived in Ladakh I began to learn how this hardy people managed to survive. I began, for example, to learn the meaning of the word frugality. Where Westerners would consider something completely worn out, exhausted of all possible worth, and would throw it away, Ladakhis would find some further use for it. Nothing whatever was just discarded. What could not be eaten by people could be eaten by animals; what could not be eaten by animals could be used as fuel, or to fertilize the land.

In such ways the Ladakhis traditionally recycled everything. There was literally no waste. Even with only scarce resources at their disposal, farmers managed to attain almost complete self-reliance, dependent on the outside world only for salt, tea, and a few metals for cooking utensils and tools.

With these few tools Ladakhis spent a long time accomplishing each task. Producing wool for clothes involved the time-consuming work of looking after the sheep while they grazed, shearing them with hand tools, and working the wool from beginning to end--cleaning, spinning, and finally weaving it. In the same way, producing food, from sowing the seed until the food was served on the table, was labour-intensive.

Despite the lack of labour-saving devices, I nevertheless found that the Ladakhis had an amazing abundance of time. They worked at a gentle pace and had an amount of leisure unknown to most working people in the West. Remarkably, Ladakhis only did productive work for four months of the year. In the eight winter months, they of course had to cook, feed the animals, and carry water, but work was minimal. Indeed, most of the winter was spent at festivals and parties. Even during the summer, hardly a week passed without a major festival or celebration of one sort or another. The myth of a life of preindustrial drudgery and never-ending work was therefore revealed as a product of centuries of Western infatuation with technological progress.

An important factor in the environmental balance in Ladakh was undoubtedly the fact that people belonged to their place on earth. They were bonded to that place through intimate daily contact, through a knowledge about their immediate environment with its changing seasons, needs, and limitations. For them "the environment" was not some alien, problematic sphere of human concern; it was where they were. They were aware of the living context in which they found themselves. The movement of the stars, the sun, and moon were familiar rhythms that influenced their daily activities.

The understanding that was gained through a life rooted in the natural world seemed to create a sense of kinship with plants and animals that nurtured a profound respect for the humble creatures that shared the world of the Ladakhis. Children and adults who witnessed the birth, rearing, mating, and death of the animals around them were unable to view those animals as merely a "natural resource" to be plundered.

No one could deny the value of this kind of authentic education of the young--that is, one which promotes the widening and enrichment of knowledge--in the development of an ecologically sustainable society. And yet, with the exception of religious training in the monasteries, the traditional culture had no separate process called "education." Education was the product of an intimate relationship with the community and its environment. Children learned from grandparents, family, and friends. Helping with the sowing, for instance, they would learn that on one side of the village it was a little warmer, on the other side a little colder. From their own experience children would come to distinguish between different strains of barley and the specific growing conditions each strain preferred. They learned to recognize even the tiniest wild plant and how to use it, and how to pick out a particular animal on a faraway mountain slope. They learned about connections, process, and change; about the intricate web of fluctuating relationships in the natural world around them.

Old Visions, New Future
We still have an opportunity to steer our society toward social and ecological balance. But if we are to do more than simply treat symptoms, it is important that we understand the systemic nature of the crises facing us. Under the surface, even such seemingly unconnected problems as ethnic violence, pollution of the air and water, broken families, and cultural disintegration are closely interlinked. Understanding that the problems are interrelated can make them seem overwhelming, but finding the points at which they converge can, in fact, make our attempts to tackle them a great deal more effective. It is then just a question of pulling the right threads to affect the entire fabric, rather than having to deal with each problem individually.

The fabric of industrial society is to a great extent determined by the interaction of science, technology, and a narrow economic paradigm--an interaction that is leading to ever-greater centralization and specialization. Since the Industrial Revolution, the perspective of the individual has become more limited while political and economic units have grown larger. I have become convinced that we need to decentralize our political and economic structures and broaden our approach to knowledge if we are to find our way to a more balanced and sane society. In Ladakh, I have seen how human-scale structures nurture intimate bonds with the earth and an active and participatory democracy, while supporting strong and vital communities, healthy families, and a greater balance between male and female. These structures in turn provide the security needed for individual well-being and, paradoxically, for a sense of freedom.

Decentralizing in order to create smaller scale political and economic units will also help to foster diversity. Cultural diversity is as important as diversity in the natural world and, in fact, follows directly from it. Traditional cultures mirrored their particular environments, deriving their food, clothing, and shelter primarily from local resources.

One of the most effective ways of reviving cultural differences would be to lobby for a reduction in unnecessary trade. At the moment, our taxpayers' money is going to expand transport infrastructures and to increase trade for the sake of trade. We are transporting across whole continents a vast range of products, from milk to apples to furniture, that could just as easily be produced in their place of destination. What we should be doing instead is reinforcing and diversifying local economies. By reducing and eliminating subsidies for transportation, we would cut waste and pollution, improve the position of small farmers, and strengthen communities in one fell swoop.

It is often said that there are too many people and not enough land for a demographic shift into rural areas. But in many unseen ways, today's centralized systems take up much more space. The relationship between the vast urban centres of today and their physical requirements is analogous to the way we use more land the higher up on the food chain we eat. A beef cow does not take up nearly as much room in itself as a vegetable garden, but when you take into account the fields of grain to feed the cow, the water to irrigate the fields, and the land that dried up because of the diversion of that water, it is clear that a cow actually takes up much more land.

The process of decentralization would involve a succession of changes in the whole socio-economic system. It is important to remember, however, that we are not talking about dismantling a static entity but rather about steering in the direction of change. The scale of our society is growing year by year, and the logic of centralization is progressively being carried to new extremes. The pace is such that we would need to actually implement plans for decentralization simply to stay where we are now. That alone would be a significant achievement.

The need to belong to a group is in itself an important reason for human-scale social units. Here we can learn directly from Ladakh, where families are large, but communities small. Children are nurtured by people of different generations, benefiting particularly from the special bond with their grandparents. Though the relationships in this larger family are close, they are not so intense as those of the nuclear family. Each individual is supported in a web of intimate relationships, and no one relationship has to bear too much weight. In Ladakh, I have never observed anything approaching the needy attachment or the guilt and rejection that are so characteristic of the nuclear family.

Decentralization is a prerequisite for the rekindling of community in Western society. Mobility erodes community, but as we put down roots and feel attachment to a place, our human relationships deepen, become more secure, and--as they continue over time--more reliable. While decentralization is the most necessary structural change we must make, it needs to be accompanied by a corresponding change in world view. Increasing ecological distress has clearly demonstrated wide-reaching interconnections in natural systems, but most academic institutions continue to perpetuate ever more narrowly focused specialization. This reductionist perspective is, in fact, one of the root causes of the malaise of industrial culture. Paradoxically, a trend toward smaller-scale political and economic units would help us to develop a broader world view--one based on interconnectedness. Instead of narrowing our vision, an intimate connection to community and place would encourage an understanding of interdependence. Our static and mechanistic world view has reached its limits, and some scientists--particularly quantum physicists--now speak of a paradigm shift away from the old "building block" view of reality to a more organic one. In direct opposition to the trend in mainstream culture toward greater specialization, we need to actively promote the generalist--the one who sees connections and makes links across different disciplines.

Throughout the industrialized world, many people are making these changes in their search for a better balance with nature. In the process, they are starting to mirror traditional cultures. In fields as diverse as hospice care for the dying and mediation as a way of settling disputes, striking parallels are emerging between the most ancient and the most modern cultures. New movements are springing up, committed to living on a human scale, and to more feminine and spiritual values. The numbers are growing, and the desire for change is spreading. These trends are often labeled "new," but, as I hope Ladakh has shown, in an important sense they are very old. Just as Ladakhi villagers have always done, increasing numbers of people are making the kitchen the centre of their household activity, eating whole foods that are grown naturally, and using age-old natural remedies for their health problems. Even in more subtle ways, such as a reawakened interest in oral literature and storytelling, a renewed appreciation for physical work, and the use of natural materials for clothing and construction, the direction of change is clear.

We are spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth. The process, however, is often an unconscious one. Our mainstream culture encourages a linear view of progress, one in which the goal is to free ourselves from our past and from the laws of nature. The modern-day mantra "we cannot go back, we cannot go back" is deeply ingrained in our thinking. Of course we could not go back, even if we wanted to, but our search for a future that works is inevitably bringing us back to certain fundamental patterns that are in greater harmony with nature--including our own human nature.

We are in fact rediscovering values that have existed for thousands of years--values that recognize our place in the natural order, our inextricable connection to one another and to the earth.

©1998 Talking Leaves
Winter 1999
Volume 8, Number 3
Visions of an Ecological Future

Questing for Vision

There is a Zen story about a man who set himself the task of digging a tunnel through the solid rock of a mountain to provide travelers with an alternative to a treacherous cliffside path. He worked to serve penance for his misdeeds, and it took him fifty years to complete the tunnel. At the time I read the story, I felt jealous of the man. Though his task was difficult, the value of its objective was clear and the rest of his life was clarified by his single vision of what he would work to accomplish. His story stirred the craving in me for a clarity of purpose that would be worthy of fifty years of my life to pursue, a vision of what unique contribution I could make.

A few years later, a friend from El Salvador was telling me of his motivation to return to his people in that country with his skills as an agriculturist. His people badly needed what he had to offer in rebuilding the country after years of civil strife. The question came into my heart, "Who are my people?" I didn't feel that I had any people, yet I really wanted to have people who could be my people, because I wanted to offer my skills to them. After some time reflecting on the question, I realized that all people living in the United States are my people, as much as I really had any people at all.

It was sad to me, because I felt that Americans did not really want me. There are so many people in the US and I was just supposed to take care of myself, find a job and a wife, move around every few years, have babies, and, if I was really civic minded, volunteer at some agency on occasion. Besides, going to a foreign country and offering my skills there seemed much more glamorous somehow, more useful and important. After more thinking, though, I realized that people in the US really do need me; as influential as the behavior and thinking of US citizens are on the rest of the world, any contribution I could make here was extraordinarily important. However, I still didn't know what I could do and the list of options seemed overwhelming.

In October of 1997, I went on a Vision Quest (see below). Thirty-five years old, I had never really acknowledged that I was an adult. I had become a husband and a step-father in September. I had sacrificed the childhood need for security and approval to take the steps toward my personal goals and a life that represented my values. I had earned the right to call myself a man. I went on the Vision Quest to confirm this as so, to tell the universe that I was ready in all ways to be a man and leave the child in me behind. I went out to commit to my roles as husband and father, so that when times were difficult I would act from my commitments and not from my distress. On the fourth night of the fast, I stayed up all night in my purpose circle, praying for a vision. I received one. I was told it is my role to help all of my people to love. That by loving, we heal the relationship between the Great Creator and his woman, who have been separated. The message was direct and clear--if I was committed to the path of spirit and wished to find my place alongside the Great Creator, I would allow the energy to flow through me and to heal others. My challenges in this would be self-doubt and a tendency to conceal my weaknesses from others. Knowing my vision has changed my life. I am making my vision real in the world by facilitating Vision Quest trips to the wilderness, teaching apprenticeships, and honoring my commitments. My relationship with my wife and my community keeps me honest and grounded so the power to heal doesn't go to my head.

My vision of the future includes a society of people who acknowledge the importance of rites of passage, seeing them as bridges between the birth, adolescence, maturity, and death of our kind. In my vision, adolescent men and women each are mentored into their unique and essential role in society by elders who have displayed wisdom in their own journey, and adults have full access to their mature roles as protectors of children and participants in community. In this future time each individual will know fully that they are wanted, needed, and appreciated for the unique gifts that they alone can contribute to their people.

Making this vision real is good work. I am grateful to have this work that will easily absorb fifty years of my effort, and is worthy of the time. I have my challenges to face, and they require me to be as big as I am. Perhaps you too feel the craving for a vision that encompasses a lifetime of work, and when you take your place, we will work side by side, serving our people and creating the future.

Charles Tilt has facilitated Vision Quest experiences at Lost Valley Educational Center.

---

The Vision Quest

Many traditional and ancient cultures recognize the need for rites of passage. Particularly important to the health of a society is the transition from adolescent to mature contributing adult. There are three principle components of the transition.

First is letting go of the past and severing oneself from what has come before (symbolic death).

Second is symbolically leaving the physical world, moving into a liminal state and encompassing the spiritual nature of the universe in which it is understood that we each have a unique purpose on earth and can become aware of that purpose and commit to achieving it. (In achieving this liminal state, we observe the taboos of no food, no company, and minimal shelter, usually for three or four days.)

And finally, returning to our lives and doing the work of making the vision real, for a vision that is not fulfilled has no power.

The ceremony is most powerful and effective for the individual if they return to a society that is willing to expect them to act out their new role as adult, and confer commensurate responsibilities and trust that are associated with their unique gift.

©1998 Talking Leaves
Winter 1999
Volume 8, Number 3
Visions of an Ecological Future

We Can Have New Visions: Contemporary Native American Voices

Excerpts reprinted from
Surviving in Two Worlds: Contemporary Native American Voices
by Lois Crozier-Hogle and Darryl Babe Wilson; photographs by Giuseppe Saitta; edited by Jay Leibold; assistant interviewer, Ferne Jensen; foreword by Greg Sarris. Copyright © 1997. By permission of University of Texas Press, PO Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819.

Surviving in Two Worlds brings together the voices of twenty-six Native American leaders. The interviewees come from a variety of tribal backgrounds and include such national figures as Oren Lyons, Arvol Looking Horse, John Echohawk, William Demmert, Clifford Trafzer, and Greg Sarris. Their interviews are divided into five sections, grouped around the themes of tradition, history and politics, healing, education, and culture. They take readers into their lives, their dreams and fears, their philosophies and experiences, and show what they are doing to assure the survival of their peoples and cultures, as well as the earth as a whole. The following excerpts, drawn mostly from the section "We Can Have New Visions," highlights four of these leaders' thoughts not only about their history and present conditions, but also about what a livable future would hold, not only for Native Americans, but for all of us.

 

Roxanne Swentzell: Hearing with Our Hearts

Roxanne Swentzell, from Santa Clara Pueblo in northern New Mexico, is a highly accomplished artist who specializes in sculpting human figures out of clay. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums around the country and was featured in the frontispiece of the Smithsonian history of North American Indians. She lives with her husband and two children in a two-story solar adobe house in Santa Clara, where she participates in the pueblo's ceremonial dances and feasts. A farmer as well as an artist, she co-founded and helps to operate the nonprofit Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute, which experiments with sustainable living systems. She was interviewed by Lois Crozier-Hogle and Ferne Jensen.

Most of the people here at Santa Clara Pueblo don't have anything to do with the land, with the place, anymore. They go off to work from eight to five just like everybody else and they want their new car and their TV and their VCR. What they really want is to be middle-class white Americans. I've watched this area and the Indian culture slowly disintegrating into white America during my lifetime. What that means is you go outside of your community for everything, and so you open the door for someone else to rule your life. Everything falls apart eventually if you put it all in that basket.

It can't stay the way it's going because nothing is in the hands of the people anymore. Nobody has a center anymore. Nobody grows their own food, nobody makes their own clothes, nobody builds their own houses, nobody takes care of their own family--they send their kids off for someone else to raise.

I don't know if people have to go through the cycle of going clear to that end and saying, "Whoa! This isn't where it's at," before they come home again. Or, hopefully, they can take a short cut home. I think most of the people in this country have already gone way out there into materialism and they're saying, "No. It's not here. Let's find where it is." So they are looking at Native Americans and people like us because we have been spiritually in balance--or seem to have been there recently.

Some Native Americans are doing this, too. I find it in a lot of the younger generation of the Indians around this country. They have seen much of the white world and realized that it isn't where it's at. So some of them are trying to come back, at least to what is left of their Native culture.

They are trying to find where they belong, where they fit in. My generation is of the children who were raised in the white world knowing that we came from an Indian world. We were raised in the white world by parents from the Native world.

Some of us found that there was nothing out there in the white world. Some of us are now asking what our Indian culture holds for us. We want to get back to ourselves. That is our true home. It's time for everybody to get back home, not just the Indian people. The whole world needs to get back home. But at the same time, remember that home isn't just another image or culture to get attached to.

That, to me, means being able to focus again, to not be blinded by the images we are given. We are all constantly being thrown suggestions of images of what we're supposed to look like, what we're supposed to be like, and how we're supposed to dress, how we're supposed to live in this world.

Look around and you will start to notice just how much of this world is a subliminal message. I'm talking about images of all kinds from every culture--although many are from Western culture. Those images are poured into every world. That makes us all feel unloved because all of us--white or Indian--aren't accepted for who we are.

What we need to do is see the world again for what it is, not through images created by someone else. And when we can see ourselves for who we are instead of as an image, we are loved again. And the whole planet is loved. You cannot hurt anything when you love it and it loves you back. When there is respect for what things are, there is love. Then the planet will live again. I feel like we're so close to completely destroying it. We have to revive it again because it's almost dead. Right now I think a lot of people are realizing that we can't keep going the way we have been. There's so much pain in this realization that it takes us inside ourselves. Hopefully, the next phase is to go completely inside where we can find ourselves again.

That may be painful, but we have to go through to the other side. It's a process. You have to go through the steps to get to the other side, to come out of the suffering of not being ourselves. I do not mean yourself with an image attached to it such as "Indian," "white," "banker," "artist," etc. I'm talking about yourself as an individual with the ability to be a part of this whole universe as you without a title attached, without a name or culture to hide behind.

When you take all of these off, what is left? That is who I want to reach.
You find yourself not through images but through your own heart.

It doesn't matter what culture you come from, it's going to be the same "way" that ties us all together. There will be a place for us in this world when we make a place for ourselves inside of us. There will be a wholeness but also a love for the self. There will be a kind of clearness because of the honesty that comes with not having images.

Christopher Peters: The Art of High Mountain Medicine

Christopher Peters is executive director of the Seventh Generation Fund, a national foundation that supports Native American renewal at a grassroots community level with grants, training, and technical support. He is Yurok and Karok, as well as Hupa and Tolowa. He has worked with community development and grassroots organizations serving Native Americans for over twenty years. He talked with Darryl Wilson about the "World Renewal" traditions of his people and the discipline of high mountain medicine and prayer.

If you could teach enlightenment through stories and legends, people might begin to think, "I can be happy with myself because I live this life and I have this relationship with the spiritual world that is gratifying to me in the most complete way. I don't need material wealth."

Certainly the generation that is coming now has to be taught this way. When our kids look at television nine hours a day, we wonder how much we are actually involved with them. Whoever programs television formulates how our children think and react.

The religious rights of Native people also must be protected. The authorities have been searching for ways to establish a law that says our religions aren't protected by the First Amendment on government land. They are more concerned with uranium or coal mining and all of the other minerals.

I think Americans have to look at the ethics of their religion combined with their own hypocrisy before they can begin to clean up the environment. They need to look at ethics within their belief system on a massive scale. But what is going to bring them to that? We are in a situation now where we have maybe fifty years before we reach a point of no return, where we can't fix the situation. We are getting really close to that point right now. There is a significant need to change. There has to be an optimism saying, "Yes, we can do it. We can change the direction of development." If we don't get that, then we have to accept that we are going to die.

For a lot of non-Indian people, the optimism for living isn't there. Vine Deloria talks about people who believe in Armageddon. If that is rooted in their religious philosophy, if this world as we see it now is going to come to an end, then there is nothing for the future. We have to say, "This world is not going to come to an end. It is a living thing. It is a spirit. It is our mother. It is going to live on and on, forever and ever."

If people can come to the understanding that the world is not going to end, then we can start changing some of this thinking. But as long as the basic philosophy is, "Hey, the earth is going to come to an end anyway, and when it does I'm going to heaven and walk through the pearly gates and live in eternity with God"--if they believe that, then they can go ahead and drill for oil, cut down trees, and destroy the whole ecosystem, like they are doing right now.

I would say we have a major task, as Native people, to change the white people. Because we are in this ship together. As much as I would like to say, "Let them do what they want to do," I can't. Because we have to realize that we are all in this together.

So our optimism is tied, largely, to our ability to change the mindset of the dominant society. That is a really significant task, if you consider the fact that for the last two hundred years the dominant society attempted to acculturate us--to make us think the way they think.

A small minority, a small percentage of Indian and non-Native people still retain optimism--a knowledge that we are going to live on and on. To continue for Seven Generations is one way to say it. But the thought that we are going to continue for One Hundred Generations or Ten Thousand Generations has to be put into people's minds, too.

Jack Forbes: We Can Have New Visions

Jack Forbes has been a leading writer and scholar in the field of Native American studies for over forty years. He is chair of the Native American Studies Department at the University of California, Davis. With Powhatan-Renˆpe, Delaware-Lenˆpe, and other tribes represented in his ancestry, he is working to preserve the Lenˆpe language, in which he writes poetry. He co-founded D.Q. University, an institution run by and for Native American scholars; has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship; has been a visiting scholar at Oxford and other universities in Great Britain and the Netherlands; and has written more than three hundred books, monographs, articles, stories, and poems. He was interviewed by Lois Crozier-Hogle.

Luther Standing Bear said that people who are alienated from nature will be living in a brutalized world. It makes me mad sometimes to read articles about ecology today where they don't mention a single Native American in the history of the so-called modern ecological movement. Luther Standing Bear was writing all of these things in the 1930s, and much more fundamental things than most ecologists are writing today.

In any case, what has happened to a lot of Native American communities is that they have lost a sense of belonging to the natural world. Then what do they have left to belong to? Do they belong to the world of McDonald's and Burger King? To the world of VCRs and pop music and making money and alcohol and soft drinks?

The world of consumption is a very unhappy world. I don't know very many classes of people that have been able to be happy by consuming. Even the rich. But especially people of Indian background, because they're usually poor to begin with. When they become part of the world of materialism and consumption, their life is one of constant frustration. On the edge of poverty and on the edge of plenty. They get a check, they buy a lot of things, and all of a sudden they're poor again. Over and over.

I think that is one of the most horrible things that has happened to Indian people--the spread of an exploitative way of looking at the natural world. But still, fortunately, in almost every Indian community the old way of looking at things survives. The future must be built on that.

It's true that we've lost a lot, and we can't do everything our ancestors could. But we can recover and we can rebuild and have dreams again. We can dream ceremonies just like they did. We can have new visions. We don't have to give up just because we've lost part of our tradition and culture. We can still find the essential things in our life and make them work for us.

And they don't have to be perfect. It's just like learning to speak your own Indian language again. The first time you speak it, it's not going to be any good. You know you're not going to pronounce things correctly. People are going to laugh. Let them laugh. Unless you try, you'll never learn.

One of the things I hope for is that one of these days we will have a kind of a world in which there won't be large states. People can live in smaller communities in more democratic ways, in a kind of federalism based upon the principles of traditional Native American confederacy, like the Iroquois and Delaware. Where small communities come together to solve their problems, there are no big powers to trample on other people.

Behind that rests a couple of things crucial to Indian philosophy. One of them is the sense of humility. A sense that you are dependent upon the earth, that you are utterly dependent upon nature and other human beings. If you are truly humble, you won't force yourself or your ideas on anybody else.

The other side of that is respect. If you understand yourself and your place in life you will respect other human beings and other living things. Respect is what will build a world that is peaceful and democratic. Only respect. To take the time to solve problems in a way that they can be solved--by talking with people.

I am particularly interested in political independence for Indian people. This means having their own land and territory, a chance to live their own lives and preserve their own languages, to be free to follow a spiritual path.

A part of the rehabilitation process for Native American people is becoming involved in a spiritual movement, in tradition, and in working with non-Indians to save the earth. But the earth will not be saved until non-Indians as well as Indian people come to really believe and understand their oneness with the world around them. I think that is absolutely essential. We must teach people how to love. We must give them the right to love.

Carlos Cordero: Reviving Native Technologies

Carlos Cordero (Maya) was born in Mexico City, and has studied at the University of the Americas there, at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at a number of other California institutions. After coming to the United States in the 1960s, he became a leader in developing the idea of an ethnic studies curriculum, helping to create models for alternative schools and to implement at the elementary level a system called Escuela Calmecac. He served as president of D.Q. University from 1983 to 1994, and continues to be engaged in research to document and advance the knowledge base of indigenous peoples. He was interviewed by Darryl Wilson, with a follow-up interview by Giuseppe Saitta.

There is a fundamental difference between the European concept of humanity in the world and the Native concept of spirituality. They are not only incompatible, but antagonistic. Indians, and certainly my mother's people the Maya, never defined humanity as being out of a state of grace with the universe. We weren't kicked out of paradise or any of those strange things. The Maya strongly believed in a reciprocal relationship between humans and the Creator or creators. Along with other Native peoples of this continent, they talked about a rootedness, a sense of belonging on this planet and in this universe. The creative force was expressed in a manner that "humanized" the existence of people.

To be human among the Indians is to be spiritual. To be spiritual among the Europeans is to transcend the human world. They have said that they are separate from the Creator. So that which is spiritual cannot be human. From an Indian perspective, that is bizarre!Ä

The dynamic of the European cultures is one of obsession with control. Control not only of the environment and other populations, but among themselves. The pre-Columbian Indian concept was that control was the communion between humans and the Creator, humans and their environment, humans and humans.

So the change that needs to happen to heal the earth can't come from the European cultural base, but must come from the Original Native bases that re-establish an inner psychic equilibrium with each other and the environment.

This harmony is needed by a highly technological society that has produced weapons of horrific power it cannot control. With all of his exo-technology--the extension of the senses through outer technology--the European has atrophied his internal technology, his natural human capacities to be in balance and in harmony with nature.

The Indian knowledge-base--culture, science, and philosophy--has technologies of ritual and ceremony. I am using the word technology in a modern sense, which is unfortunate. We should be having this conversation in the Indian languages. Realities are so complex that modern European languages are not useful instruments to convey the experience we are discussing here. One of the things that we must do is to make a concerted effort to accomplish the revival of Indian languages. They have that inner technology.

If we allow the Indian model to revive and be useful, the disparity between humans and technology will begin to diminish. Then the ability to conceptualize contemporary problems--the environment, the ozone layer, ecology, science itself--can emerge. You would have scientists who come from a more harmonious and balanced sense of who they are as a people.

Scientists of the world are a minority. Why is that? We should start to think about why science is so rarified and scientists are so rare. Indian cultures encourage the development of science. But when the invasion took place five hundred years ago, there was no moment for Indian scientists to develop responses to the infections.

The time has come, five hundred years later, to engage in science based on the Indian culture and re-establish natural solutions to the problems created by civilization in the past five hundred years.

I believe the ego-strength of Indian individuals and communities will return. It has never really gone away. We know that in each Indian community people with great ego-strength have always existed. In the next thirty years we will see larger numbers of these individuals coming back and flourishing, to the benefit of their community and the whole world. I am very optimistic that the Indian will play a significant role in the life of our planet.

The first step is the declaration of the right to education for all people. We must believe that to be human is to be educated. We must say that we cannot tolerate one human who is not educated. Nothing can change unless we accomplish this. Right now there are artificial barriers between us and our access to education at all levels. The Indian knowledge-base is tolerated in the colleges and universities of the dominant society only as an exotic curiosity.

We need to give Native people a place in the sun--literally and figuratively. Native people must have a land base. There is a difference in psychology. A psychoanalyst says that you must have a couch to find your ego boundaries and ego strength; Native individuals and populations must have land. Not land in the European definition of ownership, but an unbroken ability to connect with the essence of their humanity, based on a natural connection with the earth, the planet, and the universe.

To the degree that America denies Native people contact with the land, it will succeed in the destruction of the American Indian. Allowing the Native people to have the direct sensory contact with nature will guarantee survival of the Indian people. Having an actual place where you can be where you want to be is without question one of the things that we can do to revive the present human state of lost self-esteem.

©1998 Talking Leaves
Winter 1999
Volume 8, Number 3
Visions of an Ecological Future

Y2K: An Opportunity in Disguise?

For the last year I have been following the developments around the "Y2K-Millennium Bug" and its accompanying "embedded chip" problems. On some days I'm sure that it marks the entire end of Western Civilization as we know it and on other days I think it's just a gigantic scam to sell gold futures and upgraded models of everything possible that runs by computer chips (which is pretty much everything that has moving parts, these days). And depending on the day, I either have the audacity to think I might be able to "make a difference" by organizing my local neighborhood, or I am in despair because there is nothing that I can do to change the larger picture or I'm tired of it all and just don't care.

But deep inside me, there is a passion growing that links back to the '60s when most of us teenagers thought that we could really change the world and create a future full of love, peace and cooperation. In those days, I remember a wind blowing with the vitality of hope for a world where hunger was ended, peace between nations was the norm, all peoples were treated as equals and the greatest scientific and creative minds of the world were harnessed to solve the problems of humanity. And guess what? I think that after all these years of waiting without a great deal of overt success, we are about to face a moment in time which may provide the perfect opportunity to actualize those very dreams of so long ago.

In a way, I see it as the perfect cosmic joke. If I were God herself, I couldn't think of a better scenario to test humanity as to how we choose to meet this particular point in history than "Y2K." And, it is abundantly obvious to everyone that there is no "enemy"--no one "out there" who has created this mess we are in--except us. Also, in reality there is no problem at all--in the sense of there being less food or clothing, air, water or any of the real "necessities" of life. The problem of Y2K lies in the "extras" that we have chosen as the basis for our lives--those extras that have locked us so deeply into a superstructure of "ease" that is so totally dependent on nonrenewable resources that two zeros in the wrong place might just knock it enough off balance to topple Humpty Dumpty and all the King's Men in countries throughout the world. How absolutely ridiculous! And yet it looks like it might come true--unless we very quickly make some MAJOR shifts in the direction of our thinking as a species.

What would happen to the threat of Y2K if we decided to meet this crisis as a real opportunity for a major paradigm shift? What if we chose to come together as communities throughout the world, to share our resources and care for one another? If we chose to cooperate, live more simply and sustainably and meet one another as extended family we might just find that life could be more enjoyable, less stressful and a whole lot more creative than the way we are currently living. Imagine not having to rush off in traffic every morning to answer a hundred phone calls, faxes, e-mails and customer complaints? What if your day was filled with weeding in the garden plot, playing with the children, visiting an elderly neighbor who needed extra care and creating a simple meal for an "extended family" who had chosen to ride out this "storm" together? Actually, to me, this sounds much more sane than most of our chosen daily routines.

And yet, for some reason, we have all pushed ourselves into a consensual paradigm where money, looks, material possessions, and prestige are worth fighting for, while the simple things in life fall very low on our priority lists. When asked, most of us would probably say that we don't know any way out of the boxes we've put ourselves in. And it's true. Within this paradigm, we are in fact trapped by our credit cards, our mortgages, our health insurance, children's educational bills, and the many conveniences that we have bought or have been convinced that we need in order to live "the good life."

But what if someone came along with a way to change all of that, in a quick and somewhat painless turnaround? What if we all chose to use Y2K as an opportunity to transform our paradigm of living from one of maximum speed and quantity to one of quality of life and relationships? What if we decided to spend the next year working to alleviate the initial sufferings caused by a possibly large and long "disruption of power and services"? By working together intensively as communities and neighborhoods, we just might be able to create whole new ways of being together that use the best of our knowledge of appropriate technology while also going back to some of the more heart-centered approaches of dealing with one another from other times and places.

I believe that all of the ingredients necessary for the change are available to us. There is ample abundance on the planet to make sure that everyone has the basics of life--if only we choose to share them with a little equality. Creativity, intelligence, and education abound in youth and adults alike if they are freed up from their service to greed and dominance. And fortunately, there are still many "Elders" who have known how to live through times without all of the conveniences we imagine are necessary for a happy life. I truly believe that Y2K may just be the wonderful opportunity we need to move us toward the place lots of us have been striving to go since the '60s, finally turning the tide of a run-away "progress."

If Y2K is actually as big a threat as it appears to be to "life as usual," then the other end of the continuum is to plan on hoarding and boarding up our compounds against the possibility that our neighbors might have less than we or want more than they have and come after us and our children with weapons of violence. To me this sounds like more of the same--the current global scenario played out in the microcosm of our very homes and neighborhoods--and not the choice I would make, nor advise anyone else to make. To me what is rational in a time like this is to "pull out the stops" and invest your time, your money, your knowledge, and your resources in anything that will help to create the world you want to live in in the future. NOW! Tomorrow may be too late. And certainly, January 1, 2000 may be too late--at least to alleviate some suffering for yourself, your children, the people you love, and many people around the world.

After much consideration, I myself have decided to both think globally and act locally around this issue. In my personal life, I plan to help support the group of people I live with in becoming more self-reliant so that we don't have to fear a power or water failure or a lack of food over a period of time if the systems shut down. And we are also working to organize our local neighborhood and our county to be better prepared so that if systems shut down, the people will be able to support one another rather than competing for apparently limited resources. Fortunately, our area is becoming one of the leaders in this movement towards proactive planning, which will hopefully pay off in great positive social dividends regardless of whether the electricity goes off or not. And globally, I am working with a project called Peace Day/Year 2000 (PDY2K) in which we hope to encourage a very large proportion of the population of the world to come together in simultaneous silence, prayer, and meditation for peace and a global paradigm shift around the time of the new millennium. Again, I perceive that the preciseness of the Y2K moment (January 1, 2000), the turning of the Millennium, the many prophecies for Earth changes and of total global transformation--all coming at approximately the same time in our human history--are fortuitous in bringing us to a focal point for humanity.

To me it seems obvious that most of us will be awaiting the New Millennium Moment with a certain amount of intensity. Peace Day/Year 2000 will invite the people of the planet in unison to focus our collective energies on a minute of silent prayer, meditation, or simple thoughts for peace and positive transformation across the planet. The plan is that this will take place as the sun begins to rise over Gisborne, New Zealand on the first day of the years 2000, 2001, and 2002. Global televised and Internet events will celebrate this symbolic coming together of the people of the world and there is the hope that the "100th Monkey Effect" will miraculously take place and as a species we will choose and know that we truly want to and can create a peaceful, loving world. I invite each of you to join me and billions of others in celebrating the fact that we can choose peace and love over whatever other scenario presents itself.

Dianne Brause is a member of Lost Valley Educational Center. Reach her at [email protected].

©1998 Talking Leaves
Winter 1999
Volume 8, Number 3
Visions of an Ecological Future