Extracurriculum

Liza and I have been taking a class with the Pachamama Alliance about winning the climate challenge. The inconvenient truth we face is that the “bottom line” isn’t profit or GDP after all. At base, disconnection has led us to this brink: i.e. treating the earth’s resources and each other as disposable. The extraction/exploitation paradigm is (no surprise) not sustainable. In fact, it’s hypocritic and ultimately that is suicidal. Solutions are complex but identifiable. The principle behind them is the same old simple one: treat everything and everyone as we want to be treated. In other words, connect.

On top of that class, we just returned from a Civil Rights tour of the Deep South. Whew! It felt like a very long and exhausting week. If “white supremacy” exhausts me in a week, what’s it like to be abused and endangered by it day after day for a lifetime? The “gut punch” came when we learned that a 29-year-old man in Georgia had been found lynched the week before. And Reuters and Associated Press were NOT picking up the story?! We weren’t studying the past, we were confronting the present.

Talk about a “double whammy:” climate crisis and racism (or “human supremacy” and “white supremacy”)! None of which has anything to do with Shanghaied. Except this: we (our species) are “lost at sea.” Have been for a long time. IF we can return “home,” it will be a hero/heroine’s journey for ALL of us. It’s long odds, but is there another viable choice?