HOW TO THINK GREEN

READ MY ULTIMATE MAGAZINE POST - Something posted most days - keep visiting!
What’s on today: A post inspired by a Sunday Scribblings prompt. Have you had a go yet? … PLUS … A post inspired by a Friday 5 meme. Click Eye On the World for my current affairs.
YOU KNOW IT’S THE WRITE WAY

HOW TO THINK GREEN

We are increasingly thinking green. We recycle. We do what we can for the environment – to protect the future of the planet. But is this really ‘thinking’ green, or does this require something more substantial?
What we are actually doing is ‘acting’ green – taking specific actions based on what society increasingly expects of us. To ‘think’ green is, however, something much deeper, and it requires us to realize that we are not attuned to think green at all.

Two primary ideals in western society stop us doing so.

The first is the ascendancy of Big Biz – huge multi-national corporations which are, in effect, the main polluters of the planet. Big Biz works on a simple philosophy. This is that to continue to hold their power, ‘systems’ must be so big that only they can afford to run them.
A fossil fuel based economy is one such system. And in maintaining it, Big Biz guarantees that no other businesses – using, cleaner, more easily managed tech – can ever challenge them. Hence, their very existence demands that they cannot be eco-friendly. To be so would destroy them.

The second ideal is religious based.

Throughout the world we know of prehistoric tribes centred on animism – the idea that there is a spirit world running parallel to the physical. This based religion in nature. However, artifacts show a progression from here through the chimera – half animal, half man – to the man-god.
This shows the progression of religion changing from nature-based to society-based, as societies became more complicated, its final expression being monotheism. Hence, for the last 2000 years at least, our entire thought processes have been societal, ignoring the importance of nature, which was fundamental to the first religions.
To think green is, therefore, alien to both our present economic systems, and our very processes of thought. Maybe be need to redress this non-eco mentality before we can truly say we are ‘green’, with the future of the planet uppermost in our minds.

© Anthony North, April 2008

REPORT OF THE INTERGALACTIC COMMITTEE MEETING ON EARTHLY VIRUSES

The delegates chose on imminent actions,
for them there would be no distractions;
as one voice they were all foresworn,
no splinter would there, here, be born;
The ecology of Earth they knew could molder,
unless the decisions made were bolder;
The future for them, it was votive,
determined to wipe out that Earth-bound motive;
Throughout it’s life, a nature hate,
did arise to punctuate,
the beautiful nature of Earth’s plan;
With their desires, they sealed their fate,
for the total
unconditional
eradication
of man

(c) Anthony North, April 2008