Thursday, March 19, 2009

Time

Have you ever wished that you had more time on your hands, time to accomplish things, time to appreciate what you do have, etc?
You are not alone!
You will see that this is my first Blog entry since January. What happened to the thousands of hours that have since passed? I suppose that I could account for many of them, but I still marvel at their passing.

The point of time at which we humans first became aware that we are running out of time to make a significant course correction was not very long ago. Relative to the time humans have walked this earth, it was only a few seconds ago that we realised we cannot continue to destroy our home indefinitely.
Yet we have had enough time to begin a serious move toward living in a truly sustainable manner. We began to head in this direction when oil prices went through the roof in the 80's, but quickly backed down when the oil crisis was over. Now we are truly in a fix.
There are many barriers to the urgently-needed (life-saving) transitions into which we need to throw ourselves. Life-style changes account for part of it. Mostly it is the fear of change, the politicians being pushed by the interests of certain businesses and even "environmentalists", the power of the media, and especially the way we collectively worship the economy.
The god we call "the economy" has to continue to expand indefinitely (even on a finite planet!) because the banking industry is predicated on such. If the economy does not continue to expand the banks go broke. Since jobs, taxes, wealth, and everything depends on money, we do anything to avoid the banking system from going down. We are seeing the degree to which governments are willing to bail out banks and major industries, all to keep the economy expanding.
This, it can become evident to all who see the bigger picture, is complete madness. We are sacrificing the planet, our home (and home to an amazing array of life-forms), all in order to keep producing more goods so that the banking system can stay alive.
In other words, we are converting the planet's wealth for the sake of digits on computers. In psychology this death wish would be quickly diagnosed. Yet we all continue on down this path.
Thankfully, and despite denial by governments, companies (especially media) and individuals, increasing numbers of folk from all walks of life are realising just how mad this process is, and are pushing for needed changes.

Just in time.