I never intended for this article, a compilation of blogs, to grow so long but whenever I hear of yet another blatant example of our 'herd blindness', my keyboard jumps up and down, demanding words on paper, and who am I to refuse, huh?
Be that as it may, since I'm sure my point and concerns are by now quite clear, this one will probably be the concluding blog on the so-called 'Angry Planet' or as I prefer to think of it, on 'The Good Natured Nanny's growing annoyance with her misguided charges'.
After a while, events and views and reasons and excuses do become very familiar, very repetitive. As it is, at the moment, 'we' are already condoning by proxy a new and massive exploitation that is for now partly illegal. Yes, Nature contains yet another resource that is currently deemed essential to us - in the world as we have made it: minerals found in red clay and going by the name of... rare earth - you got to love that name!
Though rare earth is not yet a part of our trivializing small talk - the reality is that the strong acids used by miners, gangster-miners, to process the minerals in Southern China are polluting all the wells, ponds and streams in the area. These have become watery poison for the local villagers.
Why are we, in absentia or by proxy, condoning yet another anti-Nature mining activity? Why are we generally willing to see the mining of rare earth legalized by the Chinese government?
For now, China has the monopoly on the rare earth alloys, which allows her government to turn on/off the supply. China, for now, decides the quotas allowed for export to other countries and we turn yet 'another' blind eye to the toxicity of this mining practice because rare earth minerals are deemed essential to the manufacturing of everything and anything ranging from our compact fluorescent light bulbs and our iphones to our flat screens and missiles and also to our low-emission cars and our giant wind turbines.
Here, in Australia, AustralianRareEarth.com states that, "'Rare Earth Elements (REEs) can be regarded as the 'vitamins' required for the shift from a carbon based economy to the new 21st century electron economy' -SLS 2008" and produces "some wonderful investment opportunities." [5]
Even if that doesn't sound lovely to our ears, how much, collectively, are we willing to be collectively inconvenienced by rejecting this mining practice? How determined are we to collectively miss out or do without while 'Science' comes up with more alternatives to old alternatives from its collective linear-thinking brain?
Even though, as already stated, two of the key criteria for a successful global society are personal contentment and personal safety, science and technology have not yet made us more contented, or more safe.
When in the months ahead, as we read about more advancement, more discoveries, more 'progress' made in our name and as we hear, feel and see more 'coldness' inside our world and as we, doubtlessly, witness the Good Natured Nanny, becoming more and more impatient with us, her misguided charges, three questions will still be begging an answer:
1. How and when do we, personally and individually, decide to step aside from what appears to be the greatest herd any culture has ever created to take an individual stand on this, on that and the other?
2. How long will we, together and separately, go on frittering our collective potential?
3. Can we totally dismiss the fact that our ways of thinking/using/responding are too often as frozen, as barren and as toxic as the world we help create around us?
Nature is squeezing us from where we sin when, collectively, we put monetary preoccupations above all others with a careless exploitation of the planet's natural resources and with our penchant for hording our money on the one hand while, on the other, using it as a hybrid of bribe and ersatz for love within our family units.
Mega billions of dollars are being squeezed out of our global economy by acts of nature and man-made disasters. One way of making it all less gloomy is to think that wasted as they are to all of us, at least these mega billion of dollars are no longer available to fund more wars.
The use we make of money, as a commodity, has to be re-thought. Money, world-wide, needs to flow freely. A massive cultural re-thinking is long overdue. Money does not want to be horded under beds, inside vaults or buried under the spot marked X, as on pirates' maps of old. Nor should it be gripped by closed hearts and tight fists.
Money should be used to do good, but not instead of physical engagement, not instead of real affection. It has to be given generously, not held in a tight bargain, not used as emotional blackmail, not to tip the balance in power struggles, not instead of true affection - not solely for pleasuring our senses. If the flow of our global money is dammed high and deep, nature knows how to rip it away from us while, these days, it does so, sparing a maximum of lives.
Disasters are not only aimed at the ones who are personally affected - that would be a terrible overkill and nature does not waste her energy in meaningless acts just to appear sensational and make it big on CNN. Finger-pointing, over-acting and over-reacting are traits that are strictly human. What nature is trying to do for us is to force us away, totally away from the false notion that we are all separate from one another-separate as individuals inside a family, separate inside our workplace, separate within our communities, separate from inside our countries while, in reality, seeing as we are all souls in disguise, we are as inseparable as the water droplets that make up the immensity of the sea.
Anything one does affects others - always, even if ADHD little blind mice that we are, we are rarely aware of such synchronicity. Our need is to move on from the dubious gift of hindsight without over-estimating the usefulness of foresight. Our need requires the ability to be present - aware and awake - in the moment.
Just as family tragedies bring bereft people together for a moment, the spontaneous outpouring of neighbor to neighbor/stranger to stranger solidarity that springs from 'acts of god' disasters offer brief glimpses into what selfless, shared kindness and selfless active support can look like and feel like. How much different our society would become if slowly, slowly, we could retrain ourselves and our children to value much less what is material and much more what springs from the higher end of our ego - from our soul.
I do find it interesting to note that the cost wreaked by the current international 'acts of god' and 'acts of man is for the most part purely financial. Recent wild floods, massive toxic releases, weird landslides and top-of-the-scale earthquakes, as potentially deadly as they were, have spared lives as carefully as a deftly-handled whipper snipper spares the tiniest of flowers. The consequences of the global financial meltdown are lingering, particularly in America. It already seems clear that *the world* has not yet learnt enough of the intended lesson. Nature knows that it is from our hip-pocket that we suffer the most because of the purse strings tied around our heart. Thus, this is the way nature has chosen to play it out with us, here and now. Game on!
Reality checks: Why isn' it yet time to be awake and aware of what Nature is telling our civilization?
Why isn' it yet time to let the Polish flood and the Icelandic volcano and the fast succession of super storms in Dakota and Italian landslides and Asia Pacific disasters cleanse a path for us to follow - differently?
A leaping, raging, devastating new strain of killer fires - fires of unprecedented ferocity and agility - have become common in California and here in Australia. They are nature's calls to burn away the past, to leave it behind, to not try to hold on to it and to not try to resurrect it. The past is not. It is no more than the future is. Only the present moment is, which is why it is imperative for us, separately and collectively, to be awake and aware within the moments that present themselves under our feet.
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5. http://www.australianrareearths.com/
Dear Reader, should you wish to explore more of my articles in their original format - in most cases complete with color illustrations - feel free to explore http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/CCSaint_Clair FYI, I am not selling anything; no workshops; no massages; no seminars; no retreats; no crystals and no books on spirituality. There is nothing on that index that can be bought, but there is plenty that can/should be/ought to be practiced - daily:)
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