Starting 2 maybe 3 years ago I started to do what I called “retire” from my activist efforts. That mostly, exclusively really, was about climate change. But I like to write and I am an unusually interested citizen, as it goes, with the health and welfare of the human species. So naturally I began to pick up on other issues outside of climate change that threaten our health and welfare, of which there is no shortage.
I find that retirement did not help. I mean help in the sense that it did not relieve me of the burdens climate change gave me. I finally figured out that I had been more or less traumatized by the knowledge of climate change, but simply taking on other existential issues still meant we live in existential times, and they’re just flat freaking traumatic. However I have not as yet fully developed a trauma reaction to these other issues anywhere close to what it is with climate change where I immediately well up in tears and get overwhelmed with fear and sadness. It’s screwed up.
Anyway here’s the deal I’m getting at, which has little to do with my personal dysfunctions but it is thru them I am discovering yet another way to say my usual: “WE can’t keep doing what we’re doing.”
What I’ve discovered is that just like with climate change, the attention I am giving to mainstream news such as elections, politicians, economy, healthcare, war, etc., all have the same source of propulsion, which is the free enterprise system of economics. You see you can never take your eyes off the ball of what makes the world go around, money.
I’ll cut to the quick and say our system for ways and means is everything to us. It is in any culture, present or ancient. Whatever keeps you alive at the base, such as food, water, clothing and shelter is also the deepest, most endeared and possessed function of your life. It literally means more to you than your family because without it you and your family would be dead. I cannot stress enough how much of this is our very fundamental reality and is what your life is more about than you may ever consider. In current times, we take this for granted where there was a time it was a constant thought. But its significance is no less a function of our lives now than it has ever been.
From the place of ‘how to survive’ is the beginning of everything else in your life. It’s tricky because like I said, in present times this aspect of our lives is something nearly effortless for those living in the developed world and therefore is given little attention. It’s effortless because of the free enterprise system of economics, and solely because of that. Oh but, “WE can’t keep doing what we’re doing.”
Everything is involved, Everything. All that we do, ALL of it is the result of or for the purpose of our economics. It all goes back to that. YET in today’s world, all that we do is also every reason why we are headed for extinction. When you take and don’t replace you run out. The free enterprise system of economics is a take and don’t replace entity. It has taken and not replaced for centuries now and its impact has arrived. All it needs now is its continued use and its ultimate power to destroy will be fully demonstrated; likely by the end of this century.
So in one sense I can easily say my trauma, and ultimately yours as well, stems from the very form of living we exists in. It is what we do to stay alive that is actually set to kill us all. I make money, you money, we all make money and we do it to stay alive, without money we will die. But with and because of money, we will also die. What is fundamentally keeping us alive is also what will fundamentally bring us to extinction and therefore –WE can’t keep doing what we’re doing—Which is—Seeking these high standards of living–.
Evolve Now 