Maybe it is just me, but it seems that there is something different about the world these days. People seem to be a bit more “edgy” and fearful now than any time since I was born 48 years ago. I mean I didn’t live through the two great world wars or the Great Depression, the Holocaust, or other seminal world events of the past. Maybe it was the same back then. I don’t know. But something strange is in the air, or airwaves since now everything is so media driven (sometimes I believe we are being “driven” right off a cliff). I can hear it in my mother’s voice when I talk with her. People are fearful about stuff, or maybe I should say fearful about losing their “stuff.” So that brings me to the title of today’s post, everything is matter, so everything matters. The world is divided into two categories of “matter,” at least in my simplistic and unscientific view. You have the things that are natural, such as all forms of life, the earth itself, the atmosphere, oceans, land, etc. etc. (you get the picture). Then you have the things that are man-made. One exists by the hand and will of God (if you believe in that sort of thing) and the other by the hand and will of humans. It seems that all the hub-bub in the world today is because of threats to the man-made stuff. Most scoff at the idea of protecting the natural world at the expense of the man-made world. But in reality it all matters. I am not advocating de-evolution here. That is, that we all go back to living in caves and hunting and gathering. What I am advocating is that there be some balance restored in our approach to what matters, because it all does. We have gone so far in creating a world of comfort for ourselves at the expense of nature that we are reaching a tipping point in which our actions actually have a profound and negative effect on the natural world. I don’t believe that makes “Mother Nature” very happy. This obsessive focus on us, a focus that says that only “we” matter, is getting us in a lot of trouble these days. The climate is changing because of it. Organisms are disappearing. The order of nature is being upset. Greed is now good. And we are literally consuming ourselves out of existence. And everyone wants to blame everyone else. It is the Republicans fault. No, it is the Democrats that did it. No, it is the Muslims, no the Christians, no those damn Chinese, and so it goes without end. The truth is we are all at fault, every single one of us. Because we are the only form of matter that has the ability to destroy this planet and we are doing a pretty darn good job of it. The jaguar can’t do that. They just live according to their God-given instinct. The can’t decide to build an atomic bomb and kidnap other animals for ransom, or commit any of the millions of dastardly deeds that humans inflict upon themselves. They don’t destroy the forest or go to war with other animals. They just live according to the plan that God laid out for them. And what was that plan for us? Are we living according to the right plan, or have we gotten off track? I think what needs to occur is that we stop making every argument a political one, especially those that concern our planet and the health of it. That we start taking action to correct the errors that have brought us to where we are now. That doesn’t mean that we lose our comforts of life, our homes and cars, and cities and planes and railroads and all those other things we are so proud of. It just means that we start recognizing that it is not just the man-made stuff that matters, but that everything does. Costa Rica is a country that is pretty “low on the totem pole” in terms of its rate of consumption as compared with the developed countries of the world. And it is a place where folks do seem to “get it” when it comes to the idea that the natural world does matter. It is easy to have a deep respect for nature when you are surrounded by so much of it. Maybe Costa Rica and other biodiversity hot spots around the world (the few that are left) can serve as giant classrooms to teach us humans that the natural world does matter. That would be a pretty cool thing to see happen. Maybe then humans would come to realize that everything is matter, so everything matters. I hope it is not already too late.
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Costa Rica Blog - 365 Reasons I Love Costa Rica » Blog Archive » Reason #80: Puzzled
[…] If it’s Matter, It Matters….. […]
Costa Rica Blog - 365 Reasons I Love Costa Rica » Blog Archive » Reason #196: Search for the Soul
[…] I wrote in the last post about a guy named Van Jones, who was Obama’s “green jobs czar.” Well that’s now history, since he resigned last week amidst brewing controversies stirred up by Fox News and chiefly, Glenn Beck. Okay the guy did have a past that many would consider a tad “controversial,” but his basic platform was not to undermine the U.S. capitalistic system. It was to make sure that certain segments of society weren’t left out of it. He had “silly” notions that certain things matter….things like the environment and putting poor people in poor neighborhoods to work. He tried to combine these concerns by pushing the idea of a “green collar” economy. One in which jobs were created in the strive towards creating a cleaner environment, that is, one that is less reliant on “dirty” fuels that threaten the planet’s survival. He had the equally “silly” notion that what ordinary people do in their ordinary lives, can make a difference in creating a planet that will be livable for generations to come. At least those notions were “silly” to Mr. Beck. As soon as Beck was able to be label Jones as a communist, then that quickly became all that mattered. His ideas? Forget about all that. He is a threat, an enemy to be thwarted. And I guess he was since he is no more….at least not in the Obama administration. However, I have the feeling that we haven’t heard the last from Van Jones….I hope not. As much as I believe the ideas of Van Jones were more than worthy of our consideration, I also believe he was missing an important element. That is the spiritual element that is the real and essential catalyst for change. Unless people really begin to let go of old ideas about what is bad and what is good, and the labels that those ideas provoke, change will never ever occur. Any idea that is not completely in step with absolute free market capitalism will quickly get branded as “socialist” or “communist” and there is a large segment of U.S. society that will be more than ready to rally a witch-burning party. Here’s a radical thought. Maybe capitalism or communism, liberal or conservative, left-wing or right-wing don’t really matter at all. Maybe what really matters is people and planet. Maybe whatever ideas that promote prosperity with respect to people and planet are ideas that should be embraced, or at least considered, without demean-i-zing those that propose them simply because they may not be in lockstep with our own….ideas, that is. Maybe, just maybe, until we come to understand that our religious or political beliefs (and all too often those two seemed to be intertwined) are not as important as the flesh and blood human beings that adhere to them, as well as the planet on which those humans reside, then real change will never occur and people and planet will just go on careening towards the abyss. Maybe the answer only lies partially in policy, but more substantially in a search for the soul. A soul that understands that people and planet matter more than politics, or religious pathologies. A soul that understands that if it’s matter, it really does matter. […]