science and related industry.
I am not saying it will be easy. Many people will continue to suffer from lack of these essential elements of survival.
We can not change our course until we become aware of a new one. We are seeing development in material and manufacturing technologies that will revolutionize the way we view our involvement in the basic well being of our community.
As these discoveries are revealed there will as always be doubters and sceptic observers. There will also be those that resist change for personal fear of loss. We all are vested in the existing system of providing food water and shelter to the global population. There are statistics available and experts with credible information voicing their opinions all over the world.
This blog is my invitation to all of you to express your doubts, your support, your
fear, your hopes.
I will be traveling to as many university campuses as possible in the coming year and speaking about displaced population response methodologies past present and anticipated.
I believe that the worlds population can and will learn to coexist on planet Earth.
The challenges are becoming better defined and the social media is maturing, though often against it’s own will, in its ability to spread word of common threats to diverse populations resulting in coordinated response from a wide representation individuals, corporations, government and non government agencies. Traditional differences that were for centuries provocative enough to inspire brothers to kill brothers in the name of ________ ________,… fill in the blanks)(are now seen as minor variations of cultural perspectives.
In the past national borders were clearly defined
We are concerned with our own borders and our selective admission of aliens from other countries. The pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness becomes a race to consume. A material perspective when multiplied by the present and growing world population presents predictable exhaustion of any limited resource. The mood and cooperation of the citizenry is predictable as well. As we face problems of supply of essential provisions as food, water and shelter in greater numbers and the electronic media and social platforms are now effective to propose solutions for inspection by prospective partners.
This is not an article on immigration but one on imagination. As we are all citizens of the same planet, boundaries become meaningless, subjective arguments of simple, outdated thinking.
Is it any wonder that we as individuals are frustrated with the bickering and the finger pointing that consumes our leaders? We have been programmed by the 20th centuries identification with immediate gratification of our needs. We in the “developed world” have come to expect a smooth highway before us to travel to any location of our choice. We expect at the end of the smooth highway awaits a choice of hotels, entertainment to our liking, what ever our “taste”, or an off the road adventure with all the uncertainty offered by a dude ranch. If we wish to travel by air we expect affordable fares to multiple locations. We are not fond of waiting in lines and become frustrated with measures of security in place for our safety.
The Industrial revolution, powered by the internal combustion engine is coming to an end. We are now experiencing the information revolution powered by the willingness of the collective understanding and compassion of informed citizens to face limitations imposed by our host, mother earth as defined by the sciences of our for fathers and imagined by our children.
The simplicity of design is essential in building a successful model of diverse collaborative energy required to implement multicultural change.
Food, water, shelter are components of power required to build a network of communication understandable to all living organisms.
sometimes our good intentions cause results that are unanticipated and unexpected, no matter how honest the intention may be, sometimes they are percieved as something completely different to those whom we intend to support with our 'good' intentions. so ,i suppose our 'good' intentions are really left without any meaning at all, or they change from being an act of friendship or kindness to an act of imbarrassment to everyone, so really , our original intent is only meaningful in how it is interpreted by someone else.
ReplyDeletethis is a lofty goal. my question is, even if a simple idea that can be replicated to work in all areas, so simple and streamlined that it is reduced to its lowest common denominator is implemented, how can anything of a lasting nature be attained without a common sense of ownership among the recipients? take Haiti. the reforestation efforts that are imposed upon the country by well meaning organizations have failed to a large extent due to the culture of preferring charcoal cooked food by the population/the commonly owned lands/the selling of charcoal as a mainstay of income producing for the poorest members of that society/ and of course, this is only a sliver of the complicated cobweb of deterrents to these tree planting ventures having a lasting impact.
ReplyDeleteWhat has worked have been smaller projects that involve grafting mango trees and giving ownership of groves to locals/ planting grasses that restore the soil/ attempting to promote sugarcane based charcoal projects that can replace charcoal from trees/(only probably successful if they are locally "owned", and not imposed).
A consciousness change among the people giving as well as the people receiving seems to be the key. Or am I missing the whole point? Say we were able to give the Haitian population one small prefab home for each family. Successfully. Install them. Stand back with pride. What about the floods that are bound to come to sweep these homes away? What about the 7 years needed for growth of trees to hold the soil? Would they quit cutting down the trees we planted? Could we change a culture? Should we change a culture? I am not invested in any of these questions, and do not know enough facts or have enough hands on experience to state conclusions that are insightful. However, I invite the discussion re: if the goals of the Global Shelter Project are attainable,does not a great deal of the success rest upon the recipients of these efforts investment in what is received? Is it a three legged stool of shelter/food/water/, or a four legged stool of the aforementioned and...what would be the fourth.....ownership by the recipient individual? bypassing corrupt "government"? cant think of a better way to express it........... the fourth leg would have to be an investment in the change by the populace to give a long enough period of time for the next level of human development. a full, housed, and non thirsty man might write a poem, start a blog,or try to help others...................:-)
The key "integer" is the cube. Look at the room you are in. It has walls, roof and floor, like a cube. Like pretty much the room we are all in no mater in Haiti, Louisiana, Iraq or anywhere else.
ReplyDeletemy belief and the inspiration for my involvement is that we are soon to be capable of building faster, stronger and cheaper cubes that are designed to be clustered and stacked to create urban communities. As we are able to do this our economies will recover and our sense of being part of something to nourish will replace our fear of each other.
The common threats we face will bring us together to address the issues we face and those demagogs and nay sayers will be replaced forgotten like yesterdays worry.
ah, but if our" sense of being part of something to nourish will replace our fear of each other!!"
ReplyDeletei can go for that!
b.
I cry a lot lately, but mostly they are not tears of saddness, but tears of joy and release,
ReplyDeleteBringing peace and contentment.
As I discover who I AM,
I have to accept that WE are ONE,
The more I cannot ignore your suffering,
As I begin to live my life in this awareness,
I wonder what took me so long to get here ..
There is a shift in consciousness going on all over the world,
And as ONE , we will do what needs to be done
WE ARE doing it now
the only thing I AM really sure of is,
it must be done with love,understanding,intelligence,
and a great big ocean full of compassion:)
I cry a lot lately, but mostly they are not tears of saddness.