From awareness to action

A couple of days ago I learned about the Complaint Free World campaign. This campaign is designed to help people become aware of the habit of complaining, and to realize that complaints are not really changing anything in a positive way, they are only creating an unhappy environment for self and others. To help create awareness there is a purple rubber bracelet, that you put on your other arm each time you catch yourself complaining. The funds collected from the bracelets are donated in turn to several causes. I found it a great initiative - practical, simple, and with potential for impact on many people's life. Because awareness is the first step. Then I personally would suggest to convert the complaint into a creative act, for example a suggestion, a request, an offer that addresses the reason for the complaint. I already like the world I envision, with an expanding virus of lightness and better feelings, as we stop complaining and feel actors that can impact the world, in our little, daily ways...!

Power and Responsibility

I was listening this morning to an interesting chapter on an NPR's program - the title was Power and responsibility. They were featuring three different stories that illustrated the connection between power and responsibility - but not of conventional powerful people: the power of regular individuals - like you and me. This triggered some thoughts for me. What is power, anyway? who has the power? Ok - the power ...for what? A nice topic for one of my "meaningful conversations"... ;-) I replied to myself that we all have power - for many different things. We may not have the power we wish - to change things outside of our area of decision, but the limits of the area of influence are blurry - and I've never been able to quite know where they are . I even came to ask myself if there are any limits in the area of influence we have - ? Then we have to talk about responsibility. What is the responsibility that comes with power? I think I've seen the most dramatic scenes in movies when the worn out hero finally gets into a position of power over the evil one, and has all the power to kill him, and he takes a moment, looks into his eyes, and doesn't. Interesting, the hero can kill him and many others if they are both playing hiding, but it's more difficult to kill bluntly looking into the bad man's eyes. When doing so, the toll is expensive, and the hero can only keep his title of hero if he sinks into post-murder depression, guilt feelings and changes career. Doesn't it sound familiar? So what is the responsibility that comes with power, then? I think that we may not consider the huge potential of our influence - because of the responsibility that comes with it, and may be the fear of not wanting to carry that one. In those terms, it's simpler to stay selfdeclared as powerless. Hm.

Crossing a threshold

David Korten, in his wonderful book The Great Turning indicates that around the 1980 we crossed an evolutionary threshold, by placing a burden on the life support systems of the Earth beyond the sustainable limits. In the last 50 years the population grew more than double, from 2.6 billion to 6.4 billion in 2005. The number of motor vehicles is ten times what it was in 1950. Fossil fuel use is five time what it was, and global use of water has tripled. It is only 27% of the world population who enjoyes material affluence to consume goods and services. We are consuming at a faster rate than the resources of the Earth regenerate, that means that at this rate of consumption we would actually need 1.2 Earth equivalent planets. But we only have one. So we are depleting the natural capital of the planet: minerals, fossil fuels, forests, fisheries, soil, water. We are extracting these resources at the expense of our children and the next generations.

The WWF (World Wildlife Fund) publishes a Living Planet Index, that tracks the health of the planet through its freshwater, ocean, forests and coastal ecosystems. The index declined 37% between 1970 and 2000. They say it's unlikely to reach zero - a dead planet - "because the planet will surely rid itself of the offending species long before this occurs".

We need to begin thinking differently

I ready in the fabulous magazine Yes! http://www.yesmagazine.org/ that 1 square kilometre (247 acres) of hot desert receives solar energy equivalent tp 1.5 million barrels of oil. That means that worldwide several HUNDRED times more energy than we need. Similarly, analysts who have studied the solar resources of the US Southwest found that concentrating solar power could provide nearly 7,000 gigawatts of capacity, this is SEVEN times more than the current total US electric capacity. So the thought is - if we have so much energy at our disposal, more than we need, available from the sun alone, just waiting to be captured by processes currently available, we could take the budget invested in the war in Iraq and spend it on developing the energy this way, we wont need to fight for oil anymore, we don't need to send soldiers to get hurt and die, we don't need to kill civilians, pay for weapons. And if there is some money left over, we can create a microfinancing system for people to grow their vegetables and plant trees. I bet one day someone will read an old posting, dated 80 years ago, and laugh and share it with his friends with a comment: Can you believe they were just thinking of this as a possibility!?

more than 4000

I was watching yesterday on CNN how a person somewhere in Vermont set up a small white flag for every soldier killed in Iraq. The field is on a major road, and he did it so as people drive by they have a visual reminder. I am not sure a reminder of what. Of how many lives was has cost? of how many US soldiers killed? Of the price of war as the option to solve conflicts? I would like to see a field with one white flag for every life it has cost. Whether US soldier, or soldier from another country. Whether civilian, contractor, Iraqi, just counting lives. May be it could help to spend a while in a space shuttle, and see the earth from above. From there it's more clear, that it's just lives of planet habitants. There is this great game I've read about in Paul Hawken's book "Blessed Unrest", where he invites a group of executives to think and plan life for one year in a space shuttle, the size of their choice. They have no restrictions in what they can do or take on board. It becomes interesting to think of the earth as a large size shuttle, and we are all travelling on it together.

Interesting ad

I saw a very interesting ad yesterday in a movie theater in Munich, Germany. A man was sitting, fishing, on a pretty dirty looking dock, looked like in mid of a city, harbour, something like that. Another man passed by, walking his dog. The fisher man looked pretty bored, and it made me think of a recent comment that man have an easier time setting their minds blank, therefore the passion for such a calm activity like fishing. After a while, the fisherman pulled out something, and it was some kind of glove. He took it off the hook, and piled it on his side, where there were already some other objects that he had fished, garbage. The dog walker shook his head. Then a message came on the screen, big. Use your time purposeful. Give time, not money. And then an address of an non for profit organization was displayed, an organization that needs volunteering support. Nothing against fishing - but many times when I see the different ways we spend our time, I ask myself if it is really the best way to spend that half an hour - and what difference a half an hour could make in someone's life.

Quote

I found a great quote from Ghandi: " The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems." May be even more of those tiny little things to change in what we are doing daily, and how we're doing it...