All posts by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D.

Seeking balance in a bipolar holiday season

I have felt quite bipolar this Christmas season.

On the one hand, I have been going through all the familiar routines and patterns that I have observed at this time of year since earliest childhood: the planning, the extra shopping and cooking, the merry-making with friends and family, the sharing of gifts, especially for the children.  This is the way my parents always celebrated the winter solstice–not with any religious context, but simply as a festive time to light candles and keep a warm hearth against the winter dark and chill, bringing friends and family into the circle of friendship and good cheer, and exchanging gifts almost as a way of symbolizing the abundance accomplished in the previous year, and hoped for in the future.

On the other hand, I can’t escape the awareness of how well this playbook suits the capitalist economic model, which is relentlessly undermining the very abundance it seeks to enshrine, by pushing both the social system and the environment so hard that both are threatened with collapse.

The social conditioning that has made Christmas such a huge secular orgy of buying and exchanging gifts is very hard to break. If you don’t participate, you castigate yourself as a Scrooge, a boring wet blanket.  And you get depressed, too, because everyone else seems to be celebrating and having fun, while you–through your own perverse insistence on non-conformance–are off in a corner, worrying about the end of the world.

Yesterday, after opening presents by the tree and eating a cheery holiday brunch, my kids and I went for a long walk up the mountain that I can see from my front porch, the one over which the sun rises every morning.  Almost at our destination, we came through a narrow ravine in which several huge, craggy, beautifully colored boulders were scattered.

One presented one of those  classic overhangs that we know were used as sheltered campsites by indigenous hunters for millennia before the arrival of the Europeans.  Others were balanced with amazing precision, creating deep caves that we dared not explore in this season of hibernating bears.

There was an unmistakeable sense of age in that gathering of stones. Squinting my eyes, I could imagine the great glacier that had retreated down the mountainside, gouging out the flat ravine through which we now walked, and leaving the huge boulders scattered in its wake.  I could also imagine an even earlier time, when the rocks had been home to myriads of fish, with giant squid sleeping in the caves, instead of snoring bears.  Those great rocks have seen so much earthly history, standing majestically on their mountainside, unmoved by the shallower destinies of the flora and fauna that root on them or pass them by.

For a moment, putting my hand on the cold rough stone, my inner turmoil was calmed by a strong apprehension of the longer view of life on Earth.

It’s true that our current way of life, complete with its winking strings of colored lights powered by huge, dirty, out-of-sight mines, will not persist much longer.  Not with 7 billion people ravaging the globe like a swarm of ravenous locusts.

But these ancient stones have seen upheavals far more intense than what is currently on the horizon.  They have survived as silent witnesses to many cycles of destruction and regeneration.  They will be there, still silently bearing witness, after homo sapiens has become just another level on the fossil record of the planet.

There is strange comfort in this.

I still have every intention of trying to save our species–and so many other current inhabitants of Earth–by advocating for a transition from fossil fuels to renewables, and a shift from a civilization based on endless competitive growth to one based on collaborative stewardship of a steady state economy and a healthy, fully bio-diverse ecosystem. In my second half of life, this is the cause to which I will dedicate myself, second only to seeing through my job as a parent and giving my kids as strong a start as possible with which to face our uncertain future.

But somehow it helps to stave off despair, knowing that no matter how badly we may fail as a species, the planet will endure, and find new ways of prospering, new ways of combining the building blocks of creation into wondrous, miraculously beautiful and clever forms.

That knowledge forms a peaceful ledge on which to perch, between the bipolar swings of the season.  You’ll find me on this perch for the next week or so, quietly collecting my energy and my will for the struggles ahead.

 

1 Comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 26, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Community, Environment, New stories, Resilience
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 26, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/26/seeking-balance-in-a-bipolar-holiday-season/

De-coupling our wagons from the locomotive of global capitalism

There is a clear spectrum of response to the urgency of the environmental and economic challenges that face us.

On the one end is the Deep Green Resistance movement, calling for a complete take-down of industrialized civilization, violently if necessary (and it would be necessary, of course–industrial civilization won’t go down without a fight, unless it’s wiped out by natural disasters).

On the other end are those who believe we will be able to find our way into a sustainable world order via technology, ie, renewable energy sources that will keep the capitalist engines burning bright.

On this spectrum, I would have to locate myself somewhere in the middle.  While I see the necessity of deindustrialization, I don’t really want to live through the violent havoc a strong de-civ movement would cause.

But I know things can’t go on as they have been.  We must shift from an economic model built on endless growth to one that seeks to maintain a steady state, both for human societies and for the natural world (as if there were a separation between these two).

We must also shift from the capitalist system of accumulated wealth for the few based on the commodified labor of the masses, to a system in which people’s labor is more directly connected to their well-being, and wealth is not allowed to concentrate in a few disproportionately powerful, distant hands.

The only movement I’ve found so far that is actively working to accomplish a vision similar to what I’ve sketched out above is the Transition Town movement.  The brainchild of UK visionary activist Rob Hopkins, the movement describes itself as follows:

“The Transition Movement is comprised of vibrant, grassroots community initiatives that seek to build community resilience in the face of such challenges as peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis.

“Transition Initiatives differentiate themselves from other sustainability and “environmental” groups by seeking to mitigate these converging global crises by engaging their communities in home-grown, citizen-led education, action, and multi-stakeholder planning to increase local self reliance and resilience.

“They succeed by regeneratively using their local assets, innovating, networking, collaborating, replicating proven strategies, and respecting the deep patterns of nature and diverse cultures in their place.

“Transition Initiatives work with deliberation and good cheer to create a fulfilling and inspiring local way of life that can withstand the shocks of rapidly shifting global systems.”

What appeals to me about the Transition Town movement as a strategy for change is that it’s locally based and collaborative.  The first step is getting to know your neighbors, finding out what skills you can share, and taking stock of how you can prepare intelligently to cope with whatever environmental and economic shocks may lie ahead in our future.  It doesn’t dictate a one-size-fits-all model, but rather gives communities credit for being smart enough to figure out their own, locally adapted solutions.

As a society, America seems to be in collective denial about the reality of climate change.  We don’t want to hear that if we continue down the path of capitalist growth based on fossil fuels, the planet will heat up past the point where we could expect life as we know it to continue.  We don’t want to put the pieces together, because if we do, we will be forced to face the fact that we need to change. 

If we could accept this fact, we could begin to talk seriously about directions to take to make that change happen.  It would be nice if we could count on our world leaders to step up and face the challenge squarely, in a concerted effort.  But given the reality of global politics, still based on competition and armed power struggles, it seems very unlikely that we can look to the United Nations, or individual national governments, for the kind of decisive leadership we need now.

So we need to turn to each other, on the local level, and begin asking, as the Transition Town movement envisions, what can we do right here, together, to become more resilient?  What resources do we have, right here, that are not dependent on current systems of international or long-distance national trade?  How can we plan together for a sustainable future?

In a way, it’s an effort to de-couple our personal wagons from the locomotive of capitalist growth, which is proving so destructive to everything in its path, and seems to be on the verge of careening out of control.

I’ve been hearing a fair amount of fear expressed about “going backwards.” When people imagine stepping down from the capitalist growth model, they picture having to give up modern conveniences like advanced medical technologies, ready access to electricity, indoor plumbing, etc.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  We have to work on developing new ways of generating those conveniences, that are less destructive to the planet (the technological fix) and also work swiftly to dismantle those features of industrial civilization that are throwing our whole ecological system out of balance (de-industrialization).

The Transition Town movement calls this “the great re-skilling” approach.  We need to remember older, more sustainable ways of doing things, while also keeping the best of new technologies and learning how to apply them in smarter, more efficient and ecologically sound ways.

There are over 100 full-fledged Transition Town initiatives in the U.S., and hundreds more worldwide, along with many start-up groups forming all the time.  Although all of us seem to have so much to do, and so little time these days, this is really a movement we need to be focusing on now to prepare for the decade ahead.

Given the lack of effective top-down leadership, should we really be wasting our time worrying about national elections, for example?  Or bothering to go to international conferences on climate change?

Or is the smarter thing to do to begin, quietly and with determination and hopeful good cheer, to make our own preparations for a very different sort of future, in our own transition towns?

12 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 22, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Environment, New stories, Politics, Resilience, Social change
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 22, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/22/de-coupling-our-wagons-from-the-locomotive-of-global-capitalism/

Solstice reflections: Women as Victims of Violence and as Peace Agents

Winter solstice eve, 2011.

The darkest day of the year, and yet presaging the return to light.  The stars and planets continue to wheel overhead, taking little notice of all the sturm und drang here on Earth.

Tonight there is one image that keeps calling out to me for comment.  It goes by the Web shorthand “woman with the blue bra, Cairo.”

Did you see that one?

Someone captured on camera a brief two minutes of violence in Cairo, Egypt, when an unnamed protester was dragged by military forces in the street, then stripped of her abaya, under which she wore only a blue bra–and then beaten up some more.

WordPress has taken away my ability to post video, so you can watch it here.

It goes right up there with the video from New York City, towards the beginning of the OWS protests, of a police officer spraying peaceful, captive girls in the face with pepper spray.  This video has apparently been watched on You-Tube more than 1.5 million times.

There is something about seeing women being beaten up by masked, uniformed security forces that sets off particular triggers in most of us.  It’s certainly no accident that the Occupy protests swelled dramatically in numbers after that pepper-spray incident, or that more than 10,000 protesters, mostly women, turned out in Cairo following the posting of this image on the Web.

Part of me wants to question why it is that we get so upset when women protesters are attacked.  After all, they knew the risks they were running when they went out into the street.  And what’s the big difference between a man and a woman being beat up by goons, anyway?

But there is a difference.

The difference is that it’s always men doing the beating.

Yes, we have some women in police and military uniforms.  And yes, women can be violent.  But you will have to look long and hard to find cases where women bore the responsibility for killing or attacking civilians, in any circumstances.  It may happen, but it’s pretty rare.

So when we see a mob of men stripping and beating a woman–in a society where nudity is absolutely taboo, to boot–it’s impossible to ignore the full impact of the insult intended.  And in a society where women are forcibly kept out of leadership roles, the message is all the clearer.

Stay at home where you belong, or we’ll do this to you, too.

I’m so glad that the women of Cairo did not take this attempt at intimidation lying down. Just like the women in New York, who took the unwarranted police brutality as a gauntlet thrown down to test their protest mettle.

The question of whether men are in fact more aggressive than women is still a matter for debate in academic circles, but taking a look around the world, it’s pretty clear that men commit almost all the violence in every context.  When women murder or assault, it’s almost always in self-defense.

And yet women are still held back from leadership roles in most societies, and even held back from the peace-making negotiating tables in post-conflict regions.  A big exception is Rwanda, where women have taken a leadership role in rebuilding that shattered society–mostly because the men had succeeded so well in killing each other off.

We have moved past the point in the intellectual history of gender studies where feminists were striving to be “the same as” men.  Women don’t want to be the same as men if it means repeating the same old history of violence and abusiveness.

What we need is to move, as men and women, beyond the violence that has continually plagued human society.

Violence towards each other; violence towards other species and the rest of the world.

The only way to move forward as a species is to disable that aggressive switch, and become the consensus-seeking conciliators we have always been in our finest moments as human beings.

As we return to light this solstice night, this is my fervent prayer: that the aggressive, masculine energy that has dominated this planet for the past 5,000-plus years will begin to shift to a more peaceful, creative, feminine energy, from which both men and women–and the planet as a whole–will benefit.

Let it be so.

4 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 21, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Human Rights, Politics of Gender
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 21, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/21/solstice-reflections-women-as-victims-of-violence-and-as-peace-agents/

1% > 99%: Don’t Mess with the Rich, and Leave Inequality Alone

Why does it not surprise me that no comments were allowed on this op-ed piece from Sunday’s NY Times, which has been rankling at me for the past couple of days?

The authors, one a prof of law at Yale, the other UC Berkeley professor of law and economics, pose as compassionate conservatives who are concerned about the growing gap between the fabulously wealthy 1% and the rest of us 99%.

Their solution?  Impose a new, automatic tax on 1-percenters whose income exceeds $330,000—currently 36 times the median American household income.

“This new tax…would apply only to income in excess of the poorest 1-percenter — currently about $330,000 per year,” the authors (who admit to being part of this bracket) say. Their aim is not to “reverse the gains of the wealthy in the last 30 years,” but just to “assure that things don’t get worse.”

Ahem.  How about making things better???

A stark picture of the lives of those in the median (full disclosure: you’ll find me in this social landscape) was painted in today’s NYT editorial on the middle class: 

“Recent government data show that 100 million Americans, or about one in three, are living in poverty or very close to it. Of 13.3 million unemployed Americans now searching for work, 5.7 million have been looking for more than six months, while millions more have given up altogether. Even a job is no guarantee of middle-class security. The real median income of working-age households has declined, from $61,600 in 2000 to $55,300 in 2010 — the result of abysmally slow job growth even before the onset of the recession.”

You would think that our elected representatives in Congress would be concerned about this dismal state of affairs, and would be doing everything in their power to make things better for those hundreds of millions of troubled Americans, wouldn’t you?

Hah!  No, our reps in the House couldn’t be bothered to pass a bill giving us a very modest payroll tax cut, amounting to about $1,000 per year per median paycheck…because they’re holding out for strings attached that will, for example, fast-track the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Let’s connect more dots here.  According to a recent report by the non-partisan group Public Campaign, “30 multi-million dollar American corporations expended more money lobbying Congress than they paid in federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010, ultimately spending approximately $400,000 every day — including weekends — during that three-year period to lobby lawmakers and influence political elections.”

You know, there would be nothing so wrong with corporations lobbying Congress IF they had the best interests of society as a whole at heart.  But we all know that’s not true. While 2010 was a “record year for executive compensation,” it was also a record year for lay-offs. And don’t even get me started about corporate sins against the environment.

It all comes back to the greed of the 1%.

In an unusual personal aside, the Yale and Berkeley profs confess that their “grandparents would be shocked to learn that the average income of the 1-percent club has skyrocketed to more than 30 times the median income — just as we will be shocked if 20 years from now 1-percenters make 80 times the median, which is where we will be if inequality continues to grow at the current rate unabated.”

So they want to hold inequality to its current levels.  That’s like saying let’s hold global warming to where it is now.  Hello-o?  Both inequality and global warming are at deadly levels right now.  Maintaining the status quo is like setting the throttle in full gear and leaving the wheel to have a drink, while the bus rolls off the cliff.

Professors, you should be ashamed of not having had the courage to enable the comments on your brilliant proposal.

Let me just put a little spin on your title, may I?  Instead of “Don’t Tax the Rich, Tax Inequality Itself,” how about: “Don’t Mess with the Rich, and Leave Inequality Alone.”  Let’s call a spade a spade–and let the debate begin!

8 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 20, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Human Rights, Media analysis, Politics
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 20, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/20/1-99-dont-mess-with-the-rich-and-leave-inequality-alone/

The Silence of the Bees

Usually during the holidays I catch the frenzied good cheer from everyone else and wind myself up to make merry.  This year, I just can’t seem to find the spark.

Maybe it’s a case of SAD (seasonable affective disorder).  Maybe it’s the fact that it’s the first holiday after my divorce was finalized, and that new reality is sinking in.  Maybe it’s the gloomy state of the economy, which is certainly negatively affecting my financial outlook.

But I think it goes deeper and broader than these personal issues.

I feel like I’m grieving, but not for any one person.  I’m grieving for the loss of my future, and all of our futures.  Even as I stoutly maintain that we can’t give up hope, and we need to keep fighting, there is something in me that keens, heartbroken, for the huge loss that we all face.

It’s already started, the great dying-off.

I keep remembering a certain perfect May morning in my childhood, when I waded out into the deep, fragrant grass under the old, half-wild apple trees, which were glorious in full pink-and-white bloom.  I lay in a grassy nest under one of the trees–no worries about ticks and Lyme disease in those days–looking up at the blossoms outlined against the startling blue of the sky.  The petals rustled gently in the breeze, and the sound of thousands of busy buzzing honey bees filled the air.  Watching carefully, I could see the bees moving from blossom to blossom, carrying their saddlebags full of bright golden pollen.  My heart swelled with the sheer joy of being alive in that moment, a part of the humming life of that orchard on that beautiful spring day.

Flash forward to last spring, when I went out into the same old orchard on another lovely May morning, and was aghast to realize that not a single bee was working the blossoms of the tree.  The silence was frightening, like the desolate silence of a wasteland, though visually it all looked very much the same.

This is just one small example of so many countless instances of the glorious richness of life on our planet, profoundly and irrevocably being silenced.

So yes, I am grieving.  And I am angry.  And I do not know the best way to try to head off the end that seems so inevitable now.

Sometimes it feels like I’m living in a sci-fi movie, where everything seems so hopeless, the bad guys are winning…and then at the last moment, the heroes sweep in and save the day.  I want to believe that we can be those heroes.  Perhaps it will be like the TV series “Heroes,” where many of us who are preparing ourselves now for the fight will come together and really be able to make a difference.

But I don’t count on it.  Because, in large part, the “bad guys” are us.  We’re doing this to the planet.  The laptop I type on is part of the problem, the electric lights I just strung up on my porch are part of the problem, the car I drive is part of the problem.

What would it mean, really, to stop being one of the bad guys?  To become one of the vast army of everyday heroes needed to save this planet?

I keep asking this question, and I will keep asking it until the answer becomes clear.  I feel I am taking some sort of step in the right direction just by asking the question in this public forum, seeking out like-minded people who may have answers I could not come to on my own.

I know we need each other now, more than ever.  The old individualist way of doing things is part of the problem.  Interconnection should be the buzzword of the second decade of this century.  As the planet heats up, our survival will depend on our being able to cooperate and collaborate on adapting to the new, much harsher environment.


 Sometimes I have moments of hysteria, when I feel like I’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and need to decide how I want to spend my last days.  Maybe this isn’t so hysterical after all…this may be a rather sober assessment of the way things stand.

Of course, we are all living under a life sentence, all the time!  But I no longer feel I can count on living into old age, dying a natural death.  Saving for retirement seems like a pipe dream, left over from a 20th century mindset that no longer makes sense.

The only  antidote I know for the grief and depression born of full apprehension of the reality of our very bleak and uncertain future is simply this: carpe diem, seize the day.

Unless we ordinary heroes come together to create a mighty and unstoppable wave of change very soon, the planet will heat up beyond our comfort zone, causing severe weather that will send us floods, famine, conflict and extinctions on a biblical scale.

Yes, ultimately the planet will regenerate, and new forms of life will emerge.  But we will not be here to play our part–to love, appreciate, tend and respect the other living beings on Earth.

It is too soon to give in to grief.  I will shake it off, rouse myself, continue as long as I can to stand up and be counted among the opposition to the terrible destruction that our way of life has visited on so many others on this planet.

Meet me out in the apple orchard, listening for the bees….

15 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 18, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Resilience, Social change
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 18, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/18/the-silence-of-the-bees/

Call to Action in Dark Times

This time of year in New England is cold and dark: short days and long, starry nights.  As the planet wheels towards the winter solstice, human beings, for thousands of years, have huddled around fires and turned to storytelling as a bridge back to warmth and the coming of springtime.

It’s no different now, except that now most of us burn oil for our heat, and hang up strings of electric lights to symbolize the return to light.  We watch movies, read books or play video games instead of listening to clan storytellers.

In America, as in much of the world, the dominant religious stories of this time of year have to do with keeping hope and faith alive in dark times.  Jews remember, with the lighting of the Menorah candles, the preservation of their faith in the 2nd century BCE, after the destruction of the Second Temple; Christians celebrate miraculous birth of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer who would bring the word of God to the people.

All of the traditional religious stories document a continuing human saga of light against dark, with light representing life and good energy, while dark represents death and possible danger.

More contemporary mystics also point to human life as a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.

Rudolf Steiner, for example, the influential psychic who reported many out-of-body experiences where he made direct contact with metaphysical beings, routinely talks about angels and demons in his copious writings, with angels representing the good forces of light and life, and demons being the dark forces of destruction.  Freud too, in a more secular register, described Eros and Thanatos as primal human drives that align along the same lines: light/life/love, dark/death/hatred.

Is there something to all this?

In a scientific age, it’s hard to write with a straight face about angels and demons.  We are trained to see them as figures of speech, metaphors for empirically definable natural phenomena.  To whit: Human beings tell stories about angels and miraculous births at the darkest time of year as a metaphorical way of talking about the winter solstice and the return to light.

Yes.  But there have always been persistent voices telling us that this is not just metaphorical.  That there really are forces of dark that are destructive and forces of light that represent goodness, and that human beings, as the most self-aware sentient beings on the planet, are able to recognize the grand struggle between Good and Evil playing out in our psyches, and on our battlefields.

For instance, take Derrick Jensen‘s latest book, Dreams, in which he talks about his growing belief that there are metaphysical realms that human beings access in dreams, and that in the dream world there are “sides”: the side of life and the side of death and destruction.  As humans, we have a choice, Jensen says; we can choose which gods to worship, those who represent the life-giving energies of the planet, or those who represent the blood-sucking zombies that are leading us down the capitalist/imperialist road to doom.

Even further out along the spectrum of contemporary metaphysical thinkers is Alex Kochkin, who has been sending out dispatches through email and Web for some time now, warning that the end times are coming.  One could mistake Kochkin for an Armageddon-spouting Christian fundamentalist, except that, like Jensen and Steiner, he has no religious scaffolding framing his ideas.

All of these thinkers agree with indigenous shamans the world over that there is much more to human beings than our physical bodies, and that we can interact with higher powers through individual psychic work–paying attention to our dreams, meditating, being open to the realms of human consciousness where, they say, we can connect with what Steiner called “higher worlds.”

Alex Kochkin: “”You” are the result of a portion of your larger being extending something of itself into this level of density. In this case, it is a human bio-vehicle that comes equipped with basic firmware and an operating system. Flawed as the whole package may be, it is still a viable and valuable way for individuations of The All of Creation to reach into its own deepest recesses, even those that have become overwhelmed by the disease of the Dark.”

Derrick Jensen gives the “disease of the Dark” more concrete names: capitalism, imperialism, and the science that justifies and extends the reach of these destructive ideologies that have, since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, been rapidly reducing bio-diversity and inexorably altering our eco-system.

Jensen recalls the Aztec sacrifices to their gods, and speculates that we too are unthinkingly making sacrifices to our contemporary gods of Science and Capitalism.

This is an idea that one of my mentors, Rigoberta Menchu, suggested years ago, talking about how destructive the Euramerican ideologies and technologies have been to the natural world and indigenous peoples: “I often wonder why people criticize the Aztecs for offering human sacrifices to their gods when they never mention how many sons of this America, Abia Yala, have been sacrificed over five hundred years to the god Capital,” Menchu said in her second testimonial, Crossing Borders.

Whether or not there are “higher powers” involved in the life-and-death battles we are seeing played out at ever-accelerating speed in these dark times, it is true that we human beings are the ones with the power to change the course of events we have set in motion.  The fish and the birds and the great bears cannot change what is happening to their environments because of human short-sightedness and greed.  The ancient forests that have stood for thousands of years cannot withstand the bulldozer and the chain saw.  The river that has flowed for eons cannot resist the concrete dam.

Only we have the power of reversing the “disease of the Dark.”  If there are higher powers involved, they are not going to do it for us–they will only work through us.

Which stories are we listening to now as we huddle around our mechanical fires?  The old stories of dominion and destruction, “manifest destiny” and technological prowess leading to “progress” have held sway long enough.  It’s time to listen to stories that are older and wiser than the Judeo-Christian myths, stories that remind us of our deep connection to the natural world that sustains us.

Let every candle lit this solstice season be a call to action on behalf of the life energies of this planet.  And then, let us act, before it’s too late.

4 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 17, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, New stories, Politics, Social change, Spiritual growth
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 17, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/17/call-to-action-in-dark-times/

An Eco-Humynist Manifesto for the 21st Century

Having watched with dismay as the Durban climate talks sputtered to a disappointing conclusion, with all parties knowing that every day that goes by without concerted international effort to address climate change means the inexorable shifting of life as we know it on Earth, I was moved yesterday to put fingers to keyboard and come up with a Manifesto for change.

Even as I was writing it, I was thinking that such radical changes would not be possible to put into place without resistance from the status quo powers that be; therefore bloodshed, which is specifically antithetical to the principles I lay out, would be inevitable.

But if a World War III must commence, I would rather it be for a good cause like this one, than for the petty greed, bigotry and hatred that have propelled humanity into previous wars.

If we want not only ourselves, but our entire eco-system to survive, do we have any other choice but to take decisive action now?

An Eco-Humynist Manifesto for the 21st Century

Whereas human beings have acted in a dominating fashion towards each other and towards other living species on this planet, using the excuse of difference to justify aggressive and destructive behavior;

Whereas competition has been used as a rationale for economic systems based on hierarchical systems of power;

Whereas social exclusion and systematic discrimination has been seen as the normative right of dominant groups;

Whereas privileged groups have felt entitled to take more than their fair share from the environmental commons, and to deprive less powerful groups, whether human or of other species, of the resources necessary for well-being;

Whereas it is quickly becoming apparent, in the age of climate change, that the dominant paradigm of capitalist patriarchal social relations is resulting in the dangerous destabilization of the entire natural ecosystem;

The time has come to take action to change this paradigm in the following ways:

1. Move from a top-down hierarchical system to a horizontal, egalitarian model of social relations based on inclusivity across all of the traditional boundaries used to keep different groups apart, including race, class, gender, sex, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and also opening up the possibility for cross-species collaboration based on respect and stewardship;

2. Shift the worldwide economic system to a model of global cooperation and collaboration, with the focus of human industry and government on providing a baseline of well-being for all life forms on this planet, regardless of geographic origin or antiquated ideas of relative importance (ie, who is to say that a human being is more important than a songbird, or a sardine?);

3. Tailor the education system to teaching the history of the destructive cultural practices of homo sapiens up to the 21st century, and opening up constructive conversations across disciplines, where alternatives to these traditions can be envisioned and developed;

4. Model egalitarian, collaborative, respectful social relations in the private sphere of the family as well as the public spheres of education, the profession, government and law;

5. Shift from a violent conflict and punishment model of resolving disagreements to a peaceful persuasive model, with the goal always being the well-being of the community as a whole first, and secondly each member of it.

6. Destroy all weapons of mass destruction, as well as all bio and chemical weapons, and their blueprints.

7. Disallow any one person’s or minority group’s interests (with rich people and businesses or industries rightly being considered minorities)  to take precedence over the interests of the majority, including the non-human majority on this planet.

8. Develop an appropriate representative global governing council to administer these principles.

In the name of Mother Earth and ALL of her children, I call on the peoples of the world to act without delay to become the stewards of the planet and the collaborative, respectful individuals we were always meant to be.

Thanks to the students of Gender, Culture & Society, Fall 2011, for the inspiration to write this Manifesto.

37 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 13, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Education, Environment, Human Rights, Politics, Social change
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 13, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/13/an-eco-humynist-manifesto-for-the-21st-century/

On Human Rights Day, Calling the Next ‘Greatest Generation’

Today, Human Rights Day, I call upon the peoples of the world to understand that if we don’t focus on reducing human impact on the global environment in this new century, all the other more isolated issues will be moot.

Issues from the militarization of the police, to the use of rape as a weapon of war, to the stifling of free speech and democracy, are important—but they’re just minor skirmishes.

The real battle for human rights is taking place in the realm of energy politics.

It’s taking place on the thousands of oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s taking place in the hundreds of new hydro-fracking wells being dug in upstate New York and Pennsylvania.

It’s taking place in the coal mines of China and the tar sands of Canada.

All of us are players in this deadly game.  Every time we turn the key in the ignition of our car, or buy food produced by a factory farm, or pay our electric bill.  We participate as consumers, and as consumers, we have more power than we realize.

On Human Rights Day, we need to remember three things:

•   The Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the human right to health

•   A healthy environment, including healthy food, water and air, is essential to human health

•   Corporations, not being people, must not be allowed to trample on human rights.

Indeed, corporations, being human creations, should be serving human rights.

If a healthy environment is essential to human rights, then corporations should be working on making our environment as healthy as possible.  Corporations work for us.  They need to meet our needs, and uphold our rights.

There is a new movement afoot to define and uphold the Rights of Nature, which is a totally laudable goal. But in my view, the rights of the natural world and the rights of human beings are inextricably intertwined.

To truly uphold human rights would be to truly uphold the rights of Nature.

We are animals.  We are part of the natural environment of this planet.  If we foul and destroy our environment, we will die, along with countless other living beings: animals, insects, marine life, birds and plants.

This is a big battle; these are momentous times. We need to step up and be the new “greatest generation.”  We need to hold corporations accountable for their destructive, life-threatening actions.  We need to insist on change.

If we don’t, will anyone be left to lament our failure?

1 Comment
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 10, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Human Rights, Politics, Social change
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 10, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/10/on-human-rights-day-calling-the-next-greatest-generation/

Swept away for the holidays? C’mon, Occupy, Let’s Go!

Looking back over the week, it seems like we’ve settled into some kind of holding pattern. The Occupy protests keep spinning, including a jubilant rally in Boston last night, but there is a feeling that we’re all waiting for the next shoe to drop…the next big push, the next new thing.

This week saw Occupy Foreclosures; next Monday there is a plan afoot to shut down the West Coast ports. The student protests are still sputtering; there is a group of hunger strikers in New York demanding a home for OWS;  and a stalwart group of climate activists has been braving relentless hostility to protest in at the COP 17 talks in Durban.

I’m glad to see all this stirring of outrage and energy.  I’m just starting to get confused by all the different tangents the movement is taking, and wishing for more focus and concentrated action.

I want the 99% to be like a biblical flood that will wash all the corruption and evil away, leaving a sparkling new world ready for re-occupation.

I know full well that’s unrealistic.  It’s not meant to be taken literally.  It’s just the kind of mood I’m in: impatient, restless, tired of the same old same old.

I have that same feeling about the holidays this year.

Are we really going to go through those motions again?  Are we going to fool our little children into believing in Santa Claus?  Are we going to laugh and clink glasses at innumerable holiday parties?  Are we going to go on shopping sprees for presents at the malls?

Again I’m reminded of the band that was ordered to keep playing as the Titanic sank.  There’s a new 3-D version of the Leo DiCaprio/Kate Winslett Titanic coming out soon–as if what we really needed was to watch that horrible tragedy again, in 3-D.

Folks, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but we need to stop fooling ourselves, we need to get real. If we don’t profoundly change our ways NOW, Mother Earth will do it for us, and she won’t be pussy-footing around.

I was listening to a news report today about how many billions of dollars in damage Hurricane Irene caused back in late August. Then there was the October snowstorm, knocking down trees and powerlines for millions of people in the Northeast.

What’s next?  How bad does it have to get before we stop pouring good money after bad, cleaning up after natural disasters that could perfectly well have been avoided if we focused on prevention rather than on damage control?

We do the same thing with health issues.  We spend billions looking for the “cure” for cancer, when the real issue is lurking upstream, in all the toxic chemicals we’re dumping into the environment and our own bodies.

We know what makes us sick. We know what is making our climate “sick” and out of balance.  We know how to fix it too–we need to start converting to renewable energy as fast as we can, immediately!  All systems go!

And it’s the same with the sociopolitical system.  We know where it’s broken.  Campaign finance reform is not a new idea.  Bank and finance regulation is nothing new.  Social policies that bolster the middle class are obvious.

WHY AREN’T WE DOING THESE THINGS?

The Occupy movement has the potential to fire up enough people to get out there and demand change.  The movement just needs to articulate a few clear, incontestably worthy goals, and pour all the creativity of the 99% into finding ways to pressure the ruling class to get the job done–or be swept away.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t much feel like celebrating this holiday season.  I feel like rolling up my sleeves, joining forces with my neighbors, and getting to work.  There is so much to be done, and so little time.

2 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 9, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Environment, Politics, Social change
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 9, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/09/swept-away-for-the-holidays-cmon-occupy-lets-go/

College climate activists lead the way at COP 17 in Durban

You have to hand it to the college students attending the U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Durban.  They know how to cut through the nonsense and tell it like it is.

Watch 21-year-old Middlebury College junior Abigail Borah telling the august assembly that they can no longer afford to drag their feet on curbing carbon emissions.

“I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot,” said Ms. Borah, a representative of the International Youth Climate Movement. “The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty.”

The response to her entreaty?  A swift escort off the premises.

Another group of students dressed as “corporate clowns” to bring some levity to the grim discussions.  As documented by the Climate Connections blog, they too were met with hostility by the powers that be.

While talking with the press, student clown Kevin Buckland “was grabbed and hauled away. His badge was taken, and he was barred from the International Conference Center.”

Then there was the group of Canadian students who were removed from the assembly hall just for displaying tee-shirts with the words “Turn Your Back on Canada,” a criticism of the Canadian government’s support for the oil extraction of the Alberta boreal forests (aka “tar sands”).

What kind of message are these young people going to take away from these incidents about the efficacy of trying to participate peacefully in global assemblies?  No wonder they’re turned off and turning to their own “people’s assemblies.”

As Laura Carlsen points out in an article posted on Common Dreams today, climate change activists need to “broaden the focus from once-a-year meetings in high-carbon conference centers, to the fields, communities and town halls where alternatives are already growing and a stronger political consensus can be built from the bottom up.”

The top-down approach favored by the U.N. and the international governmental community is showing itself to be not only ineffectual, but morally bankrupt.

2 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 8, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Environment, Politics
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 8, 2011

https://bethechange2012.com/2011/12/08/college-climate-activists-lead-the-way-at-cop-17-in-durban/

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