how to save the world

As I was thinking about Beth’s Where is Home for You? contest, about the responses to the contest on Patti’s 37Days FaceBook page, and about my own article on the subject, a chickadee landed on the bird feeder just outside my window. It occurred to me that this little creature might have some thoughts on the subject.

I started by asking her name, and the answer she chirped back didn’t translate into any phoneme I know of, so for this interview I’m calling her Unique Chickadee, since I think that’s what her name means:

Dave: OK Ms Chickadee, could you please start by telling me what you do for a living, and what you do just for fun?

Unique Chickadee: What I “do for a’livin”? Very musical expression, but I have no idea what you mean.

Dave: What you do to feed and shelter yourself and your family, then. And then what you do with the time left over.

Unique Chickadee: Hmmm. I do what you see me do. I do whatever I like. As you told your friend the other week, the best way to describe it is to say “I do…this.” I eat stuff that’s tasty. I sleep in the shelter of the trees because it’s cozy and comfortable and just because I like to do it. I splash in the water to get clean, especially with others, and just because I like to do it. I fly, to look around, to meet others, to discover new places, and just because I like to do it. I sing, to communicate, to identify myself, to keep myself company, and just because I like to do it. I play, with others and by myself, because that’s how I learn, and just because I like to do it. I don’t see the distinction between your a’livin activities and fun activities. I do all these things because I want to. They’re all easy, and they’re all fun. As for family, I’m not in a breeding pair, so except for the Time of Newborns, when I help out the parents of the babies, protecting their nest from attack, finding sources of food and so on, I need only look out for myself.

Dave: I thought birds were flock creatures?

Unique Chickadee: I have been a part of several flocks in my life. Like most of us, I’m a bit of a rover, and if I find a flock that needs me more than the one I’m with, I’ll ask to join them. My Purpose is To Be Of Use, but that’s never a burden. We help each other out, but our a’livin is pretty easy and carefree. By the way, we’d love a birdbath out by the feeder. Yes, we know all about your cat — he’s fast and clever, but so are we.

Dave: Not my cat. Not sure he belongs to anyone, really.

Unique Chickadee: Really? Far too pampered to survive without a human keeper. He must belong with one of the other humans in your community.

Dave: Who are you, or what are you, other than what you do, if that isn’t too philosophical a question?

Unique Chickadee: I am who you see. I am me, Unique Chickadee. If you are asking what I believe, what I think about and care about, what I aspire to, what I enjoy, what I am capable of that I don’t do, what qualities I have that make me good at what I do, that is another question. Is that what you mean?

Dave: OK, yes, I guess so.

Unique Chickadee: I believe all-life-on-Earth is wonderful. I think about visiting new places, and I imagine doing new things. I care about my well-being and that of my flock. I aspire to love everyone and everything I encounter. I enjoy intuiting and learning, the fruits of my discovery. I am capable of imagining things I have never seen or heard or felt. I have the useful capacities of patience and attentiveness and appreciation and playfulness. You put too fine a point on this distinction between what we do and who we are. When I am by myself I sing, for the sheer joy of it, and maybe someone else will hear me and enjoy my song or maybe no one will hear. It doesn’t matter. You told your friend you are a writer, a ‘blogger’, and that you’re impatient because you’re not ‘doing’ anything. Can’t you see how silly that is? Your blogging is just like my singing to myself. It’s what we do, it’s who we are, it’s all the same thing.

Dave: Is there something latent in you, something that you need to be or do, or that your flock needs you to be or do?

Unique Chickadee: I don’t understand the meaning of ‘need’. This word makes no sense to me.

Dave: Do you ever feel lonely, or sad, or as if you’re missing something?

Unique Chickadee: Not for a second. This is a world full of love and joy and connection. It is all right here. I am astonished at how you humans have tricked yourselves into seeing this world of abundance as a world of scarcity.

Dave: So you don’t long to be part of a mating pair, to make love?

Unique Chickadee: I ‘make love’ with every creature I meet in different ways in everything I do. Everyone I meet and sing with and play with is my ‘mate’. You said it yourself last week: Love, Conversation, Community. That’s why we’re here. The act of sexual coupling carries with it a huge responsibility, and I don’t feel that instinctive desire to accept that responsibility that the breeders do. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t want to be that unhappy.

Dave: OK, last question: Where is Home, to you? Where do you belong?

Unique Chickadee: You spoke to your friend recently about how time and place are bound up with each other. We non-humans live in Now Time. Your Clock Time, that passes and is gone and fills you with regret for what was or what might be or what should be or what might have been, it is just an abstraction, a human artifact, designed to keep you in thrall to the other humans who want you to be everybody-else, obedient, fearful, helpless, dependent, full of grief. You have to relearn that all time is Now Time, there is no other time, and that Now Time is eternal, limitless. For the same reason, we live in Now Space. When we nest, when we hibernate, when we migrate, when we move from one flock to another, we are always Home, we can never be elsewhere, this is where we belong. This is it. 

Dave: I don’t understand.

Unique Chickadee: I know. I’m sorry. I think your brain is in the way. Keep watching. Pay attention. Listen to your instincts, and to the songs of all-life-on-Earth. You’ll figure it out. You’re pretty smart, for ahuman.

Carbon Emissions Per Capita Lowest on West Coast, Highest in Rust Belt: The tough emission standards of West Coast states are vindicated. They really do make a difference.

Canadian Research Group Prescribes Way for Canada to Meet Kyoto Targets: The Calgary-based Pembina Institute reviews existing and proposed regulations and innovations and proposes a blueprint for Canada to become green,

The Worst Way of Farming: Two new reports damn confined animal feeding operations — factory farms.

Kucinich’s Chief Economic Advisor Explains Why the US Has Been Deliberately Bankrupted: Michael Hudson, in a long, brilliant interview, describes how the political and economic agendas of a small US elite bent on a world order under their control has led to assassinations, destroyed nations, pushed the US and China into a teetering economic co-dependency, and massively redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich. Thanks to the Deconsumption blog for the link.

Another Approach to Meditation (for Those Who Find It Hard): A couple of weeks ago I was referred to a fascinating paper and book on the Beginner’s Mind approach to meditation. Now, Chaitanya has referred me to another well-written, understandable explanation of the mindfulness state of meditation and how to achieve it.

How to Save the World Selected as Leading Social Enterprise Blog: I’m delighted that this blog has been picked, along with some much better-known blogs, as ‘best in class’ by Guy Kawasaki’s new Alltop aggregation service. I’m honoured, guys.

Thought for the Week: Want to buy local, quality goods instead of Chinese crap? Consider buying from Etsy, where artists and craftspeople offer a dizzying array of hand-made, one-of-a-kind products, rated by previous buyers.

In that article I included the following excerpt from David Ehrenfeld’s book Beginning Again:

Read the whole article.

One of the philosophers criticizing this unconscious ideology, interviewed in the program, was Mary Midgley who, after reiterating her now-famous criticism of Dawkins, said something so remarkable (perhaps because it was so obvious but I’d never realized it) that I had to pull my car off the road to stop and digest it. She said:

When humans (including scientists) believed that other animals were unthinking, unfeeling robots, for example, we had no qualms about subjecting them to unimaginable torture and suffering. Even today, in many cultures and religions, ‘nature’ is viewed as a savage, hostile force to be subdued by humans (exemplified by shows on the wingnut networks like Fox — Survivor, When Animals Attack etc.)

I was listening today to a speech by our ghastly prime minister Harper, who is misrepresenting what his government is doing to protect biodiversity at an international meeting somewhere (he’s actually doing less than nothing, with policies whose effect is to accelerate loss of biodiversity). What struck me was his comment that much of the alleged work protecting Canada’s biodiversity was being done by — get this — “environmental philanthropists”.

A philanthropist is someone who donates to charity. So Harper was admitting that he views “the environment” as a charity case.

This is, of course, completely consistent with the conservative worldview. Nature is put here by God to be conquered, bent to man’s will, and used as he sees fit. Defeating nature is God’s test of our strength and valour. Once it’s beaten, it’s really of no use. Harper buys this myth completely; it is beyond his comprehension to see humans as just another, not especially extraordinary, creature that evolved as an inseparable part of the environment, dependent on that environment. The only way in this ideological worldview he can ‘make sense’ of spending money on environmental protection is by viewing it as an act of charity.

My point in writing about this is two-fold. First, we should not presume that the environmentalists’ worldview is devoid of mythology and ideology either. I think that Gaia theory (and the ever-evolving theory of evolution) is a brilliant scientific theory, one that intuitively resonates with me as having great explanatory power and predictive value. It’s very useful. It’s fascinating, even exciting. But it is only a theory, a model, a representation of reality. Like reality, it continues to evolve; it evolves as we learn more about how the world appears to work. It is not “the truth”.

This is not a defence of creation theory, which is an utterly indefensible misrepresentation of reality, and hence completely useless (except perhaps as a tool for propaganda and subjugation of the ignorant and fearful). But as useful and consistent with observation as Gaia and evolution theories are, they are only ways of thinking. They are not The Truth. In fact, as another interviewee on the program commented, the more we learn through science, the more likely it seems that The Truth is unknowable. Learning is a journey without end, and we will always find new models, new ways of thinking that make ‘more sense’ than what we thought before, and cause us to change our way of thinking and discard that old thinking.

Secondly, that italicized sentence above gave me a huge rush of appreciation for the value of writing, blogging, and being a generalist. I’ve been enormously restless and self-critical because I keep thinking out loud and writing about what I think needs to be done, what I think perhaps my Purpose is, but somehow never really get started doing anything about it. But maybe I’m not meant to be an activist, founding communities and enterprises and creating models of a better way to liveand make a living. Maybe instead my Purpose is to change people’s way of thinking. And for those of you who write as obsessively as I do, maybe that’s your Purpose too.

What do you think?

I still think we ideally need to know who we are meant to be, before we can really expect to know what we are meant to do. Paul uses the examples of being compassionate and being aware. These are, I think, capacities of being. Some of us are just better at being these things than others are. We can of course work hard to ‘be’ better at these things.

I would love to say that my distinctive capacity, what I am uniquely good at being, is perceptive, aware, but I know that is not true. Some of my distinctive Capacities are intuitiveness, what is called ‘lateral thinking’, and pattern-recognizing ability. While they can be applied in what I ‘do’, these capacities are, of themselves, elements of my being, part of who I am. I would do them even if I had no ‘use’ for them. If I were to let-myself-change to become more aware, more perceptive, more sensual, that would become part of who I am — and I aspire to be that. But it is not (yet) who I am, and if I try to live as if it is, I am not going to be happy; I will be constantly feeling as if I’m letting people (and myself) down. I don’t think I’m playing fast and loose with language here, though I may be communicating badly.

The second part of who we are, I think, is what we love being, what I called in the earlier article Joys. If I were to be honest, I would admit that I love being popular. That means I love appreciation, and that I will be driven to do things (like blogging in public) that (hopefully) draw that appreciation to me. But that is part of who I am, not of what I do. I love to be stimulated (intellectually, emotionally, physically). I love to be at peace, feeling connected with all-life-on-Earth, and that drives me to do all kinds of things (like avoiding bad news, and being anxious in the very crowds whose appreciation I crave.) It is possible, though difficult, to learn to love being things we do not currently love being, though I think it is difficult.

The third part of who we are, I believe, is what we need ourselves to be, and what others need us to be. In my earlier article I called this Intention, but perhaps a better word would be Requirement. This includes things we already are (if they are needed, valued) and other things that we will have to become if we aspire to fulfill our own and others’ needs. My intuitiveness is something I need — I rely on it and trust it immensely — but I wouldn’t say it’s needed or valued by others. Awareness is something that I need to be, for self-fulfillment (I know because I long to ‘be’ in the moment, to really see, to exist in ‘Now Time’, to be connected to all-life-on-Earth). What others need from me (I think) is sensitivity and patience, qualities of being that I am not good at and don’t especially aspire to be (perhaps I am afraid that if I were sensitive I’d be hurt and stressed too easily, and if I were patient I’d ‘settle’ too easily). These things just aren’t me.

The chart above (an analogy to my Gift/Passion/Purpose three-circle chart for deciding what you’re meant to do for a living), shows the Sweet Spot in the middle that, I think, corresponds to true happiness. I’ve filled in the qualities that I think represent me. What would you put in each of the circles: What are you good at being, what would you love to be; and what do you need yourself to be (and what do others need you to be)?

Everything in any of the circles is, I think, to some extent, a part of who we are or intend to be. The more qualities that are in that central Sweet Spot the happier we are. To become happier, we strive to find people who need and value our Area 2 (unappreciated) qualities, and we strive to come to appreciate these qualities more in ourselves. To become happier, we strive to acquire competency in Area 4 qualities. To become happier, we strive to appreciate and enjoy our Area 5 qualities. Success in any of these efforts moves these qualities to the Sweet Spot in the centre.

What we’re good at being often determines what we’re good at doing. What we love (or would love) being can correlate to what we love doing. And what people need us to be can determine what they need us to do. So the Capacities/Joys/Requirements list (what we’re meant to be) should offer us clues about what our Gifts/Passions/Purpose might be (what we’re meant to do).

The things that I am that make me happiest (being articulate and provocative and imaginative), for example, map pretty closely to the things that are in my Gifts/Passions/Purpose Sweet Spot (expository writing, facilitating self-change in others, imagining possibilities) — what I think I’m meant to do for a living. But these are all fairly introspective, intellectual qualities and activities — perhaps not those of someone aspiring to start an Intentional Community, and lead the charge for better ways to live and make a living? In learning more about who we authentically are (nobody-but-ourselves), and about who we are not (the qualities ‘adventurous’, ‘courageous’, ‘perseverant’ and ‘persuasive’ are conspicuously absent, for example, from my chart) will a better understanding of who we are meant to be, and what we are meant to do, emerge?

And once we have this better understanding, will we be able to better figure out where we belong, where is home, to us?

Paul suggests that perhaps ‘home’ for me (and for others in our increasingly tiny, global, unreal world) might be just a stopping-off place, not a place where I make a living at all. Even if flying all over the world is ecologically irresponsible (and will soon be unaffordable), perhaps my place for making a living is in a virtual world? If that’s the case, perhaps I’m freed from working on the land to embrace the whole Earth as my ‘home’.

It’s an interesting idea. But my intuition says that’s all it is, that, as physical, visceral creatures, our home is some tangible Earthbound place. Paul may be right that technology will one day separate the place where we make a living from the place we call home. Perhaps it will even separate the place where those that we love live, physically, from the place we, individually, call home.

Somehow, though, I doubt it. The essential enterprises of all species are all about providing the necessities of life — love, food, learning, play — and these can all be provided, as long as we are not reckless in ournumbers and consumption, easily, and are best provided close to home.

Now all we need to do is figure out where that is.

Living as If…: PS Pirro describes a spin she discovered on an exercise called Morning Pages, in which you write, longhand, each morning, as you start your day, what you’re thinking about. The spin: “Write as if everything you want to happen has happened.” The power of imagination and the power of intention.

Texting is Back: Artnixie is blogging for the first time in two years, and still has an astonishing way with words in her article about our disposable society.

This is World Vegetarian Week: Bruce Friedrich has Ten Reasons to Go Vegetarian.

Improv for Business: Portland-based On Your Feet teaches business decision-makers how to “ignore the script” and become more innovative by teaching them the principles and practices of Improvision. Thanks to Creative Generalist for the link.

Free Full-Function Videoconferencing: If you want to have a virtual meeting with all the functionality of face-to-face, Vyew is looking better and better. Everything you get from the expensive services, for free. I like the fact that it’s completely web-based (nothing to install on your machine), and you can use it just-in-time. This should be GMail’s next add-on. And if all you want is video chat for a group, try MeBeam. Simple, ubiquitous, real-time: This is what Social Media is really about.

Make Yourself Over, Virtually: Looking at the list of the 75 people I’ve communicated with most over the last three months (other than work-related communications) I was astonished to discover that I’ve only ever met 20 of you face-to-face. If that’s the world we now live in, are we going to see more and more people whose online photos have been ‘shopped? There are tutorials on how to do this, and some of them are amazing. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re beautiful.

The Slow End of Civilization: Rob Paterson writes about the End of Oil, and references an article from 2005 predicting exactly what has happened since…the credit crunch, the collapsing US dollar, $4/gallon oil etc. I really like the world oil production chart (above) from that article, which shows that the cascading crises that will bring an end to our civilization will happen sloooowly, by our attention-deficit standards, not in our lifetimes, but certain within our grandchildrens’.

Real-Time Data: Steve Hinton points us to Worldometers, continuously updated demographic and economic data.

Addicted to Orgasm: A new book suggests that our obsession with orgasm can actually weaken love. Thanks to Amy Allcock for the link.

Thought for the Week: A lovely new poem from Sharon Brogan at Watermark:

At Sixty

The lilac tree should have grown over the last fifteen years, but a June snow took out a third of it, and it’s just now filling out again. The birches died, and have been replaced by young saplings. Spike is slipping away from me, nothing but bones and orange fur and purrs.

In this diminishing world, I hear each day of catastrophes, cyclones, earthquakes, drought and starvation; and closer to home, fires, floods, tornadoes. Extinctions, pending and past.

As a child, I knew of these only at a distance, miles away, and long ago. Now, each tragedy comes as it happens, into my living room, where I sit in comfort and watch children who are not mine buried in rubble, caught in crossfire, too starved to be afraid.

My garden stands up in the rain. The lilac is budding. Crocus and tulips decorate the neighborhood. I know this will not last. The crocus will pass, the tulips, Spike will be buried in the flowerbed. The lilac willflower and go to seed.

Now, I close my eyes and hold my cat.

            stones on the ground
                the garden wall
                 is falling

I have written articles all around this question, from my long, ponderous article about The Importance of Place and my lament that we are all Homeless and Addicted, to my review of Melissa Holbrook Pierson’s book The Place You Love is Gone (“we are a generation weighed down by a sadness we don’t know we feel”) and my more recent Big Question: Where Do I Belong?

I have often thought I knew where my home was. Places of shelter, wild places, rainforests, warm, inviting places, places untouched by human construction or alteration. Places that called to me, welcomed me, enfolded me in their embrace. Places I just felt, instinctively, that I belonged. That I was a part of, not apart from, connected to everything in that place and though it to all-life-on-Earth.

I sympathize with the Procol Harum song whose protagonist sought to explore the world but at every turn “only saw how far he was from home”. For some, the fearful, home is the only place we are not afraid.

While I sense, instinctively, that the definition of home above, in italics, is correct, I am still not quite sure what it means.

For most of us, including me, I have never found a place where I am myself, perhaps because I am not yet sure who that self is, or is meant to be. At least not in the nobody-but-yourself ee cummings sense. I have argued that the work we are meant to do is that which lies at the sweet spot where your Gifts (what you do uniquely well), your Passions (what you love doing) and your Purpose (what greatly needs doing, that you care to do) intersect. I have called such work Natural Enterprise and although it is rare it is magic.

Perhaps, by analogy, home, the place we are meant to be, lies at the sweet spot where our Capacities (what we offer to place and community, what we are good at being), our Joys (what fills us with love and happiness in a place and community, what we love being), and our Intention (what we need ourselves to be, and others need us to be). That is, perhaps, our place — not our place to do, but our place to be, the place where we be-long. When we have found our place, is that place our home, our Natural Community?

The challenge here is not only discovering such a place in this staggeringly complex world, it’s knowing ourselves — most of us, I suspect, don’t really know our capacities, what we’re capable of, or what we really love being, if we’ve only experienced being a few different things in a few different places. We probably don’t know what we need ourselves to be, unless we’ve been really tested, and what others need us to be depends on their own ever-changing circumstances, and how those many ‘others’ revolve, as they will, in and out of our lives.

I wonder if this challenge is not due, for the most part, to having so many choices. In indigenous communities, and among wild creatures, there are fewer different capacities that can be developed, fewer capacities in demand, fewer different ways to find love and fewer people to find it with. There is less opportunity to visit or learn about other places, so one’s search is limited to what is at hand or described by those one encounters personally. And there is more time to reflect, to ponder one’s options, to learn who one really is, and less cultural indoctrination (necessary in modern civilization to keep us in order in our horrifically overcrowded world) to become everybody-else.

We have become so used to defining ourselves by what we do, that we often cease to distinguish that from who we are.

My Gifts include imagining and provoking; that is what I do uniquely well. But what am I uniquely good at being? What reflective (as opposed to active) capacity defines me, comprises my unique offering to my place, wherever that may be?

My Passions include writing and working collaboratively on complex problems; these are things I love doing. But what do I most love being, that might help me identify my place, the place where I can be this?

My Purpose, what I am needed to do, is to enable people to change themselves for the better. But what do people (people in my community, people I love) need me to be? And how can I be more completely and authentically nobody-but-myself?

Home is the place that realizes these three ‘existentials’: It is where one can be what one is good at being, where one can be what one loves being, and where one can be what one is needed to be. The ducklings in the photo above, studied so carefully by biologist Bernd Heinrich, will know their home instinctively, even though it will change (from wetland to meadow to tundra, in cycles) many times throughout their lives. Each time they will migrate home as precisely and unhesitantly as a guided missile. They know where is home, for them.

For us, discovery of home is harder. It requires us to know who we are. When we became disconnected from all-life-on-Earth, and preoccupiedwith what we had to do, and began living inside our heads, we forgot who we were. Until we remember, we will never know where is home, for us.