David Suzuki: Waste Out of Sight Out of Mind Or Is It?

This blog started as an introduction but has ended up as a flow which I just allowed. Enjoy different perspectives. There is no us or them, just us working out what is true for ourselves with hopefully the greater good at heart.

What I have learned over the years is that Gaia or the Planet is not unaware of human activity. Anyone who has watched David Attenborough BBC series can gain a rudimentary idea that the planet is complex, alive and integrated. Anyone familiar with ancient indigenous rationales will understand the planet is indeed an integrated One with all life. It is known to be alive. It is orbiting on a specific trajectory around the sun in an ecosystem of other planets. It is not an unintelligent automated system, as we sense when we feel peace walking in nature. There is plenty of evidence to suggest complex communication systems, response to change, adaptation and cycles, just like a human life. It is not unlike the body with controllable and automated functions that are carried out to keep the body alive. If you look at the perfection of the human body, what created that? The intelligence and sense of harmony is inherent in every being, those out of harmony do not survive. The genetic pool has mutants that are possibilities when the conditions are right. That has to be intelligent thought. To have a whole system of seemingly unrelated communities understanding boundaries and feeding off a variety of sources ensures balance is retained. It is unbelievably intelligent. So if intelligence is finding balance, recycling, supporting the whole as a rhythm then there is your model for a human society to thrive. It is actually essential we find our true nature to naturally move to the same rhythm, you can make up as many technologies as you like, but if they are not the right keys to the combination of life, then an imbalance will occur. If that happens, then the human species will be out of balance. The rule is anything out of balance with nature is not naturally selected as the system is self sustaining, functional and adaptable. That is the blueprint for nature. So I ask with a smile who is in charge of this system? Are we in control? (our mindset) or do we need to find true harmony with nature? That I feel is natures question to us.

The article below speaks of the imbalance of industrial pollutants in the environment and buried underground. Inherent in this article is recognition of the ignorance of the true nature of this planet. The industrialists don’t know what to do with the wastes (non organic) so they bury them, release them into the atmosphere or dump them out at sea. Regulations provide health and safety parameters (rules) providing comfort zones of right and wrong, but what do we really know about the short term or long term effects, the actual amount of pollutants that have been released into the environment out of sight out of mind? David Suzuki focuses on North America, but what about Russia, China and the rest of the world which is indeed out of sight out of mind. If the government, bureaucrats, industrialists, public are not educated then these activities just go on. There may be some cacophony when rivers are polluted, animals die, soils are despoiled, groups of people get sick. If this is ignored then the planet, people and other life forms die silently. Much of this if buried or camoflaged becoming unseen. What of the underground water, the underground ecosystems, how does the pollutants affect the web of life given it is not natural and does not speak, in truth, the same language of other organisms. It speaks of imbalance. I feel it is like a cancer out of control within an intelligent web of life on earth. The web always seeks for balance (equilibrium or homeostasis). At which point do humans trangress tipping points? The words ‘they know not what they do’ comes to mind. Ignorance and denial are the modus operandi of a species that is unevolved yet believing it is advancing progress.

It wasn’t until I left nice cosy Australia where the waste is out of sight out of mind and visited other countries where it is not so out of sight. It is dumped visibly and pollution is everywhere. Rubbish is a clear one in countries unaccustomed to waste, you can see they just throw it over cliffs. I heard a few westeners complain about how dirty they are, but my feeling was we have been trained since young children to throw waste into a bin. In these countries capitalism and its waste is a new phenomenon. You can see the different mindsets. Yet in the West there are attempts to process better but still we have a long way to go as industry is not in harmony with nature. To be honest when I went to North America for the first time I really thought they would be ahead of the world, I was amazed to be sitting in a food place in Canada to find everything was disposable – serviettes (napkins), tomato sauce (ketchup), salt and pepper, sugar and milk. I just sat there thinking I really would have thought this part of the world would be switched on. But I knew this is the nature of greed, fast food and expediency. As you travel out of cities and get to the outskirts that is when you see the industrial zones, that is the true face of industrialisation and captialism. It is dirty, baron and the engine of unsustainable growth. I always make a mental note to understand the city is not the tree lined boulevards designed to raise housing prices or beautify cities, it is in the outskirts that you see the true face. I make myself look at what I have created through my demand for products. So easy to sit in ones arm chair and complain yet not feel the responsibility of buying products that create this. I am not saying feel guilt, I am saying see the linkages that lead to your door and be proactive with love.

People can say if you love your planet, your children, the future then take responsibility. Until people find their own inner truth through experience perhaps then they will find the courage to not lend their energy to activities that harm the earth and they will gently ask supermarkets to have raw foods that are not packaged or as communities come together and suggest better ways to help the supermarket.

There are many divergent attitudes in the environmental/industrial debate some see the industrialists as hard, unfeeling, irresponsible old school practitioners who are power seeking. The other group of environmentalists are seen as tree hugging, bean munching, lettuce leaf eating, organice, hippy outsiders that are anti-progress. Yet in truth if we look beneath the arguments we have to find a middle path that will lead to a sustainable path in a way that ensures both are not left high and dry through environmental and economic collapse. It is the fine line we walk but in truth it is how we see ourselves, how we think, how we integrate our emotions and what we see as our purpose in life that enables us to find the balance in reality. Ongoing support systems reflect the voice of reality asserting itself with an urgency.

If you undermine the planet you undermine life support systems. If your economy is based on generating unnecessary wants rather than needs, manufacturing created needs on curves of infinite growth you will most definitely hit a wall economically and ecologically. The two are the twin deficits in my view. You need resources to fuel consumption, you need marketing to manufacture consumption, you need chemicals and compounds to produce the plastics, extract the ores to make the metals and technologies to produce products that few need in order to see numbers growing in your bank account and balance sheet. Yet that balance sheet does not factor in natural systems which are alive and in harmony. I am not speaking of environmental impact statements, I am speaking of true natural impacts where all is in a perfect balance with low and high tolerances. If you extract here, tunnel there, bury this and that and quarry earth minerals without a conscious awareness of impacts then you are reflecting a self interested paradigm unaware of the interconnectedness of all life that are not separated. If you don’t understand that the equations can never balance and the true costs or externalities are never factored in, then it is a false economy you are looking at. I sense a deep ignorance and/or denial drives this paradigm.

In truth the most illusionary world is the one of economics which is based on theory of demand and supply curves outside of real world realities and ecological feedback loops. I have had professors tell me the analysis are abstractions of complexity whereby certain variables are held constant in order to understand change in other variables. In reality there is dynamic interactions happening at the same time and rationality is not a constant. What you perceive as rational another will see differently as we have different needs and wants, personalities, ages and disposable income. Thus economics is a limited way of understanding complex human interactions, notwithhstanding the ecological sources upon which the whole economic system depends. This foundation is not separate moving parts that are replaceable but an integrated whole. Economics is based on human need and greed outside of an ecological community where there is little knowledge in the decision makers of all the variables in making important decisions that affect life on earth. The minerals are not Australian, American, Chinese etc. they are part of a continuous ecosystem that has no boundaries it sees itself as a whole. The current economic analysis is not based on a true understanding of homeostasis in sustainability, functionality and adaptability, instead using resources as inputs into production and outputs as products. Nor does it factor in community impacts and real social needs (harmony, balance, peace), it is driven by self interest rewarded by greed (more of) which we call money. Self interest only seeks to improve those interests deemed by the self as self serving. It has no awareness or notion of social responsibility or impacts psychologically, physically or communally. Yet a fundamental universal law is what you do to another returns to the self. Life works in cycles. This will not be in the economic text books. There is an invisible force that is unseen that brings back lessons to be learned. Some call it karma, scientists may call it cause and effect. We see it in our own lives the results of past actions coming back in another form. These are the invisibles that are never discussed or even reflected on as many would discount as not real. These unseen natural energy (all is energy) responses would seem as unseen feedbacks that have no roots in hard theory. The hard facts are always seen, not unseen, many would argue grounded in reality. In truth we are really looking at the dominant paradigm perspectives of masculine exclusive of the feminine. If the masculine is in ascendency then what we feel, see and create is real. It is tangible, we built it, all the parts fit, it is operational and that feels like success. If we see through the feminine then what we feel, intuite and sense is real. That is intangible and could be conceptualised as relationships (unseen) and a landscape that senses the unseen energy changes. You can feel it when someone walks in the room who is negative, others feel it, hence we are not separate. Yet both appear real yet when the masculine and feminine are in imbalance there are serious blindspots and implications for the pink elephant in the room cannot be seen. That is why the two must be present in the room in order to gain the big picture. Now I am using the simple idea of men and women but in truth it is the masculine and feminine within. It is like myself as a poet training as an Economist. I consciously chose subjects at university that would combine the masculine and feminine. Later on in my life the feminine was in the ascendency as I started to see and intuite the meaning of my life through poetry. I realised that poetry wasn’t fluffy words but a living philosophy that I sensed from a higher intelligence. You an easily parallel this for the hard data people by speaking about the bolt out of the blue the ah ha moment where suddenly you know what to do or how it works, that is not logical it is a flash. When I write creatively I immediately connect to the feminine and find ideas I didn’t know coming to me. I am in the no mind (flow), this is natural to me. When I step into the analytical mindset I look for data or references to prove my argument (logic) and I structure it with models that a linear and logical that appears sound (hard, solid). I know the language of this hard data. That is then acceptable as an approach and accepted by the majority, but is it reality? It is fine for the game of economics where we make it up, but it has no bearing on the natural world which is 4 billion years old and speaks another language. I know now that my feeling (emotional intelligence) side gives me more information that connects me to wisdom, seeking out far wider implications and feeling my way to solutions. So you can see the mindsets. One is out of the mind, the other is in the mind.

I always smile at professional mindsets who see the hard data as reality. I used to produce the hard data and explore markets to find it is a game played out based on perceptions. The real world in physicality is the healthy functioning, symbiotic interrelationships of air, soil, water, fire (sun), organisms, and I have to add, a spiritual reality that is inherent in our nature. Some call this spiritual reality consciousness. The latter leads you to feelings of love, self worth, harmony and oneness that is felt not learned. It is a natural intelligence that we have forgotten.

When you decide to look at the feminine for example you would make a decision to visit the real experts in indigenous communities to find out the real data on living in harmony and how we are not separate but intrinsically integrated. They are the ones who will show you when it all collapses which food to eat which to not eat and how to find water. They will espouse philosophies of living with mother earth treating her as part of yourself, they will remind us that we are stewards, to not exploit her. They will speak of the planet as a living consciousness, because indeed it is. I see the wisdom of thousands of years of true knowledge developed through trial and error. They have wise solution are you deeply listening. This term is used a lot in indigenous philosophy and in spirituality it means to listen within, to your own truth, to not follow the crowd. Your meaning is found from turning inward not gathering possessions as outward signs of success, true success is ‘to know thyself and be true’. So our true nature will naturally find wise solutions that are not based on the fiction of economic growth as security and waste management as cleanup which in truth is only deepening the ditch into which civilisation bury’s itself alive. Once we raise our awareness in alignment with the true nature of our planet we will realise how far out of step we are. This inbalance is a reflection of our inner imbalance with ourselves reflecting in the outer world. An example of this is the person who doesn’t know peace who looks for it in controlling life around him/her, who creates dischord through anger if things are not done perfectly in accordance with belief systems. This is a person who doesn’t put in place a harmonious system where all know their roles, where they are self regulating (empowered) and encouraged to solve problems (delegation). The person at the top becomes like an orchestra conductor keeping a balanced rhythm to ensure people are not stressed but feel happy in this hybrid echo system. For what you put out comes back, if you sew dischord you will experience it, if you sew peace you will feel it. This is the inner world reflecting the outer reality. It is the new philosophy which will become clearer over time. For the moment we are still like the child that throws rubbish out the window without anyone noticing, or steals something and hides it. We will educate people that they are responsible for their actions and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, this is a universal law that none can run from. Always the truth surfaces and I believe the times we are in are going to reflect that universal law.

I call on industrialists to find others who are moving towards sustainability and join that band wagon proactively. To start to reinvent the future as pioneers, envisaging clean, healthy and happy communities. To consider serving the greater good and educating shareholders that future share prices will be valued in societies that work in unison with nature. To find ways in the short term of using organic compounds that breaking down with minimal to zero harzard. Moreover, to lobby governments to release patents that are beneficial to industry and society so that proactive industrialists can make the switch in ways they can afford. I think government subsidies in this area would be positive and working for the common good. As a society for everyone to take personal responsibility for the pollution as we demand the products and industries produce them, we are in a chain that perpetuates the negative externalities. Moreover to take action and generate solutions on how to solve this rather than punish people who really were trained to produce rather than conserve. I think the youth could be engaged here to help industry by doing studies and then as a community assisting that industry to improve or shift to cleaner outputs. I don’t believe in leaving people on the scrap heap but helping them to relocate or retrain and retool in ways that ensures their livelihood is not endangered that they are cared for as we care for the earth. As we are all one on this planet.

I encourage people to have no anger towards industrialists I just feel they need to be helped by those who know to tell the blind horseman on a blind horse that he (she) is heading towards the abyss (Lao Tzu). That is what love does with others and with the next generation firmly in mind. That is the face of responsibility and compassion. Terms that are neither fluffy or idealistic, they seek to focus on the need (and fears) of the people and of nature (balance) and pull community together out of the illusion of separation to learn how to work in harmony together, that will reflect in the outer world. We are indeed each other’s keepers.

Here is David Suzuki’s blog highlighting the blindmen. It is time to look to see with wisdom.