From a Wider Perspective

From a wider perspective, so much of what we do to each other, must have the rest of creation shaking their heads in disbelief.

The fact is, that someone born in the United States is not more special than someone born in Mexico. Someone born in London is not more special than someone born in Liverpool. Someone who is white is not more special than someone who is black. They are just vehicles for the consciousness to experience.

You go down to the seashore, and you pick up a droplet of water in your hand. So when I began to understand all of this, and appreciate this other explanation to dogmatic religion and this world and science. I started to ask a few questions of this situation. Like how come, that this explanation at the very bottom line least, is as credible as the other two. How come the other two get guaranteed airtime, often no questions asked, here is your airtime, say what you like.

How can anyone say that droplet is any more or less special than all the other billions and trillions of droplets you see in the ocean before you?

And the alternative to both of them, is ridiculed, condemned or suppressed by either acception. The answer that I came up with clearly is that some people don’t want the public to have access to this information.

But who, or what, or why?

I began to ask other questions. I don’t know about you, but I’ve met a lot of people in my life, and I can’t to my knowledge recall anyone, who ever wanted a war. Who had any interests in wars? Who felt that wars were anything but horrific and to be avoided. So I thought how come the world has been awash with wars throughout this century?

Who’s behind it, or what, or why?

Then I kind of looked at this economic system that controls the world. An economic system that is so sane, that the more successful it is in its own terms, the quicker it destroys the planet. It’s the perfect environmental and human assassin. It insists every year that we take more from the earth even quicker, turn it into more things, sell even more things, consume even more things, throw away even more things, to worship the real god of the modern world – economic growth.

It insists that every year 20% of the people of the world consume 80% of the resources while leaving the other 80% to get by on the other 20%. Crazy? Of course it is! This economic system; take, make and throw away -- that controls your life and mine, and of the 6 billion people here.

So I thought what is behind this self destruction, or who and why? I started looking at the other conventional wisdom that we pass on from generation to generation as the only way of doing things in this world. The wisdom that says, even though the economic system that I just described is dismantling this planet.

So you can ask a politician of any party, anywhere in the world, “What do we do to get out of this environmental situation?” They will say we need to have more growth to raise the money to spend on the environment. If I said to you, the only way to put out a fire is to put gasoline on it, you’d say he’s out of his mind!

That is what the politicians are saying when they say we need more growth to sort out the environment.

It’s conventional wisdom that it’s fine to treat animals as mere commodities. To be made as fat as possible, as quick as possible, on as little food as possible. To condemn every year billions of animals to a lifetime of pain, fear and suffering in the name of economics.

Are you sane if you judge your success in health care not by how many people are healthy but how many diseased people you manage to treat?

We are treating more patients than ever before…why?

Why are so many people ill?

Is it conventional wisdom that rising house prices are a sign of economic success when thousands are homeless because they can’t afford them?

Are you sane if you think it’s fine to support a system that is so successful that every year it turns out more suicide, alcoholism, drug taking, homelessness, pain, stress, fear and suffering it all it’s forms?

We’d be in real trouble if this system wasn’t working…wouldn’t we? That is sanity apparently.

But it’s the ultimate insanity!

I began to realize too, that against the background of this, utter self destruction, of this sane planet -- is stunning wisdom. I began to see also that there is a great difference between cleverness and wisdom; they are not the same thing. This system is very clever, but it isn’t very wise, and it’s the lack of wisdom that is the problem.

I began to see that, what we call wisdom, is often not found in this ‘state of the art’ letters after their name system. It’s actually found in the native peoples that this system would see as backward.

Here is a piece of native American wisdom -- what has become known as the American Indian. When you have cut down the last tree, and poisoned the last river, you will know that you cannot eat money. That’s wisdom. There is another piece of very famous American Indian wisdom.

In 1854 the American Government made an offer for Indian land, and nder the system that I have been talking about and the attitude and the values that are indoctrinated into us, what should have happened, is this chief should have said, right, well I’m on a winner here, because it’s a sellers market here…I never put it on the market, therefore I’m in the drivers seat. What I’ll do is duck and weave and I’ll say I don’t want to sell, get them to push up the price, and at the moment I think they pull out, I’ll put out my hand and say, You’ve convinced me.

People will think what a great businessman he is, that chief, fantastic. But there is another value system on this planet also…a value system that said this, in terms of this chief…

“...how can you buy or sell the sky? We do not own the freshness of the air, or the sparkle on the water…how then can you buy them from us? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people, holy in their memory and experience. We know the white man does not understand our ways; he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his friend, but his enemy. And when he has conquered it, he moves on. He kidnaps the earth from his children. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind a desert. If the beast were gone, we would die from a great loneliness of the spirit for whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the Earth”.

It’s sobering to think that those words were spoken in 1854, and you look at what has happened since.

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