red onion

I've been considering specializing on two issue right now. I think it would be a worthwhile site to catalogue the statements made by the Bush administration on Iraq, from 2000 to the present. Something to think about.

The other issue: global warming.

These two issues seem to encapsulate the most important issues we as a people are facing: saving the planet from environmental destruction, and saving the planet from the ignorant.

You notice, 'issue', is defined in the previous paragraph in "active" sentences. The issue is not global warming; the issue is to save the planet from global warming.
The issue is not Iraq, the issue is to become more active than ignorant people.

Ignorance is the most polite description I can offer for those who decided war with Iraq is a good idea. Exposing the lies and hypocricies of this "operation" would go a long way to exposing the failings of the so-called "purely capitalist model" of government. The destruction to humanity this war is causing is reason enough to pursue this endeavor.

I look at the Iraq war as welfare for corporations, plain and simple. Halliburton was on the verge of bankruptcy these last several years, but what has saved it are government sponsored loans and contracts. You tell me there hasn't been outright collusion between corporate and "national interests".

Regarding the environment, some might argue it is too foregone a conclusion to become active. We're well on our way to destroying the fragile eco-systems of the earth, and there is no turning back.

I know there are some who believe there is not enough healing that could take place, quickly enough to stem the tide of dis-repair. I might agree with them. I might feel despair at times on this issue. Some aspects of our eco-systems are lost forever, certain animal and plant species are extinct, unable to survive the acceleration of human intrusion into their world. The numbers of extinct animal and plant species grows.

The ancient art of living in harmony with our surroundings is dying. Will we become ghosts of ourselves, the selves who knew how to live and not destroy, who worshipped the spirits and souls of the earth and all of its inhabitants, as representing the ideal and divine aspects of self? I tell you, we are a dead people if we lose our precious connection to nature.

Loving the world of nature is as natural a function as there is. But it does entail the act of doing, the act of loving. My mother is one of the greatest lovers of nature that I know, and she hasn't hiked in the wilderness a day in her life. What she has done, since learning from her mother as a child, is cultivate a garden almost every year of her life. Right now her pink roses are blooming in the backyard, along with her chrysanthamums, and lantana.

Love is an active principal. I suppose one could sit in one's room all day and meditate on the beauty that is nature. But to experience nature, one needs to be in nature. An active relationship with nature naturally includes participation in the moment, with the experience of nature. It's guarunteed to refresh the soul. I don't get enough of it. I don't make enough time for it. I'm a sot like the rest of you.

We are a species with self-awareness. The human will is emphasized as the instinct is lost. This is a mixed-blessing, and this mixed- blessing comes with a responsibility: the responsibility to become more aware of the effects of our actions, because our instincts no longer perform this function for us.

It is difficult to imagine living on a world with dying or dead eco-systems everywhere. I would say though, that we are already living on just such a world. The question is, will the last of our natural heritage pass away from our experience. Would it be worth it as a people to continue on this planet, if we destroyed our eco-systems so that they no longer functioned as a whole, with the parts complementing each other?

One ecosystem complements the flow of another, unseen until something goes very wrong. Something has gone very wrong when the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting, and Africa is drying up.

Given that Africa may be the oldest cradle of life on the planet, it is fitting to look at that continent for the earliest clues as to what global warming means on a massive scale.