I just returned from a gathering that Rick Ingrasci hosted at Hollyhock,

For a tease to this wonderful talk: “I believe humanity has looked in all the wrong places for miracles. All we have to do is open our eyes…You don’t have to go around looking for a burning bush; the bush itself is miracle enough…This awaking to the miracle all around us is the spiritual renaissance that I believe might save us.” – Rex Weyler

Ordinary Courage

…We look out at our tortured world, heating up at unprecedented rate, rivers polluted, forests turned to desert, and we witness the hubris of humanity…Rachel Carson wrote a half century ago, “The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology.”

We do not control nature. We are nature.

The Unitarians point out that the concept of Worship derives from the Old English “weorthschippen,” to ascribe worth to something. So, to what do we ascribe worth? To security, to money, to our career or nation? Do we ascribe worth to ancient scriptures or a life in heaven after we die?

We now see that we have failed, as a society – for millennia – to ascribe worth to the earth itself, the o­ne sustaining gift of the universe that we touch and feel every day. Perhaps it is time to not just respect the earth but to worship the earth, to ascribe worth to nature.

Nature is the first teacher of humanity. Nature provoked our ancestors’ first sense of awe, the first inspirations for human songs, stories, and for our sense of the divine.

Where do we go for a holiday? Into nature, to the beach, snorkeling in the sea, or skiing in the mountains. We find ourselves suddenly back home. Nature built us. Nature designed our eyes to see, our touch to feel, and our ears to hear the call of our kind, or the sound of danger.

Technological societies suffer from epidemics of neuroses, and I believe these mental conflicts reflect a lost connection to our natural state of being. But our mother, the earth, is patient. She abides. She suffers our neglect. She waits.

I think she waits for us to ascribe worth to her.

I am optimistic about our future because history shows that we can change, but, before I can be optimistic, I must be realistic. Otherwise I am not optimistic, I am delusional.

We cannot fear the truth, because that is what will save us.

In my high school biology class, I recall we put two fruit flies – a male and a female – into a jar with a tomato. The flies multiplied day after day: four, eight, a dozen, and soon hundreds of fruit flies feeding o­n the tomato. After about three weeks the jar was full of fruit flies and the tomato was half-eaten away. The very next day, when we came into class, the tomato was gone and all the fruit flies were dead.

This was an experiment about exponential growth in nature. There are no cases in nature in which exponential growth continues forever. None. The global economy cannot double every 24 years forever. The planet cannot absorb or feed 75 million more humans – 8 New York cities – every year. None of this is remotely sustainable.

I remain optimistic about our future because I believe we are smarter than fruit flies. But realistically, I know: we’re halfway through the tomato, and the time to wake up is now.

Forget quibbling about peak oil. We are way past peak everything. There is no natural resource available o­n the planet today that we are going to have more of in the future, except perhaps heat.

We are roughly halfway through the planet’s petroleum deposits, which represent 400 million years of accumulated sunlight deposited as organic material o­n the ocean floors of past ages. And because we took the cheap, easy oil first, future oil will cost more energy to retrieve. We are way past the peak of net energy from oil.

We are halfway through the world’s forests. Five thousand years ago, there were about 8 billion hectares of forest o­n the planet. Today, there are 4 billion hectares left. The forests are half gone. The Syrian-Lebanese desert was o­nce a cedar forest. We are losing about 12 million hectares per year. I’ve seen panzer divisions of bulldozers, dawn to dusk in Argentina, ripping up the forest in clouds of dust to create industrial farmland. They don’t even use the wood. They burn the forest like rubbish. The smoke and soil blow over the horizon.

More than half the world’s fresh water resources are gone or polluted. We’re more than halfway through the ocean’s fish, 90% through many commercial species.

On top of this, the richest 15% of the people o­n the planet – those of us with hot showers, cars, and three meals per day -consume 85% of the wealth.

China and the rest of the third world want the lifestyle enjoyed in the wealthy nations. They want automobiles, computers, nightclubs, and movies. China already uses half the cement in the world. There isn’t enough copper in the world to make electric motors for computers and washing machines for 6 billion people, let alone for 10 or 12 billion.

Already, some 25,000 people die of starvation every day. This is comparable to 50 jumbo jets dropping from the sky killing everyone o­n board, every single day. Eight 9/11s every day, and most of the victims are children.

So we should not quibble over peak oil production or wring our hands about whether or not we are causing global warming. We’re halfway through the tomato. The question is, will we wake up and will we be able to adjust? Are we smarter than the fruit flies?

I believe we are smart enough. I am optimistic because I have seen with my own eyes that dedicated people can change the world.

In my lifetime I have witnessed the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the rise of the environmental movement.

Private citizens initiated all of these changes, individuals willing to take a stand – people like Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Nelson Mandela. We, private citizens who see what is before our eyes, can ring the wake up bell for our governments, corporations, and institutions.

As some of you know, 30 years ago some of the first Greenpeace meetings were held here in Vancouver. Bill Darnell coined the name “Greenpeace” at o­ne of those meetings at the Unitarian church to plan the first Greenpeace voyage to stop nuclear bomb testing in Alaska.

That ship’s crew was arrested before they reached the test zone, but the sheer moral courage of the campaign created an international incident and led to the end of bomb tests in Alaska. We learned at Greenpeace that ideas and actions can change society.

We also learned at that time that radioactive elements from the bomb tests began to appear in children’s teeth and in mothers’ milk. Global war preparation had become a global environmental issue.

I remember seeing a picture of the polluted Cuyahoga River burning in Ohio. The rivers are burning? If that doesn’t wake us up to ecology, we’re hopeless. In the 1960s and 1970s, we witnessed oil spills and acid rain, and we felt that the next big shift humanity had to make was to recognize our interconnectedness with all of nature.

We set out to save the whales in 1975, because the whales were being hunted to extinction, and we believed that they had every right to live, just as we did. But there was another reason: for us the whales represented nature itself. They were magnificent, intelligent, and mysterious. They sang songs, protected their young, and lived in extended families.

By standing in little rubber boats between fleeing whales and exploding harpoons, we created enough of an international ruckus that by 1983, we won a moratorium o­n the deep-sea killing of whales. We still struggle with the whaling nations – Japan and Norway – to preserve this international law.

Greenpeace went o­n to help stop the dumping of toxic wastes in the oceans, won a moratorium o­n destructive drift nets, and has saved millions of acres of forests from Brazil to Canada.

However, as we can see, this is still not nearly enough. Humanity needs something more, and I believe what we need is a spiritual reawakening.

At its roots, Greenpeace was a spiritual movement. We believed that nature was sacred. If we fail to ascribe worth to nature – to worships nature – I don’t think we can make the changes fast enough.

We live inside the miracle every day. We see the miracle bursting from the ground every spring. I believe humanity has looked in all the wrong places for miracles. All we have to do is open our eyes.

My late friend and Greenpeace colleague Bob Hunter used to say, “You don’t have to go around looking for a burning bush; the bush itself is miracle enough.”

This awaking to the miracle all around us is the spiritual renaissance that I believe might save us…

What this comes down to is that by our actions, by the fruits of our action, we display social and spiritual maturity. Not by pronouncements and slogans.

To heal the human relationship with the earth, we do not need Hollywood heroes or melodramatic revolutionaries. We need ordinary heroes who practice common decency.

The writer May Sarton says, “One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.” This is the ordinary courage to stand up for integrity.

When Rosa Parks passed away last year, the whole world celebrated this humble black woman who toppled the institution of segregation in the United States.

If Rosa Parks, a poor seamstress, can change the world by sitting in a bus seat in Alabama, then so can you and I.

Who is going to stand up for the homeless, for the fetal alcohol kids, or the native people suffering from mercury poisoning?

Frederick Douglass, a US slave who became a renowned author, o­nce wrote, “Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them.”

Forty years ago, in Vancouver, a group of people got together and stood in front of the bulldozers to stop a highway project that would have pushed a four-lane highway into English Bay, out to UBC and around the Point Grey to the Oak Street Bridge. People stopped it. Moms and dads. So today we have Kitsilano Park, Jericho, and Spanish Banks. Because a few people left the comfort of their homes o­n a Saturday afternoon and stood in front of a bulldozer…

You’ve heard the expression, “Whatever will be will be.” No. Whatever we do will be. Whatever we create will be. History is not o­n autopilot. History is the result of what people choose to do.

When you stand up against injustice or ecological insanity you give courage to others. A simple act of courage can start a movement and change the world.

You cannot expect to change the status quo and not face resistance and ridicule. Ridicule is the weapon that the powerful use to bully the weak. Do not be intimidated by the consequences of having a conscience.

This is the example set by Jesus, by Gandhi, or by Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.

But here today, Earth Day 2007, each o­ne of us possesses this same power: the power of common decency, the power of compassion, and the power of an ordinary citizen to make the world right.

If we exercise this power, we may yet be able to preserve a place o­n this planet for future generations of human beings.

Robert Jensen pierces the veil of conventional thinking, and I always appreciate his insight. We need systemic change that goes deeper than surface fixes, and Jensen brings that bigger picture into focus so that we get a perspective o­n the water we're swimming in.

After I first posted his work, and he joined our listserve, he came to Los Angeles and I went to hear him speak. He was as stimulating in person as is o­n the printed page. Here's my most recent post of his work, which will take you to three posts before that:

It's taken me a little while to get to putting up this speech of his. Speaking of getting beyond conventional thinking, I've been crunching to finish my documentary o­n crop circles. In the meantime, I did send this to two other people, and it was a confirmation of my enthusiasm for what Jensen has to say that they both sent it back out to their lists.

Anti-capitalism in five minutes or less

May 15, 2007

By Robert Jensen

[Remarks to the final “Last Sunday” community gathering in Austin, TX, April 29, 2007. For a PDF of all five of the talks in this series, write to rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu .]

We know that capitalism is not just the most sensible way to organize an economy but is now the o­nly possible way to organize an economy. We know that dissenters to this conventional wisdom can, and should, be ignored. There's no longer even any need to persecute such heretics; they are obviously irrelevant.

How do we know all this? Because we are told so, relentlessly — typically by those who have the most to gain from such a claim, most notably those in the business world and their functionaries and apologists in the schools, universities, mass media, and mainstream politics. Capitalism is not a choice, but rather simply is, like a state of nature. Maybe not like a state of nature, but the state of nature. To contest capitalism these days is like arguing against the air that we breathe. Arguing against capitalism, we're told, is simply crazy.

We are told, over and over, that capitalism is not just the system we have, but the o­nly system we can ever have. Yet for many, something nags at us about such a claim. Could this really be the o­nly option? We're told we shouldn't even think about such things. But we can't help thinking — is this really the “end of history,” in the sense that big thinkers have used that phrase to signal the final victory of global capitalism? If this is the end of history in that sense, we wonder, can the actual end of the planet far behind?

We wonder, we fret, and these thoughts nag at us — for good reason. Capitalism — or, more accurately, the predatory corporate capitalism that defines and dominates our lives — will be our death if we don't escape it. Crucial to progressive politics is finding the language to articulate that reality, not in outdated dogma that alienates but in plain language that resonates with people. We should be searching for ways to explain to co-workers in water-cooler conversations — radical politics in five minutes or less — why we must abandon predatory corporate capitalism. If we don't, we may well be facing the end times, and such an end will bring rupture not rapture.

Here's my shot at the language for this argument.

Capitalism is admittedly an incredibly productive system that has created a flood of goods unlike anything the world has ever seen. It also is a system that is fundamentally (1) inhuman, (2) anti-democratic, and (3) unsustainable. Capitalism has given those of us in the First World lots of stuff (most of it of marginal or questionable value) in exchange for our souls, our hope for progressive politics, and the possibility of a decent future for children.

In short, either we change or we die — spiritually, politically, literally.

1. Capitalism is inhuman

There is a theory behind contemporary capitalism. We're told that because we are greedy, self-interested animals, an economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior if we are to thrive economically.

Are we greedy and self-interested? Of course. At least I am, sometimes. But we also just as obviously are capable of compassion and selflessness. We certainly can act competitively and aggressively, but we also have the capacity for solidarity and cooperation. In short, human nature is wide-ranging. Our actions are certainly rooted in our nature, but all we really know about that nature is that it is widely variable. In situations where compassion and solidarity are the norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where competitiveness and aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior.

Why is it that we must choose an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature and strengthens the most inhuman? Because, we're told, that's just the way people are. What evidence is there of that? Look around, we're told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we see greed and the pursuit of self-interest. So, the proof that these greedy, self-interested aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced into a system that rewards greed and self-interested behavior, people often act that way. Doesn't that seem just a bit circular?

2. Capitalism is anti-democratic

This o­ne is easy. Capitalism is a wealth-concentrating system. If you concentrate wealth in a society, you concentrate power. Is there any historical example to the contrary?

For all the trappings of formal democracy in the contemporary United States, everyone understands that the wealthy dictates the basic outlines of the public policies that are acceptable to the vast majority of elected officials. People can and do resist, and an occasional politician joins the fight, but such resistance takes extraordinary effort. Those who resist win victories, some of them inspiring, but to date concentrated wealth continues to dominate. Is this any way to run a democracy?

If we understand democracy as a system that gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate in the formation of public policy, rather than just a role in ratifying decisions made by the powerful, then it's clear that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive.

Let's make this concrete. In our system, we believe that regular elections with the o­ne-person/one-vote rule, along with protections for freedom of speech and association, guarantee political equality. When I go to the polls, I have o­ne vote. When Bill Gates goes the polls, he has o­ne vote. Bill and I both can speak freely and associate with others for political purposes. Therefore, as equal citizens in our fine democracy, Bill and I have equal opportunities for political power. Right?

3. Capitalism is unsustainable

This o­ne is even easier. Capitalism is a system based o­n the idea of unlimited growth. The last time I checked, this is a finite planet. There are o­nly two ways out of this o­ne. Perhaps we will be hopping to a new planet soon. Or perhaps, because we need to figure out ways to cope with these physical limits, we will invent ever-more complex technologies to transcend those limits.

Both those positions are equally delusional. Delusions may bring temporary comfort, but they don't solve problems. They tend, in fact, to cause more problems. Those problems seem to be piling up.

Capitalism is not, of course, the o­nly unsustainable system that humans have devised, but it is the most obviously unsustainable system, and it's the o­ne in which we are stuck. It's the o­ne that we are told is inevitable and natural, like the air.

A tale of two acronyms: TGIF and TINA

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's famous response to a question about challenges to capitalism was TINA — There Is No Alternative. If there is no alternative, anyone who questions capitalism is crazy.

Here's another, more common, acronym about life under a predatory corporate capitalism: TGIF — Thank God It's Friday. It's a phrase that communicates a sad reality for many working in this economy — the jobs we do are not rewarding, not enjoyable, and fundamentally not worth doing. We do them to survive. Then o­n Friday we go out and get drunk to forget about that reality, hoping we can find something during the weekend that makes it possible o­n Monday to, in the words of o­ne songwriter, “get up and do it again.”

Remember, an economic system doesn't just produce goods. It produces people as well. Our experience of work shapes us. Our experience of consuming those goods shapes us. Increasingly, we are a nation of unhappy people consuming miles of aisles of cheap consumer goods, hoping to dull the pain of unfulfilling work. Is this who we want to be?

We're told TINA in a TGIF world. Doesn't that seem a bit strange? Is there really no alternative to such a world? Of course there is. Anything that is the product of human choices can be chosen differently. We don't need to spell out a new system in all its specifics to realize there always are alternatives. We can encourage the existing institutions that provide a site of resistance (such as labor unions) while we experiment with new forms (such as local cooperatives). But the first step is calling out the system for what it is, without guarantees of what's to come.

Home and abroad

In the First World, we struggle with this alienation and fear. We often don't like the values of the world around us; we often don't like the people we've become; we often are afraid of what's to come of us. But in the First World, most of us eat regularly. That's not the case everywhere. Let's focus not o­nly o­n the conditions we face within a predatory corporate capitalist system, living in the most affluent country in the history of the world, but also put this in a global context.

Half the world's population lives o­n less than $2 a day. That's more than 3 billion people. Just over half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lives o­n less than $1 a day. That's more than 300 million people.

How about o­ne more statistic: About 500 children in Africa die from poverty-related diseases, and the majority of those deaths could be averted with simple medicines or insecticide-treated nets. That's 500 children — not every year, or every month or every week. That's not 500 children every day. Poverty-related diseases claim the lives of 500 children an hour in Africa.

When we try to hold o­nto our humanity, statistics like that can make us crazy. But don't get any crazy ideas about changing this system. Remember TINA: There is no alternative to predatory corporate capitalism.

TGILS: Thank God It's Last Sunday

We have been gathering o­n Last Sunday precisely to be crazy together. We've come together to give voice to things that we know and feel, even when the dominant culture tells us that to believe and feel such things is crazy. Maybe everyone here is a little crazy. So, let's make sure we're being realistic. It's important to be realistic.

One of the common responses I hear when I critique capitalism is, “Well, that may all be true, but we have to be realistic and do what's possible.” By that logic, to be realistic is to accept a system that is inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable. To be realistic we are told we must capitulate to a system that steals our souls, enslaves us to concentrated power, and will someday destroy the planet.

But rejecting and resisting a predatory corporate capitalism is not crazy. It is an eminently sane position. Holding o­nto our humanity is not crazy. Defending democracy is not crazy. And struggling for a sustainable future is not crazy.

What is truly crazy is falling for the con that an inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable system — o­ne that leaves half the world's people in abject poverty — is all that there is, all that there ever can be, all that there ever will be.

If that were true, then soon there will be nothing left, for anyone.

I do not believe it is realistic to accept such a fate. If that's being realistic, I'll take crazy any day of the week, every Sunday of the month.

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center