Discuss: Playing for Keeps

And did we not all begin wearing those wonderful american flag chest(lapel) pins… to show our patriotism.? I know everyman and mowoman in the business community did… and if you did not, people looked at you like, wow what’s with that guy?

Sandy, no actually I didn’t wear one of those flag pins.
Mary, thanks for bring up Thomas Berry. After reading the comments prior to yours Thomas Berry’s writing on our DNA and cultural coding and how this means we’re connected - not just esoterically or metaphorically, but in reality - with all species, the Earth, indeed the universe. And though on a conscious level most of us live in unaware, it’s still there, present in every one of us. He writes about this in The Dream of the Earth, particularly in the chapter, “Our Way into the Future”. This came to mind because I just finished putting together a special tribute section to Thomas Berry (who died this past June), in my newsletter, Gaian Voices.
Listening to the Earth is for real!

“They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent… Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now…”
- Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936

Yvo De Boer and the leaders of Copenhagen Climate Change Conference are engaged in “the good fight” at the last, best opportunity for human civilization to save the planet for the children and coming generation as a fit place for human habitation. Years ago I was told that my generation had a duty to leave the world a better place than what is was when it was given to us by our forefathers and foremothers. It goes without saying that my not-so-great generation of greed-mongering elders will fall woefully short of discharging its responsibilities. Come what may for the children. Too many arrogant and selfish leaders in a single generation have recklessly chosen to fight wrongful wars for wrongheaded reasons, at a cost of blood and treasure that is as astounding in its stupidity as it is incalculable to measure.

An interesting and frightening article!

Had this subject on my mind very recently. Even wrote about it. Appreciation for the living world just isn’t possible if you don’t experience it. Technological advancement, misplaced priorities, and ignorance lead human beings to think that the end goal is not survival, but comfort. We sit in our air conditioning, buy our food already prepared most of the time, and complain if we get wet in the rain on the way to getting in our car.

If you tell someone you like walking in the rain, your eccentric. If you tell someone you did’nt build on the lot you own because box toroises were living there, you’re a liberal tree hugger.

How is anyone going to be able to listen to nature, when you can’t even get them to walk through the grass barefoot? How are they going to appreciate nature, when they have a heart atack if their kid picks up a frog?

Our quest for survival has led us to believe that getting some soil on you is dirty, that wild animals in your yard need to be killed,  that human beings are the be all end all, and that nature is beholden to our whims, our desires. We pay attention when it suits us, and worse than ignorning nature, we abuse it, in the name of making ourselves comfortable, not survival. We remove ourselves from nature because nature is’nt about comfort or ease. It’s truly all about survival, and we no longer are about surviving, but surviving comfortably.

Wherever man has settled, the place haz been significantly changed. The native Americans transformed the land into a sustainable environment, but they DID transform the land.
It’s not a matter of “whether,” but of “how” and “into what” the transformation is made.

That is true…........early man changed his environment.
In fact, every living organism that has ever been on our planet has changed the environment in some way.
Early man often pushed his prey to extinction, especially when he had entered a new land never before inhabited by humans.  When hunter-gatherers lived in one place for a very long time, a sort of stasis of change occurred as he accommodated to his environment and the rest of the living organisms became accommodated to man.
But obviously that all changed when farming began, and has continued today, especially with the industrial revolution.
I doubt we can ever live sustainably again, especially with 7 billion of us all needed sustainance.  But, I guess, there may one day be a small populations of surviving humans that necessarily begin to live sustainably.  I wish them the best!