Paradigm Shifts

Extraction and exploitation aren't the only options. We need a paradigm shift away from mono cropping, fossil fuels, polluting waters, abusing people, animals and all of nature. Toward a more positive, sustainable future.
‎"Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous system. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave." - Chris Hedges
End our global militarism. That's number one on my agenda. Economically we need to become more self sufficient. Most of our imports are of oil...and plastic crap from China.

It would create a change in the average American's way of life...but it couldn't be anything other than positive, in my estimation. Local, sustainable sources. When Steve Jobs said he had to do business in China (according to one of the 'debaters' last evening) because there weren't enough technicians and engineers in this country it tells me two things.

1. Our education system sucks. If that's a problem, fix it.

2. What he really meant was he needed low wage employees and less environmental constraints to manufacture apple products. The same is true of too much crap we use here. Why can't we have a bit less, and make the products here...in an environmentally conscious manner, with living wages? Why do we need to be in a race to the bottom, which we will lose...since the bottom is already there and so-called "developing nations" are racing to the top.

My least favourite catch phrase is "under developed" countries. Should they all become consumptive, wasteful and broken like this country? Built around the automobile, rather than people? Around consumption and competition rather than compassion and cooperation?
We need a paradigm shift away from toxic tech...and slave labor.

It's getting close to where a paradigm shift won't only be desirable, but it will become necessary. Either we prepare for it and make a smooth transition, or it tumbles down around us...and like Humpty-Dumpty, will never be put back together again...it will be painful, more like Kunstler's "World Made by Hand", than a well thought out, redesigned world.
We are butterflies in the chrysalis stage...we need to struggle to free ourselves, stretch and dry our wings...to fly off in beauty. It's the struggle that makes strong wings.