Wanted: Integrity!

When was the last time you said, “She has integrity” or “He is a man of integrity,” and meant it?

Are you a person of integrity?  Does it matter to you whether or not you are?

Here’s a casual definition of the word: integrity = honesty, moral rectitude and/or soundness.

When applied to a person it refers to a person’s soundness of character.  If a person has integrity, he is a ‘man of his word,’ for example, or she is ‘sound and trustworthy.’  A person of integrity is true, transparent and dependable in his/her relationships with others, for example, neither a backbiter, nor a betrayer, nor a liar or a cheater.

A person of integrity is sound not only with respect to his/her relationship with others, but is sound with respect to his/her beliefs and convictions and seeks to live in a manner that is consistent with his/her principles and values.

In short, a person of integrity is…

• Is true to his word (say what you mean, mean what you say).
• Is reliable, consistent, dependable, and trustworthy.
• Is moderate, reasonable, balanced; is teachable and correctable.
• Is neither stubborn nor close-minded, neither proud nor arrogant, neither recalcitrant nor intractable; is humble.
• Is non-secretive or deceptive but open, transparent, and rightly accountable.
• Is respectful and considerate of others beyond his/her own circle of friends and connections.
• Is fair and just toward all, especially the powerless, disenfranchised, oppressed, and abused.
• Is as concerned for right processes as for right ends (the ends do not justify the means).
• Is purposeful, doing what is good, right, and beneficial, adding value and building community rather than undermining and destroying it.

Integrity matters.  If a thing is sound and whole, is dependable, and true to its purpose, it has integrity.  It works as it is meant to work and does what it’s meant to do.  It is good.

If a nation is to be sound and strong it too must have integrity.  But a nation’s integrity is no better than its people.  It matters whether or not you and I are persons of integrity—at home, in school, at work, or in our judicial and political chambers.  How we conduct personal and public business, how we make decisions—as to motive, purpose, and desired outcomes, matters.  We should always ask ourselves, “Does this have integrity?”

How much integrity do we have in the present politics of our economic decision making process that’s going on right now?  What are the true motives behind the stalemate?  Are our politicians really concerned for what’s best for this nation or are the desired outcomes purely political?  Are the ends justifying the means?

In politics, integrity does not necessarily mean that one does not make compromises or refuses to negotiate and accommodate.  It does mean that one does not sacrifice the public good for personal and political gain.  In this present economic climate, it seems that the best thing for both political parties to do is to make an agreement that is fair, just, and balanced for the nation as a whole, and to stop catering to the hard right or far left and to stop pandering to any other special interest group.  But no, it seems that both parties are rather more worried about election 2012 than they are about the economic strength of this nation—and that myopic concern lacks political integrity.

What to do with 1 Billion Dollars that no one wants?

Did you know that the government has over 1 billion dollars that no one wants?  It’s true!

Okay, I heard about it on National Public Radio, NPR (June 28, 2011).  Our government apparently has been minting one dollar coins in honor of our presidents since 2007.  It’s supposed to be cheaper for the government since coins last longer than paper bills (30 years for coins compared to less than 4 years for paper).

But here’s the thing.  We Americans apparently don’t want dollar coins.  We don’t like them and won’t use them.  We prefer paper.  Three times, not once, not twice, but three times our government has tried to mint a dollar coin version of our greenbacks so as to reduce costs.  And still we refuse them.

But guess what?  Because of a 2005 law, the government cannot simply stop minting these coins.  They continue to be minted—until, I believe, all the presidents have been duly honored with their own coin, which will be completed somewhere around 2016.  So now we have over a billion dollars in dollar-coins wasting away in a government vault at a Federal Reserve Bank.  A billion dollars’ worth of coins that no one wants!  And, by the time all the presidents have been served with this honor, we may end up with 2 billion worth of these gold coins (yes, these coins are gold in color) wasting away in our vaults. 

So, assuming that it IS better to circulate these dollar gold coins and that it is not a government scheme to make more money at the taxpayer’s expense while avoiding accountability, here is my humble suggestion for a solution to this billion dollar waste of solid money:

First, Congress needs to do the simple and practical thing and modify the 2005 law or pass a new law that stops the ongoing required making of these unwanted coins.  That’s simple enough, isn’t it?

Second, how about using these coins as a means of paying off some foreign debt that we may have?  Ship them off as payment.  Hey, we’re talking about a billion dollars here, sitting around doing nothing.  They’re still good currency, are they not?  A dollar is a dollar, is it not?  Use them.

Third, we, the American taxpayer, need to put our money where our mouth is and use what we’ve got.  We claim that we want a leaner cheaper more economical government.  Well, if it’s cheaper to use dollar-coins than paper dollar-bills, let’s use them ourselves!  Go to your local bank and ask for dollar coins.  That’s a simple solution too, isn’t it?

Fourth, focus on the next generation and give them to our kids.  Make it cool for our kids to use them.  If kids grow up enjoying the handling, trading, changing and exchanging and swapping of dollar coins, they will grow into adults who will do the same.  Perhaps the government should hire the Disney Company to launch a super-ad campaign geared to children, selling the idea that’s it cool to save, spend, and circulate dollar coins.  That shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish either, should it?

My point is that our government (Congress!) sometimes passes these ridiculous laws that end up wasting taxpayer’s money.  And, when congress realizes that it’s made an error (if it ever does admit it), it so often does little to modify or correct the mistake after the fact.  As if to say, “It’s too complicated; we have no idea even where to begin to resolve this problem that we’ve created.”   And so, bad, wasteful, and uneconomical laws stay on the books, continuing to waste taxpayer money.  In reality, it’s usually about politics, the one side trying to make the other side either fail and/or look bad.  But what do we Americans want?  Solutions!  That’s all we want, honest-to-goodness solutions.

Why are we playing Chicken with our national debt ceiling?

Our politicians are playing chicken with regard to our national debt limit.  It’s not their fault.  It’s us.  We voters are the problem.  We put these guys in office—far right and far left!

What we need to do is to vote in Good Sense, non-extreme people who will come at this with a good sense approach.  Why are we not doing this?

First let’s ask, “What does a good sense approach look like?”

A good sense approach is balanced, appropriately increasing taxes AND cutting expenditures in the best measured way possible.

A good sense approach will not relieve the wealthy of tax burdens at the expense of the middle class and the poor or needy, but appropriately spreads the burden responsibly, commensurable with income, status, and ability.

A good sense approach is therefore fair and just and hurts as few people as possible, especially the weak and vulnerable, appropriately taking into account citizens with special needs.  That is, a good sense approach considers the economic health and welfare of all its citizens and provides for special needs within reasonable and considerate limits.

A good sense approach makes practical realistic decisions based on solid financial facts and figures and refuses to be chained to political idealism and party extremism or misled by ideological sound-bites.  A good sense approach therefore avoids extreme left and right politics and is anchored by truth, logic, reason, and, well, Good Sense, producing reasonable, balanced, practical, and effective results.

Yet politicians know that this kind of good sense approach does not “sell.”  It doesn’t get them elected.  They know that we voters seem to only listen to extreme self-pleasing, hard-hitting, self-ingratiating politics rather than rational, reasonable, balanced politics.  And so, they’re giving the voters what they asked for and that’s why we’re in trouble.

We voters have voted in these reactionary, tit-for-tat, extremist representatives.  So we can also stop them.  At least I’d like to think we can.  I know we should.  But I think we’re too spoiled and we have lost sight of the bigger picture.  “My way or the highway” is our new personal and political motto and our elected representatives have embraced this.  And that’s our problem.

Critiquing America is not a Bad Thing & Admitting Mistakes is Good

“This is America.  Love it or Leave it!”  Ever hear that before? 

When these words are spoken, it is supposedly a way of honoring America, a way of saying, “America is the best, give her 100% of your support.”  In actuality, these words are often used to shut down all contrary opinions or to close out negative critique respecting hotly contested issues in American politics. That is to say, “If you disagree with us or have a problem with this, your love for America is questionable and we doubt that you’re a true patriot, so leave—we don’t want the likes of you.”

Take the political atmosphere back in 2002-03 when it was “being decided” whether or not we should do a preemptive strike against Saddam Hussein and extend the Afghan war into Iraq.  Does anyone remember how the minority side was treated; the side who thought that doing a preemptive strike against Iraq was not only a bad idea but a fundamentally wrong idea?  Do you remember how the “nay-sayers” were depicted by the pro-strike side and its fellow hawks?  They were called un-American and unpatriotic.  They were portrayed as traitors, betraying the American cause and undermining America’s safety and security.  They were mocked as weak minded and empty-headed, as putting their head in the sand.  They were essentially invited to leave America—yes, as in “This is America, love it or leave it!”  Does anyone remember this?

Though this minority voice was ridiculed and laughed at and made to feel small, a few bold ones continued to speak out and tried to be heard.  They said things like, “It is because I love America that I criticize her and speak out when I believe that she is doing wrong,” or like, “My patriotism demands that I stand up against this horrible mistake that I believe America is making.”  They not only had to defend their contrary point of view but their very patriotism, just because they held a contrary opinion on the matter.

It’s too easy to fall into “all or nothing” sides: The one side says, “America is the best country in the world.  She deserves a hundred and ten percent of our support.  We back her no matter what.”   The other side says, “America is bad, has done terrible things and she must pay the penalty for it; let her fall, bring her down, she deserves it.”  Where’s the honesty, the integrity, or the wisdom in either of these two simplistic polarized sentiments?

We are a mixed bag.  All nations are.  As a nation we’ve done pretty well over the years.  But we’ve also made some pretty big mistakes.  We’ve done wrong.  And the more readily we are able to admit this, the more capable we are to correct and improve things, and steer ourselves in the right direction.

Patriotic sentiment is not a weapon.  That is to say that naysayers and malcontents have a right to critique, rebuff, and question America’s policies and its decisions and actions (national or international) without being accused of being unpatriotic or un-American.  Furthermore, a strong people will have the strength to own up to its mistakes and blunders and to take corrective action and make necessary adjustments to make things right.

Remember back in W.W. II how we put our own Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps?  It wasn’t until 1988 that the U.S. Government formally apologized for that 1942 decision and finally provided some compensation to those who were interned.  This would be an example.  The Vietnam War is another.  Decades passed before Robert McNamara, one of its most powerful promoters & defenders, was finally willing to admit that the Vietnam War was a mistake, to acknowledge that he and his administrative associates were wrong.  Said McNamara in an MSNBC interview, “I think my associates and I acted in accordance with what we thought were the traditions, principles and values of this nation, but we were wrong.  And therefore I think that we owe it to future generations to explain why, to try to draw the lessons so we won’t make the same mistakes again.  There were two, three, I should say, basic misconceptions.  The first was I think we misjudged the Soviet threat, the communist threat.  And this is very important.  I hope we’ll have time to refer back to that.  The second was we viewed it as a war of aggression, Communist against South Vietnam.  It was a civil war.  We didn’t understand that.  Thirdly, we used military tactics and strategy that were more appropriate to opposing the Soviet threat in Western Europe than the Gorillas in Southeast Asia.” [See msnbc.com, YouTube.]  McNamara emphasizes that we should learn from our mistakes in the past.  Indeed we should.  But have we?  Do we?  Will we?

America will only be as strong as its integrity, its willingness to do what is right.  We may not always get it right, but we can at least be willing to be corrected and learn to admit our mistakes.  The War in Iraq would be another example, in my opinion.  To this day, the previous president, the one who decided to declare war on Iraq with its infamous preemptive strike, refuses to admit error, has no doubt nor second thoughts on this decision, and so adamantly offers no apology and no regret.  Yet, years later, we continue to count the deaths on both sides.  We still are unable to count its full cost and cannot yet fully measure our ongoing losses in human lives, resources, and money, which mount daily.  This is sad and regretful.

p.s.
It’s that “All or Nothing!” position that we must be wary of, that we should wonder at and always question.  Now we are seeing it in the area of government finances respecting our National Debt.  No movement as to taxes—even if it should minimally affect a very small and very well to do minority set of Americans.  No willingness to shore-up tax loop-holes, no acceptance of rescinding the Bush tax cuts or any other tax privileges anywhere, in any way or in any form.  All or nothing!  What is the integrity or the wisdom in that?  Are they doing America a favor with such staunchly immovable and intractable attitudes regarding taxes?  Is their position somehow sacrosanct, holier, and purer than the other side?  They certainly act that way.  What a pity.

July 4th We Celebrate our Freedoms! But how Do We Keep Them?

Next week is our Nation’s birthday.  We celebrate.

What do we celebrate?  Freedom!  We commemorate our values, our rights and our freedoms—the right to pursue life liberty and happiness, our freedom of speech and of religion, and so on so forth.

Ironically, one of freedom’s greatest enemies is safety & security.  Why is this?

Total unrestrained freedom means nothing more than life-threatening chaos.  Take our freedom of mobility to drive anywhere we please.  This freedom requires order.  If we are going to arrive at our destination safely and securely, we need laws, rules, and regulations—red lights, stop signs, driving lanes, speed limits, etc.  Thus, the free exercise of our freedom assumes limitations on that freedom—restrictions—for the sake of order, safety, and security.

All Governments, of whatever persuasion, know this and use various means and methods to maintain safety and security for their people by directly or indirectly limiting various aspects of their freedoms.  Indeed there is a direct correlation between an extremely safe and secure State Controlled environment and a peoples’ lack of freedom.  You can bet that an extremely well-ordered, clean and safe country is a country whose State-Government is heavy handed and holds the reigns tightly over its citizens.  Singapore would be a prime example of this.

It’s a trade-off.  Want more freedom?  Be prepared to feel less safe in your environment, less secure.  Want more security?  Be prepared to give up some of your precious freedoms.  Thus, safety and security are inherently antithetic to freedom.

Because of this, freedom is constantly being threatened, is regularly eroded by our need for safety and security.  And so, maintaining our Freedoms requires constant vigil.  It demands hard work.  A citizen’s personal freedoms are all too easily lost in the daily shuffle of living a life.  While Joe Citizen is busy making a living, he may wake up one day only to discover that he’s lost some precious basic freedom, just when he was feeling the most comfortable, all safe and secure.

Thus, it helps to remember that true freedom—real authentic personal and social freedom—must first ignite from within.  Authentic Freedom begins with the recognition that every soul is sacrosanct and every person is deserving of respect, dignity, and honor—Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  That’s why real freedom begins in the heart.  Freedom values people, dignifies persons, is respectful of community relationships, and honors personal and social boundaries.  And so Authentic Freedom supports just laws, fair and balanced regulation, the principle of fair play and good conduct, community cohesiveness, in short, a rule of law and order that is fair and just, equitable, non-exploitive, non-invasive, and non-oppressive.  The respect for and the dignity and honor of all human beings are at its core.

Secondly, Authentic Freedom is ignited by the light of truth.  Openness and transparency feeds into Authentic Freedom.  The heart may give freedom its passion and value, but the mind gives freedom its content and substance.  Authentic Freedom requires wisdom, insight, knowledge and understanding.  A free people must be an educated and informed people.  Education must be a priority.  Authentic Freedom is built on a citizenship that is knowledgeable and not naïve, inquisitive and not gullible, insightful and not credulous, mentally awake and aware and neither dazed nor asleep.  It citizenship wants and demands truth and authenticity at all levels and must itself be a true and authentic people or freedom has little chance.

Thirdly, Authentic Freedom must be expressed in daily practice—at work, at play, at home, in the office, the board room, the classroom, or the hospital room.  Authentic Freedom must be given shape and form by the actual character and behavior of its adherents, by citizens who walk the talk, who live the value, and play, practice, and perform their free acts without apology or abuse.  Free citizens do as Authentic Freedom expects wants and demands of a free people.  They exercise their freedom with respect, dignity, honor and consideration for all.  They live, act do and behave as authentic carriers of freedom ought to, dignifying persons, honoring personal boundaries and needs, respecting law and order and safety and security concerns, all the while keeping their core authentic freedom principles intact.  They do unto others as they would have others do unto them.

So, as we celebrate our Nation’s birthday, let us also be mindful of our responsibility to nurture our freedoms with balanced and just laws, fair and equitable rules and regulations, and just restrictions that keep our people safe and secure as well as free and thriving.  Let us therefore continue to build on our Authentic Freedoms beginning with a heart of passion, informing our minds and enlightening our understanding, and living it out in daily practice and participation.

Issues regarding our Nation’s Health Care System

We all seem to agree that our health care system needs great improvement.

First of all, it’s way too costly.  It’s ever on the increase, consistently outpacing the normal rate of inflation year to year.  Where is the money going?  Who’s getting it?  Why does it constantly outrun most other industries in terms of cost and inflation?

Secondly, it’s imbalanced.  Some get extraordinary care while others get little or none.  Tons of money is spent on adding a few short months to a life that has already lived seventy, eighty, even ninety years, while little money is available to provide basic health care needs to children who, for lack of it, are constantly sick and may even needlessly die at an early age.

Thirdly, it’s convoluted and opaque, covert and non-transparent.  Have you ever spent time in the hospital and later tried to make sense of the hospital bill?  Did you even get a chance to see the hospital bill’s breakdown?  You asked for an aspirin.  How much did you (i.e., your insurance company) actually pay for it?  You’d be astounded if you knew.  But we’re kept happily in the dark about such details.  The doctor passes by in the hallway; you call out and ask him a simple question.  You discover later that he charged you a $150 consulting fee for that 30 second conversation.  You had simply asked him if you were going to be released from the hospital that afternoon or the next morning.

Fourthly, it’s not about what it’s about.  What is health care?  Regular check-ups for both children and adults are required to treat normal mundane human sicknesses so as to prevent more serious illnesses from spreading.  So, health care is about maintaining a generally healthy population.  There are emergencies, accidents, broken legs, burns, and recoverable illnesses.  So, health care is about providing immediate medical care in a medical emergency.  There are long term and chronic medical needs from birth.  So, health care is about providing sustained medical treatment over a person’s lifetime because of congenital birth defects, deformities, and imperfections.  There are fatal diseases, the big “C” being the most common.  And so, health care is about fighting cancer and other terminal illnesses.

But health care is also a business, BIG business, and profits and losses are a major concern for anyone in the business.  So, we have a contradiction in values.    It’s an industry that capitalizes on people getting sick.  As a business it must make money.  A profit is wanted at the end of the day.  The bottom-line rules!  On the other hand, a family will say, “You can’t put a price tag on Uncle Johnny or Aunt Sally or Grandpa, Grandma, mom, dad, sister, or brother.”  “Do whatever it takes to keep my loved one alive, whatever the cost!” says the family.  Then what?  Then the ghastly medical bills come in, and a family’s home is ruined.  All financial resources are drained.  Meanwhile the loved one is now beyond recovery and dies anyway.  The family can pay no more, will pay no more.  So, who actually benefitted from such care?

Finally, it feeds into human nature’s weakness to want total control and power.  There are couples who very much want their own child but can’t seem to produce one, and there are women who very much do not want the child developing in their womb and want it clinically removed.  Thus, health care is about providing the desired reproductive ends for singles and/or couples who want or do not want “the baby.”  Note: the choice is only available for those who can prove that they have the means to pay.  And then there is the inevitable death and dying process.  Health care is about easing the death and dying process if not indefinitely postponing it for as long as possible.  Exactly how much are you willing to pay to add just a little more time to your life?

We are contradicting ourselves.  On the one hand we have couples who are willing to spend huge amounts of medical money, resources, time, talent, research, and what not in order to keep their “preemie” alive, even if it means that the baby will not have a “normal” life and will require constant medical attention along with its accompanying services (hospital stays, doctors’ visits, pharmaceuticals, nursing care, therapy, special Ed, etc.) for the rest of his/her life.  On the other hand we have those who are desperate to abort their baby, refusing to admit that it is anything near a viable living being.  And still, on the other hand, we have aging parents and grandparents who have lived a good and full life, well into their eighties and nineties, whose family refuses to “let go” demanding they be given the best and most modern medical treatment available in order to keep them here on earth, for what—three, six, perhaps twelve more months at the most?  Is this reasonable?  Is it right?

Who decides and how should such things be decided?  To each his/her own way?  Is it really an individual decision when all of society pays its social and economic consequence in one form or another?  What’s going on here?  As a society we have mixed and conflicting messages as to the definition of life, birth, death, and life’s value.  We want to believe that we can avoid death altogether.  We want to conquer the aging process.  We want modern science and technology to serve our interests, including our decision as to whether or not the next generation shall live—abort or not abort, save the preemie or not save the preemie, no matter the odds against it.  “Don’t pull the plug,” says one couple.  “Get this thing out of me,” says she.

Modern science and technology, especially in the medical field, has caused us to lose sight of two basic truths in life.  (1) We are mortal beings.  Modern medicine has made it more difficult not less, to determine and accept the final step in life—when we have to accept and embrace life’s inevitability—death.  We shall die, all of us.  It seems we won’t accept this.  (2) We are not gods.  The more power a human being wields the more dangerous he/she becomes.  Imagine a typical human with godlike powers.  Scary!  Yet, we are more and more taking it upon ourselves to decide who shall and who shall not live—based on our own selfish interests and desires.  On the aging end, we are artificially keeping loved ones alive by hooking them up to mechanical life support systems, unnecessarily prolonging their passage way to Life after life.  And, on the inception end of things, we are artificially cutting life short by invading the uterus.  We have become our own gods.  This is a very dangerous path to be on.

As to our nation’s health care system, here are some principles we should heed: (1) that which is fair and just is always a good measure for determining whether something is good.  If systems and procedures result in unfair and unjust outcomes, something is wrong.  If we are going to do what’s right for health care in our nation, we need to develop a health care system that is as fair and just for all citizens as can possibly be.  (2) Fairness and justice require truth and transparency.  We need more truth and transparency in our medical health care system.  The right-hand has to know what the left-hand is doing.  We need to understand the who, what, where, when, how, and why of the key players and stakeholders that presently dominate the health care system in order to determine what needs correcting.  I don’t believe that the public is getting the real picture.  Too much is still being hidden from public view.  (3) We need a more consistent and unifying understanding of life/death processes.  “Pulling the plug” is not always a bad thing.  Saving a preemie is not always a good thing.  Yet, I admit, sometimes it seems that you almost have to be God to know how to make that judgment call.

Nature’s Care, Global Warming, Earthly Needs, Fracking, and other Worldly Concerns

You don’t need to be an Albert Einstein.  You don’t need to be a Nobel Prize winner in Science.  You don’t need to be a physicist, a biologist, a zoologist, or a climatologist to know that something is wrong.  Nature, Mother Earth, is convulsing and choking on our waste—industrial waste, chemicals and gases, non-degradable plastics, spent nuclear rods, heat exhaust, CO2, etcetera.

We are presently teetering on a world population of seven (7) billion.  That means that in my own lifetime earth’s population increased from around 2.5 billion to a whopping 7 billion.  That’s a big increase in fifty odd years.  Wouldn’t you agree?  A global population of more than 9 billion is expected by 2050.

Exactly how many people can the earth actually sustain?  Remember, all 7 to 9 billion people will need and want, fresh clean air, pure clean water, and enough food to satisfy hunger if not our indulgent appetites, not to mention a means to rid themselves of human waste, garbage, and sewage.  How much will the Earth take?  Growth is not limitless.  Earth’s life-sustaining capacity is not endlessly expansive.

Clean water resources are receding.  Rich agricultural land is diminishing.  The rain forest is shrinking.  The Glaciers are melting at a phenomenal rate.  Huge sections of precious Coral Reefs are dying.  Waterless desert land is expanding.  Our air is polluted.  Private water wells are drying up and/or are no longer trustworthy sources of clean drinking water.  These global trends are simple matter-of-fact realities that no longer need “official declaration,” or “administrative validation,” or “legal proof” or “government confirmation.”  It’s 21st century global reality.  It’s happening right before our very eyes.  And we’re in denial.

Yet we continue to dig, drill, and “frack,” drain, flush, and empty, and otherwise exploit our land in sundry ways, giving little or no thought to the long-term consequences.  And we foolishly polarize the argument into artificially “all or nothing” positions: “tree huggers” versus “job creation and sound business investment.”  Yet these concerns are more than a mere question of present day economic business needs.  It is a question of earth’s life-sustainability.

We’ve treated the earth as if it were a mere commodity, an object for exploitation rather than as an extension of our own life source.  Mother Earth is not simply a financial commodity.  Earth is a holistic living organism that provides us with the basic necessities of life, and No!  I’m not becoming “Animistic” or subscribing to some “New Age Spiritualism.”  Nevertheless, we need to handle Earth with much more respect and care than we have in the past and stop using it as if it were nothing more than a thing to buy, use, and dispose of when done.

The modern day business mentality and its approach to the use of earth’s resources has a huge disconnect between earth as a life-providing and life-sustaining organism and earth as an object of exploitation for the material stuff that it’s made of—water, oil, gold, diamonds, coal, natural gas, and so-forth.  The effect of this disassociating approach, this disconnect between earth as thing/object/stuff versus earth as an organism/subject/life, is killing it.

It is a mindset problem, a mentality, the way we view reality and our business in this world.  The business model mindset—earth is a commodity—buy sell, exploit use and dispose, is not working.  It is effectively choking life off this planet.  For too long we have acted as if we are earth’s superiors, independent masters in control of earth rather than dependent subjects whose wellbeing is directly connected to earth’s wellbeing.  We need a new model, a new earth-friendly model that recognizes our dependency upon earth’s life’s cycles and nature’s balance of things.  The business model has been too reckless and negligent, too myopic and short-sighted, too utilitarian and exploitative, and completely blind to earth as a life-giving, life sustaining organism.

This is why, for example, many Americans who are generally good thinking, trusting, and well balanced patriotic U.S. citizens DO worry about the fracking that is going on in the Marcellus Shale.  We have our doubts.  We are not buying into the “don’t worry, we’ve got everything under control, just trust us” response to our questions about its effect upon our water wells and our rivers and streams, and why we continue to demand for more accountability and ask for better regulation over the oil companies that are doing the fracking.

The earth has its vital signs just as any other living organism.  And what earth’s vital signs are telling us is not good.  It’s in poor health and it’s not getting any better.  To refuse to recognize this is to be in denial.

For example, take the idea of “global warming.”  Not to accept Global Warming as a reality is to believe that the whole concept is nothing more than a conspiracy.  It’s as if one day, a few choice people woke up with this great idea to scam the world.  “I know,” says one culprit, “Let’s tell people that the world is getting a temperature.  We’ll call it Global Warming.  Meanwhile, we’ll set up businesses all over the world that will claim to fight the effects of this so-called Global Warming.  And, since we created the idea in the first place, we will have major economic control over the investments in these companies and so we can kick back and rake in the money when everyone is frightened enough to invest in our little lie that the earth has a temperature.”

So, Global Warming is really a big scam, a hoax, just another scheme to take our money.  Is that what they—those who oppose accepting Global Warming as reality—want us to believe?  Give me a break. And go hug a tree, it just might make you feel better.